There's no such thing as a self-centred selfish life, that's a happy life. It's an illusion. We are designed - have you noticed when you did something really kind to bless someone, how good you felt? The joy that comes out of it - where did it come from? It come out of being aligned with Heaven and doing what God called you to do. Ephesians 2:10, He has created us for good works. You're created not to just sit in meetings and pray and do stuff like that. You're created to be busy with your life and be very productive with your life. Everyone is designed for that, to be productive in some kind of way, designed for good works.
So number one, one reason we need to be doing things that bring benefit and blessing to others, number one is the way God's designed us, part of His purpose. Number two is because something is at stake, and that's always a good stick isn't it, aye? That's always a good thing. There's something is at stake. Eternal rewards are at stake. I want you to look at two verses. The first one's found in Revelations 22, Verse 12. This is what it says. It says behold, I come quickly and my reward is with me to give everyone according to His work. How much clearer could you get? It's talking about the second coming of the Lord and it says when He comes He has in mind rewarding or acknowledging what His people have done to make the world a better place.
So teachings that cause you to trust your future, that somehow God's going to whisk you out of it, actually bring you into a place of deception and passivity and stop you becoming engaged in what God wants us to be engaged in. There's many verses. I'll give you one more, Matthew 16:27. For the Son of man will come and the glory of His Father and with His angels and He will reward each one according to their works. Nothing could be clearer. Your life now counts, day by day, minute by minute, what you do does make a difference. What you do counts. The word reward, most times Jesus uses it, the word is the word misthos, meaning pay. That's not a bad word is it? Meaning a pay or an acknowledgement of the services someone has given, so at the end of the week you turn up at the office and you've worked for a whole week. You know that you will receive a reward, you'll receive pay.
So the word that's translated reward really means something that you are entitled or out of God's benefit He wants to give to you because of what you have done. It's totally connected to what you've done, not your good intentions. What did you do? Okay, we getting the idea? So number two reason is because eternal rewards are at stake. God wants - remember, you are on your apprenticeship now and so God is wanting to reward or acknowledge your success in your apprenticeship by appropriate reward in the millennium and for eternity. So if you're pretty poor in your apprenticeship you can't be expecting you'll be promoted too much. Makes sense doesn't it?
So the third reason is that there's accountability, that the kingdom of Heaven is not a democracy. It's a kingdom with a king and we're accountable to a king, so we're accountable. Accountability's a part of life and notice this in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 3 and it says Verse 11; no other foundation can anyone lay which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. If anyone builds on the foundation - so to build on a foundation means you're starting to do something, so you have become saved by faith. It's been given to you, salvation's given to you. Now the question is what are you doing with your life? What are you doing to build your life?
Now coming to meetings is a help but it won't complete the task of building your life. To build your life requires your own personal engagement with God, time in the word of God and intentionally giving yourself to learn and to grow. All of us are needing to learn and grow. I'm still having to learn and grow. It's called a life journey. It's called being a disciple or a follower of Christ. It's a life of learning and being taught by Him and growing, but you can intentionally apply yourself to it, and to intentionally apply yourself means we've now become a disciple of Jesus. We're letting Jesus help us in our journey grow and become more mature and that will involve prayer; it'll involve the word of God, it will involve service of some kind because you can't grow in isolation, and you can't grow without putting your hand to something.