So now what? If I’ve already made it, where do I go from here? What’s left to do if it’s all just been given and I don’t have to work for it anymore?

I think it comes down to the heart and motives.

In a kingdom, the son or daughter of a king grows up as a prince or princess. It’s their birthright, and with that birthright comes wealth, power, influence, and lot of responsibility. None of this comes as payment for the work they’ve done. They simply inherit it.

I think the famous phrase from Spiderman can be adapted to fit here as well: “With great inheritance comes great responsibility.”

Sure, now that you’ve made it, you could choose to misuse and abuse your inheritance. History is rife with evil royalty. Those in power who use their power to make their own lives better at the expense of everyone else. To inherit a kingdom with an evil nature is a dangerous business indeed! I’ve heard it said that if you take a pauper and put him in a castle, he’ll turn the palace into a prison. If you take a prince and put him in a prison, he’ll turn the prison into a palace.

So what about if your heart is good and noble? You could also do great good! I believe we all have this longing for our leaders/royalty/authorities to be good. To be the first into the battle. To empower their people. To take the pay cut when times get desperate. To think about how they can serve, and not about how they can be served. In the last post I mentioned Jesus saying that “it is more blessed to give than to receive”. This is what we want from those who have a great inheritance. This is the responsibility of those with a good heart who’ve already “made it”.

If we’re bored and lazy now that we’ve made it, we’re missing something. It’s all a bit new to me and I’m in the process of learning. Coming out of the “striving hard to make it” mentality, I can easily swing the pendulum to the lazier side. C.S. Lewis describes this well in the book The Horse and His Boy: “…but one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you anymore, you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.”

There has to be new type of motivation for any of this to work. God has got to be a reality for any of this to work. Love has got to be a reality for any of this to work. The Gospel and actual transformation and a new heart has got to be a reality for any of this to work. We have to believe it for any of this to work.