in life. In life, if you see something that you really want really bad, there are two basic ways to get it.

Way number one is how we get most things.

And this is do something.

Get a job, make an argument to get something from somebody else, do something nefarious,

rob somebody, take their stuff, write a fake check, fraud.

There's a lot of ways, both honorable and not honorable, both shrewd and unshrewed,

both efficient and inefficient, to get something in the world that you want that involves

doing something. But the other way that you can get something that you want or might get

something that you didn't even know you wanted is just to have somebody give it to you for

no apparent reason or maybe an apparent reason. But either way, in this scenario, you didn't do anything.

Somebody just gave you something.

Both of us have experienced both of these things.

I would say the ratio is probably massively in life in favor of the former over the latter.

And most of the time when we get stuff, it's because we did something.

But we can envision not doing anything and getting a thing as a result of the

generosity of somebody else, absolutely no strings attached. Well, likewise in the New Testament,

there is this prize, this treasure, this pearl of great price, this incredibly valuable

thing that is out there that is constantly being discussed and pursued by characters in the New Testament.

And that thing is right standing with God, a right relationship with the maker of all things.

And what do you know? If people see a thing that they really want. How are they

going to come at that? Like, they come at everything else in the world. They're going to think to

themselves, well, how do I get everything else? Well, I do things. That's the most reliable way to get

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