Is Your Focus On the Temporal or Eternal?

   

Mat 6:25  Therefore I say unto you--

Take no thought for your life

what ye shall eat

or what ye shall drink

nor yet for your body

what ye shall put on. 

Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? 

Mat 6:31  Therefore take no thought, saying-

What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

Mat 6:34  Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. 

Luk 12:22  And he said unto his disciples- 

Therefore I say unto you, 

Take no thought for your life

what ye shall eat;

neither for the body, what ye shall put on. 

Luk 12:29  And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind. 

1Pe 5:7  Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. 

Luk 12:23  The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. 

There is so much more to life than striving to live physically. All the food you could ever eat will not give you life everlasting. You could have enough to eat to sustain you every single day without any struggle to obtain it and still you will one day have no more need to eat- you will have died. You could clothe yourself perfectly every single day of your life, and still one day the clothes will be all that's left, your body returned to dust beneath. The temporal cannot compare to the eternal and yet so very often we are completely caught up in a life solely consumed by temporal pursuits. 

Told to take no thought about the temporal life isn't a guarantee you will not go hungry, or cold. Yes, God feeds and cares for many creatures, us included but this doesn't mean no creature went without hunger or warmth. Life, right now, will forever give us many reasons to focus on temporal existence and completely ignore the eternal promise. When our main focus is temporal we will take a lot of thought about everything temporal. Where is your focus? Where are your thoughts?

God promises a future eternal existence - if this is a reality to us, truly a reality, then we know this temporal existence we are living right now prior to our eternal existence isn't one that is promised to be pain free- mentally, emotionally, or physically pain free. Suffering is the temporal life's lot. 

Some of God's chosen have suffered more than we can imagine.

Php 3:8  Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, 

Php 3:9  And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: 

Php 3:10  That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; 

Php 3:11  If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. 

1Co 4:9  For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men. 

1Co 4:10  We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised. 

1Co 4:11  Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace; 

1Co 4:12  And labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: 

1Co 4:13  Being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day. 

2Co 11:23  Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. 

2Co 11:24  Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. 

2Co 11:25  Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; 

2Co 11:26  In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; 

2Co 11:27  In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.