Do you wish that you knew what your future would be? What would you do if you knew your future? If it was going to be prosperous? If it was going to be full of suffering and calamity? Who doesn't feel inquisitive to know the future?
I remember when I was a kid one of the big craze was Ouji boards. Do any of you remember? Now without getting into all the ramifications of Ouija boards,I remember one time I did the Ouija board when I was a little kid and I asked what was going to be the name of my future wife? The Ouija board spelled out that my wife's name going to be Martha. When I got older I kept my eyes out for a Martha. I never did meet any. girl named Martha LOL I did marry someone but her name was Debi not Martha!
There's always been a quest for man to know his future. Is it no wonder why people have consulted mediums, fortunetellers, clairvoyants, soothsayers, and whatever latest prophet is on the rise? Even in the church, there are those who travel everywhere hoping for some alleged prophet to give them some kind of predictive word about their future. But in spite of all this, the fact is God does not tell us much about our own personal future. Yes he gives us a prophetic timetable about the course of history leading to the end of this age and the new world to come. But when it comes to our daily lives we experience much frustration at times because God does not reveal to us our personal future.
Does that bother you? Wouldn't it be better if we could know what is the future for us and our lives? I'd like to give several reasons why I think God in his deep love and care for us thinks that knowing our future would not be in our best interest but rather desires us to live by faith.
More than anything else:
GOD HIDES OUR FUTURE SO THAT WE WOULD TRUST HIM
We read in Ecclesiastes, "Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked? When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future. (7: 13–14)
The writer’s point is that just aaren’t always what they seem. God has made both good and bad times, and that he pieces them together in our lives in such a way that we won’t know what will happen in the future. God structures our personal histories in a way that conceals the future.
So Why does God hide the future from us?
1. Knowing the details of our future would probably be harmful to us. If we knew our future would be good we might be relieved but the joy of discovery would be gone. What should be so great when it happens would lose it's excitement as a surprise. We might even be bored, and the joy of anticipation will be gone.
2. Revealing a good future might also make us complacent in our relationship with God, and that would be bad. If we know that the future is going to be good, we might conclude that we don't need to rely on God, but obviously we do. We might also be very inattentive to the present and impatient to get to the future as we eagerly await it.
3. If we thought the future was going to be evil if we knew in advance the circumstances of our death, or if we knew what would befall us along the way, we might be totally horrified and unable to live our lives as fear would paralyze us.
4. Hiding the future is also compassionate because we must not ignore the present, something we might do if we knew the future. We might spend so much of our time worrying or grieving over our anticipated future. Even more so, we might think that we could somehow change the future to avoid the forcing evils.
5. Gods hiding your future is also compassion, because we couldn't handle some of the information about the future if we had it.
God compassionately reveals the details for our future moment by moment, and that is enough. Scripture says, "each day has enough trouble of its own" (Matthew 6:34). I don't have tomorrow's grace yet, so I don't need to know tomorrow's evil yet either.
God conceals our future, therefore, so that we would trust Him. He not only not knows the future, but HE holds the future. I'll rest in that.
Pastor Bill
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