Faithfully Forward Series

I don’t think we’re basically lazy people. I believe most of us work hard to accomplish the goals we set for ourselves and our families. I don’t think our problem is idleness. I rather believe it’s over-commitment. We’re as busy as ants, filling our calendars with events and activities, and the church is sometimes complicit in adding to that frenzy of activity. Sometimes I wonder if God isn’t looking down from heaven at all of us running around from sun-up to sundown, and if all He sees is a big anthill that someone just stepped in. Like those ants, we’re carrying around lots of burdens. The problem is we’re carrying around the wrong ones. We get caught in the trap that Bill Hybels called “selective sluggardness.”

Hybels tells the story of the father who was a highly committed guy. He was committed to his work and his community, spending his week spending himself for both. By the time the weekend arrived all he wanted to do was sleep in on Sunday morning, which prevented him from doing the one thing his daughter dearly loved—going to Sunday school. His over-commitment caused him to ignore the most important thing to his daughter. He was a busy guy, carrying some heavy burdens, but they were the wrong burdens, and because he was carrying the wrong burdens, he couldn’t pick up the right ones. That’s selective laziness!

Living faithfully forward isn’t about laying our burdens down, it’s about carrying the right burdens. Tomorrow does matter and it ought to change the way we live today. Living faithfully forward is all about investing. Investing is different than saving. When we’re saving, we don’t want risk. Investing involves risk. We invest expecting a return. For the greatest return we must invest in the right things.

Let me ask you a question: What would you rather have? $1,000,000, or a penny a day doubled for 30 days? Most of us would jump in and say a million dollars because of this thing called instant gratification. But, if we chose a penny a day doubled every day for 30 days, we’d have over 5 million dollars--$5,368,709.12 to be exact.

We must choose to invest, and invest wisely for the greatest return, and greatest return for a follower of Jesus Christ comes when we invest in eternal matters. There is where we find the truth behind the paradox living today with an eye on the future. We return to Matthew 6: 19—“Don’t store up treasures on earth where rust and moth destroy, and thieves steal, but store up treasures in heaven.”

Every one of us have only two things to invest: our time and our money. Living faithfully forward means investing those resources so that they will yield eternal benefits. Having an eye on eternity will change how we live today because we’ll see tomorrow matters. Investing our time and resources in our relationships with Christ, with our families and with those in need in our community are the right burdens to bear. Good investments might include Sabbath rest, unhurried time with family or friends and schedules planned far enough in advance to ensure that what we do, we do well. I suppose if I could sum up living faithfully forward with one phrase it would be “Live like we’ll die today, plan like we’ll live forever.”