"Your Kingdom come..." - not worrying about the future

I took a long trip up to Virginia this weekend. Along the way, I got tired of my short supply of CDs, so I turned on the local Christian radio station. As I listened to both the songs and the radio hosts, I was reminded of what I so often see happening all around me in the church today - Christians displaying a shallow, short-sighted perspective in how they perceive their relationship with God. Let me explain - the predominant concerns that I hear from people's prayer requests, among bible studies, in pastors' sermons, and during conversations offline deal with day-to-day worries, healing from emotional wounds, petty arguments at work and in the home, and even worse attitudes. And what's more is that rarely is any of this met with sound biblical counsel - the kind of wise admonition and exhortation declared by Paul to young Timothy. Usually, I hear some vague, therapeutic words of encouragement focusing on being patient during trials, God's general provision, and his overwhelming love for his people. No doubt these things are true - about as true as when someone asks about the details of my job, I tell them I work for the Army. Yes, in essence, I am telling the truth - but my answer was not really helpful to my friend. Surely Christ has left us with something more to grasp onto in his Word...

I believe that there are many answers to this issue - all grounded in the gospel, of course - but we can definitely come at it from different angles from Scripture. But one thing that I see reiterated over and over again is the theme of the prophets and the apostles being eschatologically-minded - that is, having a mind familiar with God's acts in the past, an intimate grasp of His promises of things to come, and an eager anticipation for that last day when Christ returns in glory to receive us into his kingdom.

First, we see that the patriarchs and prophets were eschatologically-minded: as Abraham received the promises of God concerning the future of his great family, he saw Jesus' day and rejoiced (John 8:56). Jacob saw a ladder representing the mediating work of Christ that granted God's people access to heavenly realities. Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel (to name a few!) all had visions of glory where Christ reigned in his consummated kingdom with his people.

The apostles were eschatologically-minded: Paul speaks to the Romans about our inward longing for the redemption of our bodies as adopted sons of God at the last day (Romans 8:18-25). Both Peter and Jude give Old Testament examples as analogies of the judgment to come on the last day and how God is able to save us from his consuming wrath (2 Peter 2:4-10, Jude 6-25). John writes an entire book about the revelation he received from Christ himself and the kingdom that is to come - a kingdom where God finally dwells among his people once again, world without end.

And finally, Jesus himself taught us to be eschatogically-minded. Two examples in particular that jump out at me both occur in Matthew 6 - the first is one of the first things Jesus tells his disciples to ask for when praying to the Father. Jesus tells his disciples to pray that God's kingdom come into this world and that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). Addressing the issues of worry and anxiety about menial, temporal things, Jesus then tells his disciples to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Matthew 6:33). With such perspectives, our "worries" about these temporal things dissipate, as they are far outweighed by the longing and hopeful expectation of God's glorious reign breaking through into this world in consummating fashion.