Who doesn’t need the occasional stimulation to wholesome thinking, combined with a word of encouragement? Okay Pete, let’s hear it!
When Peter wanted to encourage the church, he didn’t talk about how many good things they were doing in the community, or how good they looked in their choir robes. Those things tantalize us, and some would say they are important…but they lack the energy to reinvigorate the Christian.
If you really want to make the soul of a Christian sing, then talk about heaven. Sing songs like “when the roll is called up yonder” and “I’ve got a mansion just over the hilltop” Okay, those are pretty old…so if you’re younger sing something like “I can only imagine”. It’s the same story…the Spirit that lives within us gets excited when we talk about going home.
I never thought of this before right now, but think of this: The Holy Spirit lives within us, and that same Spirit has been in heaven. More than that, the Spirit within us comes from heaven. Heaven revolves around the Trinity, so the Spirit isn’t observing in heaven, He is at the center of it. No wonder our hearts rejoice at the thoughts of heaven, the Spirit within us is longing to go home!
I have been in several situations where I longed for home. I remember a couple of nights sleeping on the ground in chilly weather, a brief moment aboard a whale watch charter and almost every time I have been on an airplane. I wanted to go back because I knew how much better it was there, and I think the Spirit gets excited in us because He knows how much better it is there. Heaven is eternal joy; everlasting peace and contentment. We try to define it in human terms but it’s very nature defies description. 1 Cor 2:9 tells us that God has prepared what “no eye has seen and no ear has heard”. Let’s go THERE. That sounds like somewhere I want to visit. I would gladly endure a bumpy flight in coach with nothing to eat but peanuts in order to get there. I would even sit next to someone that wants to talk the whole way.
Enter the false teacher, who attempts to take away from us the very motivation that keeps us moving forward…the hope of going to heaven. “Jesus isn’t going to return” they say. “The Church has been saying that God is coming back for 2,o00 years and they will be saying it for 2,000 more. It isn’t going to happen.”
Well, I beg to differ. One day when we are all standing before the throne Jesus will say “you were told 2,000 times that I was coming back and you didn’t listen”. Actually, if you only heard it once a week for 60 years it would be 3,120 times.
On a completely different note; As I try to imagine the earth coming out of the water for the first time I think of a child being born. As I think of the earth deluged in Noah’s flood and brought back up “out of the water” I think of Baptism. The earth has experienced it’s “second birth”. Now what lies ahead is the new heavens and new earth, after this one is destroyed. That is a striking parallel to what goes on with each of us individually. Born as humans, born as God’s children, and then when this earthly body is destroyed, we inherit a new, perfect body.
And let’s not forget about heaven….
Wistfully,
PR