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Briefing: Has anyone ever told you how a movie ends before you had the chance to go see it? Depending on the movie, this kind of insider information can really spoil the experience.

Dispatch (Assignment): Read John 16:1-4.

On the Street: Every six months, our department has to requalify with our pistols. Each time we requalify, the range master changes the course. Requalifications usually last for several days because our range only has room for ten people to shoot at a time. I always wait to shoot so that I can ask the officers who shot before me what the requalification course consisted of. I want to know what to expect before I walk onto the range.

Because God is omnipotent, all knowing and all seeing, He knows the future. I find great comfort knowing how this battle between good and evil turns out. If you could go back in your life, knowing what you know now, would you do things differently? Would you take advantage of opportunities you missed growing up? Would you avoid people and problems that turned out to be harmful?

Jesus wants us to realize how this world ends so we can live our lives in a way that prepares us to finish in first place. He wants us to be on the winning team, His team. If this were not so, He would not have given us the book of Revelation. Jesus also knows that we will have to endure hardship and persecution but in the end we will benefit from it. Jesus starts this chapter, John 16, with, “All this I have told you so that you will not go astray.”

I don’t like to fly, but if I know there is a nice vacation waiting for me on the other end of a five hour flight, it makes the flight more bearable. I don’t like to clean house, but if I know the peace and relief I will feel once the hard work is over, it makes the labor easier to endure.

It is important to endure to the end. 1 Corinthians 4:12 (HCSB) says, “we labor, working with our own hands. When we are reviled, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it”

Investigational Resources: For more scripture on endurance, see 2 Timothy 2:12, Hebrews 12:7, 1 Peter 2:20, and Revelation 3:10.

Officer Safety Principle: Take peace in knowing that we win in the end.

from The Gospel of John Through the Eyes of a Cop
©by Charles Gilliland. Used by permission.
Click here to check out the entire Through the Eyes of a Cop series!