Rich Towards God

20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

As you read this, what is your focus of the day? Is your focus on acquiring more stuff through hard work? Have you been tempted out of contentment by the allure of the things of this world, and not dialed into God?

Those are hard questions to answer if we are honest. The fool that spent his life building bigger barns, only to see it scattered to others as he met death would probably give us council not to do the same thing. But yet we can find ourselves on the same path at times, at least mentally.

How do we overcome this? Learning how to be rich toward God. What does that mean? I believe it means joyfully having our thoughts, actions, words, money and time captivated by the Cross. I believe that it means finding intense satisfaction in God alone so that the value of bigger and better worldly things diminish in value. We must shift our focus away from the things of this world and towards God. Even if self denial of the things of this world is the focus, it will control us without the grace of God captivating our hearts.

Let me give you an example. If your true focus is on trying not to eat that brownie that you want, it will dominate your thoughts and eventually overcome you. You may avoid it for some time, but since it owns your thoughts you will eventually give in. If your true focus is on the health that you desire as a result of not eating the brownie, then you are able to overcome the desire to eat that brownie as your desire is on health, not brownies. The change in desires drives a different lifestyle.

It is the same with our spiritual health. We need to ask God to direct our lives, souls and actions to being rich towards God. We need to be captivated by Him and His grace. Yes we need to sprint away from the allure of this world, but the only staying power available in that process is that our heart's desire finds it ultimate satisfaction in Christ alone. All other efforts may yield temporary victories, but will ultimately revert back to serve our desires.

So where are your desires held at this moment? Your life will be driven by them so be careful.