Here is the revelation that is shaping my life today – we all spend this gift we call life, how do I spend mine? The life we live in the now reaches into the shape of life in eternity. Self focused me wants to please Him to benefit me, an investment in future rewards. But this is me pleasing me. Pleasing Him only ever flows from my experience of His love and beauty, its motivation is found solely in overflow from my intimacy with Him, and then it overflows as it reaches into eternity.
2 Corinthians 5:9-10 TPT
[9] So whether we live or die we make it our life’s passion to live our lives pleasing to him. [10] For one day we will all be openly revealed before Christ on his throne so that each of us will be duly recompensed for our actions done in life, whether good or worthless.
Observation
What is my passion for life? Is it “pleasing him?” Sometimes, maybe often, I think it is pleasing me and using Him. This self focused culture seduces me into a self focused story, where I become the centre and everything else, including God, exists to serve me. The challenge is I have tasted deep enough the waters of living to please God and I know the absolute pleasure and joy this releases in me. I know the life I want to live but this is not always the life I give myself too. I never feel more alive than being present to God’s presence, and His presence motivates my life of pleasing him. I have drank deeply the intoxicating beauty of His grace that I would never seek to please Him to arouse anything from Him towards me. All His love, mercy, goodness, forgiveness, Himself, is already mine, my pleasing does not move Him towards me. Ultimately to live pleasing him is to please me, for life is ultimately only found here. It’s surprising how the lesser things can seduce me from the greater things.
This life does matter in the next. But maybe not as we have portrayed it often. The separated from God lie that most of my life I have lived in the torture of, has made us believe that we are separated from God in eternity unless we fix up our separation in the now of life. But it seems that “all” will “be openly revealed before Christ on his throne,” not for judgement but for reward, or no reward. And no reward is not exclusion. It seems we are not separated at all but we are all already made right in Christ to one day be before the throne. Life here matters to life there, but not as to whether we get to stand before the throne, but what rewards, “compensation for our actions,” we will receive from the throne. I have no idea what these rewards will look like? And I am not sure I want to know. I am not sure what that knowing would do to my motivation for pleasing? For I know that our motivation for “pleasing Him” in this life is not to be motivated by rewards in the next. All we do in our pleasing must flow out of our experience of His love and our returning of love to Him.
Application
Choose to live the best life, the life of pleasing Him. Check the seduction of the world into a life of pleasing me. Know, but don’t be motivated by, that there are rewards from this life in the next life.
Response
Thank you that no one is separated from you. You have already in yourself, in your incarnation coming, made us all already forgiven and family, whether we know this, name this, or not, nothing changes it’s already reality. Thank you that there is a next life. Thank you that you welcome us into that next life. Thank you that this life matters, not just in the now but in the forever. Thank you that your desire is to have me live in the intimacy of pleasure, for to please you is to know you intimately.
Meditation
Meditate – one day we will all be openly revealed before Christ on his throne.
Consider:
How do you spend your life?
Is “pleasing Him,” a joy that overflows, a demand to be met, or an investment in your future?
JOURNEY DEEPER
