25 Jun How Can We Be Happy If We Have to Wait for What We Want?
There’s a commercial on television now with a singer crooning, “I want it all… I want it all… and I want it now!”
Try going to the Lord with that prayer and see what you get!
Being willing to put off immediate “lesser things” for the sake of eventual “greater things” is one of the basic tenants of Christianity.
The Marshmallow Experiment
Even the world recognizes the validity of this principle.
There is a well-known Stanford experiment called the “marshmallow experiment,” in which children were offered one marshmallow to eat now, or they could wait 15 minutes and get two marshmallows later. The results were recorded, and then the children were studied into their adulthood.
The children who were able to wait longer for two marshmallows tended to have better life outcomes as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index and other life measures.
Living Now in Light of Future Reality
The willingness to delay immediate gratification for the sake of a later larger reward is a major milestone of spiritual maturity in the Christian life.
Randy Alcorn, in his book, The Treasure Principle, has an excellent illustration of this principle:
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 would send your money where your home is. You would spend only what you needed on the emergency residence, sending your treasures ahead so they would be waiting for you when you get home.
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 (here and now), 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. So, he offers to give you one hundred million dollars, but to actually receive it, you must spend a year in a poverty-stricken, third world inner city, living on the streets. 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 for someone not born there. 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 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 give up the lesser immediate thing for the sake of the eventual greater thing.
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