Tonight on a midnight ride to Williamsburg, God changed my life yet again. How? With this realization: God does all things in us primarily for an eternal purpose before he ever does them for a temporal one.

The “things” God does “in us” refers to pretty much everything: How we feel in a given situation, what we think, what we desire, our temptations, our struggles, our blessings, our joys, our pains, our purification, everything.

I realized tonight that this means that when anyone asks God, “Why?” about anything, there is a possibility of three responses from God; two for the non-Christian and one for the Christian. To the non-Christian he answers either (1) to draw you closer to me, or (2) to further condemn you so your eventual condemnation is just. To the Christian God’s answer is always (3) “to make you holy.”

(1) is pretty obvious. God will put people through a lot of crap sometimes and cause feelings and desires to both come and fall away in order to bring them to him.

(2) is a little harder to swallow, but true nonetheless. God is determined to be just. He will not condemn those not worthy to be condemned, and he has committed himself to showing those not his elect that their condemnation is just (Romans 1:20 , 1: 26-27, 3:5-8). My primary Biblical support for this is in Genesis 15:16. In the context, God is laying out the conditions of his covenant with Abraham. He will punish so-and-so people and give him so-and-so land, and so on and so forth. But at the very end of these covenant promises, God makes a very interesting statement. He says that the final fulfillment of these promises will be delayed. He says, “And they [Abraham’s descendants] shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” God delayed the destruction of the people occupying the promised land and delayed His people entering it because the Amorite’s iniquity had not reached the level of deserving that wrath, thus he refrained so that their condemnation was just and He was justified in their destruction. So he does with some non-believers in Christ.

Anyway, (3) is what changed my entire perspective on God, me, and sanctification. We are generally presented with a certain situation that has pain and we begin to do what? Worry about the future and how it will resolve itself. God told me tonight that the resolution in the temporal to that situation is not the point. He gives (or allows us to feel [but if he’s all powerful, then “allowing” is just the same as “willing]) emotions both good and bad to us, and their effect in the temporal is not the point. God is preparing all of us for Eternity! No matter where we will end up in eternity, His every act toward us is to prepare us further for that end. I’ll repeat that:

No matter where we will end up in eternity, His every act toward us is to prepare us further for that end, both Christians and non-Christians.

So what does this process look like? I ask God “why do I feel this way?” He says, “to make you holy.” I say, “well, how will it end up?” He says, “It doesn’t matter. This all has eternal ramifications to it before it ever has temporal ones – THAT’S the primary point; don’t worry about the temporal – worry about how this is preparing you and those around you for eternity after these temporal things fall away.”

I don’t know about anyone else, but this gives me the key to entering into God’s rest in this life, no matter what comes your way. Being able to step back and see things from an eternal perspective rather than zooming in a focusing on the temporal creates a peace and a rest from faith that can only come from God.

No more worrying necessary, for the things I go through now are to prepare me and make me worthy for His Coming; to make sure He fulfills His commitment to me to make me His spotless Bride. Whatever temporal things that come about are merely part of the ride.

in Him,

–paul

p.s. – I’m still processing all this and have yet to actually spend a day with this perspective and see how this practically works out. I don’t really know what will happen outwardly if anything. We’ll see. I’ll keep you up to date. Now I’m off to slumber into my said first day with new perspective.