As we obey God, he will continue to lavish his gifts of grace upon us. For there is always blessing on the far side of obedience. “Blessed…are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:28)

To be human is to be finite—to be limited in our knowledge of past, present, and future. We exist within strict boundaries of time and space, so that we cannot see beyond our present location or beyond our present moment. This is a feature of our humanity and not a bug, for even when we were perfect, we were not unlimited. Omnipresence and omniscience belong to God alone, and even in heaven, we will be confined to the space and the moment we inhabit at any given time, for we will only ever be men and never gods.

The consequence is that the future remains entirely unknown to us. We advance through time, never knowing what the next moment will bring. We open a door (whether literal or metaphorical), never knowing if we will walk into joy or sorrow. We form relationships, never knowing if they will lead to laughter or tears. We visit a doctor, never knowing if the treatment will bring relief or pain. We just don’t know. We can’t know, for God wisely withholds the future from us.

Yet as we consider the future, we can always be assured of one outcome: There is blessing on the far side of obedience.

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