Focus On The Future

For ever, O God, thy word is settled in heaven.

Psalm 119:89

As the Christian with the Bible in his hand surveys the world scene, he is aware that we do not worship an absentee God. He is aware that God is in the shadows of history and that He has a plan. The Christian is not to be disturbed by the chaos, violence, strife, bloodshed, and threat of war that fill the pages of our daily newspapers and our television screens and computers. We know that these things are the consequences of man’s sin and greed. If anything else were happening, we would doubt the Bible. Every day we see a thousand evidences of the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Every day as I read my newspaper I say, “The Bible is true.”

No matter how foreboding the future, the Christian knows the end of the story of history. We are heading toward a glorious climax. Every writer of the New Testament believes that “the best is yet to be.”

As John Baillie has said, “The Bible indicates that the future is in God’s hands. If it were in our hands, we would make a mess of it. The future is not in the devil’s hands, for then he would lead us to destruction. The future is not at the mercy of any historical determinism leading us blindly forward, for then life would be without meaning. But the future is in the hands of One who is preparing something better than eye hath seen, or ear heard, or has entered into the heart of man to conceive.”

Our Father and our God, because I know You are the mighty God and You hold my future safely in Your omnipotent hands, I am not afraid to face life and all its struggles. With my whole heart I believe I can do all things with the strength that Christ Jesus my Lord gives me day by day. Your Word and Your Son are settled forever in my heart, Father. Thank You for Your grace and mercy. And now I wait with anticipation for Christ’s victorious return. Come, Lord Jesus! Amen.

Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).