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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Growth Hope

Unknown Path

It’s tempting  to look back on the lives of people in the Bible and think that somehow their walk with God was  “easier” than ours. We say things like, “Well God spoke to them directly.” or “Jesus was right there with them” and think that their lives of faith didn’t require quite as much belief as ours do. Of course, this is only because we know the end of the story and somehow when you can see the end from the beginning it is easier to trust in God. Of course, this is a vantage point that the point who were living these stories didn’t share.

Take Abraham for instance. Known as the father of the nation of Israel, we may marvel at God’s work in allowing him to have a child in an old age, but we rarely fully consider what it must have been like for a couple who had been infertile all their lives, to welcome a child into this world well past their retirement age. Nor do we fully think upon what it must have been like for them to set out on their journey to the Promised Land. Calling it the “Promised Land” surely sounds inviting, but Hebrews 11:8b tells us that Abraham began his journey “not knowing where he was going.” Can you imagine that? The bags are packed, the herds are fed and your neighbors ask you – “So where are you heading?” “I don’t know,” you reply, “but God will tell me when I get there.”  That requires great faith. That requires confidence in God.

The same is true for the journey that God has us on. Often, we don’t know where the road that He is taking us on will lead. We may feel like we are going in circles. We want to know the final destination and God is asking us to take the first step, and then the next one, trusting that He longs to give good things to His children and that while there may be tough times along the path, we will see His goodness in the land of the living. Where He is leading us is not only for our good, but, more importantly, it is for His glory. We can trust Him not only because He knows the final destination, but because He designed the path and He’s walking the road with His children.

It’s hard to face the unknown. Yet as Corrie Ten Boom reminds us we should “never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” Even when we don’t know where we are going, may we faithfully walk with the One who is leading the way.

 

To you, what does it mean to faithfully walk with God even when we don’t know where He’s leading?

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