Anticipation

Anticipation

While watching portions of the Republican convention this week, I heard promises, a lot of promises.  “If you elect our candidates, they will make your life better.”  I was not born yesterday!  I’m not overly impressed by a politician’s promises, no matter his party affiliation. Perhaps they have good intentions, but much of what is said is never going to happen. So, I don’t hang too much hope on the rhetoric.  God’s promises are truths I live by! But, even then, I must take care not to force my idea on Him.  In a recent conversation, a woman repeated a ‘promise of God’ that she received years ago about a change in her financial situation. She has done nothing responsibly to address the challenges because she is convinced that “God is going to take care of me.”  So she continues to live irresponsibly, in vain hope that God will magically bring her prosperity. She has taken a real promise, that God does provide for His people, and forced her interpretation on it, which robs the promise of true fulfillment.

The Lord is at work in our lives and He promises to bring about a new and whole life in us, but not without a process that includes painful growth and development; and not without some patience and endurance on our part. We can become saints (read that as people who authentically know and love God) but not just with wishful thinking or formulaic prayers!  It’s a process, a way of life that emerges when we are responsive to the Spirit’s leading.

This passage is packed with promise. As I read it my faith surges, along with understanding that I am part of His greater plan to bring about the transformation of the whole of Creation. Read it thoughtfully. "Since we are his children, we will share his treasures—for everything God gives to his Son, Christ, is ours, too. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will give us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, everything on earth was subjected to God’s curse. All creation anticipates the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

And even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering. We, too, wait anxiously for that day when God will give us our full rights as his children, including the new bodies he has promised us. Now that we are saved, we eagerly look forward to this freedom. For if you already have something, you don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t have yet, we must wait patiently and confidently. And the Holy Spirit helps us in our distress. For we don’t even know what we should pray for, nor how we should pray. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words." (Romans 8:17-26, NLT)

There is an amazing destiny waiting for God’s children, we will be like Jesus, lifted to perfection, beyond the reach of suffering, free from sin and death.  When we came to Christ, when we were forgiven and restored to our Abba, we only tasted a little of what is to come.  Our anticipation of the full glory of God’s presence is almost painful, making us groan. But, the Holy Spirit sustains while we wait for the promise.  I am eagerly looking forward to that moment when I no longer have to resist sin or enter into the conflict with evil.  I am so ready to be given a new body that cannot die, that does not age, that is beyond the reach of sickness!  I live in faithful anticipation, knowing that I have not " yet taken hold of it. … I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:13-14, NIV)

Anticipate the promise of God, but keep it real.  Don’t give in to irresponsibility or foolish dreaming.  Prayerfully, maturely,  ask God to create a genuine vision in you.  Let it lead you to faithful obedience, to a discipleship that gives your life an ever increasing beauty, until the glorious day of the full realization of His promise.  Here’s a word from the Word.  "Let us do our best to enter that place of rest. For anyone who disobeys God, as the people of Israel did, will fall. For the word of God is full of living power. It is sharper than the sharpest knife, cutting deep into our innermost thoughts and desires. It exposes us for what we really are. Nothing in all creation can hide from him. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes. This is the God to whom we must explain all that we have done. That is why we have a great High Priest who has gone to heaven, Jesus the Son of God. Let us cling to him and never stop trusting him." (Hebrews 4:11-14, NLT)