Limited Opportunity

Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. (John 4:36)

As is almost always the case, when I come back and look at a verse or passage again on a new day something brand new is revealed to me. Today is no exception.

I have had a subtle question for many years that has not really coalesced clearly until now regarding the difference between eternity and the time we live in on this earth. I am not talking so much about the kind of eternal life that Jesus intends for us to enter into right now in relationship with Him. I am aware of that, though I certainly need to know and experience much more of it. But I am talking about the aspect of eternal life in relationship to time – the part of eternal life that will come after this world is ended.

I think this question has taken more definition as I have pondered and studied and listened to the Spirit teaching me about the true nature of our rewards in heaven. I have written about this subject several times recently and it has been exciting to see more clearly what God's rewards are and are not. But this has given rise to the issue of there being a difference between opportunities that we have now to earn these rewards and the inferred lack of opportunities to do the same once eternity has commenced.

There seems to be woven throughout Scriptures an assumption about this issue. Some call it a time of probation given to each of us in which we have unique opportunities to do things that we will never be able to do again. The clear part of this opportunity has to do with our own choice to embrace the grace revealed to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. But I sense that there may be more that is not quite so obvious here. And I think I may start to be seeing it a little bit in this verse.

Based on my new perceptions about heaven's reward system, I believe I may be beginning to have more keys to open up my understanding about this, and what I am starting to see is extremely important. It is important because if we don't perceive or value our unique time of probation to do all that we now have opportunities to do, to that extent we are going to look back on our life with deep regrets but will never again have another time in which to do what we can only do now.

I have come to firmly believe that the foundational reality of heaven's rewards is to be found in the relationships of joy that we are going to have throughout all of eternity. And while we certainly will then have opportunity to form new relationships with billions of people we never had access to in this life, those relationships somehow will not have the same capacity to produce the same results of reward that relationships we form here on earth leading others into a saving relationship with Jesus gives us.

I am having a hard time putting clearly into words what I want to convey here, but it is at least becoming more clear in my own mind through this process. Maybe it is because I really don't comprehend much what is in the kind of relationships that are going to bring us the unique kind of joy that is labeled “rewards” throughout eternity. But somehow I sense from all that I am learning that the relationships we form after eternity starts, after the Second Coming of Jesus, are not going to produce the same potential for that fulfillment within us like the relationships that we have initiated with others here and now as we allow God to work in and through us to connect others hearts to His.

But just because I cannot explain this clearly or comprehend it well myself does not mean that it is not true or vitally important. I believe that much of the urgency of Scriptures and prophetic language that we have mistaken as warnings based on fear may actually, if correctly understood, be urgent alerts due to our need to view reality very differently. What I am trying to say is that instead of reading many of these warnings as dire threats of an angry God about to thrash the earth with punishments as we often have viewed them, we may be missing a much more relevant message that is really trying to wake us up to possibly the greatest opportunities ever offered to a created being. We are privileged to take advantage of a small window of opportunity in this life to form connections that will be an eternal source of blessing and reward for us forever.

I wish I could condense this down and make it more succinct than what it seems like I am doing here. Maybe it is because I am trying to think out loud and not wait until it is clear in my own mind before I attempt to write it down. But I have found that writing itself is often an effective means to clarify and solidify vague concepts and ideas that I am trying to wrap my mind around. Writing for me is also one of the best ways to open my mind to the voice of God's Spirit and help me listen more actively, or more interactively should I say.

Anyway, what I have been attempting to flush out here is that I sense that what I am seeing in this story is some modeling for the disciples by Jesus of this very concept. Jesus and the woman at the well both were actively and even aggressively entering into the work of harvesting while the disciples were baffled about even the fact that there was a harvest at all. But when this woman's eyes were opened to the incredible opportunities available to anyone who could see with heaven's eyes as she was starting to see, in her heart she now saw amazing potential for rich harvest in her own town where before she could only see sources of pain, shame and humiliation for herself.

Maybe nothing had changed yet back in town in relation to what they thought about her, but in her mind and heart everything had changed. And that change was not that new opportunities had suddenly opened up for her relationships with others based on a different attitude on their part, but the difference was that her own heart had experienced the love and grace of her Savior and Messiah and this empowered her to see much more clearly what the disciples still could not perceive. What she now saw, just as Jesus saw all along, was a whole city full of opportunities, a city full of wounded hearts who were hurting each other because of confusion about God, waiting to be introduced to the only One who could satisfy their deepest yearnings just as she was experiencing.

