New Morning Mercies #262

Today, remember that this moment isn’t intended to be a destination, but it is what God’s using to prepare you for your final destination.

If you live with a destination mentality, you are going to be regularly disappointed. If you live with a destination mentality, you will have unrealistic expectations and you will not guard yourself against temptation as you should. If you live with a destination mentality, you will struggle to believe that God is loving, good, faithful, and kind. If you live with a destination mentality, it will be easier for you to complain than to be content. If you live with a destination mentality, you will be tempted to envy the life of someone else. If you live with a destination mentality, you will tend to hook your happiness to the degree of ease and comfort that you experience in your present situations and relationships. If you live with a destination mentality, you simply won’t be on God’s agenda page at all.

Living with a destination mentality means that you load all your hopes and dreams, your search for a definition of the good life, and your inner sense of well-being into this present moment. It means that no matter what your theology says about eternity, you live as if this is all there is. And because you are living as if this is all there is, you try to turn this present moment in this fallen world into the paradise that it will never be. Yes, if you are God’s child, you have been promised a paradise beyond your ability to conceive, but you must understand that this is not it. This sin-broken world, populated by sin-scarred people, will never be the paradise that you and I tend to long for it to be.

You see, a sound biblical doctrine of the future is the only way to arrive at a sound biblical understanding of the present. If there is a final glorious destination for all God’s children, then this time is not a destination, but a preparation for a final destination. There is meaning and purpose in everything we are going through. In a real way, God is using all the difficulties of life in this fallen world to change and mature us, making us ready for the world that is to come.

But there is more for you and me to understand. It’s not just that this is a time of preparation; the fact that we are guaranteed a place in the life that is to come tells us who we are and what we have been given in the here and now. Who are we? We are pilgrims on a journey with a glorious destination assured. What have we been given? Well, the guarantee of the future grace of eternity assures us that we will have all the grace we need in the present or we would never have what we need to finish the journey. So don’t try to turn today into paradise, but thank God that you are being prepared by grace for the paradise that will be your forever home.

For further study and encouragement: 2 Corinthians 5:1–10