During a conversation with Jesus, a lady with a very troubled past described her confidence in Messiah. “I know that Messiah…is coming. When he comes he will explain everything to us”(John 4:25).
This unnamed woman needed lots of explanations about life. Divorced and remarried five times, she lived with a man she wasn’t married to. Disappointment, disillusionment and self-depreciation filled her broken heart. Explanations eluded her, but she knew that someday Messiah would make everything clear to her.
God Values Explanations
People often state that we won’t need explanations in the next life because this life will be forgotten. That isn’t true because it isn’t scriptural. I suppose we accept this simplistic idea because Scripture promises that there will be no sorrow during our eternal life. True, God brings us into an eternity of happiness, but this happiness isn’t built on totally forgetting our time in these physical bodies. We will remember our days on earth without sorrow. Messiah’s explanations of life’s difficulties will overwhelm us with immeasurable joy.
During his visit to heaven, the apostle John “saw…the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord…until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?”(Revelation 6:9-10). These precious martyrs in heaven had not forgotten the manner of their death as they cried out to the Lord for justice. No sorrow, no tears, no discouragement, no despondency touched these wonderful people even though they recalled events of their days on earth.
Scripture is a book of divine explanations.
Over and over again the Bible reveals God’s reasons for his actions. Jesus declared, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Matthew 24:35). This means that we will read the Bible forever. The stories of human victory and human failure will still be around ten million years from now. Why? Because Scripture is the centerpiece of divine explanations.
God values his explanations because they stimulate our love for him and our faith in him. Consider Joseph in Genesis. Everything appeared to go wrong for this teenager. He endured about 13 years of trials that afflicted him with unbelievable emotional pain. As Joseph came to understand God’s motives, his love for God surged and his heart swelled with fresh faith in God. After about twenty years of separation from his family, Joseph related to his brothers the divine explanation for their cruel treatment of him. “It was not you who sent me here [to Egypt], but God” (Genesis 45:8).
The explanations Messiah gives elate our hearts and never depress our minds!
Let Time Mature Your Ability to Comprehend
God isn’t in the business of hiding things from us. “The Spirit of truth…will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13). “We have…received…the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us” (1 Corinthians 2:12). The Lord wants to reveal divine explanations to us. However, he waits for the passage of time to mature our ability to receive his explanations.
In the beginning of his horrible trials, young Joseph could not fathom God’s reasons for allowing the difficulties that intruded into his pathway. Nevertheless, he stayed in love with God and accepted that God’s ways lay beyond human comprehension. Eventually maturity enlarged Joseph’s ability to apprehend divine ways. As time passed God’s ways became clear to Joseph;
divine logic became his way of thinking. Therefore, he pointed out to his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended [your actions] for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).
Nothing lies outside God’s ability to explain, but lots of things lie outside our ability to absorb God’s thoughts. Nevertheless, our confidence in God’s love quiets our spirits when we are troubled by the inexplicable. Whether in this life or the next one, God will thrill our hearts as he unfolds his elegant and beautiful explanations to us.
Look Forward to an Eternity with Messiah
Life had been very cruel to the dear lady mentioned in John chapter 4. In spite of her awful pain, she looked forward to spending eternity with Messiah. “He will tell us everything we need to know and make it clear to us” (John 4:25 amp).
Let’s follow her example and quit trying to untangle life’s complexities. Wait on Messiah who commits himself to unraveling all that confuses us during our days in these bodies.
Eternity is not stagnation because “God…makes things grow” (1 Corinthians 3:7). Throughout eternity our ability to comprehend God’s work in our lives grows and grows. Jesus makes plain his reasons for fitting human history together in the way he did. God’s explanations for all he caused or allowed will enthrall us, thrill us and astonish us. Our admiration of him will flourish as he opens our minds to perceive divine ways. The unconnected pieces of our days on earth will fit together! The senseless will make sense and meaningfulness will replace meaninglessness.
Forever and ever Messiah unfolds before our eyes all he accomplished because of and in spite of human pain. As we read the everlasting Word of God, we will praise Messiah by quoting Psalm 119:71 & 75: “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees” and “In faithfulness you have afflicted me.” We will appreciate and not question all the pain we endured. In fact, throughout eternity appreciation of our painful experience on earth will increase as we better understand Messiah‟s suffering in our behalf. “His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness” (Isaiah 52:14).
Dear Friends, you can move on with life even when you can’t understand it. Keep putting one foot in front of another by placing your total faith in Messiah’s commitment to an eternity of explanations that transcend human understanding.
Be greatly encouraged,
Pastor James and Delores Fields
www.ComfortEncouragement.org
This was so beautiful explained. I really never thought of remember the past in heaven….but it makes sense. God bless you and keep encouraging us.