Creating the Future

The lives that we are currently living are the results of choices that were made. These choices include the choices we made, the choices that other people have made that have intersected with our lives, and the choices God has made. The reason we can be optimistic about the future is because God has chosen to get involved.

 

The future is the sum total of all the choices that are made in the present and in the past. Fortunately, that sum total includes the choices made by God.

Erwin McManus, Uprising, p. 237

The world we live in is the product of billions of choices. Each of every person who has every lived has had a hand in shaping this world.

This is why the idea of parallel universes is so appealing. A parallel universe allows us to dream about the “what ifs” of life. We can imagine what life would have been like if we would have gone out for the football team, asked a certain girl out for a date, or applied ourselves in the classroom. Just think there might be a universe out there where I am a Batman type superhero.

All of us have made choices that we now regret. We would love to go back and change them, but as the great theologian Eddie Money taught us, we can’t go back and do things over. The past is the past and we can’t go back and make different choices.

Even if there were other parallel universes out there the alternate me making different or better choices doesn’t affect my life. The only life that affects me is the life that I am currently living.

Finish reading at Creating the Future » Paul's Ponderings

 

Posted with Blogsy

Daily Thought: Love is the Present Future

"That is why love is a virtue.  It is a language to be learned, a musical instrument to be practiced, a mountain to be climbed via some steep and tricky cliff paths but with the most amazing view from the top.  It is one of the things that will last; one of the traits of character which provides a genuine anticipation of that complete humanness we are promised at the end.  And it is one of the things, therefore, which can be anticipated in the present on the basis of the future goal...which is already given in Jesus Christ.  It is part of the future which can be drawn down into the present." ~ N. T. Wright, After You Believe, p. 183

Living By Faith in the Unknown

In The Touch of the Master’s Hand Max Lucado wrote; “Regardless of what you don’t know about your future, one thing is certain: You are intended to contribute to the good plan of God, to tell others about the God who loves them and longs to bring them home.”

The future is a scary thing. No matter how much we plan and prepare for it, the future is still outside of our control. We could get hurt in a car accident and lose the use of our legs. There is the possibility of cancer or another disease that will cut short our time one earth. We can suffer through the death of our parents, our siblings, or our friends. Our lives could be blown apart with us trying to gather the pieces, but unable to make things all right.

No matter how scary the future may be, God has a plan for our lives. God did not create us so that we could live a peaceful 70 years. That may sound nice, but God has something much better in store for us, but we need to be faithful to Him.

The bottom line is that God wants our lives spent in service to Him. The plan God has for each and every one of us is to tell and to show a lost, hurt, and dying world about His great love. We are to get involved in the lives of people. God wants us to give to the poor and reach out to the rich. His desire is for us to invite the healthy and visit the sick. The list could go on and on, but what God wants from us is to be His hands, His feet, and His mouth in this world. No matter what your future may hold you are to align your life to God’s will.

Yet another thing we need to keep in mind is that we are not in this alone. The apostle Paul wrote:

As God’s messenger, I give each of you this warning; Be honest in your estimate of yourselves, measuring your value by how much faith God has given you. Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are all parts of his one body, and each of us has different work to do. And since we are all one body in Christ, we belong to each other, and each of us needs all the others (Romans 12:3-5; NLT).

When the future hits and our lives become difficult we do not have to face life alone. Yes, we are still to give our lives away in service to God, but with the help and the encouragement of other Christians. The reason the future seems to be overwhelming and the reason we struggle with obeying God is because we think it is all up to us, but it is not. You and I are part of a great body, a wonderful family, and in the Church we are to find the help and the support we need to make it through

We may not have a whole lot of control over our lives, but we do know how we are to live our lives. We are to use the talents and resources God has blessed us with to be a blessing to other people. When that is our motivation then it doesn’t matter what comes our way we can be certain that God will get us to the place that He wants us to be. In the end that place will be so much better than what all our planning and worrying could have created. We need to be faithful to God in the moment and He will take care of the rest.

Creating Our Future

The future is the sum total of all the choices that are made in the present and in the past.  Fortunately, that sum total includes the choices made by God.

Erwin McManus, Uprising, p. 237

If we took a minute to think about it we would realize that the world we live is the product of billions of choices.  Each of every person who has every lived has had a hand in creating this world.  I think this is why the idea of parallel universes is so appealing because it helps us to think about the what ifs of life.  We can imagine what life would have been like if we would have gone out for the football team, ask a certain girl out of a date, or applied ourselves in the classroom.  Just think there might be a universe out there where I am the President of the United States!

