Have the cares of this world distracted you from sitting at the feet of Jesus? Have your fears left you feeling restless, insecure, unstable? The God of the universe is still speaking, right now, in his word. Hear his voice calling your name today, bidding you to come and enjoy the one necessary thing, the one satisfying thing, the one safe thing. You have time to sit with God.

When we stop to remember that God exists — that he created all that is from nothing; that he sustains everything we know, moment by moment, with just a word from his mouth; that he governs every government on earth; that he entered into his creation, taking on flesh, enduring weakness and temptation, suffering hostility to the point of death, even death on a cross, all to shower us with mercy, cleanse us of our sin, and secure our eternity with him in paradise — it is stunning, isn’t it, that we ignore and neglect him like we do.
Isn’t it amazing that God simply was before time began, and yet we sometimes struggle to find even ten minutes for him? Isn’t it perplexing, bordering on insanity, that we sometimes prefer distracting ourselves with our phones over taking advantage of our breathtaking access to his throne of grace in Christ? Isn’t it kind of unexplainable how we often live as if we do not have time to sit and enjoy God?
It is stunning, amazing, and perplexing, and yet so painfully familiar. Everyone who has followed Jesus knows what it is like to be distracted from following Jesus. That means we all, every one of us, can sympathize with anxious Martha.
Distracted by Fear
When Martha saw that Jesus had come to town, she welcomed him into the home where she and her sister lived (Luke 10:38). When Mary saw Jesus, she immediately sat down at his feet, and hung on his every word (Luke 10:39). “But Martha,” Luke tells us, “was distracted with much serving” (Luke 10:40).
To her credit, she was not distracted with little serving, but with much serving. And it’s hard for some of us to be too hard on her. She was hosting the Messiah — Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace — and she alone was preparing the food. Mary realized who Jesus was, and sat down to listen. Martha realized who Jesus was, and ran to do all she could for him.
The serving itself was not the problem — or at least not the main problem — especially given the social expectations for hospitality in her day. What, then, was the problem? Anxiety was consuming Martha. When she complained to Jesus that Mary was not helping her, he responded, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things” (Luke 10:41). Her grumbling had opened wide a window into her heart. Love was not inspiring her to serve; anxiety was. Her turmoil was driven by misplaced fear. How often is this true of us?
And not just a fear, but many fears. “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things.” This wasn’t just about hospitality. Martha was distracted from Jesus because her mind was drowning in the cares of this world. And because she would not stop and listen to Jesus, she was forfeiting the calm she so desperately needed.
One Necessary Thing
Jesus knows how to still the raging waves of anxiety. Notice that he says her name not once, but twice: “Martha, Martha . . .” You can almost hear him slowing down the second time. He uses his voice, like a brake, to slowly quiet the turbulence in her heart. He knows how distracted she is, how wildly her mind is racing from one worry to another, and so he begins by helping her focus: “Martha, Martha . . .”
Read More

Earthly kingdoms rise and fall with all the emotional swings of human pride. The dream house we finally finished can be burned to the ground in a moment. About the time you get used to one thing, it is time to move on to another. And the constant shiftiness of our lives injects us with insecurity, fear, anxiety, and instability as the good today may be gone tomorrow. Yet, around the throne of Christ, the solace and quiet of the permanent resides without any shadow of change. The weather of our lives here may be foul or fair, but our true home is found secure in the everlasting peace of Christ in heaven.

