1. One Thing: Introduction

"I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren’t pretty, or smart, or young. They're still princesses."

 — Sara Crewe from the book “The Little Princess”

My Dad unrolls more tin foil, scrunching it up into a “flower” and artfully tying it on the black trash bag that was adorning me. He steps back and looks at his handiwork with pride. “You’re a princess!” he declares. My four-year-old sister grins at me. We are certain we look incredible in our trash bag dresses decked out with tin foil for decoration. We pose for pictures by the fireplace, eager to go out into the neighborhood and get candy. 

*

An hour later, tummy full of candy, I walk into my parents’ room, heave myself up on the bed, and sit by my Dad, brow furrowed as my five-year-old self thinks about how to ask him my many questions.

“Daddy?” I start.

“Yes?”

“What was that man talking about at the school program today? About the gospel and Jesus or something?” The school I attended for kindergarten was a Christian school. 

My dad turns to me on the bed, giving me his full undivided attention. “That man was sharing about what Jesus did for us when he died on a cross.”

“What?” I look at him, confusion on my face.

“’Gospel,’” he began, “means ‘good news’. Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, died for our sins, the wrong things that we do, dying a horrible death on a cross. God raised him from the dead three days later, so if anyone puts their faith in Jesus Christ, they will be saved and can have a relationship with God.”

“I want to have a relationship with God,” I say.

My Dad looks at me, and I see his eyes tear up slightly. “Well,” he says, looking down briefly, “You can. You just need to pray and ask God for forgiveness for your sin. Tell Him that you believe that Jesus is Lord and died for you. Ask Him to help you live for Him and begin a relationship with Him.”

“Can you help me pray?” I ask.

“Of course. Let’s pray together.” My Dad leads me, and I ask God to be a part of my life, not knowing the gravity of the life-alternating decision I had just made. To my neighbors that night I was dressed in a trash bag, but now to God I was dressed in the righteousness of Christ. I became a daughter of God.

I was only five years old, and I understood very little of what that prayer would eventually mean. But that night began a lifelong journey of learning what it means to belong to God—and, slowly, what it means for God to become my “one thing”:

“One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”—Psalm 27:4

King David, the author of this psalm, asks “one thing” from the Lord: to dwell in the Lord’s presence, gaze upon His beauty, and seek Him. Who can join David in honestly praying that this is the “one thing” they desire?

Psalm 73 expresses a similar longing. Its author, Asaph, says in verse 25:

“Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.”

Who can truthfully say to God, “Earth has nothing I desire besides You”?

Most people cannot. I cannot.

And yet, for Christians, the greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37; compare Mark 12:30).

All.

Surely part of learning to love God this way is learning to share David’s “one thing” and Asaph’s consuming desire for God.

What keeps the human heart from desiring God first? From desiring God above everything else? From being content in God alone?

C. S. Lewis famously wrote, “He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only” (Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”).

Is that true?

Is it possible to live from that reality and perspective?

Psalm 23:1 declares, “The Lord is my shepherd; I lack nothing.” Psalm 34:9 says, “Fear the Lord, you his holy people, for those who fear him lack nothing.” Psalm 87:7 says, in one translation, “All my springs of joy are in you.”

Relationship with God is repeatedly connected with lacking nothing. All our true springs of joy ultimately come from Him.

Perhaps joy’s deepest source, then, is not circumstantial at all.

Paul certainly seems to have lived this way. He wrote Philippians from imprisonment, yet the letter is filled with joy and calls to rejoice. Near the end he writes:

“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”—Philippians 4:12–13

Paul had learned something extraordinary: contentment that did not depend on whether he was free or imprisoned, full or hungry, living in plenty or in want. His circumstances could change drastically without taking away his deepest source of life.

His strength and sufficiency came from God.

What do we seek after for contentment, fulfillment, identity, security, and satisfaction apart from God?

That question can expose the idols hidden in all our hearts—things we may “worship” without even realizing it. Tim Keller described an idol as anything more important to us than God, anything we look to for what only God can ultimately give (Keller xvii–xix).

