We can take it for granted that God’s way will always work — it will always accomplish the purpose that He had in mind, whether that purpose is clear to us or not. So the question is not what will happen, but what our principles should be.
We are a “reaching people” who strain forward, eager to connect with something that can fill our needs. Foolishly, however, we reach for the wrong things, things that can’t satisfy us. But if we grasp the wrong things, we doom ourselves to death.
Satan loves to discourage us. He takes perverse delight in keeping us from taking even one step toward God. But he need not have the last word. We can determine that, God being our helper, we will summon the courage, self-respect, and energy to act!
In the end, the dividing line won’t be between those who had it easy and those who didn’t; it will be between those who decided to go to heaven and those who didn’t. When “every wind of doctrine” is gusting, it’s the set of our sails that matters.
Nothing gained by mere personality techniques will last. God sees behind our personalities, and most other people do too. Eventually the Law of the Farm will prevail: we will reap as we have sown. There is no short cut to any harvest worth having.
The important thing right now is not perfection but progress. As we work toward perfection as a goal, we’ll make more progress if we concentrate on taking the steps that are immediately before us. Those are always steps that we’re capable of taking.
This life will always be incomplete. Recognizing that we’re not going to see anything more than God’s work “in progress” right now, we are free to dream and yearn and long for the time when His plan will reach its climax, and we can finally go home.
In the end, it’s our deeds that God will judge (2 Corinthians 5:10) — not what we said we believed, not what we wanted to believe, and not what we were planning to believe someday. It’s a fact: what we actually DO is what we really believe.
We should cherish the idea of rich relationship, both with God and those who’ve been created in His image. We ought to work on building good relationships. And the maintenance of our relationships ought to be one of our most pressing priorities.
Take time to find out what things mean. These days, most of us stay so busy with our own trivia, we rarely stop to ask the meaning of even the most important things around us. But we’re the losers when we fail to ask, “What does that mean?”
As Peter wrote to his beloved brethren, we should be "waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God" (2 Peter 3:12). Oh, to hear the glorious, triumphant sound of the trumpet of God! May we hear it much sooner rather than later!