I got a chance to go to a couple of basketball games this week, part of the NCAA tournament and even though it wasn't a wise decision to spend the money on tickets my youngest son was on spring break and wanted to go watch Tennessee play so I did a financially foolish thing in order to spend time with him doing something we both enjoy. At least I am convincing myself that it was all about the relationship without any trace of selfishness. I know though that there were definitely mixed motives in my decision making, I can't take self out of the equation.
That is part of the problem with wisdom and the whole tree of knowledge of good and evil, our motives are constantly questionable, rarely altruistic. We have a couple of choices then, to abandon all hope of doing anything truly good or to realize that God's love for us and desire for us are what drove Him to die on a cross. Desire and gain aren't necessarily bad motives, but we have to sort out good desire from bad and redefine gain.
Jesus told his followers and would-be followers to count the cost, understand the risks, and then go all in. Paul was an amazing man in that way. In Acts 9 we are told that God said He was going to show Paul all that he would suffer for the sake of the Name of Jesus and then Paul took the job. Read 2 Corinthians 11 and you will see that what he suffered was more than most of us could even begin to imagine. We have a very different Christianity in the 21st century in many American churches, one without suffering as part of the equation. Too bad for Paul he didn't know he could rebuke suffering and that suffering is from the debbil (see the movie The Waterboy). He seemed to think that at least some of his suffering was from God to purify Him and change his desires. That kind of wisdom is in short supply these days.
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