Looking Back to Look Forward [PILGRIM IV Excerpt] // FAI'S 10-YEAR ANNIVERSARY
I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember Your wonders of old. I will ponder all Your work, and meditate on Your mighty deeds.[1]
I have come to realize that I have a very odd spiritual gift. It’s not one you will find on any spiritual gift inventory (who likes those anyways?). And you won’t find it made explicit in Scripture. I call this spiritual gift the gift of hindsight discernment. I define it as the (occasional) ability to understand what God has been up to in my past. Hindsight discernment is not to be confused with regular discernment. Discernment refers to our ability to understand what God is doing in and through and around our lives (individually and corporately). I have only become aware of my hindsight discernment gift as I have struggled with my frequent inability to understand what God is up to in my present. Discerning God’s present activity is a massive help to planning our future. The problem is we can’t always see so clearly. At least not with 20/20 clarity. While hindsight discernment is not explicitly named in Scripture, this peculiar gift undoubtedly exists. It is there from beginning to end. It is called remembrance. It is a mandate given throughout the Word of God to remember the greatness of God’s faithfulness even in the midst of our weak faith.
We are instructed to embed the history of God’s faithfulness not only into our minds but also upon our hearts...lest we forget:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.[2]
How do we learn to lean into a future that is uncertain and can never really be proven? Keep in mind that none of us can definitively establish to another (or ourselves) what God has yet to do in our lives. But we can precisely point to what He has already done. The clarity comes, paradoxically, by hindsight. As we “remember the deeds of the Lord”[3] our confidence swells, even in the midst of our present uncertainty. As we busy ourselves with actually living lives of faith we rarely have certainty of God’s present presence and direction.
Abiding in faith can feel very confusing and sometimes disorienting. Perhaps our time pondering all of His work and meditating on His mighty deeds[4] provides the encouragement we need to endure another day...or another decade. As we bring to remembrance the entire history of God’s activity on earth, we build our trust in His goodness even when we cannot trace His present path for us. As we look back on the journey of life we begin to see how God has been at work through all of the uncertainty, leading us forward into the people we are becoming. We must remember the wonders of old.[5] We must see the blood red thread of redemption running throughout the Word of God—and through our lives. Remembrance is, indeed, a powerful gift. The dark depression that fuels this present evil age is best conquered by our hope for tomorrow as we look back at what The Lord has already done. As we endure the difficulties of an endless string of ambiguous todays and uncertain tomorrows, we have an absolute need of remembrance. This is true for individuals. It is also true for organizations.
So, for FAI, we find it important at this 10-year mark to pull our FAI van into the rest stop just long enough to look back at what the Lord has done for us so far. And, in doing so, we fill our tank with Living Hope[6] for the days ahead. We glance in the rearview mirror. We clean our windshield. We expand our horizon.
We look back to look forward.
We pause to reflect and to consider the faithfulness of God and His mighty deeds to call us, to consecrate us, to provide for us; to teach us, to discipline us, to heal and restore us, to grow us, to transform us, to lead us. A disciplined practice of hindsight discernment of the last ten years only serves to help us more clearly discern the Lord’s plans and purposes for FAI in the next ten years. We look back to trace the history of God’s blessing so that we might gain confidence in His guidance, no matter the course of our coming days.
Let me give you a few examples of how it works:
A little more than ten years ago, a group of wide-eyed young believers bound themselves together in a covenantal relationship to reach deeply into the Muslim majority world with the hope of pioneering gospel foundations where there were none.[7] We were young and immature and prone to wander. We made mistakes. There were days we did not consider ourselves blessed. But looking back, we can trace God’s hand as He used these early days to form and shape us. We needed time to learn to walk and to talk and to carry ourselves in a manner that re-presented Christ in His best light (this process is definitely ongoing). As we look back, we call to remembrance the difficult days of being forged in the fire, saved from the flood, delivered from the pit, etc. In doing so, we celebrate the unbroken faithfulness of God to lead us through every season. As we look back...we can see the blessing.
We can look back now and remember the blessing of God’s exquisite provision of people, access, and resources to establish our presence in the epicenter of the unreached. He has opened doors for us in tightly shut up locations amongst tightly shut up people. By His grace, we have been granted access to share the Gospel of the Kingdom amongst people who have eternity in their hearts but no personal remembrance of Jesus. As we look back and remember what He has done to fling open those tightly shut doors for us...we can see the blessing.
So we look forward with boldness and a confident assurance of the blessing of God. Our confidence is not because we can recount an unblemished history of perpetual blessing. We have definitely known times of anger, fear, sickness, and worry. At times, our FAI van has felt like a van full of young children in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the night. With no gas. And a blown-out tire. Seriously, there have been many days we have not felt blessed. Maybe you are not feeling blessed right now as you read. That is ok. The Lord’s blessing does not rely on our feelings. God has pronounced us blessed. His favor is upon us, no matter how we feel. That’s the value of hindsight discernment. We do not have to rely on feeling blessed. We can look back and remember the faithfulness of God...and be blessed.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.[8]
I want you to hear that part again: He has blessed us. Looking back in order to look forward means our collective history should fuel our collective future with breathless expectation!
To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness, it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God.[9]
Most remarkably, the Lord has emblazoned upon our hearts a word (really an Aramaic phrase) that not only laser focuses our hindsight discernment but also catalyzes our propensity to hope with breathless expectation:
MARANATHA.
Is there a better word? We use this word to look back and remember what Jesus, our great, high missionary, has done for us. He gave up the ultimate comfort of dwelling within the Godhead. He made Himself nothing. He clothed himself in flesh. He became a servant. He died the worst death.[10] He drank the entire cup of God’s wrath.[11] He took our sin upon Himself that we might have His righteousness.[12]
Looking back in remembrance of all He has done for us, we can most definitely see the blessing.
But, oh what precious fuel this word provides to the raging bonfire of Blessed Hope that is the age to come. We cry “Maranatha” as a plea for Him to come and rescue our sin sick world from its decay. We join our Maranatha cry to the apostles (Paul[13] and John and the Spirit and the Bride[14]) as we long for the return of Christ.
We look all the way back, to look all the way forward. We invite you to do the same.
Maranatha.
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Jeff Henderson serves as the Director of Frontier Alliance International, after having served previously as the Chairman of the FAI Board of Directors. He is the Founding Pastor of Maranatha Church of Jacksonville and gives leadership to a number of ministries and pioneers across the globe, as well as co-hosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Stephanie Quick. Find out more at jeffhenderson.global.
[1] Psalm 77:11-12 ESV
[2] Deuteronomy 6:4-12, emphasis added
[3] Psalm 77:11
[4] Psalm 77:12
[5] Ibid.
[6] 1 Peter 1:3
[7] Romans 15:20
[8] Ephesians 1:3, ESV
[9] Chambers, Oswald (1934). “The Graciousness of Uncertainty (April 29),” My Utmost for His Highest. Retrieved from https://utmost.org/classic/the-graciousness-of-uncertainty-classic/
[10] Philippians 2:5-11
[11] Matthew 26:39; Luke 22:39-46
[12] 2 Corinthians 5:21
[13] 1 Corinthians 16:22
[14] Revelation 22:17