Every sacrifice we make in following Christ will always result in our long-term good—but it’s more than that. It will also most often result in our short-term happiness. Listen carefully to the words of Jesus to His disciples:

Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. Mark 10:29-30, emphasis added

Those who have been cast out of their biological families for following Christ now have God’s family to welcome them. Even if they don’t own their own houses, they have hundreds of houses to stay in, where they’ll be warmly welcomed. Jesus promises not only eternal happiness but a hundred times more happiness here and now. (Prosperity preachers who speak of the “hundredfold blessing” conveniently ignore Christ’s balancing words: “with persecutions.”)

This means that for God’s children, even when we make the greatest sacrifices, there is no pointless suffering. Of course, much may appear pointless since we are finite and fallen, incapable of understanding the purposes of God in his infinite wisdom. But God is never pointless nor off point. That’s why Job could cry out in his agony, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15, KJV).

C. S. Lewis wrote, “While what we call ‘our own life’ remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interests but make ‘our own life’ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible source of false happiness?”

What does my suffering do for me, then, whether it is suffering for Christ or the ordinary suffering of life in a sin-stained world? It makes me see how implausible it is that I can find true happiness outside of God. That’s just one of the ways my suffering is purposeful. When what I once leaned on for happiness—even if it is acceptance from my family and friends—crumbles into dust, the way is cleared for me to see that God still stands and is the one solid foundation on which to build my life and happiness.

One day God’s children will look back on this life with complete clarity. When we do, I believe we’ll see that our only true sacrifices were when we chose sin instead of Jesus.

In 1857, pioneer missionary to Africa David Livingstone addressed students at Cambridge University. Keep in mind that Livingstone was not attempting to sound spiritual—he was simply being honest about his experience of happily following Jesus:

I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. . . . Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter?—Away with . . . such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in, and for, us. I never made a sacrifice. (emphasis added)

When we meet Jesus face to face, behold His nail-scarred hands reaching out to us, and see the look in His eyes when He says, “Enter into your Master’s happiness,” I believe we will gain a new perspective on this life. Quite simply, we’ll see that when it came to following Jesus, the benefits always far outweighed the costs . . . each and every time.