Living Your Future (Friday Devotional)

“Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!””

Revelation 5:11-13

Everyone has an ideal future they visualize for themselves. It could feature a four-bedroom house in the country, a passport filled with stamps, an award ceremony in which you’re giving the acceptance speech, or any number of other possibilities—whatever your dream, you know it so well it almost seems real. It’s something you’ve pictured dozens if not hundreds of times, and you can rapturously envision how you would feel if you were to achieve it.

The issue then becomes how to attain such a future. Successful people, from bestselling novelists to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, are all used to receiving the same question from people who dream of achieving their level of success: what should I do to someday get where you are? The frequent reply comes in the form of another question: what are you doing now to get there? The future you visualize, at least according to those who have achieved their own dreams, is not something you stumble upon or that just happens magically—it is something you should be preparing for now.

In Revelation 5, John receives a vision of heaven, of thousands upon thousands surrounding God’s throne and singing in unison, praising Christ as worthy of all honor and glory. It is a beautiful, overwhelming picture of both the present and the future—of what takes place in heaven today and what all believers will one day experience for themselves. For thousands of years, Christians have looked to this promise with hope, looking forward to the day when they will fully know the presence of God and their voices will join the eternal song.

But like any other dream you might visualize, it is important to ask: how are you preparing now for the heavenly future you want someday? The tendency is to separate eternal life in heaven from life on earth today, to believe that the two are entirely separate realities with no bearing on one another, but if the Christ who reigns in heaven is the same Christ who lives in you, then surely there must be some overlap. In Christ the kingdom of God has come to earth, so your song of praise to the Lamb need not wait until after death—you can start rehearsing it today!

Life looks different when you see it as a preparation for surrounding the throne. From the way you go about your work to the way you raise your children to the way you talk about people who are different than you, everything you do becomes an act of worship. When undertaken with intentionality, no interaction is insignificant; every moment is an opportunity to share the love of Christ in word and deed, to worship in spirit and in truth. May the hope of heaven not just be something you visualize, but something for which you prepare today.