A Heart for His Delights E-Book

Ken Hepner

• Herausgeber: Worldwide Publishing Group
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

INVESTING MY HEART
IN WHAT DELIGHTS GOD'S HEART
 
This book challenges the heart desires of everyday followers of Jesus Christ. As a set of lenses, it will enable us to examine the activities in which we are investing our time. Pastor Ken reveals what Scripture teaches delights the Father's heart. The Lord wants us to cherish His values, and weave them into our lives under His Lordship! Under Past we will:
 
Lordship! Under Past we will:
-Study what Scripture says the Lord desires.
-Examine society's values that confront daily.
-Compare our desires and activities with H Truth.
 

Leseprobe

A HEART

FOR HIS

DELIGHTS

Ken Hepner

© Copyright 2022 by Ken Hepner

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except in the case of brief quotations for use in articles and reviews, without written permission from the author.

The views expressed in this book are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher.

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Cover design by Teresa Granberry, www.HarvestCreek.net

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter One

Circumcision of the Heart

The Folly of Material Happiness

The Choking Affect of Things:

The Lord Jesus Worked to Remove Some Things from Peter’s Life:

Investing My Life in Spiritual Riches

Desert Places – Pain and Suffering

Chapter Two

Brokenness and Contrition

Simon the Pharisee: Religious Life

The Woman: Salvation

The Words of Jesus

Chapter Three

His Promises

Jesus is the Guarantor of the Promises

Jesus’ Promises are for Now

The Promises Bring a Divine Contrast

Chapter Four

The Shed Blood of Jesus Christ

It Took Perfect Blood to Redeem Us

It was Shed for Us in Love

It Washes Us of Sin and Shame

It Destroys the Enemy’s Power to Control Us

Chapter Five

His Redeemed People

The Price of Our Redemption

Knowing We Are Precious to God Gives Us A Place of Strength to Stand

Because We’re Precious to God We Can Learn to Love One Another Deeply

Chapter Six

Obedience to His Commands

Obedience Modeled in Jesus

Obedience Demonstrates that God’s Heart Lives in Our Heart

Obedience Gives Us Throne Room Privileges

Chapter Seven

Reverent Submission to His Will and Purposes

The Model of Jesus

Our King’s Work In Us

The Cross is the Place of Reverent Submission

Chapter Eight

The Intercession of His People

The Words for Prayer and Intercession:

Why Does God Need Intercession?

Prayers of Intercession Work with God

Intercession Focuses on God’s Will

Chapter Nine

“The Worship We Give To Him”

Worship Begins with Desire to Seek the Lord:

In True Worship I am Conformed to His Image:

Genuine Worship Sends Me into the World as an Instrument:

Embracing the Heart of a Worshipper

Chapter 10

The Death of His People

Death to Sin and the Sin Principle of My Humanity

Death to the World and It’s Allure to My Self-Interest

The Death of His People – Entering Into His Presence

Chapter Eleven

Living in the Mercy of God

Mercy Poured Into Our Hearts

Mercy In Our Speech and Actions:

Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment:

Chapter Twelve

“The Precious Cornerstone”

Behold the Lamb of God

The Source of True Joy

He Must Increase; I Must Decrease

Chapter Thirteen

Integrity of Heart

Integrity in Marriage and Family

Integrity with the Next Generation of Christians

Integrity with the Local Body of Believers

Integrity with the Unchurched and Prechristian World

Chapter Fourteen

“Yoked to His Heart”

The Powerful Word Picture:

SOME YOKES THAT MUST BE BROKEN

Foreword

Alice and I have known and admired Pastor Ken Hepner and his wife Raina since the mid-1990s. They are two of God's finest.

Ken is a pastor's pastor. He has invested his life in leading the churches he's served, but not limited to that. He has a Kingdom vision for the city, state and beyond, and is a mentor to pastors.

This book, “A Heart for His Delights,” is a work of love from Ken to us. Inside, you'll immediately see that Ken loves God, and God's kids, and wants to see us positioned to be a blessing to God and to be blessed by God. Both require us knowing God's heart.

