06 Apr We Must Choose the Eventual Over the Immediate
Blog Series:
Renew Your Mind ~ Transform Your Life
A commercial on television says, “I want it all, and I want it now.” Modern American culture doesn’t like to wait. We think it is to our greatest advantage to take one bird in the hand rather than wait for two in the bush.
We don’t want to wait to have our desires met. We think that as we “follow our heart” and choose what it wants now, that that is the way to be happy.
A mark of maturity is the willingness to delay gratification
However, even secular science agrees that one of the marks of emotional maturity is a willingness to make a smaller sacrifice now in order to gain a larger reward later.
In the well-known Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, children were given the option of being able to eat one marshmallow immediately, or of waiting and, as a reward, getting to eat two marshmallows later.
The scientists recorded the results and followed those children through their early lives and learned that the ones who were willing to delay eating one marshmallow now for the sake of getting two marshmallows later were more successful in life.
The willingness to delay immediate gratification for the sake of a later larger reward is a mark of maturity. This is true in the spiritual life of a Christian, as well. To be a mature Christian, we must learn to choose the eventual over the immediate.
We must choose the eventual over the immediate
This is our third blog post on the need to choose the undesirable in the Christian life. But as we saw with the previous two posts, it is not really undesirable, it just seems that way at first glance to the person with a temporal perspective. In the end, it is the only spiritually smart decision to make.
Randy Alcorn, in his book, The Treasure Principle, has an excellent illustration of the wisdom of delayed gratification:
Suppose your home is in France and you’re visiting America for three months, living in a hotel. You’re told that you can’t bring anything back to France on your flight home. But you can earn money and mail deposits to your bank back in France. Would you fill your hotel room with expensive furniture and wall hangings? Of course not. You’d send your money where your home is. You would spend only what you needed on the temporary residence, sending your treasures ahead so they’d be waiting for you when you get home.
It only makes sense, in this imaginary story, to delay a small gain now, for a greater gain later.
Perhaps the most striking example in the Bible of the foolishness of not delaying gratification is between Jacob and his brother, Esau.
Esau had been out working in the field and came home so hungry he thought he was going to die (Genesis 25:32). His brother, Jacob was cooking some stew, and Esau asked for some. Jacob said, “First, sell me your birthright.” Esau was so hungry, and had such a low assessment of his birthright, that he agreed. He sold his birthright as the firstborn son for a bowl of stew.
Later, he deeply regretted it, having not only forfeited tremendous advantage for himself, but also for his descendants (Heb. 12:16-17). He “gave up a dollar to gain a dime.” But the deed was done!
Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” (Matthew 16:24)
We are to deny satisfying our earthly temporal desires for the sake of following the Lord. When we do, the Lord promises to bless us disproportionately for eternity: “For momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.” (Romans 8:18)
So, Scripture encourages us to “not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9). Giving up something immediate for the sake of a greater eventual gain is a major principle in Scripture.
Conclusion
Consider an imaginary option. Imagine you have been contacted by a rich uncle who was a reclusive relative whom you knew very little about. He knows he will soon be dying and he wants to distribute his wealth. To test your character, he offers to give you one hundred million dollars, but first you must spend a year living on the streets in the deep inner city of a third-world slum.
This would be a tremendously challenging requirement. Yet, knowing that it was for only a year, and after that you would then inherit one hundred million dollars, would be the sustaining hope for you to be able to endure the deprivation.
The analogy to this life is that whatever trouble this life brings to us, on the other side is unimaginable joy forever. This life is not all there is. We have hope for far better. So, we live for the future rather than the present.
As we nurture this perspective, we create a stronger and stronger eternal perspective which enables us to step down from the throne of our lives, abdicate it to God, and abandon ourselves to following Him completely.
So far in this blog series, we have looked at the first two things we need to do to cultivate an eternal perspective:
- Believe the unbelievable
- Choose the undesirable
Next week we will begin looking at the third thing we need to do to cultivate an eternal perspective: fight the invisible. I look forward to continuing this study with you then.
In case you’re new here
This blog post is part of a series titled “Renew Your Mind, Transform Your Life”, introduced on January 5, 2021. As the series continues, each succeeding post will be added to and available in the blog archives at www.maxanders.com.
If you know anyone who you think might enjoy joining us in this study, please forward this blog to them and encourage them to go to my web site (www.maxanders.com) and sign up for the free video, “Master the Bible So Well That the Bible Masters You”, available there on the home page. This will put them on my regular mailing list and they’ll receive my weekly blogs on this subject.
In addition, I am creating a new online membership site, The Change Zone, that will provide information, strategies and resources to help motivated Christians renew their mind and transform their lives. If you would like to learn more about this and get updates to know when The Change Zone will be available, click here.
I look forward to going through this life-changing journey with you.
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