So instead of fooling around with the slow, introductory process of softening up the territory and slowly acclimating people to be more open to the gospel, she went straight for the hearts of everyone and somehow sensed just exactly what to say that would entice their hearts to want to pursue this love she had discovered for themselves. And her excitement and strategy were exactly on target. She was able to get the scoop on a whole city of people and who knows how many more after that. We have no idea because we don't know the rest of her story. But I am certain that she did not stop with just one city of healing relationships. Her whole life likely became a contagious magnet from then on demonstrating the power of God to heal and transform anyone willing to surrender themselves to His divine influence.

What she was really doing here was the kind of harvesting based on initiating relationships that were going to be the living connections that would reward her for the rest of eternity. And what I am trying to perceive here is that there must be a dramatic and distinct difference between the benign effect on our eternal existence in the relationships we form after we get to heaven and the relationships we form with others in cooperation with God here on earth. For I believe that it is only during our time of probation here on earth that we can form the bonds with other hearts that are going to be the source of our richest joy – and by definition our rewards – throughout the rest of eternity.

It is one thing to intellectually begin to perceive this most amazing truth. But I am acutely aware that it is far more important to grasp this truth at the heart level if I am going to really take advantage of it. I cannot use just my left brain knowledge of this vital truth to try to create relationships that are going to bless me for eternity. That is ridiculous and even tragic mistake. My heart has to really understand and embrace this concept deep inside which means I have to experience it myself with Jesus like this woman did before I can be empowered with the enthusiasm needed to attract others to Him. But when that happens, the connections formed through my efforts to touch other lives for Jesus are going to form the roots of the rewards that I will enjoy throughout all eternity.

Of course, the variation in the quantities of those rewards from one person to another is totally dependent on how willing each one is right now to participate in the work of God and angels to attract others into this bonding process with God and with each other. This is like building a root network from which the vital nutrients of a plant can draw nourishment later on.

What helps to explain this even more might be the difference between the combined seasons of planting and harvesting – what we might call the farming season – compared with the time of sitting back and enjoying the fruits of all that work after it is all finished. The amount of enjoyment or even the amount of wealth that a farmer will have is totally dependent on how diligent he is to do everything possible correctly during the time of planting and harvesting. Yes, there are a lot of variables outside of his control, but that does not excuse him from doing everything possible with all the skills and wisdom he can get to try to maximize the yields so as to produce the largest harvest. But after the harvest the rewards he can enjoy will be proportionate to the work that he invested before that time.

This is the analogy that I see emerging from this passage. Jesus is talking about the fact that we live in a unique time of opportunities to maximize the amount of real wealth that we can enjoy after the harvest is finished. Our relative wealth in heaven is being determined right now by the priorities that we choose each day. And this is the area where we get the most confused and are in the greatest danger of coming up short after the harvest.

If we believe like many people do, that the most important thing to God is for us to have the right set of doctrines and intellectual beliefs and to have all the right answers to questions in some supposed test coming up, then we are going to put most of our efforts and time into studying and arguing and synthesizing an intellectual kind of truth that we think we will defend to the death.

Maybe we believe that being saved means having intense feelings of excitement that we assume are obtained from stimulating worship services or that what God wants most is a life that has eliminated all the external sins that we notice in our lives, then we are going to focus on pursuing every opportunity to feel excited or we may spend our lives trying to eliminate every little “sin” we can find. But whatever version of religion we gravitate toward, most people I know feel that God might have some sort of brownie point system that He intends to use to calculate our rewards when we arrive in heaven.

But if we begin to grasp the reality that our rewards are going to center in the immense joy we will experience from every one of the relationships that were formed during this time of probation and that after this there will no more opportunities to sow or harvest again for all of eternity, then we will get our attention off of trying to make ourselves righteous in God's eyes and will instead plunge passionately into the work of planting God's love and harvesting souls as fast as we can. This will become the greatest source of wealth anyone could ever hope for from heaven's perspective, for it is only the true heart connections that we form for Jesus here with others that are going to be cherished the most when the true perspective of eternity breaks into clear reality.

Cluelessness

Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. (John 4:36)

Some of this is still a little obscure and some of it is still clarifying for me.

