Hope for the future

Jeremiah 29:11 NKJV

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Yesterday we heard that a friend had left this life, quite suddenly, unexpectedly. It was a shock.

However, we know that she has a glorious future for which she had hoped for throughout her journey of faith in Jesus.

Therefore, although we are sad, we can rejoice that she is with Jesus right now and forever!

This verse from Jeremiah was specifically given to the Hebrew people exiled in Babylon, far from their homeland.

God, via Jeremiah, prophecies that after 70 years of exile He will bring them back to the Promised Land.

Jeremiah 29:10 NKJV

For thus says the LORD: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place.

He did!

Yet He admonishes this:

Jeremiah 29:12-14 NKJV

Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. [13] And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. [14] I will be found by you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.

The Lord wants to be found. He will meet you more than half way.

When Jesus told the story of the prodigal son's return He said that the Father (representing God in the parable) sees the son returning from a long way off and runs to meet him.

Luke 15:20 NKJV

"And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.

But, prior to this, the son had come to his senses, and realised that his foolish, squandering self had reduced him to eating the pig's swill of life.

Luke 15:14-19 NKJV

But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. [15] Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. [16] And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything. [17] "But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! [18] I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, [19] and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants."'

To receive that eternal future hope each one must "come to their senses" realising that we can be gone suddenly, inexplicably - what then?

Isaiah 55:6 NKJV

Seek the LORD while He may be found, Call upon Him while He is near.

God the Father is waiting to welcome you into the Kingdom that Jesus has prepared and to which He has made The Way.