"You Will Be Very Successful!" (1 John 5:4-5)

Many years ago, when I was medical resident, a friend took me to a palm reader fortune teller. I thought it would be amusing at the least and insightful at best. In order to prevent the palm reader from discerning anything about my occupation or background, I dressed in an old tee shirt and jeans and removed my watch. As far as I knew, my friend had not told the fortune teller anything about me.

When I sat down opposite her, she smiled and asked me, “What work do you do?”

I sardonically cracked, “Oh no, you’re the fortune teller. You tell me what I do!”

She frowned, obviously annoyed at my arrogance. “Hmmm….” she thoughtfully began. “You are an engineer?”

“Nope!” A good logical guess since I lived in an area that employed many engineers, many of whom were Asian.

Undaunted, she tried again. “You are a lawyer?”

“Nope!” This was comical. How much longer did this charade have to last?

She looked me over very carefully, desperately seeking a clue to my occupation. Then, in a triumphant voice, she declared, “You are a doctor!”

Wow! It only took her three guesses! She must be in the elite class of fortune tellers!

Now that we established my occupation, she carefully examined my palms. Thoughtful seconds later, she pronounced her fortune. “You will be very successful. You will marry a doctor, an engineer, or someone in the military. You will be very rich. All of your dreams will come true!”

And with that, I paid her fee and departed. I dismissed her as a fraud but curiously, a part of me still wanted to believe that it was possible to tell one’s fortune and predict the future.

The obvious danger is being beholden to a disclosed fortune. Of course that could never happen to a rational person like myself! I kept reminding myself that astrologer, fortune tellers, palm readers-these were all charlatans eager to say anything in exchange for my money. Besides, my daily horoscope reassured me that I would not fall victim to any schemers or frauds!

But I was determined to see if it could be done. I even took it upon myself to do a retrospective pseudo-scientific study and purchased a horoscope of the previous year and studied it to see it it accurately predicted the events of my life. The answer? No, but with a caveat. The predictions were so broadly written that the interpretations could be loosely applied to nearly every situation I had encountered. So much wasted effort, all to see if I could predict my future. But that could never be done, could it?

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

1 John 5:4-5 (ESV)

God has already revealed the future, not only for me, but for all His Creation. By sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the Cross for my sins and be resurrected. He has secured the fate of the world. Everyone who confess and repents of their sins and believes in Him as Lord and Savior will receive salvation and eternal life. Satan may attempt to deceive us with his lies, diverting our attention away from God and focusing upon the evil and suffering in the world, subtly planting doubt in our minds that God could not possibly be in control of a world filled with so much pain and suffering. But this is not the world that God planned for His creation. We sinned and disobeyed God and we have inherited this world that is ruled by Satan. But Satan knows his days are numbered until the day Jesus Christ returns to this earth and establishes His Kingdom. Satan knows the future and we do also!

I will be successful only because I turned from the false gods of this world and placed my future and hope with the One and only True God, Jesus Christ!

Love and trust the Lord; seek His will in your life.