Have you ever gone to a restaurant and filled up on an appetizer (like chips and salsa) and then didn’t have any room left for the more nutritious main course? Jeff uses this illustration to explain how good things can become a problem when they replace God.
Using Scripture passages from Genesis, St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians, and the Gospel of John, Jeff shows us why moderation is extremely important if we want to set our eyes on heaven.
Snippet from the Show
“Are we living in such a way where we can live in moderation and focus on the things that are really important or are we indulging in the temporal things?”
SHOWNOTES
Genesis 3:6 - “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate.”
1 John 2:15-17 - “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.
Colossians 3:2 - “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”
John 6:25 - “When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’” Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. ”
John 6:27 - “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal.”
Samuel Johnson - "It is generally allowed, that no man ever found the happiness of possession proportionate to that expectation which incited his desire, and invigorated his pursuit; nor has any man found the evils of life so formidable in reality, as they were described to him by his own imagination; every species of distress brings with it some peculiar supports, some unforeseen means of resisting, or powers of enduring."
C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain) - “All things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of heaven—tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear … If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the more probable explanation is that I was made for another world … Earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”