A Sweet Surprise?
My children are no different than any other children. They love playing outside, love YouTube, and they most definitely LOVE sweets! It has not been long since my 33rd birthday passed and my wife made me a lovely steak dinner and some cake balls! Imagine your favorite cake in bite sized balls, always moist, and surrounded by hardened chocolate! Yes! Wipe the drool off of your mouth. So of course I don't want to share those and my children want to devour them.
After begging for two days to have some I finally relented but I wanted them to work for them! I only get one birthday a year so to have some of my special treats they would have to earn it! They get off the bus and ask for some and I tell them that they must write me a story. It must have four pages (they write big, so it's actually two pages), it must have (beginning, climax, & end), and it must be completed by the time I get off from my part time job. One of my children counteroffers me with $5 for one cake ball. While I did think about taking the $5 I figured it not best to help this child be a bad steward so I declined. The offer was accepted and I left to go to work. And yes I consulted with my wife and got the OK to give them sweets late night.
I get home from a great shift singing a new song that came up in my playlist and what do I find on the table!?!? It was the story! It was written on one piece of paper with two columns per side, with the header of page number at the top of each columns. The story was a long rambling of words that abruptly ended. And there were a lot of misspelled words, in spite of the fancy new dictionary I just bought them. But I loved the fact that they did their best and put forth the effort! I wanted to reward them for that! I then went to our refrigerator as quiet as a mute in a movie theater. With hands as soft as Odell Beckham I opened the Tupperware and grabbed two of the biggest cake balls I could find! I snuck around the corner to one daughter's room poked my head through the door and suddenly in shock was looking at an empty bed!! I rushed to my other daughter's room and there they were playing around after their bed time! Momma knocked out from a long day of work, volleyball practice, and dinner prep. But they were caught in the act of being disobedient.
I held the cake balls in my hand saddened by the turn of events. One daughter was sleep as she was supposed to be. I had told them that when it was time I would wake them up. But the one other daughter was obedient to a certain point. I asked her with pain in my heart "Why did you do this?" She looked sad. And worst of all she had the youngest sister with her playing around! I'm no different than any father is with his daughters I still wanted to give her what she desired but I realized that if I had she would miss out on an important lesson. She was obedient to her father up until a certain point and influenced someone else to be disobedient. In the end I showed her the reward that she had desired the whole day. Then I told her that I could not give it to her. It wouldn't be fair for her, it wouldn't be right for the youngest to see bad behavior rewarded, and it wouldn't be right for me to go against my wife's wishes for them to be in their own beds and rooms. In the end she went away saddened by what she had lost.
I sat and thought about this situation for a moment and thought about this and how it applies to the children of God. We want what reward that the Father has to offer through Jesus. We all want heaven, we all are at some point obedient, and we do our best! God understands that we may fall short at times. He understands that what we have to offer Him, He doesn't need. He also still wants to reward and be with us! But what if we are obedient in His kingdom for a time and then once we become comfortable we begin to stop doing what we are supposed to do? What if we stop putting forth an effort to be obedient. We know when we are going through the motions. And what if in the middle of all that He returns?!! A lot of people would answer these questions and state "God knows my heart!" That's true! But will he stop being a just God? Will He reward those who remained faithful AND those who did not? He would not be fair if He did.
It's easy to be distracted in our lives. We get lost in the days, weeks, months, and years! But if we make sure that our lives are God driven and kingdom focused we can stay on the right path. Don't miss out on your sweet reward trying to create a temporary one here on this Earth.