I still don't quite see where in this story that someone is sowing except in Jesus' words to the woman. But that appears to me to be more along the line of reaping more than sowing. She was ripe for the picking for eternal life so how could that fit in as an act of sowing seed? That is the part that still seems obscure for me. But it is not absolutely necessary to know the answer to that immediately. It might be one of those questions I need to leave hanging and see if God might suddenly reveal it to me unexpectedly sometime.

But what is becoming clearer for me is that the disciples were missing out on most of the fun of this work. They simply were so out of touch with the kind of food and harvest and labor that excited Jesus and this woman that they were standing around much of the time going “huh?” and scratching their heads. But while they were trying to get up to even a slow speed about all the excitement and activity taking place and mostly missing the point, this woman saw the harvest waiting to be worked and jumped right in to help as fast as she could. And since in God's kingdom, rewards for work are paid in the currency of joy, she was already receiving wages even while she was still working which only gave her immediate incentive to work even harder.

The main purpose of wages is to act as something that motivates us to want to work. Most people are conditioned to generally only want to work if there is enough incentive in the form of wages to induce them to put out the effort. Even if the wages are not necessarily monetary in nature, there needs to be enough of a payback for us to feel motivation to do anything called work. That payback may be monetary as it is most of the time in our society, or it may be other tangible assets that will benefit us or that we can use to support our life. Work can also involve pleasure and satisfaction which can be an additional source of incentive for many people but is usually missing in most people's lives. Thus work itself has taken on a negative connotation for most of us.

This negative feeling about work that has become almost inherent in the very word creates a problem when God talks to us about work. But that's why God told Adam right after he sinned that this was going to be an issue for him the rest of his life.

Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life....by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." (Genesis 3:17-19)

This curse was not something so much imposed on Adam as it was simply a description of the consequences that were unavoidable from Adam's choice to obey a different master and embrace a different system of government. He had relinquished his authority over the earth to another master and because of that this new master of sin would cause everything to involve resistance, extra effort to get things done and he would now live under the constant effects of everything slowly dying including his own body. Instead of being a joy to work and experience immediate and joyful results from his labor, it would now involve drudgery and sweat and soreness and discouraging outcomes.

But God's words were also an instruction to Adam that work, as hard as it was going to be now, was actually going to also be Adam's therapy. He was going to need to work harder now that he had rejected God's system of free gifting and had chosen Satan's system of works. In his new condition Adam would have to focus his efforts and energy on working very hard to help provide his needs if he was to have things to eat and the necessities of life. But in choosing to work he would also avoid the worse consequences of surrendering to laziness or indulging in debilitating pleasures. Now the very act of sweating while working would act as a cleansing process for his body as his soul would also be similarly cleansed.

But this inherent sense about work being something we don't like because of the effects of sin distorts our perceptions of how appealing heaven's work is to anyone living under God's version of reality. All of heaven is very busy in work but it does not have the same negative connotations for them as it seems to have for us. But we too can begin to be energized from the kind of work that heaven enjoys doing as we enter into fellowship with heaven and cooperate in the works of God. As we begin to synchronize with Jesus in the way and with the spirit in which He works, we will discover a new source of energy and motivation that is exponentially greater and more stimulating than any other kind of earthly compensation plan that we are used to hearing about.

Many of us work and feel that we have to endure it or maybe even survive it so that we can get paid remuneration that can then be used to do something more fun or to buy the things we need for our families to survive. But what if we could work in such a way that the things we crave to enjoy outside of work could be received directly from the job itself? How might this affect the way we think about the whole concept of work?

This is such a strange and radical idea that it may take some time to even wrap our imagination around it and figure out what this might look like. Could this involve having our physical needs like hunger be directly satisfied as a result of our work? And what about many of our other needs, could they somehow be met and satisfied also if the work we were doing was better designed to fit with them? And when we start to contemplate all of this, we are forced to go back and rethink what it is we really are working for in the first place. Why do we want the money we earn from our jobs anyway? What do we want in exchange for the money we earn that is valuable and important to us? And is it possible that those things might somehow be received in a different way besides earning or buying them? The whole system of work and compensation and needs and desires suddenly all comes up for serious review and reconsideration at this point.

