It’s easy to see why so many movies depict someone trying to save the world from oblivion – or to restore it after annihilation.

Catastrophic events, economic forecasts, political chaos, climate warnings, dire prophecies and our own circumstances may shout in unison, “The future looks bleak!”

Yet, Proverbs 31:10-31 commends the woman who “smiles at the future” (v. 25 NAS).

Reading the passage, we see: This woman does not live in la-la land. She doesn’t sit around from morning till night, smiling. Nor does she frantically rush about, as if the future of the world (or her community or her family or her own life) depended on her efforts.

Rather, she sets her heart to seek the Lord’s honor, to see from his perspective and to do what he has put before her to do. Ah then, when she smiles, it’s not just a Mona Lisa, maybe it is, maybe it’s not, smile. As deep wells of joy bubble up within her, she laughs.¹

Yet do not assume that this woman’s world is carefree. Rather, assume the opposite.

Anyone can smile when a rosy future looks quite assured. But “worth far more than rubies” is the person who believes God even in volatile times, who trusts the Lord when he says:

I know the plans I have in mind for you; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope.²

The preachers of my childhood and the hymns we sang with gusto pointed us toward a bright future, “When We All Get to Heaven,” “In the Sweet By and By.”

The whole of Scripture, and Jesus himself, tell us that’s the truth, but not the whole truth.

Martha and Jesus

In one volatile season, Mary and Martha watched their brother Lazarus die. The sisters hoped Jesus would come before Lazarus’ death – and would heal him. But only after Lazarus’ burial, while his sisters sat grieving in their home in Bethany, did Jesus show up. When Martha learned he had arrived, she hurried out to greet him.

“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” (John 11:21-24)

Let’s hit the pause button, and do a little Q&A.

When Lazarus fell deathly ill, did Jesus come at the time – and answer in the way – that Martha wanted? No, he did not.

So did Jesus forsake Lazarus and his sisters in their hour of need? No, he did not.

Will Lazarus rise in the resurrection at the last day? Yes, he will!

Ah, but did Jesus also mean that Lazarus would experience a more immediate return to life? Yes, he did! That very day, Mary and Martha watched their brother walk out of the tomb, alive. Scripture doesn’t say it, but I’m guessing both sisters laughed out loud.

Time and eternity

In seeking to smile at the future, we may go to one of two extremes.

• We look only at eternity.
• We look only at this life.

Either way, we accomplish the opposite of what we intend.

I grew up in the camp that intones, “This world is just going to get worse and worse. (Oh, and your life probably will too.)” It’s a mindset built on dispensational teachings that became popular in the battered US church after the Civil War. Such a mindset embraces fatalism, rather than faith. It accepts every downward spiral as inevitable, believing the only future we can smile about is the heavenly one.

In adulthood, I discovered the camp that teaches, “We can expect all God’s blessings, rewards and fulfilled promises in this life. (Oh, and heaven will probably be nice, too.)” It’s a mindset built on prosperity-gospel teachings that became popular in the affluent 20th-century church. Such a mindset embraces selfish expectation, calling it faith. It judges and shames us when our lives don’t accumulate the type blessings we’ve been led to expect.

Resurrection and life

Yet our Lord wants us to see the same thing he wanted Martha to see: He has good in store for us both in time and in eternity. What’s more, this good, at its heart, is HIM – his presence, his resurrection, his life.

What Jesus said to Martha, he says to us:

“You don’t have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25 MSG)

I am the resurrection and the life. In so saying, Jesus points us to an eternal future so glorious we cannot imagine it. He tells us, and he has shown us, that the one overarching quality of that future is life in all its fullness, life unmarred by everything that mars it here, life that is entered by death and resurrection – indestructible LIFE.

I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. In so saying, Jesus also points us to a more immediate future, marked by LIFE – his life in us, abundant life in him – resurrection power, resurrection life, ever more fully known.

Just recently, a new friend of mine pointed me toward the works of Theodore Austin-Sparks, a British Christian evangelist and author who enjoyed simply being called TAS. Reading his book, Rivers of Living Waters, I saw in a new way how resurrection life looked for the apostle Paul, and how it can look for us. Sparks wrote:

The one issue for us, for the Church, for individual Christians, is just this: that we shall become an embodiment of the absolute triumph of Christ in resurrection – that the resurrection of the Lord Jesus should not be a part of the Christian creed, but a part of the Christian’s very being.

