Devotions this week are based on Week 3 of “He Shall Be Called: Everlasting Father” (CLICK HERE)
Do you ever catch yourself asking, “Will this matter in 3 years/10 years, etc.?” Sometimes this question is good when faced with an impulse spending opportunity and you ask yourself, “Will this matter next week?” Or if you are faced with a conflict that seems like a really big deal and you ask, “Will this matter in 2 years?” Often time this question puts into perspective a decision or activity in which we are engaging and helps us evaluate the relative importance of it.
Why do we ask these questions?
Because we know that anything we buy, engage in, or worry about is only temporal. It may have impact for a few days or for a life time, but most of the things we engage in have a beginnand have and end. Because of this we evaluate if we should invest time today based on how long the impact will be.
The fact that Isaiah calls Jesus, “Everlasting Father,” means that Jesus and anything that is connected to him, his life, ministry, death, resurrection, etc. has eternal impact.
Think about it.
We are about to turn the calendar from 2024 to 2025. For 2025 years Jesus has had an impact on the way we mark time. But more than that, he has had impact in every generation that has filled those 2000 plus years. What else could say that? Who else could say that?
Then one moves beyond his point in time at his birth and his years of ministry and realize that even 700 years before his birth, he was influencing the people of Isaiah’s time and farther back to the beginning of time he is the Word that spoke the world into existence.
And then we throw in yesterday’s truth that a key essential quality of Jesus is that he is eternal – without beginning and without end – we know that time itself exists as a subset of Jesus eternal existence.
Which puts us right in the middle of that (or somewhere in the spectrum of time and eternity!)
Which means that our faith in Jesus pulls us out of simply a temporal existence to be part of an eternal reality.
So what does that mean?
Any time we invest in our faith and the ministry of the Gospel always has importance and impact beyond the moment in which we live,
1 Corinthians 15;58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord,because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
Just prior to this, Paul connects the “Why?” to not laboring in vain
Because we are part of something eternal, led by the Everlasting Father who overcame death so we would never die.
1 Corinthians 15:54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”[h]
55 “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”[i]
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Make no mistake. You are part of something eternal…Because Jesus lives, you will live also!
Apply: Do you change anything today because you are part of an eternal movement?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, Everlasting Father, thank you for bringing me into your eternal plan. Lead me to serve you all the days of my life. AMEN