We’re influenced by our personal backgrounds and worldviews more than we realize.

In a world as chaotic as ours, we are often imperceptibly triggered by the latest headlines and our mental outlook is whipsawed accordingly.

Most of this is subconscious, resulting in a lingering sense of anticipation, good or bad, regarding our future.

Anticipation

One of the many charms of small children is their indomitable sense of anticipation. To them, everything’s new, often mysterious, and something to explore. Whoopie.

Watching young (and old) adults going into a Taylor Swift concert is entertaining in itself — the atmosphere is electric, charged with anticipation — and they can’t wait to get in, even weeks before the event. The excitement is palpable.

Then, in time, life starts to creep in. The excitement wanes, punctuated by endless tests at school, personal identity crises, the pressure of attracting friends, and an apparent conspiracy among adults who seem bent on forcing them to grow up. Yuk.

But life keeps coming at them — getting a good job, money issues, marriage, kids. Pretty soon, those once positive anticipations of their future take on a darker hue as midlife brings the dawn of reality.

Maybe they’re not going to be rich after all, perhaps their health issues are catching up to their bad habits, and their dreams of early retirement begin dissolving in the light of kids going to college, medical bills etc.

And like an unwelcome intruder, old age creeps up from behind and yells, “Boo!”

By then, if there is any sense of anticipation at all, it is one of foreboding, and uncertainty — death looms, followed by a perceived day of reckoning, fueled by haunting remembrances of thoughtless deeds done long ago.

Booze, drugs, and constant distractions no longer help to push off the inevitable. “Time’s up.”

Settling in Advance

It doesn’t have to be this way. You have the power to intervene on your own behalf in this seemingly inevitable march into that abyss beyond the grave.

Suppose there was a way for you to get this death/judgment business SETTLED IN ADVANCE? What if you could start with your death and work backward?

Then you could live as a “dead man on furlough.”

Gospel Promise

In John 14:1-3, Jesus comforted His disciples as they realized that He was not always going to be with them physically:

“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many rooms; if that were not so, I would have told you, because I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will take you to Myself, so that where I am, there you also will be.”

The promise of the Gospel, rather than an unknown abyss beyond the grave, is that Christians can anticipate a glorious future with Jesus.

And if we “do business” with Jesus NOW, we can “punch our ticket” in advance.

The Apostle Peter put it this way in 1 Peter 1:3-5: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

Beliefs that lead to an “anticipation reset.”

One of the many delights of faithfully immersing ourselves in the Word of God, the Bible, is that we get to read ahead and see how the story ends.

For instance, from Revelation 21:1-4:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth … And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is among the people, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”

How About You?

Would you like to approach the end of your earthly life with the same electric sense of anticipation as the Apostle Paul?

As he wrote in 2 Timothy 4:7-9:

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.”