A Timeline of Faith

All to often, I think, we tend to view God, (and even confine him) to our temporal understanding of life. We live in the now. So, we also expect God to live, act, and move in the now. The reality is that God is omnipresent. He exists outside the realm of linear time. For us, every moment that passes leads us to the next, but also disappears forever. The Almighty however, can view all of expanse of time at a single glance. He can see all the past, present, and future simultaneously.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever" - Heb 13:8

What does it mean for us as the average believer that our God, Savior, and Comforter is omnipresent? Well, to understand that I think we first must look at what the three different states of time mean for us:

1. We learn from the Past - though we can not re-visit or change the past doesn't mean that we can't use the past as a teacher and guide. There are many lessons that can be learned from the collective past of mankind, as well as our own individual past.

2. We live in the Present - the only time we have to do something is now. We can't go back and re-do something. Nor can we reach into the future and do something that hasn't happened yet. We only can actively affect that which is done in the present.

3. We look to the Future - if we have learned from the past, and lived in the present, then the natural byproduct is going to be looking forward to what can be done. We must make every effort to leverage both the lessons learned and the life lived to plan for and the most fruitful future that we can imagine.

Now...

With the understanding, we are not drifting aimlessly through the ocean of time, but we both love and serve a God that sees the ocean at a glance and controls the wind and the tides to both protect us and guide us. If we truly trust our loving Savior, then we know that there is nothing in our past that can not be learned from; nothing that is outside the realm of God's sovereignty to illuminate our life. Furthermore, nothing in our past that happened without God's knowledge. We can never look to God and say, "You weren't there, You don't know." All too often we carry around scars and pains from our past because we fail to recognize that God was there. He saw it, He felt it, He wants to take it, and yet we still carry it.

Likewise, there is no circumstance is our current, present time that Jesus doesn't know about, or more truthfully, isn't in the midst of right along side of us. There is nothing in our life that is void from the contact and power of God. When we are facing temptation and trial, Jesus stands beside us to both strengthen us, and protect us. The Savior is the ultimate security for living passionately in the now.

Finally, there will never be anything in the future outside of the foresight of our Father's eye. Nothing every comes out as a surprise to God. We on the other hand, get so worried or frantic because God didn't let us know that this or that was coming, and assume because He didn't warn us, that He didn't know...

"I alone know that plans that I have for you, to give you a future and a hope" - Jer 29:11

Rest and trust in the fact that our gracious King has a planned a future of hope for us. He may not always tell us everything that's coming, but He will never let us fall.

"When the fear from your past, overtakes your faith for the
present, the fruit of your future will be affected."

- Just a thought.