Ken wants us to move our focus from what we can get from God, to what we can give to Him. The essence of godliness is found in knowing what pleases the Father and giving it to Him.

Each chapter in this book bursts with revelation like a spiritual kaleidoscope. I encourage you to set aside time each day to take another look.

- Eddie Smith, Executive Director, www.USPrayerCenter.org

Introduction

There are several things implied in the title of this book, which I want to flesh out as we begin to consider together the things the Lord may want to say to us. First and foremost, this book is written from the perspective of embracing a heart for God and the things that delight the heart of God, what He values, holds as precious, and highly esteems. I am thoroughly captivated by the Biblical teaching on an experience with God that radically changes a person’s heart. In the Bible the heart is considered to be absolutely essential in living the Christian life. The heart is seen as the very essence of one’s life, the seat of one’s affections and decision-making, the place in our lives where the Holy Spirit dwells, and the issue that the Lord God considers first when he looks at our lives.

There is a marvelous story found in the Old Testament that illustrates how the Lord God views the contents of our hearts. When God was issuing the call for the second king of Israel to arise, the one He had chosen to take Saul’s place, He told His man Samuel he wasn’t looking at the right things when he saw Jesse’s son Eliab and thought he was the one. In I Samuel16:7 God says, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I the Lord have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

Let’s be straight with one another as we begin this journey together discovering the things that God esteems and takes great delight in. We are all involved in a battle for the contents, character, and affections of our hearts! We are all involved in the daily battle to make quality choices of the heart, to espouse godly desires within, and then act in our lifestyle choices in God-honoring ways.

Could we establish together another thing that is open and honest? In our culture here in North America we do not do the heart part of our spirituality well. We tend to serve the Lord with our heads and our deeds, and we tend to think that passionate spirituality is little more than emotionalism for the uneducated. I couldn’t disagree with that more strongly than I do! Passion can be emotional but is definitely not emotionalism. Passion is a choice to follow a way of life with yearning and desire to do it well. I think passion of the heart and will is the missing ingredient in North American Christianity. This missing ingredient is why we get all caught up in the stuff of this world system!

In our culture in North America, we are confronted with a set of cultural values based on consumerism, which is the unbridled pursuit of everything we didn’t know we needed in order to be happy. This system of values teaches us that true happiness and inner satisfaction is one purchase away. And, of course, the truth is that happiness always remains one purchase away. Consumerism’s mantra is “You are what you own or have the ability to buy.” Our Christian value is that your worth is based on what you are, not what you possess.

Consumerism is in essence antithetical to what has been true of historic Christianity for two thousand years. Jesus is Lord can’t be merely a creed I recite, but rather must be a lifestyle I embrace in every way. Unbridled selfishness is the exact opposite of living a godly, content, and self-controlled lifestyle under His leadership. Paul wrote to his son Timothy, in the context of turning away from loving money, I Timothy 6:6 “godliness with contentment is great gain.”

God the Spirit desires to live in and transform our hearts, making our lives wellsprings of His life in a parched world. Satan and his minions want to crush and defile our hearts, inciting us to make choices that are based on selfishness and to satisfy our appetites in self-centered, sinful and fleshly, or lustful ways.

King Solomon is the one who wrote the words of this incredible verse: Proverbs 4:23 “Above all else guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.” I grieve over the fact that this man who started out so well didn’t follow his own advice. He permitted his desires to get completely out of control and lusted for women whom he was commanded by God not to love. The wisest man on the earth at the time died a sensuous old fool whose “heart was led astray by his love of foreign women!” The heart is indeed critical to our spirituality is it not?

Paul prayed for the Ephesian believers to experience the indwelling Holy Spirit in their hearts: “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” Ephesians 3:16, 17a

Romans 5:5 “And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

The foundational truth this book asserts is that God has revealed to us in Scripture some things He delights in, cherishes, things He considers precious and highly esteems. We are going to look at passages where He reveals these values to us and seek to make personal applications of those passages in our lives today. We are God’s sons and daughters in Christ Jesus. We have been adopted into His family and we bear a new family resemblance: Like Father, like sons and daughters.

