Less Than the Best

In what other area of our lives would we accept the "desire" to do what is right? In what other area would we equate "desire" with "fulfillment"? Sometimes Christians, in their desire to attribute good to all they meet, will confuse the dsire to obtain the reward (heaven) with the desire to obey God.  Those two things are not one and the same, unfortunately for some.

Consider it this way: if you had to have brain surgery, do you want the person who wants the wage of a brain surgeon (the reward), or do you want the person who disciplined their life in order to be able to perform brain surgery successfully? There are a great many requirements to becoming a brain surgeon (and with good reason!); undergraduate work, graduage work, medical school, residencies, lab classes, etc.  Those that want to be a brain surgeon MUST fulfill these requirements (you might say that the path to becoming a surgeon is narrow).  Do you want someone who does not fulfill these requirements to cut into your head?

When we get to our spiritual life, however, we treat God as if He is lucky that we offer anything to Him at all.  Like becoming a surgeon (and even being able to maintain an active surgeon status, they have requirements for continued education, etc), the Christian has requirements to fulfill in order to achieve the reward of heaven, not JUST the desire to reach heaven (obviously having a desire to reach heaven does play a part...otherwise, why would anyone bother?).

We obviously would not allow the person who only desires the wages of a surgeon, but has not fulfilled the requirements to do such work, to do brain surgery on us.  However, we consistently accept (or make excuses for) those that have the "desire" for the reward of heaven, but do not do the commandments of the Lord (John 14:15; John 15:14).

Perhaps we should also consider it this way: would our jobs or school accept us doing our duties for them the way we do our duties for the Lord? If we constantly told our school or work that we simply "couldn't make it" in because of this reason or for that reason? If we were consistently late for either of those things? Yet, we aruge that this is acceptable for God and that God will just have to understand.  Consider Malachi 1:7-9 in which people were offering things to God that they would not dare to serve their dignitaries.  We often frown at passages such as this and shake our heads, but do we not do the same thing today when we offer God less than our best?

Remember Matthew 6:33 where we are told to seek the kingdom of God first.  The context of this passage is that God will see to our earthly needs as He sees fit if our service is first to Him, not this world.  This doesn't mean that we will necessarily be "rich" with earthly things, but we will have our needs met as He sees fit! We cannot use the materialistic things of this life that we "need" as an excuse not to obey the commandments of the Lord.  Remember the words of Joshua, "...But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15).