(Text Only)
Title: The Treasure of the Believer
v7 Treasure One: For the Believers:
Eternal Life
We know these people because they patiently continue to do good. They seek glory, honor, and immortality.
Let’s dissect this a little bit.
It is hard in a world that is oppositional to Christianity (specifically the exclusivity of Salvation of Christianity) to do good. It is even harder to do good with patience. If we understand “doing good” to be honoring God, keeping his commandments, and for the sake of example let us assume that keeping His commandments can be broken into the two over-arching commandments of Christ: 1. Love the Lord your God above all else. And: 2. Treat your neighbor as you’d want to be treated.
Then, to “patiently continue to do good” can be quite a trial in both of these regards. Isn’t it “easier” to love God when he says, “yes” to our desires? Isn’t it easier to love God when our households and our lives are being blessed? Isn’t it unbelievably frustrating to keep the same level of love and commitment high when God is not answering your prayers, or is telling you to wait, to keep praying? Isn’t it at these times when we want to stop being patient and make things happen on our own, just so we have an answer?
Example: I tell people all the time: When considering a difficult decision, go to the Lord in prayer, ask him for discernment, ask him for wisdom. Also, tell another that you love and trust to be in prayer for you about getting that wisdom or discernment, but don’t tell them the specifics of your prayer request, lest they develop an opinion one way or another.
If the Lord is not leading you in one direction or another, after considerable time in prayer, reveal the specifics of the decision to that person who has been praying for you. Don’t ask for their opinion, now ask for their specific prayer for a wisdom to make a choice. If God is still silent, then ask if your friend has felt a leaning one way or another.
If neither of you has an inkling one way or another, chances are good that God is calling you to make a decision without his direct counsel.
Then, and only then, my advice is: cautiously make a small, measured step in one direction and listen for the Lord’s voice. Keep making these prayerful small steps in faith and move toward one direction.
Most of the time, we are not choosing between “Good” and “Bad” or “right” and “Wrong.” We are usually choosing between “good” and “better” or “bad” and “worse.”
But what usually happens when I give this advice is this. That person prays, for ten whole minutes, and feels no discernment from the spirit, then they tell a friend, who tells them what they want to hear, they move forward and say, “Lord, bless my decision.”
That is not patiently continuing to do good. That is impatiently deciding that the Lord should recognize and bless your desires. Our wills should line up with God’s. We are in no position to tell God that His will should line up with ours.
Now, let’s look at patient continuance in regards to loving our neighbors. Perhaps the greatest non-Biblical example of this is Ned Flanders undying patience with Homer Simpson. The disciples asked Jesus, how many times should we forgive our enemy, seven? And Christ responded, “No, seventy times seven!”
Many of us love our neighbors, until they upset us. Many of us share and live out the Gospel to them, until they wrong us, and then we adopt a “to hell with them” mentality. And do you know what, if we had a more Biblical, and less comic-book view of what hell really was, we wouldn’t be so flippant about the souls of the lost.
Did you believe, know, understand, and accept the gospel the very first time you heard it? What if the believers in your life gave up on you the first time you were obstinate to the Truth of the Gospel? What if God suddenly decided to stop being patient with your sins?
Patience is a tricky, tricky thing, because it asks us to fail over and over and over again, and rejoice in those failures. It asks us to be frustrated, and have that very frustration increase our faith in God. It asks us to endure ridicule, uncertainty, and loneliness when we don’t have to.
None of us have to be patient Christians, we could all just jump the gun look into the rear view mirror and say, “boy I hope that gets blessed.” But that’s a pretty selfish way to love God, don’t you think.
We are also told by Paul that these people seek for glory, honor, and immortality. Now the simple way to read this is to say that believers seek for God’s glory, God’s Honor, and God’s immortality. But this is neither theologically accurate or what Paul is writing.
What he is saying is that true believers unashamedly seek for themselves the Glory, Honor and Immortality that God offers. I want to be glorious, as my Lord is glorious, I want to be honorable, because the God I serve calls me to an honorable life. And I want to be immortal, because nothing could be better for me that to be in presence of God forever.
John Piper says it this way, “There is nothing un-biblical about desiring ‘more God’ in your life.”
In fact, “More God” should be the cry of our hearts daily.
Nothing benefits us more, and nothing pleases Him more than when we want what He wants to give us.