Present with Christ: In the arms of eternity

When Job went through loss, he asked God for an explanation. But God never gave him an answer. Instead, God gave Job a revelation of Himself. And that was enough. Before we try to solve everything with logic or search endlessly for explanations, the best place to begin is simply getting to know God’s character through prayer and His Word. From there, He provides wisdom and revelation at the right time. Even Solomon, the wisest king who ever lived, spent a lifetime speaking and writing wisdom so great that the whole world came to hear what he had to say. Yet in the end, his conclusion was simple: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man (Ecclesiastes 12:13). That’s the foundation. Our God is good, and sometimes the deepest peace comes not from answers, but from trusting Him. 

God and Christ are not bound by the limits of space or time. Psalm 90 tells us that before the mountains were formed, before the world itself existed, God already was. In John 8:58, Jesus makes the staggering claim, “Before Abraham was, I am.” He exists outside the ticking of clocks and the boundaries of creation. For Him, yesterday and tomorrow are always present, and when we are with Christ, we enter His realm where His glory, His love, and His holiness are fully experienced. This realm is beyond our physical universe, outside the dimensions we know or can know from this realm. Paul explains this in Colossians 1:15–23, showing us the eternal scope of who Christ is: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” Christ is not just part of creation; He is before it, the source and sustainer of it. He is outside time yet present within it, holding galaxies and atoms together by His word. He is “the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent.” His eternity is not a distant abstraction but the very reason creation exists and continues. From the beginning to the end, Christ reigns. This eternal Christ is the One who has reconciled us “by His blood on the cross” to present us holy and blameless before God. The eternal God stepped into time to secure an eternal redemption. This explains why God did not create us out of loneliness. He doesn’t rely on company the way we do, or even on air, food, or sleep. God is self-sufficient, lacking nothing. The God who doesn’t need you still wants you. The God who lacks nothing still chooses you. That is love. Not a needy love, but an overflowing love. Real love isn’t selfish; it is shared. That’s what we see in the Trinity. Father, Son, and Spirit, each delighting in the other, giving to the other, and honoring the other. No pride, no rivalry, no competition. only eternal, equal, perfect love. Jesus didn’t come to earth and choose a dramatic death at random. He knew exactly why He came. From the start, He told His disciples His mission. Being fully God, He willingly went to the cross.  not because He desired suffering, but because it was the only way sin could be dealt with. God made the world perfect, but we corrupted it. Free, yet fallen, we were destined for sin, and Jesus came to make it perfect again. At the cross, He stood in our place, bearing the penalty of death that justice required. He who knew no sin became sin for us. The Creator entered His creation, humbled Himself, and absorbed the punishment that belonged to us. Why? Because He could not bear to be separated from us. He loves spending time with us so much, He never wants us to die and He despises death. Passing away is like stepping outside the space-time continuum into Christ’s presence. From our perspective the body waits, but the believer is already in communion with the Lord, perfected spiritually, free from pain, and full of joy. At the final judgment, body and soul will be reunited and glorified, but even now the dead in Christ are alive in His presence. Believers go into Christ’s realm, fully conscious, perfected spiritually, and outside time, space, and matter.  

