We Know the End

God wins.

When I wrote the above two lines down I was tempted to stop there and just publish.

For many of you I know that would be all the encouragement needed to focus your day. In its brevity the message would open up your own thoughts, and I think this is a good thing.

Obviously, I did not choose to go with this first impulse. A two-line post would inspire some, but for others it might confuse, and still others it might annoy. We all do not believe one or both of these ideas.

So let me talk to both groups first together and then separately.

All of us are on the same journey in this sense. We all were born, are now alive and will eventually die. Of course this appears to be one-third bad news. Dying isn’t a pleasant topic and if it is permitted to poison our thoughts then it back-flows into the other two realities we all share. It makes some wish they were never born and they can lose joy in living their lives right now.

So which are you?

Does the thought of death hold you back from stepping out and living with more freedom, or have you become settled in just how profound it is to discover that you have been told the end of the story ahead of time and you know how everything turns out?

Allow me to differentiate these two groups further.

If you believe God wins, you do so IN SPITE OF YOUR SITUATION.

And if you do not believe God wins, perhaps because you are not sure he even exists, then you likely do not believe BECAUSE OF YOUR SITUATION.

I have just described the battle of faith.

For those who believe, the life they can then live is different from those who doubt.

Doubters are on their own and must rely on their own innate skills to navigate the storms of life.

Believers can rest and enjoy relationships knowing that in the end, not based on their cunning and performance, everything turns out perfectly, and the death they once feared has been taken care of, by the one, who created everything in the first place. Death for the believer is just a door to so much more than any of us can imagine.

Now read my next line carefully, otherwise you will think it is a mistake.

Because God is and is God, he is above all and so will never lose. Of course God wins. Will you with him?