Bad Investments

Read II Peter 3:1-18

“Since everything will be destroyed in this way,
what kind of people ought you to be?”
(II Peter 3:11)

Thoughts… There are a lot of us believers who live like Planet Earth is our forever home. We set our priorities, plan our activities, and spend our money like this is all there is. We’re investing pretty much all we’ve got in this world.

As I write this blog, it is the first day of my tenth trip to the poverty stricken Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia. The church is thriving here in this region where a mere three years ago there was no church to speak of. Now, 50,000+ believers gather each week for worship in over 1350 churches that my organization has helped to establish.

And the individual believers in this region are thriving as well! By watching their lives, you quickly come to realize that they who have so little have so much more joy that we who have so much, yet have so little joy. By comparison, they are the far richer people

Why? Because they have put their hope in the Lord. They are looking forward to a city whose architect and builder is God. They have very little by the world’s standards, and what they have, they hold loosely. They have invested everything—sometimes they even have given their lives as an investment—in the eternal kingdom of our God. They have made good investments that will produce ever-increasing returns throughout all eternity.

We need to take stock in the kinds of investments we are making. Ask somebody who knows you well what they have observed your priorities to be. What does the way you spend money or plan your calendar or live your life in general tell them about you?

If your life is like mine, you would probably have to conclude that we are making far to big of an investment in a world that is soon going to come to a fiery end. And truthfully, that’s a very bad investment.

Peter asks the question that, given the fact that all this will melt away, what kind of people then should we be? How then should we live? Then he gives the answer:

• We should make every effort to live holy and blameless lives (verses 11b & 14).

• We ought to be anticipating God’s promises rather than promoting the things of this earth (verse 13)

• We ought to be focusing on Christ’s return more than the remainder of our days on earth (verses 12 & 13)

• We ought to be at peace with God and keep pure in our faith (verses 14-17).

• We ought to be giving every effort to our spiritual growth (verse 18)

To live any other way shows that we are still investing in the ephemeral stuff of earth rather than the invaluable stuff of heaven.

Take a look around. Whatever you see is going to vanish soon. Only what is done by faith will carry over to and count toward the next life.

Today is a great day to begin a new trend of much better investments.

Prayer… Lord, my hope is in you and not in the things of this earth. I will hold them loosely, but cling tightly to you. Enable me to live the kind of live today that will show on that final day that I have been rich toward the things of God.

One More Thing… “The one and only characteristic of the Holy Spirit in a person is a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ and freedom from everything that is unlike Him.” —Oswald Chambers