May the mumbling commence!
Do you want to serve the Lord God? Good. But be forewarned the pay here on earth sometimes is not very good (in the eyes of the world). Serving God is not a get rich quick scheme from the world’s viewpoint. You may struggle to get by, but God always provides what we need.
And, sometimes, the pay we receive here on earth from the world is bitter indeed. Don’t believe me? Read about the life of the old Hebrew prophets. They got ridicule, torture and sometimes death.
But don’t be fooled. There is much more to serving God than this. God rewards his servants more richly than this old world can comprehend. We don’t fully understand it ourselves.
I was thinking this morning about the pastor who brought me to faith in Christ – Leonard Hershey. I remember one of the things that he liked to say:
“While the pay for ministering for God may be meager, the retirement plan is out of this world.”
I was reminded of these words as I read from Peterson’s The Message this morning. Read the passage from the end of Romans chapter six:
But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master. (Verses 20-23)
God’s pension, God’s retirement package, is real life, eternal life. And the life is delivered by Jesus. What a blessing!
But, even better – we begin to draw on our pension plan immediately. Right now. With earthly pension plans, there are penalties for early withdrawal. Not so with the pension plan of God.
So, what are we waiting for? Where do we sign up?!? Who wouldn’t want that whole, healed, put-together life? It’s available right now.
Enough mumbling for now…
Peace Out
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