Choosing the Eventual Over the Immediate – Part 1

12 Sep Choosing the Eventual Over the Immediate – Part 1

Blog Series

Moving from Checkers to Chess

Five Steps to Unleashing the Power of an Eternal Perspective

Today we’ll begin looking at the final issue in Step 3. – Choosing the Undesirable, which is that:
We Must Choose the Eventual Over the Immediate

A mark of maturity is the willingness to delay gratification

Years ago, the British rock band, Queen, belted out:

“I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now!”

 Try going to the Lord with that prayer and see how it works out!

Modern American culture doesn’t like to wait. We think that as we “follow our hearts” and choose what we want to do right now, that that is the way to be happy!

However, even secular science agrees that that might not be a good idea. There is a well-known experiment conducted at Stanford University coined “The Marshmallow Experiment.” In it, children were offered one marshmallow to eat now, or they could wait 15 minutes and get two marshmallows to eat later. The results were recorded, and then the children were studied into their adulthood.

The children who opted to wait longer for two marshmallows, instead of taking the one immediately, tended to have better life outcomes as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body-mass index, and other life measures.

The willingness to delay immediate gratification for the sake of a larger reward later 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.

Choosing the eventual over the immediate only seems undesirable

As we have observed before in this series, looking at other hard choices Christians must make, choosing the eventual over the immediate 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 way to live.

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 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 and couldn’t be reversed!

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).

Focus on the future

Throughout the Bible, Scripture teaches that we should delay immediate gratification for the sake of future benefit, and teaches that we should cultivate a mind-set that encourages doing so.

The apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, “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 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.”

This passage tells us that Paul daily focused on eternal things (eventual), and therefore did not lose heart. The implication is that if we look at temporal things (immediate), we will lose heart.

So, the Christian lives today in light of eternity, making decisions that are best in the long run, not the short run.

Conclusion

Imagine you have been contacted by a rich uncle who was a reclusive relative whom you knew very little about, and you assumed knew little about you. He knows he will soon be dying and wants to dispose of his wealth, and you are his only heir.

However, he wants to test your character first. He wants to make sure you are able to survive instant wealth. So, he offers to give you one hundred million dollars, but to actually receive it, you must first spend a year in a poverty-stricken, third-world inner city, living on the streets. You’d be guaranteed that you would be “watched over” and spared any “ultimate harm”, but you’d have to experience all the “daily hardships” of a homeless life on the streets of a third-world inner city for a year. Meeting this challenge would demonstrate the value you place on the potential inheritance, and your willingness to sacrifice now for a greater reward later.

This would be a tremendously challenging requirement. Yet, to know that it was for only a year, and that after that you would inherit one hundred million dollars and live a life of almost unimaginable privilege, would be the motivation you would need to be able to endure the intervening deprivation.

The analogy to this life is that whatever trouble this life brings to us, on the other side (heaven) is unimaginable blessing, privilege and pleasure. This life is not all there is. We have hope for better in the future.

Paul said, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). For the sake of the greater glory, we endure the sufferings of this present time.

As missionary Jim Elliot famously said, “He is no fool who gives up that which he cannot keep to get that which he cannot lose.”

The stronger our hope is for the future, and the keener our realization is of eternal rewards, the more we will be able to joyfully delay gratification of the lesser immediate thing for the sake of the eventual greater thing.

Next week, we’ll look at Part 2 of Choosing the Eventual Over the Immediate: Disproportionate Eternal Reward. See you then!

Get a Moving from Checkers to Chess At-a-Glance-Overview: Click Here

As we have been studying these concepts for quite some time (including in some prior blog series), and I am excited to now be connecting all the “moving parts” from those posts and combining them into a “spiritual game plan” in this “Moving from Checkers to Chess ~ 5 Steps to Unleashing the Power of an Eternal Perspective” series.

For an overview of the game plan, so you can see at a glance where we begin and where we’re headed, I’ve created an overview/outline you can download for free: Click Here

For the full discussion of each of the steps, begin with the first post in this series, Moving from Checkers to Chess, and then continue with the following posts thereafter.

In case you’re new here, below are two resources I’ve created for additional help in your Christian discipleship journey:

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