Furthermore, embracing Jesus as Savior is inviting Him to be Lord, Master, our King. We become His royal subjects, members of His kingdom of the heart. The sweet thing about knowing Him as our King is that we are given open access into His royal throne room, total access to His presence anywhere and anytime we want to “enter in.” In the Old Testament kingdom terms of court protocol, when the King had a special servant/friend who had come to see him, he would raise his scepter to that person and they could ask anything they wanted of him. It is pictured in Nehemiah and Artaxerxes, Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar, Esther and Xerxes. Similarly the Lord smiles and raises His scepter to me any time I show up to be with Him because I am His cherished servant/friend! That is a truth I hold in my heart of which I hope to never lose sight. The Lord of heaven and earth and all that exists loves me, desires to be with me, and smiles when I enter the courtroom of heaven to invest time with Him daily at 5:30 AM.

I am touched by the thought of what a young Jewish maiden named Hadassah did when she was forced into a “Queen finding contest.” Before she was made Queen to Xerxes, Hadassah, who became Queen Esther, was told she would have to invest an entire year immersed in royal beauty treatments. The young Jewish maiden, although inexperienced in the ways of love, understood the fact that the real goal of this year of her life was to please the king. Esther understood a powerful truth that would become foundational for an entire year of her life and would result in a life-altering experience. She understood that her focus was to become beautiful to one set of eyes, to capture the favor of one heart – that of Xerxes.

So she gladly submitted herself to the leadership of a man named Hegai, the lead royal eunuch, who knew everything there was to know about the king. Under the supervision of this man who knew the king intimately, she also would learn to know the delights of the king. Hegai’s counsel enabled her to understand what fragrances the king delighted in, the textures and fabrics he liked to touch, and the colors he enjoyed seeing worn by a beautiful woman. She learned about his favorite cosmetics and beauty enhancements. She learned about his favorite foods and drinks, and what the king enjoyed in the company of a beautiful woman. She consumed herself with the thought of engaging the king and bringing him the most pleasure from her companionship with him that she possibly could.

Esther gave herself as completely as she could in the yearlong process of learning the king’s delights, not so that she would have knowledge of facts to be able to speak. This was not at all a merely intellectual pursuit. The young Jewish maiden immersed herself completely in those things the king valued by living out what she was learning. And as a result, she won the heart of the king and he made her his queen.

This is an illustration from the natural with tremendous spiritual implications for our lives as God’s royal subjects today. In this book I am asking you to ask yourself a critical question. What would my experience with God look like if I invested an entire year of my life immersed in understanding and giving myself to what gives my King Jesus great delight? That is the goal of this book you hold in your hand! Please don’t read through it quickly. Take your time and let the truths here immerse your heart in His delights, so that you are making lifestyle choices based on what God delights in.

Your Hegai, so to speak, will be me as I am guided to and attempt to share streams of truth from the Scriptures. Our primary source of knowledge of the ways of our King Jesus is the Word of God, the Bible. I’d like to have your permission to introduce you to themes in the Word of God that serve your spiritual formation around our King’s delights much like Hegai formed Hadassah’s candidacy for Queen of Persia around Xerxes’ delights.

If we know the truth regarding things that the Lord God delights in and esteems we can give ourselves to those things as values in our hearts too. Loving and desiring what delights the Lord God can be a grid we use to embrace some attitudes and behaviors that lead us to be godly, and to turn away from attitudes and behaviors that grieve Him or break His heart. What a simple and yet profound way to cultivate intimacy with our God.

The Lord God has revealed His heart to us in the Scriptures. He loves us with an everlasting love and desires to walk through life with us in a deeply personal and close walk. Jesus came to earth to pay the penalty for our sins and to make it possible for us to be engaged in a personal experience with God by His indwelling Spirit. He purposes to fill us with His Spirit again and again if we simply ask Him to. He purposes to set our hearts on fire with His love, to captivate us and restore to us the joy of His salvation.

