The Future Determines the Present

I was in the midst of a training run. I’ve gotten in the habit of listening to podcasts on most runs these days. And I was listening to an archived sermon from Francis Chan. The message was entitled, “Living Eternally.” And there were a few statements that nearly stopped me dead in my tracks when I heard them. The conviction was penetrating.

“Be honest, you say that you follow Jesus…but you just do what you want anyway…” 

It’s the sort of statement you either shrug off (proving the point) or are so firmly and squarely smacked in the face with it, that you simply don’t know how to respond. You know it’s true in the plainest sense – but what to do about it?

Chan was speaking (in part) about Philipians 3:12-14, which ends with “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize…”  I have learned a lot about myself in the past year – lots of great introspection and discovery, really sitting down to look and see who I am and who I am called to be. And then a statement like the following comes out of Chan’s mouth, as if to wrap up an entire year of the breaking down process (in order to build back up). Penetrating, but with a distinct sense of freedom and hope, came this statement:

“Is it true that there are certain things that I do because of my past? Yeah. But there’s a lot more that I do because of my future.”

I think I will be wrestling with the implications of thinking this way for some time, but I know that it goes well beyond “personal development”. Just at first thought, 1 Corinthians 5:19 comes to mind:

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

And then, of course, I’m reminded of this C.S. Lewis quote:

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.” 

I want to be more “eternally minded” – not to escape this world, but to allow heaven to explode into this one, through me. And therefore, when I appear before God one day, I will not be surprised to know that my life mattered.  I am overwhelmed with thankfulness for where I am in life this morning. In light of what I know about Jesus and God, about the Holy Spirit being a “firstfruit of the New Creation” and a “guarantee of things to come,” I want my present day to reflect the Kingdom of God, the “already, but not yet.” The present is pregnant with endless possibilities, because The Future Determines The Present.