The future should not be a mystery to the children of God,
but by the same token, the children of God cannot manifest the future they wish
for or envision by their will in contravention to the Word of God. Your vision
of the future must be in harmony with what the Bible says about it. If the two
clash or are antithetical, the Word will win out every time. Save for some egg
on your face and exhaustion from repeated contortionist-like attempts to
explain why what you thought didn’t materialize the way you thought it would, you’ll
have nothing to show for it. We must accept what the Word of God says about the
times we’re living in and what the future holds and prepare accordingly.
Whenever we plan on going somewhere as a family, the little
one always checks the weather. Nobody asks her to do it. We can look outside
and gauge whether or not it will be sunny or cloudy, but it has become her
thing, so before we leave the house, she asks to borrow my phone and, at the
ripe old age of six, goes onto the weather app and presents us with the weather
report.
It’s an odd sensation because when my wife and I were her age,
we were lucky to have electricity for more than a couple of hours each night,
and even then, it was spotty. Times have changed, and so have our expectations,
and now, if the power goes out for a few minutes, we start scrambling for
candles and flashlights. Back in the day, when they turned off the power, it
meant it was time for bed, whether it happened to be six or eleven.
If there’s a chance of rain, she insists we bring umbrellas,
and if it looks like the weather will hold, she gives us the thumbs up and says
that we’re good to go. Knowing what will be allows us to prepare, and there
have been occasions when, due to her consistency in checking on the weather, we
were walking around the park bone dry under our umbrellas while others were
getting soaked or running to their cars.
We are given knowledge of what the future holds so that we
might act upon it. You can know a storm is coming, but the knowledge itself
does nothing for you if you don’t bring an umbrella.
It is incumbent upon us as individuals to act on the
knowledge the Word of God reveals to us. When the rich young ruler came to
Jesus asking what he needed to do to be saved, Jesus told him, yet the rich
young ruler walked away because he was unwilling to follow through and do as
Christ instructed.
If the Word tells us that we will see these things, but in
seeing them, we should not be troubled, then the follow-through to the
information we’ve received is to build up our trust and faith in God so that we
might not be troubled. It’s not to obsess, grow anxious, or let fear dictate
our actions. That’s the opposite of what Jesus said we should do.
Consequently, if someone comes along and lays out what the
future holds but insists that your reaction should be something other than what
Jesus said it should be, they have an ulterior motive for telling you what
they’re telling you. Whether it’s to sell you a converted septic tank as your
own personal doomsday bunker or buckets of gruel with a 300% markup, if you
listen intently enough, you’ll spot the hook before it can sink in.
Not only are we supposed to be aware of the events of the
coming season, but our reaction to them must be Biblical and proportionate to
what Jesus said it should be. The storm of the century is coming; make sure you
stock up on suntan lotion!
I keep returning to this point because repetition is the
mother of learning. It’s one of those fundamental points that must become a
reality in our hearts, lest we despair as the world and see no hope as those of
the world.
Yes, all these things must come to pass because Jesus said
they must, but see that you are not troubled. It doesn’t bode well for the
church when we react to certain events in a far more chaotic fashion than those
of the world. It speaks volumes about our faith and trust in God's omnipotence
when our first reaction to the events unfolding in real-time is to grow anxious
and fearful of what tomorrow might bring.
You are in Christ, and Christ is in you. What have you to
fear?
We cannot approach the last days of the world with the
mindset of a toddler, especially when we fashion our worldview through the
prism of living in the West and, as yet, not having to contend with the reality
of persecution. Last year alone, five thousand brothers and sisters in Christ
were murdered for faith-related reasons. Currently, over three hundred million
believers worldwide face high or extreme levels of persecution. Yet, we’re
still prancing around beating our chests, insisting that we are the no-ouchie
generation and Jesus wouldn’t dare allow us to experience anything more than
indigestion from overindulging at the local buffet.
Every child falls when they first learn to walk. First, they
try to stand on their own two feet, then take one tentative step, then two, and
at some point, they get adventurous and start making their way from one side of
the room to the other. If you happen to have children, you know you cannot
navigate the learning-to-walk stage without a skinned knee or fifty. Every time
it happened, after the initial shock and pain wore off, my wife would pull out
the hydrogen peroxide, something her mother used to do whenever she skinned her
knee. After the third or fourth time, when the kids caught on to what was about
to happen, they’d start screaming, ‘No ouchie, no ouchie.’
Each time, my wife would explain why it was necessary and
assure them that it would only sting for a minute, and then it would be all better.
The ouchie was already there; what she was doing was making it better. It took
my daughters a while to understand that and no longer decry the peroxide, the
ointment, or the band-aid.
God is not a fan of needless suffering. He does not allow His children to go through persecution just to see them squirm. Our faith is tested for a purpose, and after the pain of it dissipates, we come to realize that in the midst of the suffering, in the midst of the persecution, our faith increased, our dependence upon Him increased, as did our intimacy with Him. Only in hindsight can we fully appreciate God's providence, provision, and protection and be in awe of His omnipotence.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
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