THE BEST IS YET TO COME!

Do not remember the former things,

Nor consider the things of old.

Behold, I will do a new thing,

Now it shall spring forth;

Shall you not know it?

I will even make a road in the wilderness

And rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:18,19

So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten,

The crawling locust,

The consuming locust, 

And the chewing locust,

My great army which I sent among you.

You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,

And praise the name of the Lord your God,

Who has dealt wondrously with you;

And My people shall never be put to shame. Joel 2:25,26

Thanks indeed to social media, and specifically, Facebook, about a month ago, I re-connected with a friend in New Zealand that I have had no contact with for over thirty years. Bruce and I boarded with a young couple in Christchurch in the early eighties for several years, while I was working for Radio Rhema.

Bruce related to me that he had been through a period of eleven years of severe debilitating health issues from age thirty seven, followed by a period of several years seeing their only daughter be taken from them through a terminal illness. Yet, through all these severe trials, Bruce and his wife have remained faithful to follow the Lord Jesus Christ and to trust Him, even though they have unanswered questions as to why God has allowed them to face such severe tests.

I wrote back to Bruce, with a desire to encourage him in the Lord, saying: It might sound like a cliche, but I want to believe for you, as for us, that your best days are ahead. In reply, he answered that he agreed that "The Best Is Yet To Come" if not totally here on earth then definitely in heaven as I am totally convinced that just one second in heaven will be far greater than all of our earthly years. 

He also shared a link to a song he had written and recorded while singing at church called "The Best Is Yet To Come." 
About ten days after Bruce sent me the song, for a period of twenty four to thirty six hours, this song, or at least the chorus to the song kept going around in my head.
To quote some of the lyrics in Bruce's song:
"The best is yet to come,
Yes, the best is yet to come!
The rain will fall again, heal you inside.
Has the flower bloomed into many colours
Or has the blossom come and suddenly gone?
Oh, the best is yet to come,
The best is yet to come.
Living waters will flow again
Out from your heart.
Oh, the best is yet to come!

What is so incredibly encouraging to Tessa and me is that the Lord has confirmed the truth of this song as an encouragement to us at this time, that for us - I believe starting this year - that the best is yet to come! To use a colloquial expression, I believe the Lord is saying for us, as well as for our church home and indeed for every follower of Jesus Christ, as we position ourselves for blessing and breakthrough - 'You ain't seen nothing yet.'

The following are five confirmations of this encouragement that the Lord has given us over the past nine day:

1.  The Saturday before last, while Bruce's song was "playing in my head", I was scrolling through my News Feed on Facebook and suddenly saw a post with a picture of a big cinema screen with the words boldly emblazoned "BUT WAIT - The Lord says 'THE BEST IS YET TO COME.'
2.  That same day, in the evening as I was getting ready to go for my shower, Tessa called out to me that she had just turned the radio on - tuned to Vision Christian Radio, the Australian Christian radio network. The song playing was "The Best Is Yet To Come" by a man named Matty Mullins.
3.  Last Tuesday, we listened to my hour long music program on Tasman FM, a community radio station here in South East Tasmania - which I pre-record at home. After listening, I drove to the service station to check the tyre pressures in my car. When I got back in the car, I thought I would turn Tasman FM on to see what the lady announcer was playing. She forward announced the next three songs she was about to play. The second song in the set she announced as "The Best Is Yet To Come" by Michael Buble. I could not believe what I was hearing. Of all the thousands of songs she could have chosen, she chose to play that song at that time.
4.  On Thursday last week, we received in the mail our quarterly copy of "Creation" magazine, produced by Creation Ministries International. While flicking through the magazine to get an overview of the articles contained, when I got to page 42, I gasped at seeing the title of the article: "The Best Is Yet To Come."
5.  Finally, today while we were watching an episode of an old TV series on DVD, one of the characters, while in conversation said
 "Come and go along with me,
  The best is yet to be."

We feel really excited about our future, knowing that God is going before us and there is a sense of wonder at what the Lord is preparing us for in this next season of our lives.
Another word I have heard from time to time from the Lord is "Position Yourself."
Part of that positioning for us has been to move to a new church home, after being in our previous church for almost seven years. This was not done out of any sense of being disgruntled or being offended by anyone in our previous church home, but with a clear sense of leading by the Holy Spirit to Living Waters Christian Centre in Campania, an as yet, small church with a huge vision to reach the lost and to impact the nations for Jesus Christ. We truly believe that as far as we are concerned: "we have come to the kingdom for such a time as this." God Bless! May you who read this blog be encouraged today to Position Yourself in God's purposes for your life and see what He will do in and through you.

If you have read this blog and would like to know more about becoming a Christian, may I suggest you go online to:
www.vision.org.au. Click on Grow your faith, then Looking for God?