I don’t know about you, but I can be selfish. Shocking huh? I think we all are naturally, it’s who we are, its what we do, and everyone is at one time in his or her life. For instance, I can have no motivation to do anything but then someone will offer me $20 and I would be more than happy to do it.
Why? Because I get something better for doing it. I had to be enticed, lured in if you will.
If a toddler who has 1 cookie, and then you offer them 2 brownies, the toddler will leave the 1 cookie simply because 2 brownies simply because 2 is more than 1. Get it?
God has a clever strategy. Like I said, we are all selfish, and this selfishness that lives inside us is so contrary to God that God uses this to induce us to go towards His will.
This is His clever plan….
He promises us greater things than the world can give us, even in this life, and promising to give us something so great that the world doesn’t even know. We are attracted to this because God is so, so good, and He does this because He knows that we are attracted to pleasure. We obviously are attracted to attractive things… like how I am attracted to Buffalo Chicken Pizza from BJ’s. It’s just good.
He knows that we are the kind of people that will not leave our 1 little toy unless we are offered 4 toys!
God promises us so much more than this world offers us. God shows us this by offering up His own Son. God has all of this to offer, things greater than anything we know, and it looks amazing. But when we follow, are our motives pure?
In Genesis 22 God promises Abraham and makes a covenant with Him. He promises great and mighty things, things that would blow Abraham’s mind. But god, to test our motives, will put us through tests to make sure our heart is right so that we are not following Him just because he want the reward. Abraham was put thought the ultimate test by going to sacrifice his son because God commanded him to. Because he went through the trial, and was faithful, God blessed Him beyond this world can understand.
God offers us the same. We have 1 cookie, but God offers us an entire basket. We are the non-motivated teen-ager who wants to be given $20 for doing nothing, when in order to get the reward we need to do chores to get the allowance.
God has our reward. He is waiting to give it to us. We need to work for it and be faithful in the troubling times. We need to be like Abraham.
God plays off our selfishness to get us to understand that He offers way more than the world we live in now. In that, we take our first step into noticing that God REALLY does have more to offer, and that when we follow Him, that selfishness turns into true faith and a wanting to follow Him, and because of that we are then rewarded in heaven by our Father.
Leave your 1 cookie, do the chores, and leave with a relationship with the Creator and receive your basket of goods.
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