The other day I was listening to a talk by a man of God whom I greatly respect, and one of the things he said really made me think. He said that ‘there are great times ahead!’.
So what?, you might say. Of course there are great times ahead; God is involved in our future, isn’t He?
Well, yes. Absolutely. And I am sure that the words are correct because of that. But the drift of that man’s message was that tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow, or at some indeterminate time in the future, things will be better. There will be better circumstances, better displays of God’s power at work, better whatever. But it’s tomorrow, not today.
Well, I have learned a real little gem through my grieving process, and it’s this:
Today is the Day of Salvation (2Cor 6:2)
No matter what you are going through – and I am going through some horrible circumstances as I write these words – Now is the day for wholeness, for salvation (remember the word ‘sōzō’?); now is the day in which it is possible to find God’s peace and to find rest, in your relationship with Him, despite, and in the midst of, your circumstances. St. Paul’s encouragement to ‘give thanks in every circumstance’ (1Thess 5:18) was written with precisely this sort of thing in mind. Bringing Jesus in to a situation changes everything.
This doesn’t mean that everything will just suddenly, magically change and all your circumstances will improve, at least on the physical level. But it changes the way you cope with it. This is because as you turn your eyes to Him – maybe in worship, prayer and/or thanksgiving – it puts all your circumstances into a heavenly perspective. It sets up what you see before you, in the context of eternity. Not that you are thinking, ‘Well, it’ll all be ok because when I die I go to Heaven’ – Jesus’s teaching was all about His blessings on this Earth for us – but in the midst of our circumstances.
So for my friend the man of God, while I agree that indeed great days are ahead, I need to remember that Now is the Day of Salvation. God wants to bring His miraculous power, His sweet, sweet Presence, His incredible wisdom, into the here and now for us – right here and right now. Today! Now! When we are actually on one of those ‘great days’ in the future, for us it will then be simply ‘today’. So, on this ‘today’, as you are reading this, this is one of the ‘great days ahead’ that my friend the man of God talked about yesterday, last week, last month. It’s now!
So, yes, ‘Great Days are Ahead’, but God is not procrastinating His blessings – putting them off until some indeterminate ‘great days ahead’ in the future. It begins right now. And so, I need to remember this idea:
Great Days are Here Already!
Yes!
As a great preacher friend of mine once said, “This is not ‘pie in the sky when we die’. This is meat on a plate while you wait! “. And this is the encouragement I am trying to get across to you today.
I hope it helps 🙂 God Bless you.
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