Ecclesiastes 7:8a The end of a matter is better than its beginning,
When we contemplate the end
being better than the beginning, we can’t help but let our minds drift to our
Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus. During His earthly ministry, humanity despised
and rejected Him. Consequently, he was well acquainted with grief and
accustomed to anguish (Isaiah 53:3; John 1:9-11). When that phase of His
earthly life ended on the Cross of Calvary, He now sits at the right hand of
God. As Christ Jesus is, so we are, we must bear our cross, or the crown of
life will never be ours. We will have to wade in among some sludge or never
experience the golden streets.
Consider the lowly Caterpillar
forced to crawl on its belly through mire and mud in its beginning. Finally,
however, in the last phase of its earthly being, it will fly with elegant
wings, enjoying the radiant beams of the sunlight tasting the nectar of spring
flowers. As Children of God, the Caterpillar is us before we become wrapped in
the cocoon of earthly death. Praise God: when Christ appears, we will be like
Him and know Him as he is (1 John 3:2).
When cut from the dark caves,
the diamond is jagged as a lump of coal. However, when the cutter places the
diamond on his wheel, it loses most of its being but becomes a beautiful gem to
be honored and prized, sometimes through many generations. We may compare
ourselves to the diamond in the rough because this is our time to experience
the cutting process. Then the day will come that as believers in Christ Jesus,
we will become the “treasured possession” of our Lord and Savior (Malachi
3:17).
Paul tells us in his letter to
the Romans that we are no longer to conform to the ways of today’s world but
transformed into the likeness of Christ Jesus. The Apostle further teaches us
that if we do that, we will be able to discover God's will for our lives
(Romans 12:2).
Worldly methods and practices
compel the follower of Christ Jesus to conform to its ideals and principles.
Satan will tempt the Christian by allures of material sexual values, dubious
music, and temptations to be conformed to Satanic world values. This temptation
will come from earthly voices being led willingly by the evil one.
Satan knows that we cannot see
what tomorrow holds for us. However, the good news is that God can see
tomorrow. He knows what the future holds for us. The blissfulness and joy that
will be ours when we are with Christ Jesus at the end of our earthly lives are
beyond human imagination. However, if you might want a small preview of the
utopia that we will experience once we are with Christ Jesus, God will grant
that. It comes with a daily portion of prayer and Bible study. It will not be
as some preview to our favorite movie, but a feeling of warmness that surrounds
us like our favorite quilt on a cold winter's night. The bottom line is the
filling of the direction of God’s Holy Spirit on our lives is dependent on the
amount of our surrender to God’s Holy Spirit.
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