Pursuing that Kingdom (God’s call, the dream of the Kingdom, where all sorrows will cease and all injustices will end, and where care for the poor is lived out) sets our feet on an adventure that is so challenging and dynamic that all so-called “virtual realities” seem dull and lifeless in comparison. Neither our youth nor our adults will want to waste time on a synthetic electronic replica of reality when the real thing is so captivating.
-Tim Dearborn, The Local Church in a Global Era, 214.
I loved this! I say this from experience where last night a group of friends and I met up downtown by Rosa Parks Circle to then be sovereignly led by God to interact with many homeless people. What a joy to interact with those who God calls the greatest in the Kingdom! In seeing the homeless and the poor as if they were Christ himself gives a whole different outlook and joy to fellowship, feed and give drink to them. Christ showed how blessed it is to care for the homeless and poor when He associated Himself with them in Matthew 25:34-36 saying, "(when He comes back in glory to finally sit on His throne for the Judgment of all nations) the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For (stating the reason why they are blessed by His Father and are to inherit the kingdom prepared for them) I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me."
John Piper captures this concept of banking on the real pleasures and satisfaction that we long for when he made these comments that continue to challenge me daily,
“It is not that we are all trying to please ourselves, but that we are all far too easily pleased. We do not believe Jesus when He says there is more blessedness, more joy, more lasting pleasure in a life devoted to helping others than there is in a life devoted to our material comfort. And therefore, the very longing for contentment that ought to drive us to simplicity of life and labors of love contents itself instead with the broken cisterns of prosperity and comfort. The message that needs to be shouted from the houses of high finance is this: Secular man, you are not nearly hedonistic enough! “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” (Matthew 6:19–20) Quit being satisfied with the little 5 percent yields of pleasure that get eaten up by the moths of inflation and the rust of death. Invest in the blue-chip, high-yield, divinely insured security of heaven. Devoting a life to material comforts and thrills is like throwing money down a rat hole. But investing a life in the labor of love yields dividends of joy unsurpassed and unending: “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. [And thus] provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail.” (Luke 12:33) This message is very good news: Come to Christ, in whose presence are fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. Join us in the labor of Christian Hedonism. For the Lord has spoken: It is more blessed to love than to live in luxury!”
- John Piper, Desiring God, pg. 128-129.
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