A few days ago, my friend Toby found himself being dragged to a McDonald's parking lot. This was obviously strange and terrible, as McDonald's food is nasty. But as it turned out they weren't there to buy food.
Earlier that week, Toby had his cell phone stolen. And to make matters worse, in his attempt to retrieve his phone from the thieves, he dropped his car keys in their car while they were making their get-away. As a phone-less, key-less, broke college kid, Toby was understandably upset. After hours of trying to think of a solution to his unfortunate predicament, he realized there was nothing he could do. He was powerless to fix his situation.
But in an act of Christ-like generosity, Toby's friends conspired together to replace his phone.
Like Toby, they are also poor college students. But they figured they could make a little bit of a sacrifice, and help a friend out. Which is what Christ did, albeit on a much larger scale. This lifestyle of sacrifice is what we, as Christians are supposed to be doing with our lives. We're supposed to be kingdom-focused.
The Christians in Colossae were apparently pretty good at this.
We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit. (Colossians 1:3-8, ESV)
The Christians in Colossae loved each other, just like Jesus commanded us. But why? Paul says its because they were looking at the big picture. They were looking forward to Heaven. They knew how their story ended, and it gave them hope. They were kingdom-minded.
Kingdom-minded means suffering is temporary. Which frees you up to sacrifice - like Toby's friends. It frees you up to spend less time on yourself, and more time on other people. It means when times are tough, we can grit our teeth and take the pain because our story ends well.
Kingdom-minded means looking to God. Later in Chapter 1 it says this, "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (1:15-16). Paul writes with absolute clarity - Jesus IS God. He made the world. He is over and above all rulers and authorities. Jesus is in control. He's God, and everything is for his glory. We can worship him in the difficult times by resting in the truth of his being in control of everything.
Kingdom-minded means loving people. It's just one of those things. If you truly love God, you will love people. If you don't love people, maybe you don't love God. When Paul talks about the Gospel, "bearing fruit," this is what he means. They heard the Gospel. They heard about Jesus - God coming into human history as a man, living the life we couldn't live, paying the price we couldn't pay, and dying the death we all deserved to die - and, "understood the grace of God" (1:6). And it led them to love each other with the same type of self-sacrificial love that Jesus demonstrated, and the same type of self-sacrificial love that Toby's friends demonstrated. Mother Teresa said this, " I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."
So how can you shift your perspective to be a bit more kingdom focused this week?
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