Hold On Loosely

Hello, radio friends. How in the world are you? You’re doing alright? Well, bless your heart, I’m fine, happy in the Lord and so grateful for the privilege of spending a little time with you around the Word of God, trying to put a handle on it so that you can get hold of it for yourself. God’s Word is forever true, whether or not anyone reads or believes it, but it becomes of value to you and to me when we apply it to our lives. This then is my purpose in coming to you day by day with portions of God’s Word.

Right now, we’re in the book of Colossians, and we’ve started in chapter three. “Since you’re risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. Since you became alive again, so to speak, when Christ arose from the dead for you, now set your sights on the rich treasures and joys of heaven where he sits beside God in the place of honor and power. Let heaven fill your thoughts; don’t spend your time worrying about things down here. You should have as little desire for this world as a dead person does. Your real life is in heaven with Christ and with God. When Christ who is our real life comes back again, you’ll shine with Him and share in all his glories.” I read those three verses from the Living Bible, which is as you know a paraphrase, not a translation, but it is so helpful in that it just brings the truth right down on main street, so to speak. Doesn’t it?

“Since you’re risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.” “Set your sights on,” is the way Kenneth Taylor puts it. “Seek” in your Greek New Testament is a verb that means go after it, pursue it, and want it with all your heart. That’s the combination of meaning that you have there in that verb of seek those things which are above. The desire for heavenly values is the thing that must take up our attention most of all. Okay, now you say, “That’s fine for you to say that, Brother Cook, but I have to live in a real world. How in the world do I do this?” “Commit thy work unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established,” said the sacred writer. If you’ll talk to God about what you have to do and the way you have to live, God will see to it that your value system is adjusted heavenward. Two things will change your attitude toward the world around you. One is prayer, which I just talked to you about, talking to God specifically about the things you have to do in the life you have to live. And that means family, and house, and children, and husband, and wife, and job, and career, and neighbors, and community contacts, and shopping, and money, and budgets, and planning, and insurance, and health, and doctors, and discipline, and schooling, and all the rest. You know, you go down the list.

You talk to God about these things, and He’ll see to it that your thoughts and your value system are adjusted heavenward as a result. The other thing, of course, is the Word of God. “Thy word have I hid in my heart,” said the psalmist, “That I might not sin against thee.” “Wherewithal shall a young man change his way,” that means modify his character and conduct. How can you modify the person you are and the way you react to life? He certainly can’t do it through somebody else’s lecturing you. All that I say to you today is of little value, unless you get alone with God in his Word and let the Word of God operate in your heart. Also, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another.” It’s the indwelling Word and the indwelling Holy Spirit and the inworking power of the Holy Ghost in your life, working out that salvation. Philippians 2, “Work out that inworked salvation that God has given you.” That’s what makes the difference, set, seek those things which are above.

Now the second thing he says was, “Set your affection.” Set your affection on things above. What is it that you really love? I told you the other day the story of my neighbor 40 years ago, who really loved his classic Model A. Well, it’s possible for people to be completely hung up on things, isn’t it? Oh, yes. I suppose the most dramatic illustration about this comes from my acquaintance with my good friend, Colonel Paul Maddox. He and his dear wife, Lucille, had just retired from being chief of chaplains in the European theater right after World War II. And they were bringing all their family effects, household effects home. And the army, of course, moves you, packs you and moves you. And everything went well until the boat docked at New York, and they were standing on the pier waiting for their particular shipment of household goods. There was one huge carton that contained all sorts of valuables, china, and other things that were very valuable. And this was put in a hamper, that kind of a rope hamper that they connect to a crane, and was being lifted out of the ship, up, up, up, out of the hold, and then across the deck and then out over the concrete pier. And suddenly, the person who was operating the crane made some kind of a mistake, touched evidently the wrong lever, and that entire shipment dropped 30-40 feet or more to the concrete and was completely smashed.