But I believe that heaven's idea about working must be radically different than the way we typically think about work and the compensation is far different than the artificial and manipulative monetary systems that we are used to living under in this world. Then the next question that begins to emerge is, how realistic is it to believe that we could even get hired into this new strange kind of work if it is really as rewarding as it is starting to sound like it might be. Is this “work” something worth looking deeper into or is it simply a religious mirage that is presented in glowing terms but in the end leaves one empty and more depleted and discouraged than before? Is this work Jesus is talking about here seriously for real or is it not?

If it is really true and if it is as rewarding as it is starting to appear to be from the excitement suddenly displayed by this Samaritan woman, then why aren't more people signing up for this kind of job? And why weren't the disciples themselves jumping in to take advantage of this incredible job offer? Who is really telling the truth here? I really want to know myself, because I am getting very conflicting messages from various people in this story as to what is real and what is important and what is worth investing time and effort in focusing on with my energies and attention.

This work Jesus talks about definitely sounds intriguing, but why didn't the disciples get excited about it like everyone else? I would really like to know in very practical ways because obviously I seem to be more in sync with these disciple's view of things from the evidence in my life than I am in tune with the exciting way of working everyone else was involved in. I feel like I have been missing out on most of the fun that Jesus and this woman were into and I am getting almost upset about it. I want a piece of the action myself; I want to earn these kinds of wages myself; I want to eat more of this food and living water that was so important in Jesus' life and that got a whole town excited within a few minutes. I don't want to be on the outside of all the fun and action any longer, I don't want to miss the point and stand around scratching my head with the disciples; I want to be filled with the kind of motivation and joy that sent this woman scrambling back to town forgetful of the pots and pans that everyone else seems to consider more important.

This woman accepted the job of reaping when the disciples missed the opportunity due to their cluelessness. I'm afraid I have been with them most of my life. I don't want to stay that way, but I'm still not sure how to get there from here. Lord, save me from cluelessness!

Which Reapers?

I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor. (John 4:38)

This is when I would really like to have access to a person skilled in looking at the original Greek to explain potential optional readings of a passage. I have looked at the Greek words used for this text but it seems to me to be somewhat ambiguous, meaning that it is possible that Jesus may have been implying something significantly different here than the assumptions the translators have made. On the other hand I could be completely wrong which I am sure many scholars would agree on.

So I am not going to make an unflinching assertion about this. But I would like to propose that given the context and the perspective that I have begun to see in this story that at least it is a viable possibility that this text may mean something a little different than it may first appear on the surface in its reading after translation.

The reason I have question about the surface meaning of this text is because of the actions of the various people in this story up to this point. I think it is safe to assume that Jesus had something much more in mind for the disciple's trip into town than just to buy some physical food with as little social interaction as possible with the people they would meet in the process. Jesus never endorsed the prejudices that still controlled these disciple's thinking and if they had tried at all to live outside of those narrow cultural boundaries the story very likely could have turned out much differently.

One reason I believe that is because of this text right here. Jesus says that He sent them to reap! I believe that He was talking here about their most recent trip into town, and the reaping He was referring to was the fruit of interested people in wanting to know more about Jesus. They had been given a wonderful chance to introduce a whole city that just happened to be ripe for the gospel to the very One who had come to reveal the good news about God to the whole world. They actually could have made a difference in that city if they had not been so blind themselves to the incredible value of His presence with them and the amazing privileges they enjoyed being able to know Him so personally.

If they had had a much greater appreciation of who Jesus really was they would have also had more innate excitement that would have worked as a magnet on everyone they would have encountered wherever they went. On their trip into town to get some food they had the opportunity to share the very same enthusiasm for Jesus as the woman displayed who went into town after they left. But because of their spiritual blindness and their prejudices against non-Jews they could only see ordinary people whom they felt didn't deserve to have the same privileges that they enjoyed hanging around Jesus.

Given this context, I believe that this verse could possibly be translated slightly different than it currently reads. Again, I wish I could run this by an unbiased scholar familiar with the original language to see if this alternate rendition could be allowed in the original flow of the Greek, but for now I will have to just leave it as my proposal that fits the context. Here is how I think this could possibly read after examining the original Greek words.

I sent you to reap others (the people in town), but you failed to invest the effort needed to make that happen. Since you didn't do the job, others have labored (the woman Jesus met at the well) but you are now invited to join her in her joy of harvesting.

