Setting your Affection on Higher Things

What is your opinion about?

Spiderman - Toby McGuire, Andrew Garfield, or Tom Holland?

What sort of things affected your opinion?

Can your opinion change?

Our True life is in hidden in Christ

The idea of being hidden is not that it is veiled from us that we have to search for it and try to find it, like hide and seek. No it actually is more like it is hidden in a safe place being guarded and protected.

example of bear cache of food

Matthew 6:19–20 ESV

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

Matthew 13:44–46 ESV

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

Do you know how they are going to get you? Do you know how the world is going to squeeze you into its mold to cause you to conform to its standards? TECHNOLOGY.

Back in the days of the USSR under communist controlled Russia, they would put people in the Gulags. in 1917 they were developed as concentration camps for forced labor and punishment of those who rebelled for most, it was a life of cruel labor and for many it meant death.

“not a war fought with blood but with tears” Rod Dreher

If your affections are hidden in Christ, well the world can’t touch that.

Mark of the beast

Revelation 3:18 ESV

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.

if you are going to be alive to God, and if your affections are going to be centered on Christ then you will have to die to the world. If you are dead to the world. Then what can they do to you?

Wycliffe

We are dead

What are some examples of earthly things?

Does being dead to the things of the earth (world) mean that we cannot enjoy or participate in theses things at all? Explain

What are some practical things we can do if we find our heart and desires gravitating to earthly things?