True Heavenly-Mindedness

What does it mean to be heavenly minded?

Does it mean to stick your super-spiritual head so high up into the clouds that you cannot properly or responsibly do your God-given work? Does it condemn us to being of absolutely no earthly use?

There are clearly some spiritual dangers in other-worldly orientation! Yet it is also a trap of the Devil to lose celestial focus. A better way to state this, eschewing ethereal excess, is that only heavenly-hearted folks are of any lasting, earthly, help.

Being truly eternity-minded means no less than this - it is to resolutely, persistently, worshipfully and humbly, to direct our intent gaze on glory in Christ that awaits all true children of God.

Being really celestially-goal-orientated means no less than to perceive spiritually, with God-given eyes in the heart, the Christ once-wounded, now raised, in His ascended, exalted, vindicated, sovereign, radiance.

Being seriously glory-seeking means to personally, scripturally, diligently and transformatively to intensify our study of the character, person, work and fruit-filled life of Jesus.

Being rightly eternally transfixed is to use the means of grace, in public and private, to study the Savior who walked by faith in truth, and died to self as He humbled Himself even to death on a Cross.

Such true, heavenly, non-ethereal faith, hope and love, not only abides; it also rests content with its promised eternal reward and the inexpressible and unspeakable radiance that awaits.

The reason for this is not hard to find: when we set our hearts fully on things that lie beyond - things of such an exalted, higher, nobler, Jesus-centered, monumentally-significant, strain, all is spiritual change. Sin is put to death. Holy character is formed. Christ-like love infills and infuses our souls through His Spirit that indwells us.

In other words, the heart cannot eye the crucified, risen, ascended, glorious Lord, in faith, and remain the same - Jesus transfixes! Christ transforms!

The holy, spiritual, light emitted from the face of Christ increasingly molds and bridles our soul with grace, peace, joy, humility, obedience, endurance and selflessness.

We seek lost sheep and the good of brothers (and all others) before self. We love our families. We serve our friends. We glory in the faith which floods us with such hope. Our words, thoughts, deeds, plans and dreams become Kingdom-centered.

In the sight of Christ, we perceive God's purest light: tawdry pleasures of this world begin to dim and fade - once magnetic sin, popularity and flesh lose their glitz-appeal.

In the light of Father's love, seen through the contact lens of His Lamb who was slain, earthly, worldly, and selfish ambitions seem so seriously over-rated - so pray for grace, brothers and sisters, to be more truly, sanely, deeply, practically and progressively, heavenly-minded.