I always feel like I’m waiting for something, or looking towards the future for the next event.

Doesn’t this seem to be the way that many of us live our lives?

We’re planning for the next event, setting goals for tomorrow or next summer, or just thinking of the weekend ahead.

And yet, we as believers should always be looking forward to the blessed hope that we all long for.

We can’t hold onto this present earth because it is not our ultimate home. For even now we see the earth as it is in birth pangs, ever longing to be released.

Many of the eastern religions and philosophies suggest that we just simply “live in the moment,” and don’t consider whatever is next.

There was a book that came out in the early 1970’s that was entitled, “Be Here Now.”

While there certainly are some things to consider with these ideas and statements,
scripture tells us to be straining towards what is ahead of us.

“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus,” Philippians 3:12-16.

We’re running along a track or pathway upon this earth that we live on. We’re very much like those who compete in the Olympic games, particularly those who run the long distances.

We’ve already run several laps around the track so far, but the finish line is still a ways off. We know who waits for us at the finish line, and we beat our breasts and do our best to run well and to do it with as little baggage as we can.

I’ve also heard the old adage that says, “The past is as dead as an old door nail.” And it’s true that we can’t live in the past, because we’ve already experienced it and it’s not alive to us now.

But we are also given memories both good and bad, and we can learn from those memories. We can reminisce about them, and we can rejoice about them as well.

Many people when they get older, particularly at the end of their lives, go back and think about their past.

In fact, a lot of times, you’ll notice that when Alzheimer’s has set in and they are having a very difficult time with the present, that they can actually remember quite well those things that happened to them early in their lives.

But when this happens to them, typically then they are like those who are trapped in a place and a time period.

God lives in the past, present, and future simultaneously. He isn’t confined to space, or time. And yet He has made us so that we can experience ALL.

And we do know that there is a FUTURE, just as there is a PAST, and an ever-present PRESENT. And yet God wants us to not be concerned about the worries of tomorrow, for He has said,

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” Matthew 6:34.

There are so many concerns and cares that can consume us as a people. We all have bills to pay, and perhaps at times it may seem like the oil and flour will run out.

But we see how the prophet of old had the widow and her son fed for a long time because of the hand of God.

“For thus saith the LORD God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the LORD sendeth rain upon the earth. And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days,” 1 Kings 17:14-15.

We live in dangerous and dark times, and much of what we see all around us could certainly consume us and keep us from experiencing God’s peace.

Every hour and every day, we see the truth of prophecy unfolding all around us, and in that knowledge we do know that our circumstances will surely change, and that our faith will be stretched beyond even our wildest imaginations.

And so having said that, it causes our focus to be pin-pointed upon those events that we know are soon to come upon us.

Our present time and circumstances seems to race in such a way that the future becomes a reality right before our very eyes.

But even so, so matter how horrendous or dark the days that are to come, we are promised the light from above and within, to guide us in such a way that our faith even shaken, will be sustained and cause us to be immovable.

 

Selah,
~ Stephen Hanson

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Stephen Hanson of In His Truth Ministries came to the LORD is a special way in 1975 and has prophesied regularly since. In these end-time birthing pangs we are reminded that judgment must first begin with the household of God. Will we be prepared and ready?

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