As I read the other verses surrounding this it seems to reinforce this view even more. In verse 36 Jesus notes that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. And this is on top of what He said in verse 35, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields. Clearly they were not yet seeing correctly or looking in the right place if Jesus had to keep trying to get them to see reality differently than they were accustomed to doing.

And yet, even though I see a gentle rebuke in these words of Jesus to His disciples, I also see much more His amazing love and grace toward them. They seemed so oblivious to what seemed so obvious to the woman and even to many of the people in this town. This woman was catching on very quickly and as a result she was becoming an avid missionary for Jesus after just a few words of life received from Him. Now those she invited were already pouring out of the city on their way to receive the same things.

There is no reason why the disciples could not have been the instigators of this revival instead of just this woman. If they had opened their hearts more to perceive the real truth about Jesus that was clearly exhibited in His life and attitudes, they could have been far better motivated to do more than just buy food while trying to avoid as much contact as possible with some “heathens”. And yet even in their prejudice and blindness and fear, Jesus still offered them yet another opportunity to join Him in the celebration and joy of harvesting souls, inviting them to embrace the love and grace being offered them by God. He was giving His disciples another opportunity to join the woman who was already busy working as a harvester and get involved themselves if they would be willing.

Boy does this ever speak to my heart. I have been raised pretty much like these disciples were raised, with all sorts of prejudices towards people outside of my small circle of belief in a narrow set of strict doctrines. We were carefully trained to be suspicious of anyone who didn't view life or interpret the Bible just the way we did and thus developed a strong fear of being somehow contaminated if we hung around the “wrong” kind of people very much.

Because of this I always lived with a sense of defensiveness, of a need to keep my guard up to protect what I had been taught was the only correct view of “truth”. I was deeply instilled with a great deal of prejudice from a very early age just as these Jewish disciples had been. Because of this I can now see that I very likely would not have acted much differently than they did under the same circumstances.

They did not understand the true nature of joy – that joy requires that I be happy to be with someone else. They certainly did not want to feel happy to be with these hated Samaritans. They thought the only people they should feel good or safe to be around were people who already thought and believed just like they did.

I see that same kind of attitude demonstrated in just about every church I visit including my own. I see the presence of great fear whenever anyone who thinks too differently tries to mingle into the midst. There is enormous pressure, albeit very subtle at times, to make them conform to traditions and preferences and idiosyncrasies before they are made to feel completely welcome.

I can see this kind of attitude and I can feel very resentful about it, but at the same time I realize that I am just as much to blame as anyone else. And yet at the same time I have a very difficult time seeing how I do it. That tells me that I must have many of the same kinds of blind spots that these disciples had in their relationship with Jesus. They enjoyed hanging around Jesus and they sensed that He was much more than what met the eye, but at the same time their cultural upbringing created such deep and high walls of resistance to what Jesus was all about that it took years for them to begin to really let go of their prejudices and begin to honestly embrace people into joyful fellowship that were very different than they were.

As I reflect on this I sense that one lesson God wants me to learn is that opportunities to experience “community” may come from places or people I may least expect sometimes. If I insist that I should only experience genuine community and joy-based bonding within the confines of my church or my family, I may be setting up preconditions and barriers that God never intends to be in place. That is not to endorse the idea that I should allow my heart to be connected to just anyone that makes me feel good at the moment; but this story does tell me that God may be working in the lives and hearts of people that I might least suspect could become my brothers and sisters in close fellowship and love. I need to be more sensitive and alert to listen to the promptings of God's Spirit so that I can be open to subtle signals from others that they are ripe for harvesting. And if I am willing to be a co-harvester with Jesus and relate to people like He does, then I may find my sphere of community rapidly expanding in directions and in depth like I have never experienced before in my whole life.

I find it compelling that Jesus did not censure or reject His disciples for having such blindness and prejudice or for failing to see what He really wanted them to see about this situation. And because of that it gives me hope that He is doing the same with me. That very kindness and patience that He demonstrated toward His dull-minded, faithless, slow-to-believe disciples is shown to me and is the very kindness that induces real repentance of the heart. I am sure that John felt this very keenly when many years after this story happened he sat down to write out the stories of his life with Jesus in this book. As he thought back and reflected on how Jesus had treated him and the other disciples in all of these situations, I am certain that he was in awe and amazement at the incredible insights he could then see into the love of the Master that he had not appreciated or understood while these stories were taking place.

