The Road to Eternity

[HKHaugan]

The Road to Eternity

       “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or marked off the heavens with the span of his hand? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on a scale and the hills with a balance? Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, or informed Him as His counselor? Whom did He consult to enlighten Him, and who taught Him the paths of justice? Who imparted knowledge to Him and showed Him the way of understanding (Is.40:12-14)?”

       After that, if we really want to feel the limitation of our humanity, we have only to read Job 38-41. That really would take us down a peg or two. Those four chapters are humbling to say the least.  About the time we think we get our lives together; we discover there’s always more.  It’s not more materially.  It’s ‘more’ spiritually, relationally and of course personally.  What is ‘more’ is understanding, wisdom, loving, being fulfilled, what to say, how to say and when to say it.  There’s more to learn, more to experience, more to believe, more to trust and more to do.  The very fact of eternity is that there will always be more.  If eternity is perfection, then the state of being perfected in God is ongoing.  Until we drop our body off at the death portal, we will always be limited in the process of being perfected.  Perfection is the ‘more’ all of us yearn to feel within.

       The key to that ‘more’ is faith.  Faith is the road to perfection.  Faith is the beginning of everything to the end of everything.  That ‘everything’ includes from Creation in its entirety to every person’s next moment of choice.  Everyone is born with faith (before you react to that there is a problem which we will get into shortly).  Faith is the action of the mind and heart to step out beyond the borders of our body.  That is into the spiritual, the personal and relational atmosphere that surrounds us.  Faith is the spirit in us that motivates us.  Faith really is “the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen (Heb.11:1).” 

       Who doesn’t say before they undertake doing something, “I hope I get this right?”  Who can say that when they chose to do it that they knew ahead of time that it was going to be right or wrong?  It took faith to do it or not do it.  No one knows what will happen in the next moment.  The whole process of evaluation is a moral one and that being the case, who or what guides us (now we get into the problem mentioned before)? “In what or whom do we believe and trust in as we apply our faith?  This is the real question, and it comes down to one thing, our spiritual choice, me, guesswork, cultural tradition, friends or God.  Given our and everyone else’s imperfection in mind, heart and spirit, are we willing to trust our and their judgments about what we can’t see, the everyday living process where every moment is a faith moment?

       After the writer of Hebrews opens with that statement about what faith is, he gives a list of people and how they took action after they were confronted with a situation.  That list takes up the whole of Chpater 11.  In each case they had no idea what would happen, no foretaste of the future.  They did what they believed God wanted them to do and by faith did it.  “These were all commended for their faith, yet they did not receive what was promised. God had planned something better for us, so that together with us they would be made perfect (Heb.11:39-40).”

       Faith is the key to understanding God’s plan for each of us.  Paul makes the same point, “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.  For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life (Eph,2:9-10).”  The ‘works’ are those conceived by faith and done by faith in Jesus.  Therefore, made by faith to live by faith, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb.12:2).”