Having an Eternal Perspective

When God completed His creation of Adam and Eve on the sixth day, He looked at all He had created and said, for the very first time, that His creation was very good. All previous days God said that what had been created was good, but on the sixth day, after creating the first man and woman, He said it was very good.

God was very pleased with His creation. But a short time later, God was very sad at how far humans had fallen.

Because he was so unhappy, God decided to destroy everything.

Then it was as if just before He was going to destroy everything, He took one last look and found a man who was trying to live a holy life. In verse 8, the Bible says, “But Noah found favor in Adonai’s eyes.” Verse 9 goes on to say, “He was blameless among his generation. Noah continually walked with God.”

In His goodness, God could not destroy a man who faithfully served Him. But out of all the people that now lived on the earth, there was only one man and his family that still served God. How sad.

Because God has an eternal perspective, He can see everything that will ever happen. As He was studying all that was to happen, He could see that if humans were allowed to continue on in their wicked and evil ways, there would come a time when there would be no one left that still served Him. God could not allow that to happen. If there was no one left serving Him, there wouldn’t be a righteous lineage (family line) for the Messiah to be born into. With no Messiah, our sins could not be forgiven, and we would be eternally separated from Him. That was not part of His plan!

We were created to have a relationship with God. He couldn’t allow things to continue on the same path as they were because that would make having a relationship with Him impossible. He loves us and wants to have a relationship with us. So, He decided to destroy everything and everyone on the earth, except for Noah, his family and a certain number of animals ... everything needed to repopulate the earth once more was to be saved on the ark.

Just as God has an eternal perspective, so can you and I. What does that mean?

Well ... we need to stop and realize that everything that is happening to us, good and bad, serves an eternal purpose. You may not understand why you have to suffer or go through hardships, but you can know that it has a purpose. You can also be assured that one way or another, your difficulties and hardships will eventually end. You know, as well, that Yeshua will give you the strength to endure any trial or hardship.

All too often, when life is going well, it can be easy to forget that God is in control. When things are going well, we need to remember to live a life of gratitude, thanking God for His blessings. Too often, it’s not until the going gets tough that we remember to turn to God and give Him the attention He deserves. God may allow hardships to take place in our life to remind us to turn to Him, therefore strengthening our faith. When hardships occur, God can use them to get our full attention.

Did you know that without intense heat and pressure, a diamond will never form? That’s right! It takes intense heat and pressure to transform carbon materials into a rough diamond crystal. And even then, it’s not the pretty sparkly stone you have in mind when you think of a diamond.

When a diamond is raw or in the rough, it can be a pretty shiny stone, but to become a highly-valued brilliant faceted jewel, the diamond has to be sawed or cleaved, cut or chiseled and then polished. It must endure a whole lot of pressure and tooling to become a thing of beauty.

In the same way, God allows and uses pressure and circumstances in our lives to create a thing a beauty - saints that will spend eternity with a God who loves them. Using an eternal perspective, you can see, just as God sees, that your difficulties and hardships are transforming you into a person with which God wants to spend eternity. That means that we should be praising God for our difficulties and hardships. That’s kind of strange, don’t you think? Praising God for your hardships? But since He uses them to make us better, that’s exactly what we should be doing!

Heavenly Father, I pray that you give me an eternal perspective. Help me to see that you are using whatever hardships I face to polish me and make me into a person of righteousness and faith. Yeshua, I know that I can do all things through you because you give me the strength I need. I thank you for helping me and being there for me when things become difficult.

I was asked to create a set of devotionals for the youth in my congregation. If you enjoyed this devotional and want to read more, click here.

I use the name, Yeshua, because that is the name my congregation uses. You may better know Him as Jesus.

Blessings,

Cindy