I recently pointed to insights from Dan Chambliss about the relationship between excellence and loving the hard work associated with improving one’s craft or discipline—that those who become excellent don’t view the necessary work as a sacrifice. They don’t think in those terms because they love the work, the mission, and what they get to do.
Christ-followers understand an even deeper reality of this principle. As Christians, we have a better reward than excellence in our craft—a greater glory than winning at work or on the field. We get Jesus. And He has promised to share His eternal glory with us—life with Him forever where everything is right, new, and perfect. For Christians, the sacrifices of this life are not worth comparing to the glory that will one day be revealed to us.
David Livingstone was a missionary, doctor, and abolitionist—the first one to bring the gospel to Malawi in South Africa. He also experienced significant trials and struggles because of his commitment to take the gospel to others and fulfill what God called him to do. But Livingstone said all his sufferings were not a sacrifice compared to what he would one day experience (and is now experiencing). In a message to students at Cambridge, he shared:
For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa… Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.
The only way we could say “I never made a sacrifice” is if our hearts are overwhelmed with God’s grace towards us and confident in what is in front of us.
