Are we double minded?

"The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth" (Mt.6:22-24). This is a very important truth Jesus shared with us about our practical life. The 'eye' here refers to the goal or intention of our heart. When He says we cannot serve God and wealth, the point is that only one of them can be our goal at any time. We fool ourselves if we think we can manage both as goals.

Imagine we are preaching a sermon. Apparently we are trying to serve God. But at the back of our mind we may be trying to impress people, avoid offending them, gain control over them, pressurise them to give money, etc. At that moment, we may imagine that we are serving God, but actually we are only serving our own interests.

The apostle Paul had many people working with him, who had left their jobs and were travelling with him, apparently serving God. But Paul understood that only one of them was genuine, Timothy (Php.2:19-21). If this was happening under Paul's watch, it is much more now!

Some people think serving God is a means of gaining things for themselves (1Ti.6:5). They see some leaders living such lives and think that they too can aim for such things. Others have no such goal, but because of the corruption of the flesh, they do not realise that while they are serving God, another goal is active, to seek their own. For some it is wealth, and for others it is pleasure, fame, power, etc. While Jesus just used the example of wealth, any of these can also be our real master.

Seeking our own is contrasted to seeking the kingdom of God, like darkness opposed to light. While we are supposedly engaged in working for God, if we are serving ourselves, we will be imagining we are walking in the light while there is darkness. Many people are only living before others, and they are careful only about their external actions (Mt.23:26,27).

All who have been born again and become children of God have the privilege to seek God's kingdom and His righteousness first (Mt.6:33). This is a full-time commitment we must have before God for our practical life, even if we are in secular jobs. At all times we are to walk in the light before God, with no darkness in us. Since we are being tempted day and night to walk into the alleys of darkness to gain something or other for ourselves, how alert we have to be to make sure that we remain in the light! That is going to be possible only if our eyes are set single-mindedly on following Jesus in every part of our life. Whenever we are tempted, that must be our point of reference to which we are committed. That is the place we must come back to even if we see we have fallen.