Check out this powerful song from Steven Curtis Chapman. I used this to conclude the sermon on Sunday for how powerfully it speaks to our confidence as believers even in the face of terrible suffering.
“I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus… What has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel… I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance.”
Philippians 1:6,12,19
Let these words wash over you:
“There is going to be a glorious unfolding. Just you wait and see and you will be amazed. You’ve just got to believe the story is so far from over. So hold on to every promise God has made to us. And watch this glorious unfolding.”
For even more inspiration, watch this music video that illustrates the song with the story of a woman who recently lost her father – but Dad had a plan to remind his daughter to SEE.
Steven and Mary Beth Chapman endured the unimaginable in 2008 when their four year old daughter, Maria, died in a tragic accident in their own driveway at home. The song Glorious Unfolding was the title song for Steven’s 2012 tour and expressed the confidence in the Chapman family that they will see Maria again in heaven and their conviction that death for the believer is “just the beginning of the beginning.” Listen to Steven share how their family processed and is processing this painful loss here. He said, “It’s a completely unfixable, broken-beyond-repair situation until heaven. In heaven, and only in heaven, will this make sense.”
The suffering and tragedies of this life only make sense in the context of eternity. But knowing that God’s plan for us is so much bigger than the 70-80 year mist of this life, we can press on and encourage one another to hold on to the promises of God and watch for the glorious unfolding. We’ll see glimmers of redemption in this life but our great and final hope is the ultimate redemption we will experience for all of eternity. As C.S. Lewis concluded the Chronicles of Narnia: “Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”