After our family eats a meal at a Chinese restaurant, we enjoy reading our fortune cookies to each other. I wish knowing about your future was that simple. We would all have it made if we had a crystal ball that would accurately predict our destiny.
Christians do not search for their future in tarot cards because we have the Bible. One of my favorite Bible verses is Jeremiah 29:11. God says, “’For I know the plans I have for you’—this is the Lord’s declaration—’plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’”
The word for “future” in this verse is a picture of a man rowing a boat while his back is facing his intended goal. He keeps his boat going in the right direction by focusing on a fixed object behind him (on the shore) or on a crew member (coxswain) at the rear (stern) of the boat so that he will head straight to the exact destination he wants to reach.
That is a picture of you and me. We cannot see what lies ahead, we can only see what is behind us. History accurately orients us toward our future.
The only way we can get to where we want to be is by fixing our eyes on an event in the past. It happened 2000 years ago, when Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead. If we keep our eyes on Jesus, He will direct us to a wonderful future, ending in heaven. The Bible says we should be “keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2).
Does that mean that everything which happens to you in the future is going to be pleasant? No, just like everything that has happened to you in the past has not been enjoyable. God takes everything that has happened to us and those things that will happen to us in the future, and He makes them all “work together for good” (Romans 8:28).
That is how God uses the nice and bad things that happen to us in the past and in the future. He makes them work together for good. That is why He promises Jeremiah 29:11.
There’s another verse in the Bible that speaks about our future, Isaiah 46:10. It says God knows “the end from the beginning.” That word “end” is the same Hebrew word as “future” in Jeremiah 29:11.
It is like watching a parade from street level, you see each event as it passes by. But from the vantage point of a helicopter, you can see the parade from the beginning to the end, all at once. That is God’s perspective on the events of our past, present, and future.
God’s plans for the believer’s tomorrow will work out for good. Just put your eyes on Him and what He has done for you on the cross and in the empty tomb. You will arrive at the right place in the future.
