No not really. I understand how people can have good lives and not have material success. That is what I am missing. I don’t want a fancy car or a big house (I do need a roof over my head and transportation - but my car is 7 years old and I know that brand new car won’t give me what I am missing)
The first thing is to be able to write it the way you have here. You have exactly described the problem that our culture works very hard to create in us. Consumerism.
In Jesus’s time they had the same thing, just like now but without TV ads and professional marketing departments using (and driving) psychological research to learn how to best create the feelings of want and need.
That’s where the rich man walked sadly away when Jesus told him to lose all his stuff. It wasn’t that he had the stuff as much as his attachment to it. Jesus could sense that, the same way we can sense in the speech and behavior who is “so up there” that they just don’t get what it’s like to not have the stuff.
As it is, you probably feel lucky to have the car you do, and hopefully it works and does not cost greatly in maintenance. But imagine being without it – it breaks down and just no way to afford fixing or replacing it. Would your life immediately go into the trash? Or would it be just be a “different path” to walk?
Shedding these values, built into us before we were old enough to think on our own (and thus preventing our ability to in the future) can be quite a chore, and in some cases like mine involve a full blown “Dark Night” experience complete with psychosis. Luckily with some great help and support, the Divine Therapist (aka the Holy Spirit) has seen me healed to my joy and desire to “shout from the rooftops” what the Lord has done. And looking back, the “Dark Night” including those “horrible” things that others did, was the most beautiful and elaborate “show” I’ve ever seen, and it is clear how it all works for benefit like Rom 8:28. It’s easy to forget now and then, and then it auto-extends to purify something that is probably more deep and subtle than the “obvious” stuff.
Actually that’s kind of weird because when I think I’ve lost a layer of pretentiousness, something much more subtle comes up, and I see myself becoming very bothered over what seems less terrible than the stuff I quit getting upset over. It’s kind of like once the noise dies down and it seems quiet, soon my ears accommodate and I notice things that are “bad” that I’ve never noticed before and Get Upset Over It! So not only do I get upset, but I get upset with myself for getting upset, and it just seems ridiculous. It wasn’t a problem, until I lost other problems. My mind has thus been programmed to “awfulize” the situation at any given time and come “hell or high water” it WILL find a problem so that I can have a reason to exist, in order to either fix it, complain about it, or maybe “help others” through it.
The kingdom Jesus talks about is right here, right now, for those who can see it. It is a way to be in the same place you are now physically, with the same surrounding that don’t look any different, but with a certain perspective that makes the moment excellent and blessed because it exists and you are able to perceive it – at a level that does not require any worldly conditions to improve first. If I’m always looking at “what needs to be fixed” in the world, or even “what am I supposed to fix next” that can work against it. It’s tricky to navigate between “I’m going to make the world better” and “the world is perfect as it is.” The first sounds like a “purpose” but actually is pride bait.
But there is a trap hiding in your own statement, and that is “I need a roof over my head and transportation.” The key here is “need”. I’ve never actually been without a home, although we’ve gone without heat in the winter until a kind soul gave us a new furnace. But why do I need this? Because I hate to imagine me, ME, living without that. I am completely in your camp; I’ve danced around losing a home but never have – and it scares me that within a few years if something changes (or other things don’t) it Could Happen to Me. I’ve helped out at homeless shelters and I see people in this situation, but it is so far removed from my personal experience that I feel a great difference between them and me. I have a certain respect for them, that I do not have for myself.
That is where I am now - because I don’t know how to fix it. I have tried all that I know. Then when I think “let go and let God” or “Jesus I trust in you” I have these thoughts I must be doing something wrong or God would help me fix this situation. Or maybe God is helping but I am missing his direction and on and on and on…