He also said “the principle of resurrection” is “not merely resuscitation, but mighty increase … It is indestructible life.”

As an example, he pointed to the life of Paul – and he described Paul’s life in a way I hadn’t considered. See if this description sparks any new insights for you too.

In Ephesians 1, Paul prayed for believers to know firsthand the Lord’s “incomparably great power for us who believe.” Paul also pointed out: It’s the same power that raised Christ from the dead.³

By that power, Paul experienced newness of life and fullness of life firsthand. He wanted others to experience it too.

By that power, Paul lived in confident expectation of far greater fullness of life after death:

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.⁴

Affirming all that, Austin-Sparks noted:

And yet [we also find Paul] saying: “We despaired… of life… We had the sentence of death within ourselves…”

Ah, but he did not leave it there. The completion of his statement is: “… that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:8, 9).

[And thus Paul moved] from despair into a new experience of resurrection; from the place where everything seemed to be at an end and he would have to give up, into another mighty experience of resurrection.

And mark you, this man never stopped at that experience. Right at the end of his life, with all that he had known of the power of His resurrection, he is still saying: “that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection” (Phil. 3: 10).

“In deaths oft,” Paul “is the very embodiment of triumph over death – of resurrection.”⁵

So saying, TAS asked:

Are you the Lord’s, have you received His life? You may come more than once to the place where you despair of life, where it looks as though everything has come to an end and there is no more. But – believe it – God does not mean it as an end; God means that there shall be more life than ever.⁶

Now and forever

So even when life seems most uncertain, when all you thought stable has blown up in your face, when death appears to have won, be blessed to know that Jesus is there. Be blessed to get up and greet him, to continue to trust him.

For he has come to do what Isaiah 61:1-3 promises:

Heal the heartbroken,
announce freedom to all captives,
pardon all prisoners.
Comfort all who mourn.
Give [you] bouquets of roses instead of ashes,
Messages of joy instead of news of doom,
a praising heart instead of a languid spirit.
Rename [you an] ‘Oak of Righteousness’
planted by God to display his glory. (MSG)

This blessing, at its heart, is your Lord himself. He is your Hope. He will never fail you nor forsake you. He is Present, with you, in you.

And right now and forever, he is Resurrection. He is your Life.

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The original version of this series was published Feb-Apr 2014, and was adapted from the Key Truths e-column, “Smiling Just Thinking About It,” 2008, 2014. The original version of this post was first published March 5, 2014.

Image by nadij / freeimages.com

Smiling at the Future series

Might turbulent times be key times to learn the laughter born of faith?

• Smiling just thinking about it
• Living in two worlds
• Fighting fear with fear
• Look ahead with hope

More insights for turbulent times

This series focuses on one way we cooperate with God in the hard times, to move toward a future of healing and life. There are other ways to cooperate with God too. I’ve written about several of them in other posts, including:

• When your world has changed
• God who has wronged me
• The blessing of mourning
• When waiting is writhing
• Waiting for hope

Footnotes

1. What I’ve said here I explore more fully in the other three posts in this series. ↩︎
2. I’ve quoted from two verses here: Proverbs 31:10 and Jeremiah 29:11 CEB. ↩︎
3. See Ephesians 1:18-22. ↩︎
4. 1 Corinthians 15;54, 56. See all of 1 Corinthians 15; as well as 2 Corinthians 5:1-5; Philippians 1:20-23; 2 Timothy 4:7-8. ↩︎
5. “In deaths oft” is quoted from 2 Corinthians 11:23 KJV. Paul talked a lot in 2 Corinthians about those “deaths,” and about the resurrection life that enabled him to triumph over each one, and the resurrection life to come. See, for example, 1:3-5, 8-10; 2:14; 4:1, 6-11; 5:1-5; 11:22-29; 12:9-10. ↩︎
6. From Rivers of Living Water, by T. Austin-Sparks, First published by “Witness and Testimony Publishers” in 1957; published as an e-book by Austin-Sparks.Net. ↩︎