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.