27 Nov Are You Saving for Spiritual Retirement?
When you’re young, you tend to think you’re invincible and immortal. There is an inclination to live for the “here and now,” and assume that the future will take care of itself.
As you get older, it gradually dawns on you that that’s not the case. You are not invincible, you are not immortal, and the future will not take care of itself.
Financially, that is when people usually get serious about putting money away in a retirement account. It is prudent to save for retirement, because the only money you will have to live on is the money you put away ahead of time.
So, a related question… and a much more important question is… are you saving for spiritual retirement? Of course, we never retire spiritually while still on this earth. Christians retire spiritually only when we die! But, if Jesus doesn’t return first, we will all die! And there are two things we can do ahead of that time to have a spiritual retirement awaiting us in heaven: faithful obedience and good works.
Rewards for Faithful Obedience
Faithful obedience requires that we abandon our will while on earth and take up God’s, which is the supreme challenge of the Christian life. We are so focused, so predisposed, so lured by the devil and the world to live for “self,” that consistently exchanging our will for God’s is typically the single greatest test of the Christian life.
But, as Scripture says, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect (mature) and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2–4).
Our goal – to become a mature and complete person – is something that only trials will give us. It does not happen any other way.
Our inclination is to focus on the trials, and try to figure some way to get out of them. But the better response is to focus on the results… becoming perfect (mature) and complete, lacking in nothing.
As the apostle Paul wrote:
“ Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).
This passage tells us that the way we do not lose heart in the middle of our “momentary, light afflictions” is by focusing on things which are not seen, rather than things which are seen.
In this context, that means focusing on the magnificent eternal rewards that are ours rather than the trials we have to go through to get them. As we focus on trusting God in the midst of our trials and being faithful to Him in the process, we receive eternal reward for faithful obedience that will be waiting for us when we get to heaven.
The Good Works We Have Sent Ahead
Someone has said that you have never seen a U-Haul trailer pulled by a hearse. The reason is because we cannot take anything with us when we die.
But while we cannot take anything with us, we can send it ahead. Randy Alcorn, in his valuable book, The Treasure Principle, tells a very helpful illustration:
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 in France.
Would you fill your hotel room with expensive furniture and wall hangings? Of course not. You would 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 got home.
Like deposits to our bank back home, our good works are stored up in heaven, and our reward for them is waiting for us when we get there. Jesus said that we cannot even give a cup of cold water in His name without receiving an eternal reward. (Matthew 10:42)
We can do good works now in Jesus’ name, saving up for our spiritual retirement.
Conclusion
So, regardless of whether you are younger or older, it makes sense to save for your spiritual retirement. If Jesus doesn’t return, you are going to die! When you get to heaven, will you have a spiritual retirement of eternal rewards waiting for you?
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