Be Happy for Others

When those closest to us are successful we celebrate with them. Our love for them is poured out in banquets and honors. We tell our neighbors about the honor and success that our friends and family experience. We live through their success. We are happy for their joy.

When those we do not know are successful, we question whether they deserve their success. We don’t even know them, or maybe we think we know them. We just can’t seem to be happy for others. Maybe it is because we think we deserve the success others have found.

Brethren, having the same spirit of faith as he had who wrote, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we too believe, and so we speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

2^nd Corinthians4.13-18

Saint Paul says, “So that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving.” When we experience the worldly honor of more and more people, we can get jealous. We feel left behind and forgotten. We are never left behind by God’s grace.

Saint Paul isn’t talking about worldly honor. He is talking about Godly honor. Saint Paul wants us to understand that it is for our sake that others experience the grace of God. Instead of being jealous, we should be happy.

Instead of thinking we have been forgotten by God, we should be happy that He has remembered others. Let me say it another way. If God’s grace extends to ‘all those’ others, why wouldn’t it extend to us. Seeing the grace for others should remind us that we’re there too.

When we see God’s grace for others with joy rather than jealousy, we experience His grace as heaven. If we experience the honor God grants to others with joy, then the honor He grants to us is comfort. The goal isn’t to be alone with God in heaven.

Imagine looking around heaven and saying, “WOW! Isn’t God awesome? Even those people are here!” Wouldn’t that be better than, “OH MAN! I can’t believe they got in too. Why did I bother with all that good stuff if they got in without being so good?”

Life on earth is practice for heaven. Start by being happy when others are honored now, and we will be much happier when we see others being honored later in heaven.