Stuck!

I know what “stuck” feels like, and I’ll bet you do, too. Usually I’m only bogged down for a couple of days or a few weeks, until a mood passes or a problem is resolved. But occasionally, like a rock in a swiftly flowing stream, life streams past but I’m not budging. I’m stuck.

God goes to extra lengths, in those times, to free me and get me moving once again. In fact, one year God gave me the following as my verse for the entire year: “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13,14 NIV).

He also helped dislodge me by showing me how much better the future would be than the past to which I clung. At first I was skeptical. How can we know that the best in this life isn’t behind us, that it’s really yet to come? He gave me four reasons:

1. He goes before (Jn. 10:3,4,10). Wherever He leads us, He goes before us, preparing an abundant life no matter the circumstances. And we’d better be up and following - wherever He is has to be the best place possible!
2. He fills tomorrow with His promises and provisions – everything we need to live as His child and be like Him (2 Pt. 1:3,4). Of the sometimes-ominous future He says, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world (or, as is written in the margin of my Bible, “I have defanged and declawed it)! (Jn. 16:33).
3. Tomorrow we will know Him better and be more like Him. The Holy Spirit is continually making us more and more like Christ, changing us “from glory to ever-increasing glory” (2 Cor. 3:18).
4. Tomorrow lies closer to reunion with God and our eternal reward. And on this pilgrimage to heaven, we go “from strength to strength,” increasing in spiritual power until we finally meet God face to face (Ps. 84:5-7).

It all adds up to one glorious fact, true no matter how Satan tries to hold us back: “The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day” (Prov. 4:18 NIV). It’s all enough to get our spiritual blood pumping, our lead feet up and moving, our souls growing in glory and power, as we follow Jesus into the abundant, overcoming life He has planned for us!