Every time we cling to an idol instead of God, we fall short of the Greatest Commandment to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We fall short of what we were created for: to know, love, and worship God.

Jesus describes eternal life this way:

“That they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” —John 17:3

And Jesus does not merely tell us to love God this way. He shows us how.

Jesus loved God, prayed to God, obeyed God, depended upon God, and taught others to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. If Christians are called to become like Christ, then following Jesus should lead us increasingly toward the One whom Jesus himself loved and served.

Jesus leads us to making God our “one thing.”

How can we deeply know God while continually turning away from Him to created things for what only He can give? How can God be our “one thing” if something else quietly functions as our real source of worth, security, or joy?

The Westminster Shorter Catechism says that the “chief end of man” is to “glorify God, and to enjoy him forever” (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 1). I also appreciate John Piper’s adaptation: to glorify God by enjoying Him forever (Piper 23).

Romans 1:18–25 warns against exchanging the glory of the Creator for created things.

Creation is good, but it is not worthy of the worship due its Creator.

God alone is the ultimate source of satisfaction and life.

Augustine famously prayed to God that our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.

May our hearts actually learn this.

May our one desire—our one thing—be God, not an idol. I believe every person’s ultimate one thing should be God: knowing God, loving God, worshiping God, seeking God, enjoying God, and longing for His presence above everything else.

God is the prize.

God should be the One ultimately desired, sought, trusted, and worshiped.

David does not write in Psalm 27:4, “one of the things.” He simply states:

“One thing.”

Consider his words again:

“One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”—Psalm 27:4

But what does this practically mean?

If God is our “one thing,” will all eternity simply be one never-ending church service—singing forever while everything else disappears?

Scripture gives a much richer picture.

Eternity is lived in God’s renewed creation, where God is loved, enjoyed, sought, and worshiped in everything His people do. Worship is not limited to singing or formal services.

First Corinthians 10:31 says:

“Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”

Colossians 3:23–24 similarly teaches believers to do their work wholeheartedly for the Lord.

Eating, drinking, work, relationships, creativity, service, celebration—all of life can become worship when lived in love and gratitude toward God.

First John 4:7–8 says:

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

What an amazing revelation:

God literally IS Love.

And John refuses to let love for an invisible God remain abstract. Whether we know and love God is revealed, in part, by how we treat the visible people around us.

John continues:

“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.... Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.... God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”—1 John 4:9–16

God’s love was made visible through Jesus, and that same love is now meant to become visible through Jesus’ followers.

Therefore, making God our “one thing” is not withdrawal from people. It is loving and worshiping God in such a way that we become free to love people rightly.

If our identity, satisfaction, and worth depend on a romantic relationship, family, friends, career, children, ministry, success, the Church, our theology, or anything else that displaces God, then we will grasp at those things. We will need them to behave in ways that make us okay.

But contentment in God frees us to love instead of grasp.

The reflections that follow consider good things that can become destructive when we ask them to take God’s place—when we make them our ultimate source of identity, security, fulfillment, or joy.

The goal is not to enjoy these gifts less.

It is to enjoy them rightly.

Life. Health. Calling. Family. Friends. Marriage. The Church. Theology.

These are all good things. Some are extraordinary gifts from God. But none of them can bear the weight of being God.

My hope is that these reflections encourage us toward the freedom and joy of trusting God as our “one thing”—the One who ultimately satisfies, fulfills, and gives us our deepest identity—while receiving and enjoying every other good thing in its rightful place.

First Corinthians 13:4–8 says:

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

Jesus showed us what this Love looks like by laying down his life so that humanity could be reconciled to God.

Paul affirms what matters most in Galatians 5:6:

“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

Or, in the language of this introduction:

The one thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

May our prayer be:

God, may You truly be our one thing. May Love be our one thing.

May Your Kingdom, God—the Kingdom of Love—come.

Amen.