Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. ( Hebrews 10:35 35 Cast not away therefore your boldness, which hath great recompense of reward. )

We need to ponder the superiority of God as our great reward over all that the world has to offer. If we don’t, we will love the world like everyone else and live like everyone else.

So take the things that drive the world, and ponder how much better and more abiding God is. Take money or sex or power and think about them in relation to death. Death will take away every one of them. If that is what you live for, you won’t get much, and what you get, you lose.

But God’s treasure is vastly superior, and it lasts. It goes beyond death. It’s better than money because God owns all the money and he is our Father. We are his heirs. “All [things] are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” ( 1 Corinthians 3:22 22 whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; –23).

It’s better than sex. Jesus never had sexual relations, and he was the most full and complete human that ever will exist. Sex is a shadow — an image — of a greater reality, of a relationship and a pleasure that will make the most exquisite sex seem like a yawn.

The reward of God is better than power. There is no greater human power than to be a child of the almighty God. “Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” ( 1 Corinthians 6:3 3 Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more, things that pertain to this life? ). “The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne” ( Revelation 3:21 21 He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father in his throne. ).

And so it goes on and on. Everything the world has to offer, God is better and more abiding.

There is no comparison. God wins — every time. The question is: Will we have him? Will we wake up from the trance of this stupefying world and see and believe and rejoice in and love what is truly real, and infinitely valuable, and everlasting?