If you want to value something more, try having it taken away.  For instance, if your health is not worth anything to you now, it will be worth everything on your way to the hospital surrounded by EMT’s in the ambulance.

If you don’t think you rely on money or credit cards now, try going on a trip and having your wallet stolen.  What will money and credit cards be worth to you then?

 

Yes, you love your spouse now, but you will realize that love more when you are threatened or forced to part.

 

You don’t think anything of shoes.  You have 27 pair in the closet now.  But just suppose things changed suddenly and you were forced to go barefoot.  How much would you value shoes then as you stand barefoot in the cold or walk miles on stones?

 

Food may not be a big part of your life.  Like most Americans, you are probably a little overweight.  But what if you were locked up and forced to eat limited rations for weeks on end?  What would a real meal be worth to you then?

 

When your kids are all in the house, you are a happy family, even with those moments of frustration with all of the noise.  But what if something out of your control happened and they were taken away?  The ceaseless quiet would be deafening.

 

Most people don’t think much about their cell phones these days.  They use them all the time – that is until they drop them and they break.  How quickly they will drop everything else to get their cell phones replaced.

 

Isn’t it amazing how the things that we value in life, whether trivial things that can be bought and sold or priceless relationships, are worth so much more when they are taken away?

 

Now think about your relationship with Jesus Christ.  Granted, Jesus is different.  You can never lose your relationship with Him.  But notice, if you dare, when everything else is taken away, your love for Jesus will be so much more.

 

“Therefore we do not lose heart.  Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.  For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.  For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”  2 Corinthians 4:16-18