The Great and Godly Future
Of the Class of 2002
Pastor
Joe Fuiten
Last night we graduated 46
students from
A few years ago, a thought-provoking article entitled, "If You Are 35, You Have 500 Days to Live" suggested that when you subtract the time spent sleeping, working, tending to personal matters, hygiene, odd chores, medical matters, eating, traveling, and miscellaneous time-stealers, in the next thirty-six years you will have roughly the equivalent of only five hundred days left to spend as you wish.[1]
The bottom line is there is less of the future actually out there than you might presently be imagining. "[Lord], teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to WISDOM”
Scripture
1 My son, if you accept my words and
store up my commands within you, 2 turning your ear to wisdom and applying your
heart to understanding, 3 and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for
understanding, 4 and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for
hidden treasure, 5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the
knowledge of God. 6 For the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth come
knowledge and understanding. 7 He holds victory in store for the upright,
he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, 8 for he guards
the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones. 9 Then
you will understand what is right and just and fair-- every good path. 10 For
wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. 11
Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you. 12 Wisdom will
save you from the ways of wicked men, from men whose words are perverse, 13
who leave the straight paths to walk in dark ways, 14 who delight in doing
wrong and rejoice in the perverseness of evil, 15 whose paths are crooked and
who are devious in their ways. 16 It will save you also from the adulteress,
from the wayward wife with her seductive words, 17 who has left the partner of
her youth and ignored the covenant she made before God.
1. In General, God plans to bless you.
I cannot predict what might happen with regard to international events or the American economy. These are challenging times when there is both great good and gross evil. Even if the decades ahead have great difficulty in them, and evil increases, I can tell you that there is victory for the upright. Verses 7-12 indicate the ways that God will watch over your life. He will shield, guard, protect, and save you.
The longer I live the more I enjoy laughing about the dire predictions of disaster. Do you remember Y2K? I’ve lived with those kinds of predictions all my life. Even as a young teenager I remember them. I remember reading the US News & World Report in the early 60’s where the Russians predicted they would conquer us by 1971. I can still visualize the pictures and headlines of that article.
Every decade brings a new prediction of some unsolvable problem. People said, “Automation will put us all out of work and the machines will take over. The computer will take away jobs.” Clearly those were people who never owned a computer. Malthusian predictions of people unable to be fed failed to anticipate the green revolution. Some people can only predict problems without realizing the answers that will be found.
Until the
day that Jesus splits the clouds, there will be a future for those who will
follow God. Every once in a while I hear
people say they don’t want to bring children into such an awful world. Please remember the grace of God. Romans
I believe
God will give this generation the grace to be a Christian generation. I do not subscribe to the theory that things
have to get worse and worse. We simply
do not know for certain when the Lord will return. If we do not know, then it is possible that
we are facing the greatest days the church has ever known. We might be facing
Don’t be afraid of the future. Look forward to it. Expect the grace of God to be powerful. Expect his presence to fill your life and to fill his Church. Expect miracles to overcome impossibilities. Expect God to be God.
2. But God will also use failure to help you
The
Psalmist understood that God blesses us with the good, and uses the bad for our
good. Psalm 119:66-68 “Teach
me knowledge and good judgment, for I believe in your commands. Before I was afflicted I went astray,
but now I obey your word. You are good,
and what you do is good; teach me your decrees.”
One thing I can promise this class is some dimension of failure. I want to urge you not to be afraid of failure. There is nothing really wrong with failure if three things happen as a result: First, do not give up. Second, do not trash your loved ones. Third, learn to obey Jesus more fully.
“For the unbeliever, earth is the closest to heaven he is going to get. For the believer, earth is the closest to hell he is going to get.”[2] The devil tries to use evil and failure to trash us. God uses failure to help us. It becomes part of the refinement of our lives.
We all felt
sad this week to learn about the Missionary killed in the
I’ve learned four
things about failure.
1. Failure is never final.
2. Fear of failure, is really the fear of being alone. If I fail, people will hate me and leave me. If people leave me, I will hate myself.
3. Your friends will not abandon you. Admit your mistakes, learn, and go on.
4. God will not abandon you. He will use adversity to shape his character in you.
3.
God will guide you mainly through his Word.
Our Scripture reading today emphasizes that. “ My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, 2 turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, 3 and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, 4 and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, 5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. 6 For the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.”
Many times you will not know what to do on matters big and small. Learn to pray about it and to read the Scripture. Obviously, gather as much information as you can. Talk to as many people as possible. But in the end, be directed by God through his word. If you feel directed by the Lord to do a particular thing then trust God in it. If it doesn’t turn out to be what you hoped it would be, then you know that God has something for you even in that apparent setback.
In the end, a successful life is found in the will of God.
I’ve tried to give you my best biblical advice today. There is one thing about your future about which I have no doubt: You will forget everything I said here today. As a result, you are going to have to do two things: read God’s word for yourself and come back next week to be reminded of the great truths of God’s word.