The Result of Delayed Gratification

The account of Christ’s temptation in Matthew is the greatest example that can be told in trying to understand the discipline required to delay gratification for a greater purpose. Imagine being the creator of the entire universe, the very Son of God, and then imagine willingly coming to earth to live with the limitations of humanity but with the ongoing awareness that all that you see was originally yours.

Would it not have been a natural response to Satan’s temptation to accept his offer to rule what was yours to begin with? That would have allowed Jesus to dispense with several more years of living in an arid land, with having to put up with uneducated, dense disciples, from suffering the challenges of the religious hierarchy, from being physically killed in a tortuous manner at the hands of the Romans, and from suffering spiritual separation from His Father in Heaven.
Yielding at the moment Satan tempted Him would have been pleasurable and would have bestowed earthly power unmatched in all of history.

But Jesus saw beyond the moment. He knew the price that would be paid by all humanity should He give in to Satan’s offer. Worst of all, He knew He would be disobedient to His Father and would have thwarted God’s plan for reconciliation of humanity to Himself. Jesus’ ultimate purpose in coming to earth would have been defeated just by accepting His rightful place in a manner and at a time that was not the Father’s will.

Well, how am I to apply that to my life? I think it has daily application. God bestows upon all of us great opportunities and resources. But our choices in how and when to avail ourselves of those gifts is not preordained and mapped out in a manner that is readily visible to our limited human viewpoint. In a sense, He gives us much in the way of raw material without an obvious blueprint or master plan for how to use them. There is a reason. He desires that we seek Him in the use and enjoyment of all that He has given us.

Our temptation, a microcosm of the temptation that Jesus faced, is to take shortcuts. We are prone to use His gifts in a manner that leads to temporary pleasure but defeats the ultimate satisfaction of experiencing God’s pleasure. In our seeking Him and in our obedience is the ultimate satisfaction, not in the pleasure itself.

One cannot name a pleasure—productivity in work, food, visual beauty, sexual pleasure, the beauty of music, even service to God—that cannot be perverted if the pleasure begins to be god instead of God the Father. A saying that seems to apply here is: What God has given us for our delight was never meant to satisfy*. The corollary of that saying, the Law of Diminishing returns, states it in another way: The more you do anything, the less it satisfies*. (*from Everlasting Adventures: JH Ranch.com)

Only in submitting to the Father, only in submitting all of the resources He has provided to us to His control do we have hope of achieving satisfaction, of achieving a permanent and eternal victory over the temptation to make the creation into a god. Christ knew all of this before Satan approached Him in the wilderness. We would be best served by preparing ourselves with the same knowledge. Only then can we live in the peace and joy on earth that is a foretaste of Heaven. An apparent delay in gratification, one long enough to be assured of the Father’s pleasure in our activity, ultimately results in the greatest pleasure—the pure pleasure that comes through pleasing our Father.

Lord God, help us to see beyond the immediate to the eternal. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.