Six Forever Guarantees for the Present

1. The future grace of eternity guarantees me present grace.

If God has promised that I will live with him forever, then implicit in that promise is the reality of all the grace I need to face what I will face in this fallen world until forever is my home. I don’t need to fear people and situations, because grace will be supplied for what I am facing when I face it. I have always believed in the gift of God’s grace, but after my eyes were opened, I had a new and life-changing appreciation of the now-ism of that grace. Today I can face life with courage, not because I am able, but because I know I will always have the grace I need to do what God has called me to do.

As I quoted earlier, when Peter wrote to suffering people, he captured this grace with these words: “By God’s power [we] are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5 ESV). If you are God’s child, Peter is writing this promise for you.

2. The guaranteed end of the story secures control over my story in the present.

Understanding that I was not responsible for writing my own story nor able to do so was a relief. By grace the grand forever story had become my story. My job was not to control people and situations with the anxious hope that somehow things would work out. I came to rest in the fact that even when I don’t understand my past, present, and future, my life is secure because I am held in the hollow of the hand of the one who controls all three. In the midst of the harsh realities of life in a world that does not operate as God intended, I can grab hold of the fact that my story will have a glorious end. God’s control over his story is so careful and personal that the apostle Paul says, “[God] marked out their ["their" here means us] appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands” (Acts 17:26).