Consumed

What consumes you?

What thoughts…emotions…energies…priorities take up most of your time, and occupy the better parts of your mind and heart?

Is it work? School? Money? Sports? Food? TV? Technology?
Do days pass, and you wonder where they went?

When we are born the clock starts.
We all begin this journey as beautiful swaddling bundles of God-like potential.

In the course of our lives, between the first breath we take and the last one we give back, we humans do a curious thing.

We learn to long. To desire. To fix our minds and hearts on the pursuit of something in this life that promises good things: joy, laughter, love, beauty.

From the earliest age we sense an innate hunger, a kind of soul-thirst.
And from that early age, we will be exposed to nearly limitless options for our time, our energy, and our attention. We will be drawn in a million different ways to pour our minds and hearts into a complete and unfettered commitment to something or someone.

We will be consumed by something.

We can be consumed by success, esteem, ego or image.
We can be consumed by the power and satisfaction of what we achieve;
or we can be consumed by the pain and despair of what we don’t.

Jesus had some things to say about this.
About what is meant to consume your life…and what isn’t.

He taught that if we could learn to “seek first the kingdom of God…”
…If we could discover how to relinquish the lesser pursuits and preoccupations of our lives and instead become consumed by the complete and unfettered reign of God’s love in us and around us…everything would change.
Nothing would be the same.

What would it look like for your life to be consumed by the love of God?
What worries would disappear…
What fears would melt away…
What new priorities would be pursued…
…if you became, consumed?

Shaun King
Senior Pastor
Johns Creek Baptist Church