Salvation is nearer

By The NewsDay | Nov. 28, 2015 | 4 Min read

AS the penultimate month of the year ends and the countdown to year-end enters the home stretch, many are reflecting and planning ahead. It’s a season where reality dawns and faith is tested.

Those of little faith abandon hope, choosing to side with facts instead of truth. It’s a mixed pot in which some will be celebrating the best year ever while others are enduring the worst year ever. The celebration of the festive season is dampened by the outcome of your personal audit of your yearly resolutions. The outlook of the national economy doesn’t make things better either. The socio-economic and political climate may challenge the exuberance and verve with which you took off at the beginning. Against this backdrop, I ask you to consider that as you navigate with trepidation to an apparent dead end, you’re nearer a breakthrough now than when you first started the journey.

The year naturally starts with mountain-moving faith and unfortunately degenerates into anthill-moving faith and fizzles out as wind that can’t be caught. Many start the year with God by embarking on days of prayer and fasting presenting their resolutions unto God. Others undertake their yearly consecration programme towards the close of the year and hit the ground running in the new year aware that early birds catch the worm. Barring provisions of various faith practices, there are others that start and end a year and even a day obliviously carefree. At the end of the year, as it is in life in general, there will always be mixed outcomes; some get more than they planned while others receive below expectations or just about break even, as it were.

I don’t seek to apportion blame, accuse you nor add salt to injury, but to give you hope. Today’s piece intends to exhort you and recall your attention to your first hope. I intend to realign you to the high spirits you had when you set out to go.

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Scripture asserts in Romans 13:11, “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed”. The last part of the verse assures us that as we purposefully drift away from the starting point, we draw closer to realisation of set targets. If you started with God, you have to trust Him all the way. Facts on the ground and natural parameters and indicators may point otherwise, but you simply have to go by God’s verdict. As a believer always remember 2 Corinthians 5:7 which says, “For we walk by faith, not by sight”. He has the final say. It may appear irrational and idiotic, but stick to His way. Commit everything to His care, giving Him glory always including in circumstances in which results don’t tally with your expectations.

Isaiah makes a statement of truth of faithfulness of God. Isaiah 25:1 reads, “O Lord, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth”. Instead of counsels of old, simpler versions use plans made long ago. May I say to you that plans you agreed upon with God for your life still stand. You could have abandoned such plans, but God didn’t. If you wandered away, when you come back to your senses, you will find God waiting on you. He isn’t double-minded. Although God blesses His permissible will for you, He is faithful to hold His original will for you should you repent. Because of His love for us, He accommodates our intransigency according to Romans 8:28. It reads, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Many of us shall be shocked in heaven when God shows us what we could have been.

Have you scaled down your hope or scrapped off some items and resolutions from the original plan? Believe again, don’t downsize God’s power and grace. It may sound impractical. Let’s say you budgeted for a certain house or car but the resources that came provided for a lesser budget and you settled for the cheaper. This is common in our economy and you did wisely. According to the allocation of faith you had at the beginning, there’s a portion pending which you should not throw away. Leave it in the hands of God to offset with a better deal. This is done in the domain of God called supernatural and comes to you as a miracle.