Jesus, I have to admit that I see myself all too much like these dull-minded disciples instead of the responsive, enthusiastic joy of this woman who was eager to share Your love with anyone who might listen. I wish I was more like her, I want to be more like her but I have to confess that I am blind and lukewarm and resistant to the kind of joy that motivates You and all of heaven.

Father, I need a great deal of healing, of retraining, of dying to self and allowing Your passion to flow through me much more freely. I give You full permission to transform me into Your image so that I can appreciate and respond to the opportunities that You bring into my life to reflect Your passionate love to others. Give me a spirit of true repentance and teach my heart to not be afraid of joy – all for Your reputation's sake.

Of Wages and Rewards - 2

Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. (John 4:36)

Last time I looked at the issue of how easy it is to make assumptions about how or when God does things and planning our lives based on our assumptions instead of on learning to check with God continually. This is one of the most pervasive problems that I see in Christianity today and I am certainly affected by it as well. Just because I can start to see this is no guarantee that I am free of its deceptive influence in my own thinking. I pray to be delivered from this kind of assumption-based living and to know the Shepherd's voice and depend on it much more consistently in my life.

But there is much, much more in this verse that I also want to explore. I touched on the issue of wages and rewards last time and the difference that needs to be seen between the two. It is not only confusing but even dangerous to mix up these two things when trying to know how to properly relate to God. Wages are earned; a gift is not earned. Eternal life is a gift and we must strip ourselves of every notion that we can do anything whatsoever in the slightest to earn this gift. When we fall into that trap we actually insult the grace of God offered to us.

But this creates yet another trap that may be even easier to fall into as well. When people begin to grasp the truth about God's incredible gift to us of eternal life, there is a subtle temptation that is exploited by many religious teachers and leaders to believe that there is nothing we are have to do after accepting this gift. This has led many to embrace the dangerous doctrine of “once saved, always saved.” This is actually a distortion of the truth that all the world has indeed been saved by the death of Jesus and is waiting to become aware of it and embrace it. It is also a problem of not understanding the real meaning of the terms we are using, but that is a different subject dealt with elsewhere.

In this verse can be seen some incredibly important clues about the true nature of wages as viewed from heaven's perspective. Sin has wages and God gives wages, but as would be expected, the wages that sin deals are a counterfeit of the kind of wages God has for those who work with Him. The promises of rewards that sin entices people with are always inherently deceptive while initially very alluring and attractive. But the results always end up in pain and death even though that was not disclosed initially.

When people contract to work for wages, they generally expect to be paid in something that is useful and beneficial for their life. We don't go sign up to work for a job that promises us that we will be piled up with only debts or will only receive abuse and torture as the reward for our work; no one is crazy enough to want to work for those kinds of wages. That is why sin is so incredibly deceptive, because it could never succeed and expand and attract so many if the real results were properly represented up front. Thus it has always been that sin is presented as something that will make us feel better, that will bring us pleasure and satisfaction, that will elevate us to a higher level in some way, maybe in power or excitement or satisfaction or whatever area where we feel lacking.

Sin's wages are usually presented in a very glittering, alluring light that can be overwhelmingly appealing. It has to appear attractive or it could not have the success that it does. But sin is inherently based on lies and deceptions which means that it is very difficult to discern for ourselves the real truth, the ugliness, pain and death that hides behind the alluring exterior. We have to depend on a reliable Source of truth and choose to believe that objective Source without leaning on our own understanding. That is called faith and is absolutely crucial to escaping the lust that will draw us into the deadly trap of sin.

But heaven has a system of wages too, which may come as a surprise to some. But because we are so used to the world's system of wages and works and the motives we have for earning wages, it is very easy to miss the real truth about heaven's kind of wages and what constitutes those wages. We almost always tend to project at least some of our distorted assumptions about work and wages into what we read from God's Word and then come to mistaken conclusions about heaven's rewards. We must be extremely careful and try to lay aside our assumptions and preconceptions so we can listen to God's Spirit to discern what should be our main incentive for wanting God's kind of wages.

