Hang On Brother! There Are Better Days Coming!

April 3, 2018

FOCUSING ON OUR BRIGHT FUTURE CAN EASE OUR TROUBLED PRESENT I'm not saying my life is any harder than anyone else's. I'm just saying that it's harder than I thought it was going to be. From health crises, to financial reversals, to interpersonal conflicts, to dreams shattered, to bad things happening to loved ones, my life feels as though it has been wave after wave of crises crashing against the expectations of my life. And I suspect many of you know exactly how that feels! After just so many of those waves, it is impossible to keep deep questions from entering the mind:

God, are you good?
Do you love me?
Do you care about what I'm going through?
Can you do anything about this?
If you cannot, why not?
If you can, why don't you?

There are times in life when it may feel as though God has simply lost interest in us, and has wandered off to other places in the universe doing more important things with more interesting people. It can feel as though we are just left here to muddle through on our own until life finally ends. These questions, if asked honestly and answered carefully, can greatly deepen our faith, draw us closer to God, and convince us - resolutely - that there are better days ahead… and can therefore create greater strength for today. We have just finished celebrating Holy Week, culminating in Easter Sunday. Keying off the powerful truths of Christ’s resurrection, there are three things that convince me that there are better days ahead.

The Resurrected Christ has gone to heaven to prepare a place for me.

John 14:1-3 says, “Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” He is gone now, but He has made a place for me, and is coming back for me. So, under the adage that “all's well that ends well,” my life will end well. So while my life may be harder than I want it to be today, the hope of a better place gives me strength for today.

The Resurrected Christ is in heaven now praying for me.

Hebrews 7:25 says, "He always lives to make intercession for [us]." Also, Romans 8:34 says that Jesus is now at the right hand of God and prays for us. What more could I hope for than to know that Jesus, who suffered and died for me on earth, is now in heaven praying for me. Surely He is no less committed to my welfare now that He is in the comfort of glory than He was when He was gutting it out on earth to pay for my sin. I conclude that the hard things in life God will use for a divine purpose that is good (Romans 8;28, and that in the end I will say when I get to heaven, “All is well.”

The Resurrected Christ is prepared to give us mercy and grace when we need it.

Hebrews 4:15-16 says, “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." What a towering passage! We have not gone through anything that Jesus didn't go through. Therefore, we can come to Him to receive mercy and grace when we need them. However, just as the Father's will did not let Jesus escape all His trials, so the Father's will does not allow us to escape all our trials. So when we go to Jesus for grace and mercy, it doesn't necessarily mean that He will deliver us from our trials. It may mean that, as the Father did for Him, He will deliver us through our trials. We can imagine, in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross, that Jesus may not have felt that God's mercy and grace were sufficient, but in the end they were. In the same way, Christ's mercy and grace may not always feel sufficient for us, but in the end, they will be. Conclusion Sandwiched in between a promise-filled past and a blessing-filled future, the only thing God hasn't already done for us is to make this life on earth easy for us. But in the end, even we ourselves will consider that the sufferings of this present time will not be worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed to us in heaven (Romans 8:18). And as we focus on our bright future, it enriches our troubled present. As C.S. Lewis wrote: “Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”; aim at earth and you will get neither. Sadly, many of us are so tethered to this world and the things it offers that we scarcely take thought of the world to come. Yet it is precisely by reflecting often on the joys, beauties, and satisfactions of eternal life in the world to come that we find a hope that empowers us to live fully for Christ today.” (Mere Christianity, p. 134) Timothy Keller summed it up perfectly for me: “On the Day of the Lord—the day that God makes everything right, the day that everything sad comes untrue—on that day the same thing will happen to your own hurts and sadness. You will find that the worst things that have ever happened to you will in the end only enhance your eternal delight. On that day, all of it will be turned inside out and you will know joy beyond the walls of the world. The joy of your glory will be that much greater for every scar you bear.” (The King’s Cross, p. 225) Is life harder then you thought it was going to be? Are you troubled by God’s unwillingness to intervene in your trials? Well, hang on brother! There are better days coming! And focusing on our bright future can ease our troubled present.

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