“Consequences: Good vs. Bad” Devotional #37

            Every decision we make, whether big or small, has a consequence attached to it.  The consequences can either be good or bad.  Whether we accept the consequence as good or bad depends, sometimes, on our perceptions.  Let me give you an example.  I had a friend in high school that was accustomed to everything going her way.  We were Junior’s (in 11^th grade) and she got her driver’s license shortly before me.  I remember that her father offered to buy her a car but what he offered was a used car.  What she wanted was a brand new car.  He offered to use the money set aside for a used car towards a new car instead but she’d have take over the car note.  In the end she did not choose to receive the free car her father had originally offered.  She chose a new car with the car note too. 

The consequence of her decision was that she had to work part time after school so that she can make the payments.  She was constantly stressed out about the payments.  I could not understand why she chose to go through the stress of paying for a car when a free one with no stress involved had been offered to her.  What I could not understand even more was that even though she was always tired and stressed she did not care because she got what she wanted in the end.  The truth was that the consequence was bad (constantly stressed about responsibility of working while attending school) but, my friend only saw it as good because her perception was that she got the car she wanted.

There’s an example Jesus gave in Luke 15: 11-32, the “Parable of the Lost Son.”  In this parable a man has two sons.  One of the sons asks the father for his inheritance.  After he received it he left home.  He had all the “fun” the world could offer him that is until he spent the last he had left of the inheritance.  Since he no longer had money he lost his so-called friends too.  Soon after he hired himself out and was feeding pigs and because he was so hungry he desired the slop he was feeding them but he wasn’t allowed to eat it or given any food.  When he realized just how wrong he was he decided to go back home and ask his father for forgiveness.  Luke 15:17-18, “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!  I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.” (NIV)  His father forgave him and accepted him not as a servant but as his son.

When the money was there and all of the “fun” of this world were at his fingertips he believed he had it all.  He believed that the consequences of his actions, asking for his inheritance from his living father and then wasting it all away, were good.  Though the consequences were bad, he abandoned his family, moved away and lived a wasteful life, his perception saw it as good that is until he found himself in need.  Aren’t we this way sometimes too my dear friend?  When we desire something so badly, that we’ll do anything for it whether good or bad, we justify our actions to fit our desire.  But then, when we are suffering through the bad consequences we realize just how wrong we were like the Lost Son.

Good consequences come with good decisions based not on our desires, needs or intelligence but instead based on what the Lord leads us to do.  Ephesians 5:1-2, “Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.” (MSG) 

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*If you would like to read this same devotional in Spanish or know of someone that would please visit my Spanish blog at www.ministerioreflejandolaverdad.blogspot.com