Imagine you were a month
away from going on a cruise, say, in the southern Caribbean. You may be a
landlubber, and it’s not your thing, but bear with me. Work has been pounding
and grinding on your mind and body. You are frayed and more than ready for a
little R&R. Your job has been nothing short of pulverizing, pressurized,
nerve-racking, and mentally exhausting, but each thought toward cruising around
the islands has mysteriously, almost magically, taken the edge off of work, and
the humdrum routine of making a living is approaching a delightful
interruption.
You are just looking for
a little breather in the blues (water and sky), soaking up the sun, feeling the
ocean’s breeze against your face and coursing through your hair, making
footprints on some “deserted” soft white sandy beach, breathing into your lungs
fresh ocean air though a little on the salty side, longing for those
mesmerizing turquoise waters, and trying to decompress from all the stress
buildup since the last getaway. Going from an “under the gun” world to another
world of slower flow “under the sun” seems so surreal it almost pushes the
envelope of unbelief. You welcome every thought of punching holes in the
mundane same old same old with thoughts of being anywhere but where you are at.
You asked yourself so many times that you’ve lost count, “Is this really
happening? Thank you, Lord! You knew I needed it!”
You need this vacation so
badly in your life, right now, that if something happened to postpone it you
are thoroughly convinced that you would need therapy and probably would have to
be put on life support! With each passing day, the anticipation builds toward
that “heavenly” event. What seemed so pressing and unbearable in the office
environment is strangely a little less intense because you are about to go on a
cruise in the Caribbean and visit exotic ports of call, and you are excited. In
fact, you are pumped, primed, and prepared!
Okay, it doesn’t have to
be a cruise; it can be anywhere than here that is going to present a positive
disruption in your daily workday world. Here is the thing; barring some
unfortunate situation, you are going to be in the southern
Caribbean, or wherever, as planned and scheduled. You treat it like a fact even
though it’s still in the future. You’ve got that “my bags are packed; I’m ready to go”
attitude stretching from ear to ear! Your fellow workers are becoming envious
the closer the “I’m outta here” approaches.
You even have sworn a
personal oath to yourself of leaving work at work and not dragging that sack of
burdens up the gangway to the ship. The only positive thing about hauling your
suitcase of work with you on vacation is the airlines cannot charge you a
luggage fee for that! Whether taking a break from work or from the weariness of
the same old thing, going on a vacation of some sort breaks up the routine and
invigorates us with a new attitude on life, until reporting on a Monday for
work….
So, let me ask you a
question. Assuming you are a believer, how often do you think of heaven? Do you
believe heaven is a reality or live your life like it is? You won’t find heaven
on Google maps or Mapquest. I got on Google maps and put in my location as a
starting point; I then typed in “heaven” for a destination. I got the message,
“We could not find heaven,” well, so much for GM. So I checked for directions
to heaven from Mapquest. They gave me some choices! But these claims of heaven
for this or that were found on earth. One in particular that amused me
unexpectedly was Hog Heaven in Dyersburg, TN., a BBQ joint! Okay, MQ didn’t
know how to get to heaven either!
Where do you go to find
heaven? And the survey said, “The Bible!” Believe it or not, the Bible doesn’t say a
lot about heaven, but it is very clear on how to get to where God is who is in
heaven. The problem is we are not exactly sure where heaven is located! But
before we get to that, I wanted to talk with you a little about why the reality
of heaven should affect our attitude in life towards everything in a more positive
kind of way like going on vacation does but even more so! If anyone should be
pumped, primed, and prepared for heaven, it should be us who believe, right? So
let me offer you a proposition for your consideration at the risk of you
disagreeing with me!
Proposition: Believers
should be the most joyful people on earth because they are bound for heaven.
Since all genuine
believers are booked for Heaven (cf. Jn 3:36; 1 Jn 5:11-12; 1 Thess 5:9; Rev
20:15), and departure is imminent (rapture event, 1 Thess 4:16, 17; 1 Cor
15:52), we should be primed, pumped, and prepared to go more than any vacation
spot here on earth. Of course, heaven is an eternal “vacation” destination
unlike having to go back to work after the breakaway.
Isn’t that really a
sophisticated proposition? Not really, it is simple and straightforward, and you
have to believe what is revealed about eternity in the Bible that going to
heaven beats any vacation here on earth without question. If vacations can have
an effect on us described at the beginning of this article in hyperbolic
fashion, how much more the thought of actually going to heaven at any moment
via death or better yet, the rapture!? I want to forego entertaining all the
reasons this is not so in our lives, and just throw this out there as positively
as I can.
We can believe what the
Bible states about this or that so much that when something good happens in our
lives, it just doesn’t seem real; sometimes we call it a miracle. We instantly
realized we significantly underestimated its value and revealed our doubts by
our initial reaction to something good happening to us (cf. 1 Cor 2:9). Have
you ever had a positive “I can’t believe this is happening to me” moment? It’s
truly happening, but we are caught up in a temporary state of unbelief until
reality settles in the heart and mind that what’s happening is very real.
There is something deep
down within us that wants to believe that something is true, that the Bible is
true about heaven, but this world has burdened, hardened, and plagued our
hearts with so much garbage of cynicism, pessimism, skepticism, disappointment,
and battered with bad that we are conditioned to believe the fiction that
nothing really good happens to us until it is a reality, and if it does we are
shell shocked!
Imagine, if you will,
arriving in heaven and the first words out of our mouth are, “It’s real! I’m
actually here! I can’t believe it! Lord, it’s true! I’m saved! I made it to
heaven!!” I am speculating of course, but don’t we all feel this way at times,
kind of, if we are honest – “I believe it, but it’s too good to be true until
it is true.” Most will not admit it because it sounds so secular in thought.
It’s the world’s creature features coming through; you know: pessimist, cynic,
critic, skeptic, doubter, etc.
What if we got settled in our thinking in the here and now that
we just took God at His Word about the reality of heaven and that we are going to heaven as promised and
guaranteed (Jn 14:2, 3)? The lag time on the “I will come again and
receive you to Myself” bums us out a little as we get older and dampens the
excitement, but this is the way God planned it for us to be ready at any time
for His return (Mt 25:13). Do you think it would transform us if we looked at
heaven like we do vacation, getting that basket off our life so people can see
Christ in us the hope of glory and the reality of heaven in our talk and walk
(Mt 5:14-15, 16)? We need to be heaven-bent for that to happen! <><
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| To Part 2 |