When the Bible sometimes says that a person who has died is “asleep,” it doesn’t mean their soul is unconscious or unaware. It’s describing what their body looks like from our perspective. That’s the language Scripture uses, but it doesn’t mean the person has ceased to exist or lost awareness. Some groups take that language to mean the dead are actually sleeping in a state of soul-unconsciousness until the resurrection. But the rest of Scripture doesn’t support that view. He doesn’t say we wait in a kind of blank sleep; he says as soon as we leave the body, we are with Christ. In Philippians 1:23, Paul even says he desires “to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” That only makes sense if Paul knew he would immediately experience Christ’s presence after death. It’s a bit like stepping out of time itself. We see death as an end, but in reality it’s an entrance. Imagine someone living inside a two-dimensional painting  to them, the frame is the limit. But when they step out, they find a whole three-dimensional world beyond what they knew. That’s what death is for a Christian: stepping beyond the frame into Christ’s realm, where His glory and love are experienced fully. The body may “sleep” here, but the soul is wide awake in His presence. Think of Plato’s cave. In his story, prisoners are chained inside a cave so that all they can see are shadows cast on the wall by firelight. For them, the shadows are reality; they don’t know there’s a world outside. But if one prisoner is set free and walks out of the cave, he’s blinded at first, but then he sees the sun, the trees, the sky, and the true world he never imagined. Life here is real, but it’s also shadowed, partial, and bound by time and matter. We see flickers of glory, dim outlines of truth. But when we step out of this cave, out of the space-time frame, we see Christ as He is. Suddenly we are in His realm, where His love and holiness are no longer filtered through shadows but shine in full brightness. The “sleep” of the body is only from the perspective of those still watching shadows on the wall; the soul has already stepped into the light. Think about a baby in the womb. For nine months, that’s its whole reality: warm, dark, and contained. The baby doesn’t know there are mountains and oceans or that the sun rises and sets every day.  All it knows is that small, enclosed world. Then comes birth. From the baby’s perspective, it must feel like the end the walls close in, the pressure mounts, and everything is pain and confusion. Yet that very suffering is what brings life. The painful contractions, the narrow passage, the struggle all of it is the process that ushers the baby into a larger, brighter, freer world it could never imagine before. When we step out of this life, we will see God fully. Right now, we walk by faith and not by sight. We live in what Scripture calls “the god of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4), the time where Satan blinds minds, promotes sin, and stirs rebellion. We are constantly under attack. Yet God has not left us without help. Through the Holy Spirit, believers have access to God’s power, wisdom, and presence. The Spirit convicts us, strengthens us, and keeps us, even while Satan rages in the world around us. Still, this present life is a battlefield. We feel the tension of living in Christ’s kingdom already, but it is not yet fully revealed. Satan’s influence clouds the vision of unbelievers, but even believers experience temptation, distraction, and weakness in this fallen world. The millennium reveals something important about the human heart. Revelation tells us it is a thousand-year reign where Christ restrains Satan, binding him so he can no longer deceive the nations. Imagine that: the great tempter silenced, the great deceiver chained, the father of lies unable to operate. And yet even in that time, rebellion is inevitable.  The millennium proves that sin is not just Satan’s influence but also the condition of the human heart. People still have free will, and even with Christ visibly reigning, some will choose to rebel. Outward conditions may be transformed, but without inward change, the heart remains prone to wander. Think of it like this. There’s a boy named Timmy who is always disrupting class. He talks back to the teacher, throws things, distracts other students, and refuses to listen. Finally, the teacher has had enough and sends him to the principal’s office. Now in class, everything seems calm. The students can concentrate, the lesson can move forward, and there is a sense of order restored. From the outside it looks like the problem is solved because Timmy isn’t there to stir everything up. But what about Timmy himself? Sitting in the office, he might be quiet on the outside, but in his heart he’s still angry, still rebellious, still plotting how he can get even or cause trouble later. His removal has restrained the chaos, but it hasn’t changed his heart. Outwardly, the world looks ordered and peaceful in its “Sunday best.” But inside, the human heart hasn’t been fixed by external conditions. Outward rule doesn’t equal inward transformation. Sin is still there, hiding, waiting, showing that only Christ’s final judgment and full renewal can truly make all things new. Believers who have died, however, are already beyond this struggle. They are with Christ in His presence, spiritually participating in His reign even before their bodies are resurrected. They are outside Satan’s influence, safe in the glory of God, perfected in spirit. While the world wrestles under restrained evil during the millennium, those who have stepped out of this age are already tasting the age to come. They are not in some middle ground or purgatory but are fully conscious, fully joyful, and free from pain. Satan’s chains matter for earth, but for those in heaven, his reach has no power. Even miracles themselves were never meant as ends in themselves. They were signs pointing to who Jesus was. When He healed the paralytic, He first said, “Your sins are forgiven.” The healing was proof of the greater authority. The authority to forgive sins, which only God can do.  Think of it this way: what if Jesus had been a mute healer? He could have raised Lazarus, restored bodies, and driven out sickness. Yet Lazarus died again. The healed grew old and weak. Without forgiveness, without reconciliation to God, the healing was temporary, a brief reprieve. But when Jesus spoke forgiveness, that was eternal. The sins forgiven were gone forever. The mute healer would only have delayed suffering; the Savior who speaks forgiveness defeats death itself.

