Bruce Wilkinson: Heaven's Sweet Rewards

GORDON ROBERTSON: Bruce, thanks for joining us so much today. I understand your new book has already hit the number one on the New York Times Best Seller list in just the first week of being out. How do you explain that kind of success?

BRUCE WILKINSON: It is hard to explain, but people are wanting to move ahead in their spiritual lives, and there are so many millions of people who have been touched by Jabez and Secrets and I sense they are wanting more. It caught us by surprise that in the first week it could hit number one, but it just demonstrates the size of the audience who wants to move on.

GORDON ROBERTSON: How did you first get into the teachings of Jesus?

BRUCE WILKINSON: It was by accident. I was teaching a series on how to teach so that people could learn, and the last law I was going to teach was the law of reward. When you teach, you need to give the students incentives by grades or by other factors. I went to the Bible to find that topic in Scripture. I was shocked that after college and graduate school I had no idea that Jesus Christ had talked so much about rewards. That began a thread that is almost 20 years now. I have studied this topic, Gordon, more than any other topic in my whole life.

GORDON ROBERTSON: What is the secret? What is the life that God rewards?

BRUCE WILKINSON: The shocking part about it is, if you grew up in an evangelical church or home, you heard about your faith and what you believed about Jesus Christ and His death on the cross for your sins giving you entrance into salvation. What you didn't hear much about and still don't is that your life on earth after salvation has a great deal to impact your life when you get to heaven. Most of us just think, 'Once I am 'in', it makes no difference.' We separate life here from the life on the other side. It is an absolute shocker, a shocker to people when I start going through these passages of Christ, one after the other. He said that if you act this way on earth as a prelude, as a preface, as a preparation, it will greatly determine what happens to you once you are in heaven.

GORDON ROBERTSON: What are the specifics that Christians need to be doing to determine the rewards?

BRUCE WILKINSON: Christ was at this banquet, and the people were jockeying for the better seats. He said,' Wait a minute. Go sit at the back, and let them move you forward.' Then He turned to the host and He said, 'When you give a feast, don't invite the rich and the neighbors, unless they come and repay you. Instead invite the poor, the maim, the blind, and the lame, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you.' We think about that as a kind of warm contentment and peace and fulfillment that we get from giving to somebody, but that is not the end of the sentence. Jesus goes on and says, 'for you will be repaid at the Resurrection of the Just. Christ said, 'If you take care of the poor and needy for Me, I will repay you after death.' That is a shocker. The resurrection of the just means you are dead. Christ is linking together what you do for Me here will determine what I do for you on the other side.

GORDON ROBERTSON: Jesus talks about fruit that endures, fruit that remains. How do you determine how your fruit and your works will endure and remain forever?

BRUCE WILKINSON: It is amazing that Christ wants to reward us. Heaven is enough, don't you think, as far as what is enough on the basis of His love for us? But he says, 'I also want to reward you if you decide to give your life and devote it in whatever proportion you choose to do what I want you to do. Do you do things for me that matter to me, and is your motive to give Me glory and give Me credit because you are My hands and feet? If you do, I will reward you on the other side because you were faithful to me. You dropped your dreams and set them aside, because all of us have those initial dreams, and Christ is a different one. As Paul said, you have to carve away what He wants you to do so that you can finally achieve it. That's the thing that God rewards.

GORDON ROBERTSON: Your book talks about God's moving plan.

BRUCE WILKINSON: One of the things that surprises people is that most people think that Jesus is against money, that He wants you to give it away. That's what I believed all of my life. I had a negative feeling about money until I studied it much more deeply. I found out Jesus Christ wants you to keep your money, not give it away so that you don't have it. He says, 'Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroys. Instead of that, I command you to lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where that can't take place. Christ is not saying you can't have it. He is saying put it where you can't lose it.

Most people think that heaven is a choir and all you will do is sing. I spoke this morning nearby in Washington. One of the prominent men came up and said to me, 'I never looked forward to heaven because all I am going to do is sing in a choir forever and ever. That is kind of boring.' I said, 'Wait a minute. When God made a creation for Adam and Eve, He didn't put them in a choir. He put them in the world and He said, "I want you to rule it.'

There is an economy in heaven. There are cities in heaven and there are people who lead and people who don't lead, people who are rewarded and people who are not rewarded. The shocking part is that Jesus says there is an economy here. 'I want you to realize that you must take your money that I entrusted to you and give it for causes that make a difference for Me, and on the other side, I will give it back to you a hundred-fold.' That's when you are going to be happy when you have passed on your funds. But most people think that the treasure just isn't real. But Christ uses the same words in both of those passages about moth and rust, and he's basically commanding you to prepare for your future. The way you do that is to pass it on to causes -- your church and other things -- that make a real difference.

GORDON ROBERTSON: You are getting ready to pass your whole life on to a cause. You are moving to Africa. Why are you doing this?

BRUCE WILKINSON: Gordon, if you said to me in April, 'How would you like to move to Africa?' I would say, 'I am not supposed to move to Africa. I am moving to California to get involved in the media.' In May, just a couple of months ago, we went down and spent a week in South Africa and trained about 100,000 people. Then we went to Nigeria and trained 10,000 leaders and met with the president of Nigeria. Then we went to Ghana for 3,500 leaders.

During those three weeks, I had heard about hunger, I had seen the statistics, I had heard about AIDS, but what happened is God brought me not face-on, He flat out opened my heart without asking me and put the pain in it so deep, and said, 'Come help down here.' Then some of the Christian leaders got together and said, 'We want to ask you to please move here to help us.' It sounded like Acts 16, where you are heading in one direction and then God forbids you and you wonder what is anything on. Then you go to Africa never expecting for this to take place. But it was so clear, Gordon, that I had no choice but to obey. You can't say, 'Lord, please let me do more for You,' and He says, 'How about Africa?' and you say, 'I didn't really mean Africa.'

So we moved to South Africa six weeks ago and bought a house. We are really throwing our lives into trying to help the people and to move churches, Gordon, from our country to send a suburban white church and an urban black church to team together and to go overseas to some place in Africa and pull together a white church and a black church and together as the Body of Christ, let's make sure nobody dies any more of hunger. Let's take care of the millions of orphans.

GORDON ROBERTSON: Bruce, I am sure that move is going to get you some rewards in heaven, but it is also going to get you some rewards in the here and now as you see lives change. Thank you. I look forward to having you back on the show with stories from Africa about how God is moving.

BRUCE WILKINSON: Thank you, Gordon.