Tag: eternal reward

Lottery Odds Or Eternal Assets

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What kind of dreams are you pursuing? How sure are you of your chances of finding the joy for which you are looking?

Some people strive desperately to “get rich quick.” They will spend valuable income on a lottery that has incredible mathematical odds against a win. The miniscule chance of monetary gain is slim beyond understanding. But in an attempt to grasp at a fantasy, people do what is imprudent.

Perhaps lottery players feel that the small amount of money they put into the game of chance is negligible. They decide it is “no big deal” to pay small amounts for such a gamble. But isn’t every penny we have a blessing from God? And does not a whole bunch of little amounts spent regularly add up to a large amount? This principle of caring for each asset provided to us applies not only to gambling, but to all the ways we spend our money – and our time.

What if we moved from slim chances to eternal surety? What if we quit being obsessed with the temporal and truly sought to see the everlasting, as far-fetched as it might at first seem to a mind pulled from God? What if we actually believed what Jesus Christ stood and on a mountain one day and said to real human beings one day, “…Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:20, ESV)? Could it be true that we can accumulate (lay up) assets in another world (heaven)?

Many people focus on Matthew 6:19 to the neglect of the verse I just mentioned. We tend to focus on the “don’t” instead of the “do.” We somehow get turned off by the “Do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth…” (Matthew 6:19, ESV) – forgetting that the next words out of our Savior’s mouth assure us that we can currently be building a mass of heavenly wealth that cannot be lost!

I like, too, how Jesus connects the building of heavenly possessions with scientific truth. My treasure in the next world cannot be destroyed by living creatures, corroded by chemical reactions, or stolen by evil intentions. The assets accumulating in Heaven are one hundred percent safe. There is no gamble, because Jesus is protecting that wealth. You talk about a secure bank and secure investment! My treasure does not need to be kept under lock and key or safeguarded by high level passwords; your true wealth is “kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4, ESV).

In other words, the treasure I am building by investing in God’s work is not stored in this world. It is somewhere else – where God abides. It is safe! And better yet, I am safe, too, until I get there! The Bible says we have been born again “to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed…” (1 Peter 1:4-5). No one can steal my true wealth, and no one can prevent me from getting go the place where God and it resides! Amen!

I have been traveling for a number of weeks, each Monday afternoon, to a Christian school in the area. I pack up my laptop, projector, my Bible, and head to the gymnasium/cafeteria to speak to nearly one hundred students in grades six through twelve about Christian apologetics (a reasonable, intelligent defense of biblical Christianity).

Each week, I speak my heart out, using every ounce of God-given passion to help these teens recognize the validity of the Bible and Jesus Christ. Counting on the Holy Spirit, I press forward, despite a few disgruntled and uninterested faces. Nonetheless, I watch many students suck in truth that they have never before heard. I sense God’s Spirit working, and I give it all I’ve got.

Yet there are times when I wonder what I am doing. The enemy tries to discourage me, saying, “What are you doing in a little gymnasium/cafeteria each week speaking to a group of teens in a small Western Pennsylvania school?” And I begin to ponder in my selfishness, “What prestige is there in this?” and “Who else would do this?”

Then God gets hold of me. He whispers that someone does this who is willing to be obedient in the smallest of things and invest in eternal treasure. Those who play the lottery gamble away little bits of money here and there, but I invest eternally little bits of time and effort every Monday afternoon. It may not seem like much. It is not glamorous. It does not bring me fame. But it is eternal investing, and I got to see a glimpse of that treasure just a few days ago.

A sixth grade girl in a pink hoodie approached me after one of my lessons about the reliability of the Old and New Testaments. I was packing up my projector when she stopped me with tears in her eyes and said, ‘Hi.” I responded, and she proceeded to say, “I gave my life to God on December 14 (a Monday afternoon!) because of your talks here, Mrs. Prindle.” My exclamation as my eyes lit up was, “That’s wonderful!” and “That makes everything I’ve done here worthwhile!” Then I gave this young girl a big hug.

The truly amazing part is that this sixth grade student had been a professed atheist. Her fellow students and teachers were aware of her lost condition. And yet, Jesus got hold of her one Monday afternoon! Now she is telling those same people about her new relationship with God.

There will be another person in the eternal New Heavens and New Earth because of a regular Monday afternoon investment. I refuse to gamble away my time and resources in this fading world. I will invest in eternal assets. I will hug precious people in Heaven who are somehow connected to me by the true investments Jesus has enabled me to make.

Let’s live like Moses did: “He thought is was better to suffer for the sake of Christ than to own the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to his great reward.” (Hebrews 11:26, NLT)

Quite the Opposite of a Cop-Out

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I believe the first rule of genuine Christian leadership is a precept some may label a cop-out. God does not classify it this way; God describes this principle as truth. Here is the rule: Your reward is secure with God and will not be fully realized this side of eternity. Corollary to the rule: You will at times feel exhausted and discouraged, but these are only feelings; the truth remains unassailable.

Isaiah 49:4 proclaims, “But I said, ‘I have toiled in vain, I have spent My strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely the justice due to Me is with the LORD, and My reward with My God.’” Interestingly, the prophet Isaiah has done here something for which he is known well. He is speaking generally to the people of his time, but He is also speaking specifically of the Messiah. As it is true of Jesus, so it is true of His servants. We grow weary from all the fury Hell can bring and we grow disheartened from all the loneliness of leadership and its unique responsibility. And yet again, as it is with Jesus, so it is with us. The Father promises to do right in the end. The sovereign Lord is working His plan, and He will bring the reward swiftly and surely.

Do you ever have days where the phrases “toiled in vain” and “spent My strength for nothing” seem all too familiar? If we are only focusing on what we can see with our eyeballs right now, we will no doubt feel empty at times. However, if we focus on a reward currently invisible but nonetheless tangible, we will grasp the sense of the phrase, “surely the justice due to Me is with the Lord, and My reward with My God.”

I am not sure why it is that at times even Christians give into the perception of “pie in the sky stuff” when it comes to belief in a reward in another world. I think part of the reason is a culture foolishly enamored with a definition of success realized by numbers, profit, and popularity. Standing in stark contrast to the belief of many, a reason that God says He is not ashamed of us is that we “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16). Imagine – God is proud of us for desiring the reality of Heaven! This verse does not proclaim God’s pride in us for what we achieve or desire here and now, but He is proud when we desire our heavenly home and all its reward and glory.

Though all human accolade be withheld, we shall yet stand before God and be delighted by the faces of those who have been greatly or even remotely affected by our service to Jesus Christ. They heard one word we spoke, they watched one godly reaction of ours, they felt our Savior’s love through our hug, they observed a life of passion for eternal things, they benefitted from our offering to the work of God, they heard of Jesus from the friend of a friend of a friend of someone with whom we shared the gospel, or they lived out their life in close proximity to ours as we served the living God.

Though we be misunderstood, unappreciated, maligned, forgotten, or persecuted; our reward is with our God. Peter says of that inheritance, “[it is] reserved in heaven for you” (I Peter 1:4). No small matter is it that the reward is also imperishable, undefiled, and will not fade away.

Discouragement cannot tarnish our reward, economic downturn cannot diminish our reward, human evil cannot debase our reward, and time cannot corrode our reward.

No human may ever fully understand what we have done, are doing, or will do. But, God knows. Our labor for Him is not in vain.

Do you want to be a leader? First and foremost, know where your reward is. The chances of survival in leadership are nil if you are counting on anything other than the living God for your strength and satisfaction.