THE LONGER I’VE BEEN IN THE FAITH; THE MORE I MATURE; and the firmer I become on various doctrinal positions—everything from eschatology and cosmology to graceology and doxology—I find myself succumbing to an ever-deepening fear of the Lord on the understanding, and coming to terms with the fact, that I am indeed a fallible soul, and undoubtedly will at the moment of my death be very wrong on any number of positions which I firmly held to.

Someday I am expected to give a full account, not only for how I lived out my practical—and at times, most impractical—beliefs in action, but far more importantly, what I wrote about and taught; and that is a frightening thought. I know I must stand before the Creator, and when I do, my legs may wobble with the muscular strength of a wet noodle when He calls my name and asks that I step forward. And yet I know my God is good.

At the risk of sounding irreverent to our Redeemers saving graces, I can’t help but imagine, from the moment I enter the gates of God’s kingdom, that I’ll simply fall on my face due to the mere realization that I actually made it; I’m in; I forsook the inheritance of the powers of darkness and the gods of this world in order that I might receive the crucified Christ; I survived the separation of the sheep and the goats and the fires of Gehenna. Like an exhausted swimmer who survived the shipwreck, and only now managed to collapse onto the sandy shore of an unknown island on the map—which ironically, I’d searched for my entire life—I’ll probably just lay there on my face. You guys will have to step over and sweep around me, and I may not even move for ten or twenty years while I continue lying there on my face contemplating the incredible reality of an eternity before me in which I might be a partaker of God’s delectable presence, now that heaven has finally conquered Earth.

I can only hope that one of you will finally come along, after I’ve been laying there for ten or twenty years on my face, and be like: “Dude, you can get up now. You missed out on the feast with Abraham and Isaac and the Prophets, and the ten-course meal was amazing, but we saved you some cake.”

I say this not to be irreverent towards God and His coming kingdom, but in hopes that my fellow brothers and sisters in the faith—those of you who love the Lord; who earnestly seek Him and attempt to understand what it means to be a disciple of the crucified Christ—move forward in humility, grace, and love, as each of us recognizes how easily we stumble over our own fallible minds. Let us not forget, if we have washed our robes in the blood of the lamb, that there is only one pilgrim’s journey and we happen to be on it together. Ultimately we’re simply trying to untangle ourselves from the horse blinders of human tradition and figure it all out.

God’s narrative, and his inheritance to come, is so much greater than our wildest schemes. When you forsake, “My will be done,” and pray therefore, “Thy will be done,” prepare to be awed.

Together we pray: “May God’s kingdom come and His will be done, on earth as it is in heaven….”

Look for me on the far side banks of Jordan.

^“Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.  Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.”

1 Corinthians 9:24-27

^“For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.  I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.”

2 Timothy 4:6-8