My View of the Future
July 7, 2021
For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. 2 Corinthians 4:17-18 NLT
Our view of Jesus and our great hope in Him changes everything; nothing more profoundly than our view of the future. Knowing Jesus intimately, experiencing His love for us and the power He exercises on our behalf, makes the future unalterably hopeful.
One of the signs of true intimacy and personal knowledge of Jesus is that your trials and troubles don’t mow you down. You have a new view of them and their impact on your life. Instead of seeing them as tools of Satan to destroy you, you see them as small in the grand scheme of things. They are relatively insignificant because their shelf life is short. They have an end date, and they won’t last very long.
However, though the trials themselves won’t last long, when we have the new view of our future, we understand that the benefits and glory that comes from overcoming them and persevering through them vastly outweighs them and will last forever. “Vastly” means “to a great extent, immensely.” In other words, the benefit and blessing from persevering through our current trials will make them puny by comparison.
Since we know that, we don’t look at the irritations and trouble we can see now. Instead, our great hope enables us to focus beyond them to what we know is certainly coming; we just don’t have it in hand yet. The things that without our great hope initially seemed so significant and massive will soon disappear and be gone, but the things we can only see by faith will last forever. That makes considering the future glorious, no matter what it includes!
My mother was diagnosed with cancer in early October 2007, and it was her ticket to heaven in May 2008. As Dad said, “We all have to get out of here somehow.” 😊 One day I was sitting with Mother, and her discomfort was very evident. I held back tears as I told her how sorry I was about everything she was experiencing. She smiled and said, “Don’t waste time worrying about it. Jesus assures me that five seconds in heaven will more than make up for everything that has ever been hard.”
That’s the great hope. It changes my view of the future, and that changes my experience in the present.
- What does your hope look like when you think of the future? Jesus wants to help you see it with eyes of anticipation and faith. Pray about it.