Though we know in our hearts of hearts, as the great theologian Eddie Money taught us, we can't go back. The past is the past and we can't go back and make different choices.  Even if there were other parallel universes out there the alternate me making different or better choices doesn't affect my life.  The only life that really matters is the life that I am currently living.

I have to realize that the life that I am living right now is largely the product of the choices I have made.  Yes, I have been affected by the choices of other people, but those choices still required that I would respond in a certain way.  So it all comes down to choices.  Each day we are faced with hundreds of little choices, and those choices mold us into the people we are becoming.

This can sound a little scary.  After all I know myself and I know how often I make the wrong choice.  I know how easy it is not to exercise because I am to tired or how easy it is to eat the wrong thing (is that a Reeses Peanut Cup Blizzard calling my name?) because my body is craving it.  Each and everyone of us have tired to become a different person, we have had the good intentions, and we have fallen short.  Let me encourage you: Things can be different!

First we have to realize that our problem with making the wrong choice often comes from the fact that we are lead by our flesh.  Our flesh focuses on the immediate and satisfying our bodily desires.  It is our flesh which leads us to sin.  It was Eve's flesh that convinced her to listen to the voice of Satan and eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  It was Adam's flesh that caused him to desire Eve more than he desired God.  

Read what Paul wrote about the flesh:

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.  For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Romans 8:5-8; ESV).

When our choices are guided by the flesh we are unable to please God and to live the way He wants us to live.  Thank God our lives and our futures are not totally dependent on our choices.  We can have different lives because of the choices God has made.  That is the good news!  God's choices are added into the equation of our choices to shape the future.

Earlier in Romans Paul wrote:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:6-11; ESV)

You see because God made the choice not to give up on humankind He did whatever it took to save us from sin, to rescue us from death, and to give us new life.  He did this, not based on our good choices, but based on His character.  God desired that we would be able to live lives which were guided by the Spirit and not the flesh.  In this way we would have the resources we need to make good decisions.

Our futures are created by the choices that are made.  Our lives are affected by our choices, the choices of the people around us, the choices of Satan, and most importantly the choices of our Heavenly Father.  The reality that God is active in the world and in our lives is the good news that has the ability to change the trajectory of our lives. We can be different people and our futures shaped when we open our hearts to the choices God has made in this world.  Thank God our futures are not totally dependent on the choices we make!

Sunday Quote: Face Our Problems

"When you ignore problems, you relinquish a place of truth.  When you ignore obstacles, you communicate a lack of confidence that God can overcome obstacles that have debilitated or even paralyzed God's people.  Identifying the clear problems is not expressing pessimism or negativity.  It is not judgmentalism or condemnation. It is standing to face whatever Goliaths stand before God's people and speaking with confidence about a future gained after Goliath's defeat.  Identifying the clear problems is the beginning point of spiritual warfare in leadership.  It gives the spiritual leader an opportunity to call God's people to prayer and usher in the promises of God, promises of a future and a hope." ~ Erwin McManus; An Unstoppable Force, p. 191

Faithful in the Moment

In The Touch of the Master’s Hand Max Lucado wrote; “Regardless of what you don’t know about your future, one thing is certain: You are intended to contribute to the good plan of God, to tell others about the God who loves them and longs to bring them home.”

The future is a scary thing.  No matter how much we plan and prepare for it, the future is still outside of our control.  We could get hurt in a car accident and lose the use of our legs.  There is the possibility of cancer or another disease that will cut short our time one earth.  We can suffer through the death of our parents, our siblings, or our friends.  Our lives could be blown apart with us trying to gather the pieces, but unable to make things all right.
  
No matter how scary the future may be you can be confident in the knowledge that God has a plan for your life.  God did not create us so that we could live a peaceful 70 years.  That may sound nice, but God has something much better in store for us, but we need to be faithful to Him.
   
The bottom line is that God wants our lives spent in service to Him. The plan God has for each and every one of us is to tell and to show a lost, hurt, and dying world about His great love.  We are to get involved in the lives of people.  God wants us to give to the poor and reach out to the rich.  His desire is for us to invite the healthy and visit the sick.  The list could go on and on, but what God wants from us is to be His hands, His feet, and His mouth in this world.  No matter what your future may hold you are to align your life to God’s will.

