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“To fight for the future, we must have hope.”

A thought by Erwin Raphael McManus from his book, The Last Arrow: Save Nothing for the Next Life (p. 126). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

I understand the difficulties of facing the future.  To many, the unknown is always scary and it can also be viewed as the present over and over and that makes it bad if their present is bad.   

But Erwin says, “We must believe there is a future worth fighting for. We simply can’t fight the future. The future is coming whether we like it or not. In fact, there is nothing we can do to stop it from coming. This doesn’t mean we are powerless when it comes to the future, but it does mean we have to take a different stance toward engaging it.”

He goes on, “You can’t fight the future, but you can create the future. To fight the future is to ensure that you will be lost and left behind to the past. For some, the idea of standing your ground is a desperate resolution to find some way to make sure that the past is the future and that the future never happens. Frankly, the apocalyptic tone of the Christian faith has postured the church as an enemy of the future. The faithful hold on to the past and fight the future. If I have had one struggle in my faith journey, it has been that the church seems to march into the future walking backward. For many, the only hope of faith is that one day we will leave this earth and be free from a future that filled us with fear. Often our best hope has been that Jesus would come back soon. Yet I am convinced this is exactly the wrong viewpoint for any of us who live by faith. Faith is the fuel of the future, and if God is the God of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, then tomorrow should fill us with inexplicable hope. No matter how bleak the present may seem for those of us who believe, the future is always full of hope.”

There it is, no matter how bleak your future may seem to you, if you are a believer then your future is always filled with hope. 

So, is your future filled with hope?
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