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 ETERNITY IN OUR HEARTS FOR THE NEW YEAR

Ecclesiastes 3:11 “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.”

God Has “put eternity in our hearts” so that we might seek after Him. The reality is that apart from His help by revelation and insight given by the Holy Spirit, we will wander about in various degrees of confusion. The reason? We are not God and cannot understand the Infinite with finite minds, broken moral compasses, and vastly limited perspectives.

We tend to forget or, for some reason, minimize even in the slightest measure, that salvation is of the Lord…PERIOD! There is no dimension of our lives that we can redeem, transform, heal, salvage, or change to the absolute degree of the holiness God requires of those who will believe and follow Him. God does for us what we could never do. He has, in the Life, Death and Resurrection, and Ascencion of Jesus Christ, opened the unique, the only way for us to be restored to wholeness of life as human beings. When we own the fact of our own sinfulness, our lostness, our rebellion against God and turn to Him, believing Him for forgiveness, He gives to us the forgiveness won for us in Christ Jesus.

Salvation is given to the believer, and they are born again into a new Life, a life that is only lived out by the Holy Spirit becoming life within the believer. That new birth, becoming a new creation and then maturing in Christ Jesus to become whom God has made us, is the work of God. Having begun that good work, He promises to complete that work by the Day of Christ. God finishes what He begins.

The Holy Spirit is perfecting the obedience of Jesus Christ in the followers of Jesus Christ. Jesus becomes in us, by the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, the Righteousness of God, the Wisdom of God, the Character of God. We are being changed, transformed from one degree of glory to another by the Holy Spirit.

The hunger in the human heart for meaning, identity and purpose are strong indications that God has indeed planted eternity in our hearts. As St. Augustine stated. “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee, O God.” There is infinitely more that God has planned for those who will love Him, will believe Him, will surrender the whole of life to Him for His to transform us into finally becoming fully human. Eternity is so much more than we know! This gives the singularly strong foundation in the believer for prayer. We pray to the Lord God, bringing all of life to Him because He IS God. It is because of Who He is that we seek Him in prayer.

The glory of the Lord’s love is that He saves of, wants to reveal Himself to us, wants us to be established in meaning, purpose, and identity that only truly comes from Him. Having given up His only Son to redeem us, He will hold nothing back to enable us to follow Him and experience His salvation in every dimension of living. He then lives through us as He lives in us to stir eternity in the hearts of others so that they, too, may Live.


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