In Matthew 6:22, Jesus spoke of having eyes that are single.

²²  The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

He was talking about what kind of spiritual vision we need to have as Christians.  Having single vision simply means being single-minded, and that is the key to being consistently productive in the kingdom of God.

Do you remember the movie “City Slickers”? It was about three men approaching middle age, who spent some time on a cattle drive with a bunch of seasoned cowboys.  They were hoping that in the process they might find out something useful about the meaning of life.

The boss of this cattle drive was an old cowboy named Curly.  In one of the more serious scenes, Curly is riding alongside one of the city slickers when their conversation turns philosophical.

The man on vacation turns to Curly and says, “Your life makes sense to you.”   He makes this statement in a kind of envious way.  To which Curly replies: “You city folk. You worry a lot. How old are you? 38?” “39,” the man says.

“You all come up here about the same age. You spend fifty weeks getting knots in your rope and you think two weeks up here will untie them for you. None of you get it.”

He pauses a minute and then he goes on, “You know what the secret to life is?”

“No, what?” says the man.  And then Curly says, “One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that, and everything else don’t mean nothing.”  “That’s great,” says his companion., “but what’s the one thing?”  Curly looks at him for a minute, and says, “That’s what you’ve got to figure out.”

To reach our full potential as citizens of the kingdom of heaven, we must figure out what that one most important thing is.  The good news is we do not have to go on a rugged cattle drive to figure it out.  The Bible tells us.  That one thing is God and His will.  When we live our lives striving to please God and doing His will, we will have a single-minded focus on spiritual things and find ourselves in good company.

In Philippians 3:13-14, Paul said, “This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.  I press on toward the goal for the prize…”  The goal was Christ and the prize was heaven.  That was Paul’s focus.

In Psalms 27:4, David said, “One thing I have asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.”  David knew what was most important.  His focus was to be in the presence of God as much as possible and to worship Him.

In Luke 10:42, Jesus said that Mary chose the one necessary thing.  That one thing was spending time at the feet of Jesus and learning from Him.  She was focused on that.

Let us learn from these examples and be single-minded. Yes, we might have some interests in this world, but there should be something that we seek more than anything else, that is, a relationship with God right now, and a home in heaven after a while. That is the one thing that should outweigh everything else in our lives.   It is the only way that God can count on us.  Remember, James said that the double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.  Let us do our best to gird up the loins of our minds and serve God (1 Peter 1:13).

As you wind down for the night, think about these things.