Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. Romans 8:18 NLT
In the 1960s, Stanford did a now famous study where they put kids into a room with a marshmallow or cookie and told them that they could eat the marshmallow or cookie now or wait 15 minutes and receive a larger reward later. The test was to study delayed gratification and its long term result on kids.
In the Bible we see the idea of delayed gratification as a theme…don’t sacrifice the future for a present impulse.
In leadership and life, this idea of delayed gratification and sowing now to reap later plays itself out virtually every day…
· Invest in a future leader now and they’ll be even more valuable later.
· Save a dollar each day and take a mini vacation at the end of the year.
· Hold your tongue so you don’t burn the bridge and can have a relationship later.
· Workout today so you can have the results later.
· Choose to cut back on the budget for one item so you can maximize another.
It’s these hard choices, these ‘sacrificing the present for a better future’ decisions, that often distinguish the prosperous from the struggling, the good leaders from the great ones, and the people God uses most from those that miss their call.
This week, this year, today, hold on to the marshmallow.
Keep being faithful even when it doesn’t seem fruitful.
Invest when it makes more sense to cash in.
Show grace when your first response is to get even.
It’s worth it. Trust me.
