The Shortfall With “God Knows The Future” – A Christmas Observation

“God knows the future.”

This is a belief and statement that I have so often personally taken ahold of.  However, I have come to see the shortfall of being satisfied with just that.  This is simply not enough and because of it, it affects (limits!) other areas of my belief and faith.  To say that God “knows” the future is true, but limits Him.  Why?  Because I am placing Him in the present (though He is), but refraining Him from the future.  It puts Him alongside of me in the perspective of “now,” looking forward.  So, He is like me, except that He is also able to “know” the future (He “knows” what is coming, “knows” what will happen, etc.).  I am limiting Him (not truly, but rather limiting Him in my life, thus my faith) to fit into the time and reality in which He has created, in the same way that I exist in this time and reality…as if He stands beside me looking forward and seeing what is ahead, though I cannot.  The truth is, He is already there, too.  He is already part of the moments that I simply know as “the future.”  So, to say that He “knows” the future is not enough.  He is there.  He is not part of each moment, arriving at them as I do.  He does not move from moment to moment as I do.  He is here AND He is there.

When I look at Him in this perspective, many things change.  The present, the future, even the past!  Most importantly, I stop seeing God as having sent His Son into time as we know it (i.e. God “came” to the moment in time, ~2,000 years ago, and decided to send His Son into creation…).  God is not limited by time, but rather time has limitations by God.  Can it be possible that God sent His Son to this earth to die even before He created the heavens and the earth?  That His glory within “time and reality” is demonstrated through His Son on earth?!  After all, if Christ has first place in everything, would that not also include death?  I am now in the age of time that this mystery has been made known to humanity.  I can know that “time and reality” revolve around His Son, Jesus Christ.  The axis of reality, of time, is Jesus Christ.  This brings me to my knees in awe of a limitless God, who IS Love, Goodness, and Faithfulness.  Glory be to God in this season of celebrating His Son’s arrival (as we know it) from eternity (that’s forever, by the way—no starting, no ending)!

My Christmas passage for you…

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation because by Him everything was created in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.  He is before all things and by Him all things hold together.  He is also the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He might come to have first place in everything.  For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile everything to Himself by making peace through the blood of His cross—whether things on earth or things in heaven.” – Colossians 1:15-20 (HCSB)

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