Our part in this relationship of love with the Father, Jesus the Son, the Holy Spirit is to cultivate a soft and teachable heart. We each are responsible to be the keepers of our hearts, to tend to what we permit to enter our hearts and live there. Let’s be honest with each other and admit that we live in a self-centered and consumer-driven cultural value system. To ask the basic question North American question, “What is in this for me?” is definitively not a kingdom-focused way to live. The road of consumerism is one that absolutely leads in the opposite direction from the kinds of values God has clearly defined for us in Scripture. It is a mere mirage of happiness that never delivers the goods. It is therefore, antithetical to living a Christian – that is Christ-like life and something I must reject if I am to be His follower.

If we choose what delights our King Jesus, we will experience the joy of His renewing presence in our lives every day as the Holy Spirit walks with us and works to transform us into the image of Jesus. We are simply asked to embrace the passion the Lord desires to pour into us, to welcome His will and desires to live in us. The Holy Spirit is a person, and as such, He can be grieved by our lack of desire for Him or welcomed by the invitation we extend to Him to live in our hearts. Where He is welcomed or longed for, He dwells in presence and power. Where He dwells in power He transforms life and where He transforms the life of a person He uses that life to create hunger in other hearts.

I think there are three far better questions to ask than the self-centered, “What’s in it for me?” I’ve been welcoming the church family I have the privilege of walking with to ask these critical kingdom of the heart questions with me. They are:

Am I choosing to fix may gaze on Jesus, to behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world today?

Have I embraced John’s prayer as the ongoing lifestyle I desire to live: He must increase; I must decrease?

Lord Jesus, what are you planning to do in my life and through my life today that I may join you in doing?

I am convinced of the simple truth that everyone who enters into a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus really wants to be a true disciple, but things get in the way of that happening consistently. We generally don’t make conscious choices to turn away from God’s heart. We tend to simply permit laxity and spiritual slippage to occur over time. Busyness, business, materialism, and other desires can and do sidetrack us. Often what we need is a simple catalyst to call us back to our first love for the Lord Jesus Christ, and we will respond with a ready “yes.” I am writing this book with the hope of it being a catalyst for people who will choose to be passionate for God, renewed in spirit, and who will in turn challenge others to be renewed.

As I conclude this introduction section, I want you to know that I am a very simple man, who wants to know and please my King. I am on a journey of the heart just like you are. We are people who need to experience a new move of the Spirit of God in inner transformation and heart cleansing. We need to be called back to our first love, the foundations of brokenness, contrition, repentance of human ways, and hungering passionately for the presence and power of God.

If the Lord has called you to this kind of passion and hunger, you are among a new breed of men and women whom God is raising up in the world to minister in reestablishing foundations of spirituality. A few years ago I sensed the Lord leading me to fast and pray my way through a personal vision statement, which would guide my life for my remaining years in ministry with Him. Here’s what I sensed the Lord directing me to do: I am called to help as many as I can as much as I can for as long as I can. The book you hold in your hand is a simple man’s attempt to fulfill what the Lord has asked me to do with Him.

I trust this book will be a spiritual hoot for you as you read it, or at the very least you will discover in the end, you aren’t alone, you aren’t crazy, and you’re in good company!

Written in love for Jesus and my wife Raina …

Ken Hepner

Mifflintown, PA

Chapter One

Circumcision of the Heart

I

’d like us to remember the truth that we are all engaged in a significant battle to keep our hearts devoted to knowing God personally and loving God so much that we will choose to do what gives Him great delight. When Solomon wrote in the Proverbs, 4:23 “Above all else guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life,” he was giving us a pretty important message about our heart’s desires. You and I are the keepers of what we cherish in our hearts. Spiritual passion is essentially embracing a deep desire and longing to know and walk with God. Spiritual passion in my heart is first a choice of my will and then it becomes my motivation and guide to my actions.

Jesus’ message was pretty clear when He began His ministry among us. “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near you.” This is a clarion call to think in terms of God’s Kingdom invading the earth, to think about something that is far bigger than my own life and my little corner of the world. It is as though Jesus was saying straight to my heart, “Ken, because of who I am and what I have come to do for your salvation, the kingdom of God is within your grasp right now. Knowing God intimately Ken, is right at your fingertips so reach out and touch Him.”