Yet another thing we need to keep in mind is that we are not in this alone.  The apostle Paul wrote:

As God’s messenger, I give each of you this warning; Be honest in your estimate of yourselves, measuring your value by how much faith God has given you. Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body.  We are all parts of his one body, and each of us has different work to do.  And since we are all one body in Christ, we belong to each other, and each of us needs all the others (Romans 12:3-5; NLT).

When the future hits and our lives become difficult we do not have to face life alone.  Yes, we are still to give our lives away in service to God, but with the help and the encouragement of other Christians.  The reason the future seems to be overwhelming and the reason we struggle with obeying God is because we think it is all up to us, but it is not.  You and I are part of a great body, a wonderful family, and in the Church we are to find the help and the support we need to make it through    

We may not have a whole lot of control over our lives, but we do know how we are to live our lives.  We are to use the talents and resources God has blessed us with to be a blessing to other people.  When that is our motivation then it doesn’t matter what comes our way we can be certain that God will get us to the place that He wants us to be.  In the end that place will be so much better than what all our planning and worrying could have created.  We need to be faithful to God in the moment and He will take care of the rest.

Sunday Quote: A Glorious Future

"At the moment, therefore, the people who in this life have come to know and trust God in Jesus are to be the signs to the rest of the world that this glorious future is on the way. Equally, the sign that they themselves have received which guarantees them their future is the holy spirit. The spirit is to the Christian and the church what the cloud and fire were in the wilderness: powerful, personal presence of the living God, holy and not to be taken lightly, leading and guiding the often muddled and rebellious people to their inheritance." ~ N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, pp. 12, 13

Trusting God with the Future

Henry Blackaby in Experiencing God wrote; “We join Him so He can do His work through us. We don’t have to be able to accomplish the task within our limited ability or resources.”

Have you ever been given an assignment and then wondered how you would do it? That is how I feel right now. I haven’t talked much about the church I pastor, because that isn’t the focus of this blog, but things aren’t going well. When I accepted the position 2 and half years ago the church family had been in decline for a decade. Ten years ago the church was averaging 130 on Sunday morning, last year we averaged 33. How do you stop a pattern of decline once it has started? This is my heart’s cry to God: “What am I supposed to do?” I feel so incapable of making a difference in a church family and in a community that desperately needs help.

That is why things like this quote from Blackaby are so valuable to me right now, for they remind me that it isn’t just about my effort (I also realize that it doesn’t mean that I just sit back and wait for God to do all the work). An aspect of faith is being able to trust God when things are outside of your control.

I also have to remember that I am not the only person in this position. All of us, when we are given a job, want to be given instructions on how that job is to be accomplished. That is not how God works! Many times God will give us assignments that we cannot accomplish on our own, and He doesn’t reveal to us His entire plan at once. Instead His plan is revealed with each step of faith that we take. The Bible is full of examples of this truth. Noah, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samson, and Ruth all did things only God could do, and none of them and the entire picture ahead of time. Yet, God used them to accomplish His purposes.

Take for example what God told Moses; “I will be with you. And this will serve as proof that I have sent you: When you have brought the Israelites out of Egypt, you will return here to worship God at this very mountain” (Exodus 3:12; NLT).

I think that it is interesting that the proof God gave Moses was what would happen after Moses trusted God. God didn’t tell Moses about Pharaoh’s hard heart or the ten plagues. Moses has no idea how Israel was going to be freed from Egypt, but he trusted God and went. As Moses walked in faith, God revealed a little more of His plan to Moses. This means what is needed is not knowledge but faith. We cannot talk ourselves out of trusting God just because we don’t have all the answers. It is our faith that makes the difference.

God knows that we will have our doubts about the task He has set before us. He knows we will question our ability to complete the job, the way the people will respond to our efforts, and even if it is really God calling us to go. What God is interested in is not so much in our talents or knowledge, but our faithful character. The number one thing we need to carry out God’s calling on our lives is the resolve to trust God no matter what.

Confession time. That is where I miss the boat. I only want to go, to “risk” if I know how things are going to turn out in the end. I want God to give me a plan and assurance that He will use all my hard work. I want to take a step of faith where everything has been worked out in advance.

While I am uncertain about the next step that I am to take, I am absolutely certain that I am in the right place. God has placed me here for the purpose of enhancing my faith, and now I have to ask myself the question all of us have to ask, “Will I trust God with the future?” The choices we make will reveal our answer.