Well you can understand how bad a person would feel when something like that happened; here is the results of a whole lifetime of careful collecting of things that are of value. And I think they had picked up some beautiful things there in Germany as well, they’d been able to buy them. And so there they were standing on the pier with the shattered remnants of a lifetime at their feet. Well, I don’t know whether I would have said this, but Paul Maddox told me that he looked at his wife while she was crying and he said, “Well now, that’s too bad dear. You know you could have taken all of that stuff to heaven with you, couldn’t you?” [chuckle] That’s gotten to be sort of a joke around our house since we heard it. I’ll say to Coreen, when something breaks, “Well, that’s too bad, you could have taken it to heaven with you.”

Things, don’t set your heart on things. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust doth corrupt and thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves.” Jesus said, “treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through and steal.” “Every man’s work shall be tried,” Paul says, “by fire of what sort it is. If any man build on this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, or wood, hay, and stubble, every man’s work shall be tried by fire.” And he said, “If the fire burns up the wood and the hay and the stubble, you’ll lose it all, but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire. But if your work remains,” well then he says, “you’ll receive a reward.” You read that in Paul’s first letter there to the Corinthians.

The truth is there isn’t it, beloved? You and I have no business setting our affections on earthly things. I think so often of what Jim Wright said years ago, when I was President of Youth for Christ, and our office was located at 109 North Cross Street in Wheaton, Illinois. We had a small office building there that Ted Engstrom had help us purchase, so we didn’t have to pay rent. And we had a small staff of workers; one of them was a man, Jim Wright, a very fine godly young man. One who put the rest of us to shame by the depth and intensity of his devotional life. But we were not above teasing him as young people are…

So one day he showed up with a new Chevrolet. He’d been driving an old clunker. And now I think he borrowed some money from his in-laws or something and got a new Chevrolet. Well, it was the cheapest model, it was what we called a stripped model. There wasn’t anything extra on it, no radio, no air conditioning, just a car, but it was new. And so we walked around and looked at it and kicked the tires and made our various comments, and we were giving him a bad time. I remember I said some that something like this to him. I said, “Jim, you know that’s pretty carnal driving a brand new car in the Lord’s work. You’re gonna have to live above that, aren’t you?” I was giving him a bad time. He looked at me and he said, “Well Bob,” he said, “it all depends upon whether you have things or things have you, doesn’t it?”

And I’ll tell you, that was the end of the teasing and the kidding at that point because he had made a very solid point with all of us. It’s something I always remembered across a good many years now. It all depends upon whether you have things or whether they have you. Tell me something, do the things of this earth have a hold on you? What do you get upset about? What really bugs you, as the kids say? What do you get upset about? What is it that has a hold on your affections?” You need to hold these things at arm’s length, so to speak, because they’re just for a little while and then eternity begins. I don’t think there’ll be any Cadillacs in eternity. I don’t think there’ll be any diamond rings in eternity. I don’t think there’ll be any mink coats. Maybe there may, I don’t know ’cause I haven’t been there yet. [chuckle]

But my guess is that some of the things we value so highly in this world are gonna show up missing in the next. He said, “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” Oh, the gold, and the silver, and the precious stones that have to do with eternal values. You know what’s gonna be important over there? How much you honored the Lord Jesus here. “He that confesseth me before men, him will I also confess before my Father, which is in Heaven.” Your Savior is gonna be able to say to some of you… Say about some of you, I should say, when He speaks to the Father, “Father, this man witnessed for me in a very difficult situation, and he won so and so to me,” and so on. The Savior is going to brag a little about you, beloved, if you are true to Him, down here; that’s what he said. He said He would confess you before the Father, before the angels in Heaven. And so the things that really count are the things you do for your Lord, here and now, not the possessions that you amass.

Now, I’m not asking everybody to take a vow of poverty and live as a mendicant and go around begging and not have a right to cover yourself; that that isn’t the point and you know it. The point we’re making is, how much of a hold on your life do earthly things have? You better hold them loosely, beloved, and you better pay most of your attention to living for eternity because that’s where you’re gonna spend the rest of your life.

Dear Father, today, may we hold things of this world loosely, but may we hold tight to eternal values, Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!