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28th August 2024
WednesdayReflection
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Scott Hubbard shares
Managing Editor, desiringGod.org
God Behind Me, God Before Me
Looking Backward and Forward by Faith
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The end of a year invites us to take a look backward and forward - back to the year whose last pages are turning, forward to the year whose cover lies before us.
Depending on where you are in life, however, studying the past and the future might feel like more than you can bear.
Our worst days - or weeks, or months, or years - have a way of burying the mercies of God in our past, and darkening the promises of God for our future.
The past becomes a list of hopes deferred, relationships lost, opportunities squandered, all telling the broken story of how we landed here.
And the future, as far as we can see, will only get worse.
For God's people, however, what we see never tells the full story.
"We walk by faith, not by sight"
2 Corinthians 5:7
Faith, not sight, must be our guide as we scan the pages of yesterday and turn the page of tomorrow.
And faith has a different interpretation than what our worst moments would suggest.
When faith looks to the past and to the future, it says with David,
"You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us"
Psalm 40:5
The past, no matter how many ghosts walk there, is full of his wondrous deeds.
The future, no matter how many sorrows await us there, is full of his merciful plans.
The past - our own past, if we are in Christ - is not mainly a story of sin and sorrow, but rather of the wonders of God that forgive our sins and heal our sorrows.
We should not be surprised if we sometimes struggle to see such wonders when we look behind us.
Only the Holy Spirit can reveal God's wonders to us, whether in the pages of Scripture or the pages of our past.
The Holy Spirit does open our eyes, however, and he does so as we look.
Consider, then, the wonders that God has wrought in your past - wonders that David could have only dreamed of.
But keep looking.
If you belong to Jesus, then God has not withheld his mercy from you (Psalm 40:11).
If you are Christ's, then God has drawn near to you in all your neediness.
He has heard every sigh, seen every sadness, caught every tear.
He has so sanctified every sorrow that it has become, in his hands, a minister of mercy.
Here is comfort enough to heal all your sorrows.
No past can be a wasteland if Christ himself has walked there.
No matter how much guilt and grief is buried in the years gone by, the ground bears the footprints of "the God who works wonders".
As we find ourselves rehearsing all the bitterness behind us, then, we need to tell ourselves the fuller story:
"God has forgiven me; Christ has redeemed me; the past is full of his wondrous deeds."
Do not miss the footprints of mercy amid the shadows of the past year.
Now, what does David see when he looks forward?
"You have multiplied, O Lord my God . . . your thoughts toward us"
Psalm 40:5
The word for thoughts here is the same word translated elsewhere as plans, most famously in Jeremiah 29:11: "I know the plans that I have for you . . ."
When God multiplies his thoughts toward his people, he is multiplying his merciful plans.
Of course, the merciful plans God multiplies for us likely will be quite different from the plans we would multiply for ourselves.
And we can thank God they will be, for we are poor planners, every one of us: we dream up seventy years of happiness, while God has eternity on his mind
Whatever else you see when you look ahead, then, see the mercies God has multiplied for you.
The future, though mysterious, is not the grey blank many of us expect it to be.
The future is the storehouse of God's merciful plans, if only we had eyes to see them.
We are hemmed in by the faithfulness of God.
Behind us are his wondrous deeds. Before us are his merciful plans.
Both of them are marvellous and more than can be told.
With such a God behind us and before us, we need not allow the past to swallow us, nor the future to worry us.
The past and the future belong to him - and most importantly, so do we.
><(((°>
This is an edited version.
The full article and Bible references are avaiable on request
Our Founder
John Piper was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Bill and Ruth Piper January 11, 1946.
His father was an itinerant evangelist, and his mother died in 1974 in a bus accident while visiting Israel.
In 1980, sensing an irresistible call of the Lord to preach, John became the senior pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he ministered for almost 33 years.
Desiring God began inauspiciously in 1994 when John handed off the church's tape ministry to his assistant, Jon Bloom.
Scott Hubbard is the managing editor for Desiring God, a pastor at All Peoples Church, and a graduate of Bethlehem College and Seminary.
He and his wife, Bethany, live with their three sons in Minneapolis.
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