He Will Show Us Things to Come

God knows our future. He has a perfect plan for our lives, but He does not force it on us. 

“Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them” (Psalm 139:16–17).

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). 

These are two powerful passages of Scripture that clearly state God has a good future planned for each of us. He has established this future and good plan for our lives before we were born. This plan includes peace, prosperity, and success, not evil and calamity! If that is the case, why then do so many struggle in life finding peace, prosperity, and success, which He promises are a part of His plan and thoughts for us? The reason is very simple. So many of His children live their lives in light of their own plan for themselves instead of seeking Him to discover His plan for their lives. This bears out in the following two verses of Jeremiah chapter 29: 

“Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:12–13). 

He follows His promise to us in verse 11 of a good future for our lives with the means to enter into that future—by praying and seeking Him. The will and plan of God for our lives must be discovered, not decided! And we discover our future—His will and plan for our lives—by seeking Him. This is not a one-time, random kind of seeking God. This involves living a life of continual seeking Him, looking to Him, yielding to Him, depending on Him, and following Him as He leads us. He has hidden His will and plan for us not from us. He delights to show us the future He has for us inside our relationship with Him as we seek Him. 

Just before Jesus left His disciples, He shared an important principle with them regarding the place of the Holy Spirit in their lives. 

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come” (John 16:12–13). 

The last part of this verse in the King James version of the Bible says, “He will [show] you things to come.” One major aspect of the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to show us our future! Since this is true, it is imperative we develop a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit can show us things about our future in many ways. It can come in a dream or a vision. It can also come while you are reading the Word or hearing the Word taught by someone. He can speak to us through an impression, an inward witness, or an inward desire He plants in our hearts. He can also speak to us through one of the gifts of the Spirit such as prophecy or a word of wisdom. These are just a few of the ways the Spirit can begin to show us our future, but He is not limited to how He speaks to us. 

In my walk with God and developing my personal relationship with the Spirit, I have discovered He will show us two types of things regarding our future. First, He will show us things regarding our kingdom potential and inheritance. Second, He will show us plans of the enemy that we can either avoid, overcome, or stop.

The first area is our future regarding our kingdom assignment, potential, or inheritance. In 1976, I observed and heard many testimonies on Christian television and in my new church about the Holy Spirit using normal people in supernatural ways. I began to seek the Lord, asking Him to use me. I owned a very successful wholesale florist company and made lots of money at the time. Yet there was a growing dissatisfaction in my heart regarding the will of God. 

One day while I was reading in the first chapter of Luke, the Holy Spirit stopped me and highlighted two phrases from two separate verses and impressed me strongly this was the future and plan He had prepared for me. The following are those two verses and the portions He highlighted to me: 

“Just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us” (Luke 1:2). 

“He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, “to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,” and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:17). 

I had been seeking Him for about three months at the time, and this was one of the first things the Spirit revealed to me regarding God’s plan for my future. He focused me on two separate phrases from each of these verses and confirmed in my heart that He had called me to be a minister of the Word to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Praise God. I could read those verses a hundred times and never come up with that revelation on my own. Now granted, I didn’t see myself as a minister of the Word yet. I saw myself as a successful businessman. But I did realize this was the Holy Spirit revealing my future to me even though I didn’t fully understand it. 

Later that year one morning in October, my wife came to me. She told me God had just spoken to her in prayer and told her she was a pastor’s wife. 

At that time, I had been evangelizing with a small group of people from our church on the streets of downtown Houston, Texas. We had asked many of the people from our church to go with us, but very few responded. As a result, I had made some judgments about the church, and one of those was I would never be a pastor because the people in the church are so passive and lazy. 

Those judgments caused me to react in a negative way to my wife’s wonderful news from the Lord. I told her, “Well, if God spoke that to you, that means one of three things. One, I’m going to die and you are going to marry a pastor. Two, we are going to get a divorce and you will marry a pastor. Or three, God is going to have to change my heart because I don’t want anything to do with those lazy, good-for-nothing saints!” You have to understand I was very young and immature at the time, and my response caused my wife to cry and go off and question whether she had heard from God or not. Yet I am confident, looking back, this was another clear word from the Holy Spirit regarding the future He had planned for us. 

