God’s Time Frame for Your Life

Life and Death

It was Carroll, Iowa, in the late 1960s and early 1970s; I was in high school and jogging was just becoming popular.

A huge city cemetery sat right behind our backyard, and three to four times a week I'd hop over the fence and take a run. Many times I'd stop and look at gravestones, noting a person's name, birth year, and death year.

Since then I thought how most people define life in a physical way, by when we are born and die. We celebrate our birthdays, and sooner or later we die. Then we have memorial services and receive one of those gravestones with our names and two dates on it. We have only so many years on this earth, and then we are gone.

A New Spiritual Outlook

A few years later I was attending Iowa State University. It was my first day of classes and I still remember waking up to my roommate's clock radio playing a song called Won't Get Fooled Again.

But it wasn't until later that year that my foolishness was taken away, for by God's grace I realized my problem was sin and that Jesus Christ was the only answer – and I believed that Jesus died for me and paid for all my sins. I was born again. I was forgiven. I was a child of God in the Kingdom of God. I didn't fear death anymore, for death was but a door from this life to the next, from Earth to Heaven. This was the Gospel – the best news I had ever heard.

Now I had a heavenly Father (my earthly father had passed away 10 years earlier). Life was no longer just a physical life, but more so it was a spiritual life, a relationship with God Himself. I had eternal life, and I was going to live forever (John 11:25-26)!

God's Word became my favorite school book, and God was my teacher. He taught me that my relationship with Him was in three parts:

The past: I was justified, I was born again and had a spiritual birthday.

The present: I am now being sanctified, and I am spiritually growing up.

The future: I will be glorified, I will be perfect – body, soul and spirit.

This sums it up – justified, sanctified, and glorified. But I learned that being glorified doesn't happen when I physically die. Christians who die are rid of their old body go to Heaven, and never experience any more sin, sickness, or sadness. However, they are not yet glorified.

Being glorified doesn't occur until Christ returns at the end of this age. It is at that glorious occurrence that believers receive our brand new, perfect, powerful, spiritual, and eternal bodies. An individual's salvation is only completed when he is glorified.

This perspective of our life is seen and summed up in many verses:

Philippians 1:6: Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 1:30: But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.

Colossians 3:3-4: For ye [have died], and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.

Prophetic Insight

Eventually I began learning about prophecy, and I realized that my life on earth was converging and coinciding with the end-times. I saw that I could be here when Christ returns. If that is to be the case, I will be glorified along with all the other believers from all of history.

It became clear to me that there are two possibilities for my future: Either I'll make it to the end of my life and die and go to Heaven, or I'll make it to the end of this age, be raptured, glorified, and then go to Heaven.

A Change of Thinking

Do you ever think about this? Do you realize that you may not live to be 70, 80, or 90 years old? You may not become a grandparent. You may not have children. You may not even get married. However, the fact that you are living in the end-times means you need to look at life differently, for your glory days are not that far away.

You may be living on earth when Christ returns and raptures all the saints. Thinking about life in this way changes things and it helps you to not be fleshly and worldly, but to be living for God. Living in view of the Rapture affects the things you do, the places you go, the people you see, and how you use your time and money.

You need to see that the time frame of your life is now fitting in with God's time frame for the end-times. Knowing this gives you the proper perspective on your life! Now, in these days, is your time to live for God!

Steven Hogan has been a pastor-teacher for the past 25 years, and the pastor at Hope Bible Church of Tampa since 2003.