When Jesus was hanging on the cross before he took he last breath, he said these words: "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:43)
The paradise that is being talked about here is another term for heaven..
After being mocked, ridiculed, accused for nothing, put to shame, and hung on a cross, Jesus knew that he was going to be in paradise.
That is really amazing to me. Nothing worse every happened to anyone else in the history of the world than what was happening to Jesus and he still had faith and remembered that he was going to paradise.
This makes me feel silly. Sometimes if one part of my day sucks, I think that rest of my day might not go well either. We are too caught up in worrying about what little things we experience on daily basis will affect the rest of our day, not our lives.
When I was playing college basketball the past couple years, if I had a really bad practice one day, I had to forget about it, and focus on the end goal, not one bad practice. If I focused on having bad practices over and over, I would fall into a never ending cycle with no long term goal.
You see, everything that happened yesterday, happened yesterday. It's the past. There isn't anything that we can do to change what happened yesterday. Maybe it was a great day, maybe you fell into sin...whatever the case is, it was yesterday and we can't change what happened about it.
We must live consciously day by day, with a forward focus that we will be in heaven someday with our Father.
The forward focus is key. If we don't look forward to that day, we will get thrown into the vicious cycle of not understanding our purpose and feeling horrible for ourselves every time something goes wrong.
I have some things to be really excited for, like getting married in 11 months. I've been waiting for that day my entire life. But the other day I've been waiting for my entire life is the day I will be in heaven for eternity.
I always have that in the back of my mind because I know that I need to have a lot of faith and live in obedient life in order for that to actually happen. So when a day might go horrible for me, I know that I still have something to look forward too. When those days happen, you just have to move your short term focus to the next day and always keep that long term focus on paradise.
My encouragement for you is to be excited for an eternity in paradise and to remember that you have to make a daily commitment to the forward focus.
It shouldn't be as hard as it is, to focus on what our eternity will be vs. how something didn't go our way here, or if we didn't please some people the way that we wanted to.
My plea! Paradise is something to look forward too. Set our focus on that, and you can never be let down by God's promise which lasts forever.
I write for one reason, and that is to encourage others, give perspective, and get people excited about their faith.
Sunday, January 19, 2020
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