| | | | The Long View - 1 Corinthians 15:16-20 And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost! And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died. 1 Corinthians 15:16-20
Human nature has a distinctive flaw; We tend to be short-sighted. Our focus is often "I just need to get through this week." TGIF rules the office! It's probably the reason why our country has the lowest savings rate of any developed nation; we're more concerned with today than twenty years from now.
This "here and now" perspective can also affect our spiritual view. We tend to be more concerned with what's happening in our lives here on this earth. That's not to say that what God is doing today isn't important. We know that God desires to save souls, restore marriages, reconcile relationships, and set people free from the power of sin. It's what we pray for daily. But I believe Paul is encouraging us to also have a long view.
Paul wrote "if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world." See, if we're following Christ in this life, we're swimming against the current of this age. If we're yielding to God, and serving God in this life, then we aren't going to be the most popular, most successful, or most followed people. Our Twitter followers will never hit the level of a Kim Kardashian.
And I believe that's a good thing, because the bible teaches that this entire planet is going to melt away, everything on the earth will burn (2 Peter 3:10). Nothing in this physical world will pass through to the next. Only those who have placed their faith in Christ will pass through into the eternal realm. That's the "great harvest" Paul is talking about; People who we've shared Christ with, who have been saved by faith, and who will be with us in heaven.
Our final destination, our great hope, is heaven. When we have this perspective, then we're truly taking the long view.
"Lord, help me live my life today with an eye always seeing the end result, our home in heaven."
Pastor Clay | | | | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment