"It's Going to be Okay."

 The older I get, the more I realize how much it means to me when my husband tells me, "It's going to be okay."  Other people can try to reassure me, but when the world spins out of control, I find myself holding my breath until he can get home to put my heart at ease.  I need his words so badly, that I rarely even tell other people when I'm anxious because they really can't do much to give me peace.  But he can.  

In thirty years of loving Tim Taylor, I've come to be certain that when he says, "It's going to be okay," then it's either going to be okay or he's going to make it okay.  Knowing him, trusting him, watching him, growing with him, seeing him come through time after time after time has made me sure that his, "It's going to be okay" is worth believing. 

This week has been one from absolute hell.  People I love are hurting so badly.  Saints that I adore are feeling like failures.  My own life is scattered with details that make my guts churn every single time I think about them. Death is taunting us.  People are fighting for their marriages, their jobs, their reputations and their lives and it would be so easy to sink into a dark pit of depression, anxiety, anger and despair. 

Our Scriptures teach of a Kingdom, a New Jerusalem, the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom not of this world, the Kingdom of His Beloved Son, our Christ Jesus.  For the past few years, I've come to see the entire world as two kingdoms; this kingdom that we live in, and the beautiful, perfect, love-filled, Kingdom that is promised to those who trust that Jesus has made them righteous before God.  In the Kingdom of God, Jesus sits at the right hand of God proving with His blood, His Kingdom and our eternity that it's going to be okay.  

Our ekklesia has been intentional about telling each other the Gospel of Christ as often as we can, usually daily in some form or another.  We've been careful to point each other's attention away from our earthly kingdom and instead to the Kingdom Jesus is building for us.  In some form or fashion, we try to communicate to each other that no matter what happens here, no matter how good or bad it gets, no matter how hopeless things seem, it's going to be okay, because our hope isn't in this world.  In Christ, things are either okay, or He's going to make them okay.  And when He makes them okay, they'll be okay for ETERNITY.  

A few years ago, hearing these encouragements would have seemed cliche, trite or disingenuous.  Telling me that "It's going to be okay because everything in this world is temporary," would have been dismissed as just what religious people say.  But it's wildly different now.  Now, I know Jesus like I know Tim. Knowing Him, trusting Him, watching Him, growing in Him, seeing Him be true to His own Gospel, keeping His promises about reconciling us to His Father, absolutely being the King and Christ He said He was going to be has made me sure that His, "It's going to be okay" is not only worth believing, it's worth risking hope when nothing at all about your situation calls for it.  It's worth walking in joy when it's impossible to fake your own.  It's worth letting go of what the world says is required for life and happiness and finding contentment instead in looking forward to what God has prepared for us. 

Dear brothers and sisters, if you truly trust Jesus and take Him at His word, if you trust His finished work and put no hope in your own religion, flesh, deeds or accomplishments, if you can truly say that you are righteous because of the blood of Jesus and trust Him so much that you look forward to being judged by God because you know that when Jesus died once, for the sins of all, it was finished, then hear me when I say to you that 

It's

going

to

be

okay.  

FOR ALL ETERNITY.  

Our hope is sure. 

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

So that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.