Word of Encouragement (5/1/2020)
How often do you thank God for your future? We certainly pray a lot for our future, asking God to heal us from our present sickness, provide for our present need, deliver us from our present crisis, etc. To thank God for what is yet to come may seem strange. It is only natural and right that we should thank God for what He has done. But to thank God in advance for what He will do later truly requires faith, doesn’t it? But we can, and should, thank God in advance for our future because God is in control of our future and made certain promises to us, which He will not fail to bring about.
So, Paul is able to say to the Philippians, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). And he assures the Corinthians that God “will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:8). Also, Jude blesses God in this way: “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen” (Jude 1:24-25).
Giving thanks to God for our future is good because it rescues us from our myopic vision. We only see what is in front of us; we don’t know what is just around the corner. Just think about COVID-19 and its devastating effect on the whole world in so many ways—not only the loss of so many lives and jobs and businesses but also the sudden, radical changes in the way we interact with one another, etc. We were all blindsided. But God was certainly not blindsided by any of this. Nothing is happening, which did not exist in His mind already. All these things are all part of the tapestry of God’s sovereign and perfect design being woven together, which includes bright colors as well as dark colors, all working together to show the glory and beauty of God in the end. Remember how the cross of Jesus Christ and His empty tomb work together for our salvation. There is no glory of the empty tomb without the agony of the cross.
If we can humbly acknowledge our terribly near-sighted vision and put our trust in the all-knowing, sovereign God, we will be able to thank Him for the glory of the Easter morning on the hopeless Good Friday evening. We have the assurance that God will do all things right. God will justify Himself to be just by executing His full justice. “Soon shall close [our] earthly mission, / Swift shall pass [our] pilgrim days, / Hope shall change to glad fruition, / Faith to sight, and prayer to praise” (“Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken”).
So then, let us give thanks to God in advance. Let us please God with our confident faith in Him by giving thanks to Him today for the unshakable certainty of the perfect completion of all His wonderful plan for our lives in the future!
Have a blessed day!