What’s in your future?

One of the darkest times in my life was when my mother died when I was just becoming a teenager.

My father was a cruel, mean man, someone that I don’t have any memory of a single happy day with. It was my mother that crafted a life for her children, and losing her raised a very real and serious question for me at such a young age: What would be my future without her?

Without her, I didn’t have anyone to protect or defend me against my father, or help me grow up and figure out this crazy world we live in. Fortunately, my faith in God became paramount to me during that time of grieving my mother’s loss, and I latched onto a passage of scripture that still moves me to this day:

“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash,” Matthew 7:24-27.

At a young age, I came to understand that God’s great promise that gave me hope and peace was the promise of a future in and with Him.

With God, we have a future, and it’s one we can look forward to!

Not everyone believes that or even wants it. A couple years ago news reporter Kimberly Winston filed the following story for Religion News Service:

• Atheists and nonbelievers [estimates of crowds between 8,000 to as many as 20,000] gathered on the National Mall Saturday in a bid to show politicians, voters, and even themselves that they have grown into a force to be recognized and reckoned with.

“It really is encouraging and it makes me think there is hope for a different kind of future,” Mwimanzi [a rally organizer] said. “Religion has dominated human history, but maybe it’s time for a new direction.”

Taking Christian “religion” out of human history might change the future, but not to a hopeful one! What an ironic choice of words, as if there could be any hope in a future without God. God has been working throughout human history to fashion a future for us that is our greatest hope:

“In those days you were living apart from Christ. You were excluded from citizenship among the people of Israel, and you did not know the covenant promises God had made to them. You lived in this world without God and without hope. But now you have been united with Christ Jesus. Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near to him through the blood of Christ,” Ephesians 2:12-13.

“But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control,” Philippians 3:20-21.

That’s the future for followers of Christ, a future to be excited about!

What is the hope of your future based on? Are you eagerly waiting for a magnificent future with Christ?

Scotty