If we project our desires for wages into heaven's system of payment, too often we end up mingling selfishness and pride into our assumptions about what we want to get paid for wages. Jesus touched on this in some His parables involving wages that tend to expose and disturb us if we get the real point of the parable. I think particularly about the parable where various people who worked very different lengths of time all received the same amount of pay. This understandably incensed some who had worked much harder and longer and caused them to protest against the actions of the boss. And while this parable was not dealing directly with the kind of wages heaven uses, it does expose our distorted perspective and motives about why we want wages to start with.

All of this is to try to expose the fact that we need to have a much more open mind when trying to understand the true nature of what may constitute heaven's kind of wages. If it is likely quite different than earthly wages and definitely very different than sin's wages, and if heaven's wages are not paid in the currency of eternal life which is only a gift and is not wages, then just what might be left that would be so desirable for a true follower of God to earnestly want to earn – what would be of supreme value to him or her?

I believe that it can be found right here in this passage and especially in this verse. That is one of the reasons why this passage is so exciting for me; it actually is one of the places in the Bible where we can see more clearly the kind of wage arrangement that heaven loves to deal with, the kind of wages that the angels are constantly working to earn and the wages that every true follower of Jesus will come to crave. In fact, this kind of wages is revealed clearly in Hebrews 12 to be the wages that Jesus sought most to earn by His own life, and He will receive the greatest amount of wages when it all becomes clear in the end.

I believe that the easiest way to discover the real truth about heaven's kind of wages is to study what Jesus worked for and looked forward to when He worked to earn heaven's wages. I have dealt with that in a separate writing so I will not repeat it here. But given that context it can be seen that this passage strongly reinforces that truth and helps to expose what heavenly-oriented people want to earn for wages. The disciples were having serious perception problems so they not only could not understand or appreciate the kind of food Jesus wanted but also didn't appreciate the value of the kind of wages that could buy that kind of food. But notice what we find here in the passage.

He who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together!

There is far more hidden in these last two words than meets the eye unless one has learned the true definition of joy. I have thought and written about this extensively and what I have learned from James Wilder has been a tremendous help and blessing for me to unlock this most important concept in the Christian life. Those who truly enter into the spirit that motivated Jesus and begin to experience the desires that consumed much of His life will begin to understand that the wages most valued in the eyes of all of heaven is intimate fellowship with other hearts. Joy is when someone is glad to be with me. That is about as short a definition as can be produced but has much broader implications within it. If we don't sense the inherent, immense value hidden within that definition it is likely because we have never been truly loved in our life. The effects of sin are so pervasive in suffocating the heart God created us to live from that we desperately need a heart transplant as described in Ezekiel 33 and other places.

In the last two words of this verse can be found the essence of this definition. Rejoice is really just another term for joy, and together is actually an extremely abbreviated version of the definition of that very joy. This verse is like an acorn that contains the seed from which a mighty oak tree can be produced. Rejoice together is like shorthand for the kind of wages that lights up the eyes and captivates the interest of everyone who has come to appreciate what heaven values the most.

Some other terms closely associated with this kind of wages – the wages of joy – are things like community, the body of Christ, fellowship of the saints, and many other concepts scattered all throughout Scripture. When the Bible is read with a corrected definition of joy and a better appreciation for the kind of wages God's true children want to work for, suddenly everything we read takes on a whole new light. And the more wages we begin to enjoy and spend right now in our work for God the more eager we will be to seek ways to earn more and more of this infinitely valuable currency.

When I stop to think about it, something very significant comes to my attention about eternity. If one views eternal life only from the dimension of time and not quality, then to live forever, but to have no joy in the life would be very much like the descriptions of hell that are entertained by many false religions today. To live forever without love, without heart fellowship and compassion and connectedness with other people would become supreme misery. And to believe in a God that might impose such a punishment on those who reject Him is to believe in a god who is actually the demonic, sadistic Satan himself. This is why so many people have become atheists after hearing about the popular teachings of hell as presented by most Christians; they cannot accept that such a monstrous God could even exist, much less truly love them.

But God is not at all like we have made Him out to be based on Satan's misrepresentations of Him. God is the ultimate source of joy because He is the greatest lover – the very essence of love itself. Because of that God craves to be connected to the hearts of all the intelligent beings that He has created, both the saved and those who will be lost by rejecting the truth about His feelings towards them. As I have explored extensively in my web site on this subject, hell is literally the ultimate torture of experiencing God's passionate love from a mind and heart that has destroyed all it's capacity to enjoy and respond reflectively to that love. They will perceive that passion as being wrath. That is the greatest torture that any being can ever experience who was created to live and thrive in love.

