Where you position yourself spiritually determines your spiritual harvest. Many believers struggle not because God has abandoned them, but because they've planted themselves in spiritually hostile environments. Like a gardener who chooses location over convenience, believers must position themselves by the streams of living water through daily Bible reading, corporate worship, prayer, Christian community, and service. The difference between desert Christians who visit the river occasionally and riverside Christians who live by the streams determines whether you fight against your environment or thrive because of it.

God cannot take you forward from where you are pretending to be - only from where you actually are. Are you ready to stop camping in yesterday and start pressing toward what God has prepared for you? The apostle Paul shows us how to move forward spiritually, even when the past feels too heavy to leave behind. What would change if you focused on just one thing this year instead of trying to do everything?

Imagine you're watching a movie. The hero faces impossible odds—betrayal, loss, suffering. The middle of the story is dark, painful, and uncertain. But you've read the Book. You know how it ends. You know the hero wins. You know justice prevails. You know love conquers all.
That knowledge doesn't erase the tension of the difficult scenes, but it changes how you experience them. You watch with hope, with anticipation, with confidence that the darkness is temporary.
That's what the biblical promise of Christ's return does for us. We're living in the middle of the story—facing real pain, genuine suffering, legitimate struggles. But we've read the end of the Book. We know how this ends.
As we conclude our "Joy to the World" series, we've seen how joy came down in Christ's birth and how joy breaks through our obstacles. Today, we discover how joy looks forward—how the promise of what's coming transforms how we live today.