This earth is good grooming ground. God created it for our habitation, but earth is not our final destination, and this is an ultra-exciting truth that is almost too fantastic to fathom. Our Heavenly Father doesn’t want us to be ignorant concerning the things to come, and He tells us all we need to know about the future in His Word. He wants us to understand that complacency and ignorance are enemies of the faith walk, and that we can miss what He has in store if we’re too distracted.
Our Heavenly Father is an on-purpose God. He’s brilliant beyond brilliance, and perfect beyond perfection. He doesn’t miss a beat, not ever! He’s a God of supreme order, and He makes everything fit into His divine plan. Nothing that any human being does can alter God’s Will. He’s not in heaven pulling our strings like puppets, controlling everything that we do. He didn’t create us to be robots that automatically obey His every Word. He doesn’t force us to love Him or to seek to have a relationship with Him. He allows us liberty to choose, and by this, He shows us how real love behaves. Real love doesn’t put anyone in bondage. It extends choice and freedom. This is what God does because He is the very embodiment of love.
1John 4:8 tells us that God is love, and He loves us more than we can ever possibly know. 1John 4:9-10(NLT) goes on to state, “God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.” The sacrifice of Jesus Christ is a demonstration of God’s real and abiding love for us. He’s given us the opportunity to live on earth, and we’re here to not only learn of God’s love but to live in, by, and through it. We accomplish this by accepting His love by making Jesus Christ the head of our lives. We can then love others with the patience, tenderheartedness, kindness and generosity of Christ.
1John 4:17(NLT) tells us, “And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.” Our mission is clear. It is to grow more perfect in God’s love and to live like Jesus while we’re here. Our Heavenly Father rewards us for being obedient to fulfill our destinies in Christ on earth, and it is important for us to understand that we’re also being prepared by Him for what comes next.
God tells us in 1Corinthians 2:9(NKJV), “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” God created us to glory with Him, and this means that we must understand that Jesus Christ is the blueprint of our design and God requires us to be like Christ in every way. We are learning through life experience that God’s way is always and forever the best way, and if we live in and by His love, victory is always the outcome.
We will never be at a disadvantage for living according to the example of Christ. 1John 5:4(NLT) declares, “For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith.” Many of us are not quite as confident in this truth as we should be, and we must be ever so grateful to God because He’s patient with us. Our Heavenly Father doesn’t rush us when it comes to being confident in His love. He watches us. He roots for us, and He guides us along love’s path as we allow Him to. We make colossal mistakes along the way because we try to take the reins and live life on our own terms. We think we can make it without God and take matters into our own hands. This isn’t a workable strategy and always ends in disaster.
Our commitment to Jesus Christ means that we are in partnership with God to get some things done in the earth. 2Corinthians 5:20 tells us that we’re ambassadors for Christ, appealing to others through his love so they will come back to God. Our commitment to the Gospel affirms our sonship continually. It demonstrates that our hearts are strong for God and we’re proving His Will. Are we perfect at this? No. Do we make mistakes? Yes, we do. We fall down in life. We go through things that bring us to our knees. God doesn’t cause the situations that break our hearts and disappoint us, but we had best believe that He will take those setbacks and turn them into set-ups for our spiritual elevation.
Our powerful God is in no way wasteful or redundant. We’re here on this earth for such a short span of time, and He doesn’t waste one once of our experience. He will take what the devil meant for our surmise and use it for our good. Romans 8:28(NLT) says it best. It affirms, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” This is why, as confident believers in God’s love, we shouldn’t waver in faith when troubles come.
Romans 5:3 tells us that we can glory in those tribulations, but they will teach us to be patient with God. They give us the experience of knowing Him more, and they strengthen our hope in Christ, and this is a hope that will never disappoint us because God’s love is in us through His Holy Spirit.
The world is unpredictable, volatile, and in rough shape. God told us it would be. As true disciples of Christ, we’re being groomed to stand strong in our faith in God, come what may. Romans 8:18(NLT) tells us, “Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.” Yes, we may at times feel worried and disappointed, but we can’t allow ourselves to be too distracted. God has so much more in store, and this earth experience only scratches the surface. God’s love is the only treasure we need. We are being trained to conquer, overcome, and triumph by His love not just on earth, but in worlds and a future we haven’t yet begun to explore.■
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“A Future We Haven’t Yet Begun to Explore”, written for Springfield Fellowship © 2022. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.