DEVOTION: Remember the End of the Book ...! - Kathi Macias

    

        I don’t know about you, but I prefer encouraging words to discouraging ones, positives messages to negative warnings. As we turn the corner from 2010 to 2011, the media is full of discouraging, negative reports. We hear them everywhere, and if we aren’t careful, we’ll begin to believe them—and to live accordingly.

            Does that mean none of those negative messages are true? Of course not. Many of them may be—and worse. But bad tidings and doomsday warnings should not dictate the tenor of our hearts or the fulfillment of our calling.

            There is a common saying among Christians that we have “read the end of the Book—and we win!” There is no greater ending to any book than that very positive truth, my friends. However…if you’ve read the entire Book (and I certainly hope you have, many times over!), you know that we are not promised a problem-free existence in this world as we await that victorious final chapter.

            And that’s where the fear comes in. We let our focus drift from the final outcome to the temporal circumstances, and we forget that it’s not up to us to grit our teeth, pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, and somehow overcome impossible trials and challenges. God is the One—the only One—who can carry us through, safely and victoriously, to the end. And He has given us all we need to hang on to during the ride: the blood of the Lamb, which paid our price for sin and restored us to relationship with the Father; the ability to proclaim the gospel to all who will listen; and the perfect love that flows from the throne of God and melts away the fear of death with the promise of eternal life with Him.

            That’s all we will ever need, beloved. Regardless of what the world might throw at us in this New Year, we have the promise and the provision of God that enables us to look past the temporal and into the eternal, to keep our eyes fixed on the Prize and our hearts yearning for heaven. Nothing here can begin to compare for the things God has prepared for us once we pass from this life to the next. So rejoice in the New Year, my friends; don’t be discouraged by negative reports, and remember, the best is yet to be!

“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony,

and they did not love their lives to the death” (Revelation 12:11).

 Kathi Macias is an “occasional radio host” and an award-winning author of more than thirty books, including her popular international Extreme Devotion fiction series from New Hope Publishers. 

Thank you Kathi for your regular contributions to this column.