Issue 219
One of the difficulties that projects or strategies encounter is the turnover of those in charge. When the government changes, the head of department is replaced or a company is taken over, things do not remain the same. New brooms sweep all before them, priorities are adjusted and plans may be scrapped. In contexts where popularity with shareholders or voters is important, and one is to stay in office, decisions will tend to be made to ease pain and please now rather than solve and deliver later.
The result is that the short term is promoted over the longer term, bigger strategic project.
We are about to enter a section of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus of Nazareth advocates going for the long term approach; specifically, he is describing long term rewards. In the eighteen verses which start chapter six he affirms that, “your Heavenly Father will reward” three times, with a fourth implied.
Straight away we are into the long term because there will be no change of government here, and no new head of department. There is no need to go for the popular vote because no-one can remove this Father from his position. Nevertheless there are rewards to be had;. they may not be now or in your lifetime, they may not be wealth and prosperity, but they will be real.
Jesus believes in the principle of rewards. He does not teach that you should walk this path unrewarded. As you go to work this week you can carry with you a certain hope of reward. This is not because you are presuming but because, once you are on this road, Jesus is assuming you will behave in a particular way. This way has to do with operating in the unseen world. It is not just for introverts or loners but for everyone. Jesus is calling us to a set of disciplines and a type of approach which need to be carried out in secret. These disciplines are not add-ons for the spiritually serious but are the core disciplines for all Christians and Jesus is wanting us to know the way in which these disciplines should be conducted.
The disciplines are giving, praying and fasting.
We will visit this way next time, but for the short term take comfort that you are headed for the long term reward. It will affect how you work in the here and now.
Matthew 6: 4, 6, 14, 18
4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
14 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
18 so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
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Geoff Shattock
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