We all enter the kingdom of God through the very same doorway of voluntary humility, to confess our need of a Savior. We are all called to repent of sin, believe in Christ Jesus’ finished work on the cross, that His death pays the penalty of our sin, and receive Him into our hearts as risen Lord Jesus! The gift of salvation by faith in Christ is really the miracle of new birth – there are two people, two personalities, two mentalities, and two sets of desires living in one body. You and I live in our physical body with the Holy Spirit of the Living God.

In the kingdom of God in Christ Jesus there are inherent transcendent truths and values that each adherent is invited to embrace. One of the key values in this kingdom of heaven on earth is that we love both God and people. Loving God first and foremost, with all my heart, soul, mind, will, and body is a call to value what God values that we esteem as precious what God esteems as precious. That means we care for people far more than we value the stuff of this world system, possessions, status, and material things.

As we unpack this concept of inherent and transcendent values I would like you to consider with me that the Bible teaches us a basic truth about living in the blessing of God. If we know the truth and seek to live the truth we will be blessed, that is we will enjoy the smile of God’s favor in our lives. The Lord Jesus taught us that if we honored Him with our hearts, our desires, the material possessions we’re entrusted with, and if we gave to those who had need we would experience the blessing of God.

For me this whole concept of living under the blessing of the Lord has taken on a brand new theme in my heart in the past seven years. For the past seven years of my life I have lived with the excruciating pain of having blown two discs that have damaged my sciatic nerve. Living with intense pain and suffering, one can’t get away from twenty four hours per day for three years, can be an incredible teacher. The same God, who loved me and blessed me when I wasn’t in pain, has carried me for the past seven years of walking in pain.

The popular theological position of many people in the church world of North America has placed a definition on the word “blessing” that I can’t accept. May I be straight up with you? I know it’s a novel concept, but I have a really simple grid that I pass Biblical teaching through, which I have had in my heart for nineteen years. If it isn’t true for my friends in southern Africa who struggle to get enough food for their family to eat one descent meal each day, it probably isn’t a kingdom ethic.

There are lots of people who are being taught a North Americanism, as a kingdom value. The teaching goes that living under the blessing of God has to do with God wanting all of His children to be happy, with having all the money we need, and the material provisions we desire. For me, and what the Lord has been doing in my heart, that definition is taken from the wrong testament and the wrong covenant. I’d like you to consider with me the vast amount of difference between the definition of the term “blessing” in the Old Covenant with God and the definition of “blessing” in the New Covenant with God.

In the Old Testament how do we know a man is considered to be under the blessing of God? He drives the luxury camel or has the sporty “tricked out” model of the colt, and has a twelve-bedroom, 4500 square foot tent as his home. He had 12 sons, 9 daughters, eight wives, five concubines, had material possessions in great abundance. He owns cattle, sheep, donkeys, camels, and he sits with the elders in a seat of respect at the city gates. In short, his prosperity and public esteem are the proof of his “blessing of God.”

In seeming direct contrast in the New Covenant, a person who walks with Jesus is considered to be under the blessing of God not by what he has in terms of this world’s goods, but by what he permits to God to remove from his life. In the New Covenant a person is blessed when he goes to the cross and permits God’s Son to take things out of his heart and soul, things that are inhibiting his or her walk with the Lord. In the New Covenant a person is blessed by what he gives away to benefit the kingdom of God and not by what he gets and hoards to himself.

In Deuteronomy 30 Moses calls the people to love the Lord their God wholeheartedly, which is the heartbeat of commitment. There is an incredible word to them about what God would do for them in their hearts in response to their choice to love Him. Read with me verse 6: “The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendents so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul and live.”

Paul reiterates this incredible word about a circumcised heart in Romans 2:29 “No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise is not from men, but from God.” And in Colossians 2:11, 12 “In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men, but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.”

Circumcision, in the natural realm, is cutting away something useless in order that the physical body will be bettered. Why does a medical professional circumcise a little boy? He is doing so to increase the sanctity and sensitivity. Why does God say he will circumcise the hearts of his people? He is telling us He will cut away what is spiritually useless to us in heaven in order to increase the sanctity, the personal holiness we live in and our sensitivity to His voice of direction and leadership in our lives. Paul’s concluding words in Romans 2:29 are that a person who holds still for the cutting work of the Holy Spirit in the heart is a person whose praise is not from men but from God. As a man who wants to be a follower of Jesus that is a pretty important sequence of words to me!