This is what matters eternally. Jesus’ ministry was not just to make broken bodies whole for a time, but to proclaim the kingdom of God, to teach righteousness, and ultimately to die for sins and rise again. Without the cross, all is lost. With the cross, even death is undone. Christ did not come just to mend what time and decay will break again; He came to bring us into His timeless realm, to reconcile us to God, to share His eternal life.

So then, prayer is of greatest need. Never stop praying. Even when we can’t see results right away, prayer is never wasted. God is always preparing hearts, restraining evil, and moving events toward His ultimate plan. Prayer is not just about asking for outcomes we want; it is stepping into God’s rule and helping align human hearts with His will. Satan blinds, deceives, and corrupts, but prayer pushes back against that. It’s the way believers stand on the front lines of the unseen war. The Timmy example reminds us that outward control is never enough. Restraining Satan during the millennium will bring order, but it won’t fix the human heart. Only God can do that. Prayer is where heart-change begins. Just as Jesus prayed in the garden to align His will with the Father’s plan, we pray so that our desires, actions, and lives come into step with God’s kingdom. Prayer doesn’t exist to remove every difficulty, because Satan and evil are real, but it gives us the strength to entrust ourselves to God’s plan, to share in His reign, and to prepare for His victory. Even Christ Himself, sinless and fully God, used prayer in His moment of deepest battle. In Gethsemane, He prayed not to escape the cross but to submit to it. That is the model of prayer in a fallen world. It is not about comfort but about surrender. It is not about dodging suffering but about joining in God’s redemptive work. God’s will is often accomplished through the prayers of His people. Our requests become the very channels through which He brings healing, provision, or change.  Even if the physical body isn’t healed exactly as we hope, prayer transforms our hearts, giving peace, faith, and trust in God. Aligns us with God’s plan, so we act according to His will, and intercedes for others, bringing spiritual impact beyond what we can see. our deepest hope is not that pain in this life will be avoided, but that resurrection with Christ awaits. Every prayer, answered or unanswered, draws us into that reality. 

(Investing in the Church of the Body of Christ is highly important. Community is a training ground and a support system. Loving, serving, and learning within the Church equips you to navigate life’s difficulties with guidance, accountability, and shared wisdom. Spiritual formation through prayer, Scripture, and fellowship is the groundwork for resilience. These practices are not indulgences; they are essential preparation for the realities of living in a world marked by moral, physical, and emotional challenges. Find a local Biblical church today! – ( church map= https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?ll=40.52106123277431%2C-41.39371617622709&z=2&mid=1SRpkwF4hEaXZvor4BXyoAawrNVgH9CM )

𝕹𝖔 𝖌𝖚𝖎𝖑𝖙 𝖎𝖓 𝖑𝖎𝖋𝖊, 𝖓𝖔 𝖋𝖊𝖆𝖗 𝖔𝖋 𝖉𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍, 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖎𝖘 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖔𝖜𝖊𝖗 𝖎𝖓 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘𝖙 𝖎𝖓 𝖒𝖊 𝖋𝖗𝖔𝖒 𝖑𝖎𝖋𝖊’𝖘 𝖋𝖎𝖗𝖘𝖙 𝖈𝖗𝖞 𝖙𝖔 𝖋𝖎𝖓𝖆𝖑 𝖇𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍. 𝕵𝖊𝖘𝖚𝖘 𝖈𝖔𝖒𝖒𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖘 𝖒𝖞 𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖞!!!!

God Bless us every one!

𝕭𝕰𝕹 𝕬𝕹𝕿𝕳𝕺𝕹𝖄 𝕾𝕴𝕸𝕺𝕹

Writing as 𝖂𝕴𝕷𝕷 𝕱𝕺𝕽𝕲𝕰

𝕻𝕴𝕷𝕲𝕽𝕴𝕄 𝕻𝕺𝕹𝕯𝕰𝕽𝕴𝕹𝕲𝕾 𝕸𝕴𝕹𝕴𝕾𝕿𝕽𝖄