On the other side, all those who will be found in heaven will have entered into the experience of what life was really designed for – intimate joy-bonds with other hearts that have formed connections through which love can flow to bless the lives of others around them. Thus, when we cooperate with God in forming bonded connections with others and draw them into experiencing a direct bond themselves with their Creator and Father in heaven, we put into place the very connections through which we are going to receive heaven's kinds of wages all throughout eternity.

When this system of payment or wages is properly perceived, then we will begin to appreciate the passion that motivates all who are learning to cooperate with God in the saving of as many souls as possible. Our motivations for evangelism will be dramatically transformed and look very different. We will not be trying to see how many numbers we can add to our church membership lists or how many people we can claim to have baptized (and then abandoned like orphans while we rush away to find more), but we will be seeking to find every way possible to connect with the hearts of people the way that Jesus did in order to form a connection through which we can start a blood transfusion to bring their hearts to life.

Now isn't that a radical concept? If we viewed ourselves as needles looking for the veins of everyone around us in desperate need of love so that we could inject them with the blood of Jesus who is love incarnate, then our whole basis for soul-winning, evangelism or whatever we might call it, would be turned completely upside down. Instead of focusing on large campaigns with expensive outlays for advertising targeted at a public uninterested in hearing answers to questions they are not asking, we would see that the real way to earn heaven's wages is to cooperate with God and follow the lead of His Spirit to have Him connect us personally with people who are ripe to be harvested.

And what does it mean to be a harvester? That is a whole topic that needs much more exploration as well. But in the context of wages here, I believe that it means, at least in part, that we spend most of our focus on connecting with people's hearts (instead of trying to change their intellectual beliefs) and allowing the love and truth and attractiveness of God to flow through us so they will want to become part of the body of Christ and connect with Him directly.

So just from the wages standpoint, a word picture comes to my mind. Think of a three-dimensional picture that contains balls and tubes. Each of us is a ball, a sphere that has infinite numbers of available connection points around its surface. When we connect with others at the heart level we connect a tube between our ball and their ball. Through that connecting tube can flow whatever is inside of our heart.

Of course, if we want to use heaven's way of “working” we will need to make sure that our ball is pressurized daily with a strong, open tube directly to the heart of God through which we are filled with God's passionate love for us. Then as we work with God to establish more and more connections to other balls starving for love, the love that fills our own hearts can be pumped through these tubes and will inspire and bring hope and life into other lives and hearts.

Now think about the fact that some spheres may have hundreds or thousands of tubes that they have attached to other spheres. But then there are many balls that have hardly any tubes connected anywhere. After sin has been annihilated and eternity begins in earnest, all of these connections formed on earth are going to still be intact. It is then that it will become much more clear what our real purpose was supposed to be as Christians while living in this sinful world. Because those who worked with God the most to initiate as many attachments as possible in this life are going to have the most joy-bonded attachments in the life to come. And it only makes sense that the more openings you have to your heart through joy-bonded connections with others the more joy you are going to be capable of experiencing through all of eternity.

This is precisely why there are differences in the amount of rewards that will be seen in heaven –because heaven's reward system is based totally on relationships and those relationships are primarily formed or initiated while still here on earth. So the choices we make now in how much we are willing to cooperate with God's work of saving souls determines proportionately how much in the way of wages we will have capacity to enjoy throughout all of eternity. For those wages will all flow into our hearts through the number of bonds that we chose to form with other hearts while we lived during this time of probation and those wages can best be defined as joy itself.

This understanding gives a whole new context and perspective to the idea of witnessing. Witnessing then becomes not an obligation or duty that must be performed to keep God from being upset with us but becomes an incredible wage-earning opportunity by cultivating as many heart connections with others as we possibly can so that the wages of joy will fill our lives for eternity. The more we value and appreciate the wages of joy, both now and in heaven, the more motivated we will become to work for souls the way God designed us to do instead of our largely fruitless methods we use now.

Father, train me to cooperate with You in using my heart to form connections with other hearts so that Your love can attract them to connect directly with You. Take away my fear of making those kinds of connections. Heal my heart with Your love and then make me a source of healing love for others – for Your name's sake.