Be Wise: Pay Up Front!
“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, ‘I have no pleasure in them…’” (Ecclesiastes 12:1, KJV)
“Seek ye the LORD while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our GOD, for He will abundantly pardon.” (Isaiah 55:6 &7, KJV)
Everybody loves to pay using credit. There’s a, “Get it now, pay whenever!” mentality running rampant throughout society. As a result, trillions of dollars of debt will be the legacy we leave our children. This ‘get now, pay later’ attitude is discouraged in the WORD of GOD because of the bitter outcomes it produces in every area of life. As the verses above indicate, the Bible advocates a sense of urgency regarding remembering and seeking GOD first. If you continued reading the verses in Ecclesiastes you would see that Solomon describes for his son different unpleasant aspects of aging that could hinder serving GOD (i.e. loss of interest in the pursuit of pleasure, poor eyesight, feeble knees, hunched posture, lost teeth, poor hearing, and fear of falling from high places). The prophet Isaiah uses language that implies to the reader that there is an opportune time during which to gain access to GOD that might not exist at another time. Getting to know the LORD should take first place and be central in the life of a believer; the earlier the better. Why? Because all too soon, “stuff” happens and choices are made, and when GOD isn’t consulted the likelihood of bitter outcomes exponentially increase.
“Oh relax! Why do today what you could put off until tomorrow?” Yeah, particularly the inner spiritual work of sin renunciation, character development, and renewal of the mind…“So boring!” If that’s your viewpoint I’m sorry to say you’re not a wise person. Wise people understand that to benefit their life they must do the ‘boring’ work of spiritual development up front.
You say you’d like to marry one day; what if you refuse to renounce and be freed from your pornographic habit? Real women don’t look the way they do on porn sites. You say you’d like to have a ministry one day; but you don’t invest time in prayer or studying GOD’S WORD. You say you’d like to be financially stable; but you have two maxed out credit cards and you’re trying to get another one. You have an expectation that good things will just happen for you and that they will last without any effort from you. This faulty belief system is one of the ‘childish things’ Apostle Paul encouraged the Corinthian saints to get rid of in their quest for spiritual maturity (1 Corinthians 13:11).
Foundations, struts, girders, rivets, and crossbeams are all ‘boring’ parts of a building. They’re not visible and they aren’t exciting to think about or to use, but without them the building won’t hold together. Many in church (from the pulpit to the door) find themselves in dire situations because they repeatedly avoid the ‘boring’ work of inner cleansing and inner healing that builds a strong, resilient Christian life. They refuse to be transparent, truthful, or to travail in prayer until new life in CHRIST is birthed in them. Instead they settle for a mask until one day Satan removes it revealing the ugliness underneath. Because of their refusal to pay up front, bitter circumstances were the result.
In Luke 14:28-30 is a couple of questions that the LORD JESUS posed to the multitude He was teaching. He asked how many of them would begin to build a tower without first finding out if they could afford building costs. He asked them what they thought about a king who would dare to fight another king that had a bigger army than he did and refused to broker a peace deal. The LORD wanted the people to see the foolishness of NOT counting the cost of an endeavor before starting it; in other words the importance of preparing to pay up front.
If you want to break the cycle of bitter outcomes in your life, be wise. Do your research, count the cost of what you desire to achieve, and be ready to pay up front by doing all of the ‘boring’ work that laying a righteous foundation requires!
DECLARE: “LORD JESUS I receive Your wisdom regarding paying the cost up front for a righteous foundation in all my endeavors. I renounce spirits of laziness and procrastination. I receive instead a spirit of excellent diligence in the things of the SPIRIT (i.e. prayer, fasting, studying of Your WORD and other required materials, applying what I read, accountability to leadership and other saints, submitting to authority, and maintaining a good name among non-believers). I decree that by doing these things I will make my calling and election sure, and make my life prosperous. Amen.”