Rabbi Schneider - Bring Ourself Into Alignment With an Eternal Reality

You know, when you look at young people, they are only conscious of what's going on in their own life right now. I remember myself as a young person. I mean, I grew up during the Vietnam War and all these things that were going on in politics and the Richard Nixon and the scandals and all this. As a young teenager or even as an older teenager, I wasn't conscious of any of those things. Were you as a teenager? Maybe some of you were, but I think in general, teenagers are aware of one thing. They're aware of what's going on in their high school, what's going on in their friends groups, what's going on right there, right now in that situation. And they don't have much of an ability oftentimes to see beyond what's beyond those doors of their high school.

The opposite of that is having a biblical perspective, which not only sees beyond our immediate circumstances, but sees beyond this world. Listen what Paul instructed us to do in second Corinthians chapter four, verse 18. He says "While we look not of the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

So when we perceive life, we want to have that eternal perspective. Whether we live or die, we live unto Messiah. That we don't hang onto our lives because we realize that the life on this earth is so temporal, that man is like a vapor in the world. He's here today and he's gone tomorrow. So we're looking not at what is seen, but we're looking at what is unseen. You know, some people are so caught up in their beauty and they're so, you know, in this little small bubble, it's like, how long is that going to last? How long can you hang onto your beauty? How long can you hang onto your physical body? I mean, life goes on. The outward man decays. It's the inner man that's being renewed day by day, which goes on forever.

So I want to encourage us today to get an eternal perspective of our life. And then once we have that eternal perspective, then we need to prioritize our actions by that eternal perspective. We live for a kingdom that's not of this world, and that should dictate our thoughts, our actions, our words, our relationships, what we're giving ourselves to. Seek ye first, the Kingdom of God.

So I just want to encourage you today to look beyond the natural, look beyond the temporal and ask yourself, what does this mean in light of eternity and what changes may God be asking you or I to make in our temporal situation so we can bring our temporal situation, whether it's our relationship, our finances, the words that we're speaking, the way that we're treating people, whatever it is, what may the Lord be saying to you and I, today, beloved one in terms of how we're to change the way we're relating to our temporal world, to bring ourselves into alignment with eternal reality so that we're living for the kingdom that's coming.