This Light Affliction

"And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life."

Matthew 19:29

This is a remarkable verse, especially poignant for those who have left all to follow Jesus.  As true as it remains for the foreign missionary, it rings just a true for the man who never physically leaves his house or country.  When a person decides to follow Jesus, he must leave all.  Nothing in his life is to have precedence or influence above his LORD and Savior.  The allurements of riches, personal ambition or goals, pursuits of pleasure, and all which competes with loyalty and love for Christ must be put away.

We do not leave all to follow Christ for the purpose of receiving a reward.  If this is our motivation we can know for certain we are moved by selfishness rather than love.  By responding in the flesh we forfeit the hundredfold which the LORD desires to give.  Scripture affirms we will receive a reward, and we rejoice in the grace of God to provide abundantly beyond what we could ask or think.  But this is tempered by the realization we are undeserving of any reward or gift for our service.  Can man repay God?  All the works of a million lifetimes could not repay God for the gift of a single breath we draw.  Shall a man earn eternal life?  We cannot.  But man is offered this priceless gift at Christ's expense, who once for all died for the sins of the world.

I am coming to the conclusion that the leaving of family, house, and country is as hard on other people as it is for me, perhaps even harder.  I and my family have been called to serve God in Australia, a country foreign from our birth.  Yet parents and siblings on both sides of our family will stay behind, not sharing this specific call to be physically uprooted.  Though we labour in prayer on opposite sides of the globe, we labour together for God's glory.  Is their pain of separation any less pronounced than mine?  By God's grace they can share in the reward of suffering lack for the sake of the Gospel, being separated from children and grandchildren for Christ's name sake.  This hardness is shared by all.  2 Timothy 2:3-4 says, "You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. ⁴ No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier."  We are called and are able to endure hardship by the grace of God for His glory.  Instead of being broken under a weight of depression, our strength can be renewed like eagles when we wait upon the LORD.

Jesus is worth all the sacrifices we might be called to endure while we remain on this earth.  He does not grant us eternal life because of our sacrifice but because of His own!  To be partakers of Christ's heavenly nature is grace beyond measure, much less the gift of eternity in His presence!  These light afflictions last for a moment and are not to be compared with the glory of our Savior.  2 Corinthians 4:16-18 reads, "Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, ¹⁸ while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal."  This eternal perspective is the proper one!