Hope

Faith of the Future

We live in a culture where we spend a lot of time thinking about “now.” We live in an age where immediacy is king. We want things to happen instantly and even our plans for the future are usually limited to what’s happening in the next few days, perhaps the next few weeks, and maybe, just maybe the next few years. We rarely consider the impact today will have on what the course of things in a hundred years.

Yet Scripture is replete with pointing us future-ward. Just like the Israelites were looking forward to when their Messiah would come, Christians are pointed to a future gaze when that same Messiah will come again. We’re to live in anticipation of His return, yet, nowadays this is rarely a subject of conversation, let alone a defining factor in our thought process and our plans. When we discuss the future, we’re usually considering things that we want to do; rarely are we considering what God has promised He will do.

Joseph is a good example of someone who lived with a faith in the future that God had promised. When he died in Egypt, he made plans for his bones to be taken when the exodus to the Promised Land occurred (See Hebrews 11:22). The Israelites wouldn’t receive their inheritance for hundreds of years after Joseph’s death, yet he was looking to the future that God had promised and was orienting his life (and his burial) accordingly. He wasn’t just anticipating what God would do in his lifetime, he was faithfully living for what God would do in the future as well.

Our mindset should be similar. We should live in anticipation of God fulfilling His promises – even if they don’t occur while we dwell on this Earth. And we should orient our life accordingly putting our faith not only in the God who provides today, but in the One who holds the future in His hands.

 

What do you think……What is a promise that God has made that you should live in anticipation of it being fulfilled? How will this change how you live today?

 

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Being Content

Predicating Factor

Human beings don’t have a hard time thinking about themselves.  Children often learn “mine” as one of their first words, and using that word frequently, whether verbally or just mentally, usually continues throughout adulthood. It must be why Scripture is replete with the command to “humble yourselves.” After all, if we are thinking of ourselves too highly, we aren’t thinking of God highly enough.

One of the things that we don’t often consider is how much thinking highly of ourselves, pride, is a predicating factor for worry. I Peter 5:6-7 helps makes this so clear. In verse 6 is the oft-repeated command to humble ourselves. The very next verse tells us outcome of doing so – we cast all our anxieties upon Him. The opposite is true then as well. When we don’t humble ourselves, when we are prideful, we keep our cares under our own control. Essentially, we worry.

This is a hard truth to swallow. After all, in today’s culture worry is considered the right and privilege of doting parents, concerned teachers, and a thousand of other roles that we think have the “right” to feel anxious about the future. However, God’s Word says that this is wrong. None of God’s children have been given the right to worry. Instead, we have all been given the privilege of reliance on Him.

Therefore, next time we are prone to worry, we must first recognize that the likely culprit is that we are thinking too highly of ourselves. We think that we are the ones in control, when the truth is that we are far from it. Instead, we need to cast our cares on the One who has the cosmos in His hands. To do so, we must start with humility.

 

Now it’s your turn….

How have you seen pride turn to worry? How can we practically humble ourselves so that we are relying on God and not our own abilities?

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