There is nothing new under the sun.
Everything changes—nothing stays the same.
These are two adages that we regularly use to describe our world. We employ them when a fitting situation arises in our life. Yet, the commonness of these two proverbs only aggravates the tension between them—there is nothing new and everything changes. Which one is it?  
Empires are borne and buried. People are known and forgotten. Summer wanes into winter.  The newness of today is a remake of a forgotten yesterday. Even the new technologies we invent are the same old efforts to improve some aspect of life. Yet, amid all these cycles of sameness, there is one thing that is truly new.  
This new event was a cataclysmic, cosmos-altering incident. It fundamentally modified the reality of the world, even if humans fail to recognize it. And this unique, one-of-a-kind act was the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Christ’s resurrection a new world was born—a new age came into existence—and the apostle Paul wants to make sure that believers orient their whole selves around this new reality. Here are fourteen important things to remember about setting your mind on the things that are above.
1. We Have Died to the Elemental Spirits of the World
Earlier in Colossians 2:16-23, Paul has been telling us what not to do. He exhorted us not to let anyone judge us in matters of diet, calendars, or the self-abasing rites of angel worship, as such self-proclaimed humility was really just a prideful technique of self-promotion. Moreover, we should not submit to these regulations, because it is to put ourselves back under the law of the world.
To heed all of these “do nots” is to act like we are still alive to the world and serving the elemental spirits and principles of the world (Col. 2:20-23). Yet, we have died to the world and its laws, so we cannot obey its rules. Besides, as Paul noted, all the regulations are useless to accomplish the purpose of which they boast. 
The prohibitions to which Paul is referring in Colossians 2 were worldly laws to beat the body in order to progress spiritually towards God and true life and security. Starve the body to free your soul from its fleshy desires. Invoke angels to whisk you away to worlds unknown. But all this harsh humiliation doesn’t advance us one spiritual baby step. Instead, it only puffs up a person’s ego and draws lines of division across the body of Christ.
2. Having Been Raised with Christ, We Should Orient Ourselves around the Things Above
Because we have died in Christ to the things that we should not do, Paul now shifts to what we ought to do. Where he tied our not doing the worldly laws to our death in Christ, he weds our duty to having been raised with Christ:
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Col. 3:1-4)
Verse 1 takes us back to Colossians 2:12 and our spiritual resurrection by faith with Christ as we put off the corrupt nature:
Having been buried with [Christ] in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.
Our sin was forgiven as it was nailed to the cross. This spiritual resurrection of ours by faith unites us to the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. By his resurrection, Jesus becomes The Beginning of the new creation.
3. In His Resurrection, Jesus Inaugurated a New Creation—a New Reality, a New Age—to Which We Belong
Jesus’ bursting out of the grave fundamentally altered the reality of the cosmos. His resurrection created heaven—and not merely as the place of God but as the heavenly mountain Zion, as the new heavens and new earth where God and the glorified church will dwell together in unending blessedness.  
And to be raised with Christ by faith makes us part of this new creation. It alters our identity, our homeland, our family, and our destiny. Being raised with Jesus means we are strangers and aliens in this age. Our new family is the body of Christ. Our homeland is the Age to Come. The country of our new birth is the world above.
4. In Our Spiritual Resurrection, This World Is No Longer Our Home
We still look the same on the outside; we speak and dress the same, but we are no longer part of this age. This world is like an old home that we lived in ten years ago—we return to the house once so familiar and native, only to find it remote and bizarre. 
So also, having been raised with Christ, this world is no longer our home, our identity. In Christ, we have been transformed to be princes and princesses of heaven living in a “Muggle” world.  Do you ever look out at the world and feel like you don’t belong? Do you listen to the ideas of our society and it is like they are speaking a different language?  
This is because you have been raised with Christ and made a heavenly citizen. Being a native of heaven, Paul exhorts us to seek the things above. Pursue the world above. To seek this other world is to desire and prize it as our true delight and home—to aim for it with all our energy and thought.  
We are to be like a POW whose heart always aches for home, and the thought of getting home never fully departs from his active thoughts.  Our serious thoughts always rest in heaven; our dreams fondly lay in the age to come. We don’t suppress our feelings of foreignness with the world; rather, we express them. We let them out, giving them air to breathe.
5. We Should Seek to Be near the Enthroned Christ—to See Him and to Worship Him
Our seeking of the things above is not an impersonal pursuit of heavenly delights but rather is immanently and entirely personal. We seek the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father. This is a pursuit of Jesus—to be near him, to see him, to worship him.
Read More
Related Posts:

Individuals who feel distress about their gender need the expertise of someone knowledgeable and trained in the treatment of adverse childhood experiences—a trauma therapist. A skilled trauma therapist will ask probing questions to help the client identify the disordered thoughts and discover the link to childhood experiences.