Do you spend more time looking up or looking down?

Do you spend more time looking up or looking down?


This Sunday’s sermon reminded me of a question that I asked a lady in our church a few weeks ago. As She walked by she was looking down the whole time. When she looked up, she seemed to have a lot on her mind. I asked her the question, “Do you spend more time looking up or looking down?’ Her answer was, “looking down.” I wonder how true this is for all of us.
This past Sunday john challenged us with a thought from Colossians 3:3. That challenge was that our life was hidden in Christ. That means my life is not found in my present circumstances wither good or bad. My life is in Christ!

It is amazing to me how easy it is for us to be come so consumed by our present circumstance that we neglect to acknowledge our future.
I remember a few years ago when my daughter was struggling through her teen years, she made some unwise choices. The circumstances of those choices caused her a lot of pain and she suffered consequences from them. But the greatest pain that she suffered was from her own thoughts of herself. She now saw her self much differently than before.

In all of her brokenness she could not let go of the fact that she had hurt God and destroyed her testimony. I remember her saying that she no longer felt worthy to have a relationship with God, and she no longer felt she should be called a Christ. What she saw and what I saw were too different things. What I saw was a girl who no longer had it altogether and was proud. I now saw a girl who was depended on God and humble.
I reminded her that life was filled with success and failure.

Even though God wants us to acknowledge things we do in the present and confess our sin, he does not want us to do that in isolations of what He has said about our future. God doesn’t just see where we are now. He sees what we will be one day also. One day we will be JUST LIKE JESUS! That is why it is so important for us to know who we are and what God has said about us. We can’t view our present circumstance in the right way unless we acknowledge are future.

We have to spend more time looking up trusting what God’s word says than looking down. Even when we cannot see it or even feel it. That is the substance of faith. Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, The conviction of things not seen”