About six months later after a night of evangelism on the streets of downtown Houston, I came home and was seeking the Lord because of a lingering dissatisfaction in my heart. After praying in the Spirit for about thirty minutes, I stopped and decided to listen. Immediately I heard the Spirit say very clearly to me, “I have called you to equip the saints.” 

This startled me because my heart had been for evangelism. At the same time the Spirit reminded me what He had spoken to my wife back in the fall. He did let me know that pastoring people and evangelism were not mutually exclusive. I also knew from what He revealed to me the year before I would be involved in ministering the Word to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. 

The second area the Holy Spirit will show us things to come is regarding the plans of the enemy for our lives.

On 9/11/2001, approximately 3,000 people lost their lives. That was a major, national catastrophe we will never forget. There were many interesting stories individuals shared following this event. The Twin Towers’ office capacity was approximately 30,000 people, yet only 3,000 or 10 percent of those perished. And of those 3,000, many who lost their lives were hundreds of first responders. Of course, many fled who were able after the first attack on the first tower. Yet, scores of testimonies from people who were officed there were very similar. 

“Something was telling me not to go to work today.” Or, “For some unknown reason, I just felt like I needed to stop by and pick up my cleaning”; or “I just felt like I needed to stop by the coffee shop and go in late that day.” Many others felt a need to take a sick day and not go in. 

Anytime you get that sense in your spirit of some impending danger where you are planning on going or you are in the wrong place, I encourage you to follow the leading of the Spirit. His leading will always bring peace with it. My experience is, the more inclined I am to follow my reasoning and press on in spite of what the Spirit is telling me in my heart, the less peace I will have. Look at the following verse with me: 

“A prudent man foresees the evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are punished” (Proverbs 22:3). 

We need to remain sensitive to the Holy Spirit and be willing to follow His leading in our hearts instead of pressing on and following the leading of our minds. This verse tells us if we fail to do that and just press on following our reasoning, we will be punished. This is not punishment from the Lord. Rather it is punishment by the enemy of our souls. 

Several years ago during a time of prayer, my wife and I had this foreboding sense that the enemy was attempting to bring some type of hurt or harm to someone in our family. While we were praying in the Spirit, the Lord showed my wife a vision of a red pick-up truck driving fast down the street and our son, Michael, running into the street in front of it. Michael was three years old at the time of this vision. We took authority over the spirit of death and bound the enemy off of Michael and declared the Word over him: 

“No evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling; for He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways” (Psalm 91:10–11). 

We spent a good deal of time after that praising God that Michael was safe and angels were given charge over him to keep him in all his ways! After a time, that strong sense of impending danger lifted and God’s peace and joy filled our hearts. Of course, we also were careful after that to ensure Michael did not go near any street. Two years later, my family and I had taken a few days off to go to the beach in Galveston, Texas. Our two older sons, Brian who was seven, and Michael, who was five, asked to go to the beach. 

We decided that Janice would take the boys and our infant daughter, Michelle, to the beach for a short time. As my family crossed the street to go to the beach, they stopped on the median to wait for the oncoming traffic on the other side of the road to pass. My son, Michael, thinking Janice was continuing across the street ran out ahead of her. When Janice noticed Michael had run out in the street, she looked to the right and there was the red pick-up truck she had seen in that vision two years earlier. She screamed, “Michael!” and he supernaturally flew backward into her arms. 

Praise God. This had to be the work of an angel we had prayed over Michael two years before. The enemy had plans to take Michael’s life, but the Holy Spirit showed us those plans in advance. We had already taken care of this by the leading of the Spirit, and the enemy’s evil plan was thwarted! He will show us things to come; and if we will follow His leading, there is nothing the enemy can do that will stop our destiny and future! 

Praise God for the Holy Spirit. He will show us things to come. He will show us our future and His plans for our lives. He will also show us at times the enemy’s plans so we can avoid them, overcome them, and stop them. Thank God we have the person of the Holy Spirit who knows everything and will help us move into our future with abundance, peace, and success. He will also lead us to avert danger, calamity, and evil if we will listen to and follow Him!

Adapted from Greg Mohr’s Book, Flowing in the Supernatural

Watch Pastor Greg’s television series on Living a Supernatural Life to learn more.