And let’s be honest at even deeper levels. Jesus said, “What is highly esteemed among humans is detestable to God.” God will cut away the things in our hearts that are crowding out spiritual life and health, things that are valued by the world system in which we live. In this chapter we are talking about embracing the blessing and favor of God. Let’s be clear with one another that the Word of God teaches us to value what God values, to keep in step with the Holy Spirit who lives in us. Let’s also be clear on the fact that the material blessedness of the North American value system is not a kingdom ethic. God’s blessing may include material prosperity and it may not. But one thing is certainly true of materialism as it works its way into my life: It definitely has a desensitizing effect on my heart’s pursuit of God’s presence!

In John 15 Jesus introduced us to His Father God with the metaphor of a Gardener. He said the gardener, who is good at tending to his vineyards, will take a fruitful branch and prune it back, cut it, so that it will be more fruitful. So it sounds like kingdom fruit bearing requires that we hold still for cutting work!

The Folly of Material Happiness

Proverbs 23:4, 5 “Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint. Cast but a glance at riches and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle.”

I Timothy 6:6 – 9 “But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction.”

The first thing we need to do is to examine what the Bible has to say about the insidious creeping allure of consumerism, the insatiable quest for material happiness! The world’s value system blares at us with alarming regularity: “If you can just get this better paying job, this thing -- car, house, or recreational activities, you will have found material nirvana and you will be truly happy!”

The philosophical issue behind that statement is that we are ultimately living for the here and now. Consumerism thrives on being driven to achieve true happiness. One doesn’t have to actually be rich in the things and goods of this world to have this issue be a really significant inward wrestling match. Paul told Timothy it is a matter of getting our wants and needs mixed up, a matter of the heart’s desires. “People who want to get rich fall into temptation.” The Bible calls us to be the people of God in Christ Jesus, who are called to not live ultimately for the things that this world can supply to us. We’re asked to make the choice of the heart to live simply, with a generous and giving heart attitude, in the here and now. There is a huge difference between living for something and living in something!

Peter wrote to the followers of Jesus and encouraged us all to think of ourselves as passing through this world on our way to another destination, and therefore to think of the desires we deal with for the things of this world in light of that truth. I Peter 2:11 “Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.”

The truth is that materialism cannot deliver the goods promised because the fact is that nothing outward will ever bring us to a place of deep inner satisfaction or happiness. Material things were never meant to be cherished in the heart. They were meant for our use, not for our adoration. The Lord Jesus taught us in Matthew 6:19, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.” And as He finished that thought He told us why we shouldn’t store up treasures for ourselves in the here and now, “where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break in and steal.” It wasn’t because material things are necessarily evil but that it isn’t very smart to put high value on something that doesn’t last. The Psalmist says, in Psalm 49:16, 17 “Do not be overawed when a man grows rich, when the splendor of his house increases; for he will take nothing with him when he dies, his splendor will not descend with him.”

The Choking Affect of Things:

Luke 8:14 “The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature.”

I Timothy 6:10 “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

Notice that what Jesus is talking about in the parable of the sower is the choking affect things can have on the ability to know and understand what really matters, the essence of where real life is lived. Notice also in Paul’s words to Timothy it isn’t necessarily the accumulation of things but the desire to have many things that is at the very root of all kinds of evil.

Let’s break this choking affect down into four categories:

Values – the accumulation of material things often has to do with our search for significance. In North American culture, our contemporary society seems to determine status and significance on the basis of income, possessions, and accomplishments. The moniker is: “You are what you have the ability to buy.” It seems that if we want to be highly regarded a good income, a great house, a nice wardrobe, the outward appearance of success is a good place to begin. When we permit ourselves to get sucked into the values of materialism and accomplishment, we can miss the truth that there is a completely different and ultimately higher value system in the kingdom of God. Our calling in life as God’s people is to love God deeply, love people, and use the things of this world to invest in kingdom ethics.