To Encourage You

Colossians 1:4-5 “we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.”

Why do Christians live like they do?   What motivates their faith?  Do they do what they do because it makes them feel better? Does it give them a warm fuzzy feeling to know that they’ve helped someone?  Do they feel just a little better about themselves because they’ve gone to church and met their religious obligations?  Well, if it is a life rooted in the genuine faith and agape love that the Bible commends, it is because of something much deeper than such things.  It is a life motivated by the certainty that life in this world is not all that there is. 

You see, many people in the world live for the most part by the philosophy of “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die” (Luke 12:19; 1 Corinthians 15:32).  They have no certainty about life after death.  It doesn’t matter to them.  They either don’t believe there is such a thing, or they have an attitude “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”  The Christian should never think like that.  For the believer who has put their faith in Christ, there is a great hope, a certainty, that there is laid up in heaven certain sure promises that God has given us in His Word.  Genuine believers are certain that the only things that really matter in this life are what they do for the glory of God. They know that one day they will stand before Jesus, and in that moment every person will hear one of two things.  For those who have lived a life of faith and who have truly loved Christ and their neighbor in a response of overwhelming gratitude for the love Christ has poured out on them, Christ will say “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21).  This is “the hope laid up for you in heaven” of which  the Bible so  often speaks.  It is a hope that is real. It’s not a “hope so” kind of sentiment. It is a hope that knows that heaven is as real as Jesus, and what the Bible says about heaven is as true as what it says about anything else. It’s a hope that knows, as in the words of a well-known hymn, “it will be worth it all, when we see Jesus.”  It’s a hope that motivates all of life. 

But to those who have given no thought to any of this, who have lived only for today, these words will be heard: “You wicked and slothful servant! . . .  cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 25:26-30).  Of course, if one has no faith, they don’t think about this.  They don’t believe it. Eternity is of no consequence to them – at least that’s how they think. 

But the question is, “What is really true?”  In the end, it doesn’t matter what I think, you think, or anyone else thinks. Our thoughts and opinions have no more influence on reality than wishful thinking does on anything else that is real.  But if what Jesus says is true, and if reality is what He has said it is, a faith and love that is rooted in this (or not), will have enormous consequences in the end.