Sometimes, the answer to how we are feeling is really a very simple one: what does it matter on the last day?

When you feel the weight of people misunderstanding you and your actions. When you feel that you have let others down. When you feel a failure. When people make judgements about you and they are all wrong. When you feel weighed down by your lack of success and ability. Stood before the Lord, on the last day, what does any of it matter?

I know it seems trite and simplistic, but there is sometimes great freedom living simply. People will misunderstand us, people will make wrong judgements about us, some people may even set out to harm and damage us. But when we’re stood before the Lord, why will any of those things matter?

I wonder how our lives and our churches would be transformed if we cared that much more about what the Lord thought about us and we simply lived our lives with his judgement of us at the forefront. Certainly that is far easier to say than it is to actually do or feel. But what if we really lived with the question at the forefront of our minds: what will this matter on the last day?

There will be some things that really do matter. How we treat others, particularly the church, will matter a great deal before the Lord. The church is the apple of his eye, his beloved bride. How we cared for the flock he has given us to care for will matter a great deal. Whether we served because we were driven on by his glory or we were really serving for our own glory, that matters to the Lord who will judge all things. Living with the last day on our minds wouldn’t be a license for us to stuff everyone and their feelings and do whatever we like, no matter how obnoxious. That would be something that would clearly matter before the Lord on the last day too.

But the judgements of others would really not bother us. The successes of others would please us greatly if it meant the gospel was being advanced. Comparison would be irrelevant. The praise and glory of other people wouldn’t really be an issue to us. Whether we were fully understood or not, whether we were fully loved or not, whether people held us in high regard or not, all of it would be ultimately meaningless. Only the Lord’s opinion of us would matter, the one who judges the thoughts and intentions of the hear.

It is the Lord who determines whether we are welcomed into eternal life or cast out into outer darkness. He is the one who decides whether we have an eternal reward and what that will be or whether we have squandered what we could of had on the altar of the praise and glory of men, who also probably inwardly rolled their eyes at us because they knew exactly what we were after. When Jesus says, ‘they have had their reward’, that is it – people outwardly praising you whilst inwardly being annoyed by our crawly attempts to get their praise and adulation. People who find us objectionable and don’t really like us because of our snidey judgements that we think makes us look better in comparison to them. That is the reward and it really isn’t worth having!

But there is a real reward for God’s people, and it is exponentially better the more we concern ourselves with his judgements and his glory. All the rest melts away when we have that in the forefront of our minds. The views and opinions of others, if they are not God’s views and opinions, are really meaningless in the end. After all, what do they matter on the last day?