Invested

 My daughters took up music recently. One gravitated toward the violin, the other toward the cello. Needless to say, sounds are coming out of our house that, were they loud enough to hear, would compel someone to call the police. They’re just starting, and while I’m praying for hearing loss, there are noise-canceling headsets that I can put on when it gets too rough.

The honor of hearing the melodious sound of wounded cats required an investment on my part because the music teacher was quick to tell me that the children needed instruments of their own at home to practice. Forty bucks a month later, we have a cello and a violin taking up space in the living room until such a time as I return them to the music store whole and unmolested.

My investment in the instruments was not predicated upon what they could presently do but on what I hope they practice and work toward being able to do at some time in the future. God invests in us not for who we are when we encounter Him but for who He knows we can become in Him. When we remain in the same sin, vice, mindset, and spiritual desert after we have encountered Christ, as before encountering Him, all we’ve done is squander the gift of grace that was offered us freely and without remuneration. God did not invest in me because I deserved it. He did not bestow grace and salvation upon me because I was entitled to it. He did so that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.

James 1:18, “Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.”

God brought us forth by the word of truth that we might be, not because we were. He covered the upfront cost of something we could never hope to purchase in the first place, not so we might remain as we were but that we might become what He desired us to be.

Telling people that God wants them to be rich, successful, attractive, and irresistible isn’t just unbiblical; it’s harmful, damaging, and destructive. The world can be all those things, but God wants you to be something the world can never be because you are His, and He made an investment in you. God wants you to be pure, holy, and righteous because these are all virtues the world cannot possess, nor can any man purchase them with silver or gold.

What would have been the point of Jesus dying on the cross if God’s expectation only extended to you being as the world, doing as the world, thinking as the world, and living as the world? Jesus could have been spared the pain, and you and I could have remained just as we were if God’s singular purpose was to give you stuff, make you influential, or bless you with Instagram followers.

Yes, I heard a modern-day self-titled prophetess claim that the Lord had blessed her with five thousand Instagram followers. If I had Instagram, I’d tell her that silly girls in Alabama selling pictures of their feet online have a million. If that’s the metric of blessing, or of being in the will of God, then might I submit that the prophetess in question fell short.

Any time someone insists that something is God’s will for your life, the first question you must ask is if you would be able to acquire said blessings on your own, given a bit of diligence and elbow grease. If the answer is yes, then they are lying because what God gives to His children cannot be obtained by any means other than being one of His children and from no other than His almighty hand.

God bought you with a price, and He bought you for a purpose. The purpose was to do His will and not follow after your own. The purpose was to surrender to Him and forfeit this life for the life eternal, not hopscotch between the light and the darkness as though it were some game.

Rather than insist that God doesn’t do what He promised He would do in His own Word, perhaps we should look in a mirror and assess whether or not we are where we need to be in order to receive what He promised He would give us. I understand it’s easier to shrug our shoulders and say God doesn’t do that anymore. It assuages any sort of personal responsibility on our part, but is it true and factual?

If everything God promised we would receive is available, yet by our duplicity, lukewarmness, and halfhearted commitment, we never attained them, at whose feet should we lay the blame? Is it God’s fault or our own?

But God should have made it clear! He did! He made it crystal clear in His Word. What about booming voices out of the sky, though? What about an angel appearing and telling me what I should do? If you’re not willing to obey the Bible and humbly follow after Christ, you would have found an excuse for not doing so even if a voice boomed from the heavens or an angel appeared in your kitchen.

You were brought forth by the word of truth not so you could be your own but so you could be His. Wholly, fully, and completely His. Not just for a season or a day, not only when the road gets tough and you need someone to lean on, but in perpetuity, for as long as you have breath.

It is a wondrous journey, and at the end, when you hear ‘well done,’ you’ll realize that your journey has barely begun.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.