Several years ago, Stephen Covey wrote an influential book titled, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The second habit is “Begin With the End In Mind.” He writes about living with the end of your life in mind using a visualization exercise. Imagine of yourself at your own funeral and what you hope significant people in your life say about you. It is a powerful technique for focusing on principles that matter. The same can be said for the people of God. We must begin with the end in mind: the reality that God, who created a good world, who broke into human history through the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, is going to bring his work in the present age to its perfect completion in the future. Directing history, God is calling us to participate in his Kingdom-building mission. There is much to do in the here and now because we know where we are going. The Christian hope draws us forward into God’s future and makes sense out of our present.
Now, this is a very different approach than those who subscribe to the Tim LaHaye version of the end, where Christians are instantly raptured out of sight, escaping the negative realities of a sin-sick world, only to return with Christ when he shows up for his Third Coming (where is this third appearance in the Bible?). This escapism is foreign to the whole tenor of the Scriptures. People who begin with that non-Biblical, very inconsistent with God’s plan and purposes, vision of the end of time, tend to be those who believe it is the Church’s job to retreat from society except for purely evangelistic ministries. Any ministry done for the physical person is seen as temporary and only serving the needs of evangelism. I certainly place a high value on evangelism, as does the Bible, but evangelism is only the beginning. People are not saved just so they can go to heaven when they die. We are saved to serve God’s purposes for renewing his entire creation. What about discipleship? Holiness? What about the prayer we pray: “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”? Is the fulfillment of this prayer only to be expected at the very end? Or, as Jesus, Paul, John, Peter, and James suggest, we have a decisive role to play in realizing the perfect will of our Heavenly Father here on earth, now?
Begin with the end in mind: the renewal of earth and heaven, the absolute reign of our King, Jesus. What are we doing in the present with the power of the Holy Spirit to bring this present and future reality into existence? There is much to do now for the Kingdom because we know where we are going.