The Greatest Thing About Heaven

As we conclude our series of discussions about heaven, we discover the most wonderful thing about heaven. We will have an unimpeded fellowship with God Himself! Revelation 21:3 says: "“Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God." 


Dwelling with God in a transparent and open environment will certainly be the highlight of heaven. A relationship that is not marked with jealousy, deceit, stress, nor animosity. Isn't it true, that our heart longs for this relationship? We want to know and experience God's presence in its fullest. There is something in our spirit that craves this relationship.

But the amazing truth is that God also craves to have this kind of relationship with us. He created man to have a relationship with him. Even after the original failure of Adam and Even, God provided a means by which we could return to the pre-fall relationship that He had enjoyed with mankind. But this powerful verse tells us that God will be with us and He will be our God.

What a mind-blowing thought that this relationship is not only the greatest dream of mere men, but also the greatest dream of God?  For the first time since before the Fall of Adam and Even, God will have unbroken fellowship with us in heaven. Our frailties will no longer hinder our complete relationship with God.

Can you even begin to imagine how amazing it will be to be in a completely honest and open relationship with God? Unimpeded, un-compromised, nor fractured from the pain of broken relationships, we will be able to enjoy God's presence and glory in our lives for eternity!

No More

Often, when we try to describe heaven, we attempt to give a visual description of the amazing beauty of this wonderful place. Streets of gold, walls of jasper, gates of pearl...the most precious things of earth are so common they are used as building material in heaven!

However when John (who, by the way, actually had a vision of heaven) tried to describe it, he spent a significant amount of time talking about what won't be there. Read Revelation 21:4: "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain...."Can you imagine it?


No more tears; no more death; no more mourning or crying or pain! Think about what is stressing you right now...no more! Think about what is hurting right now...no more! Think about what is stealing your sleep at night...no more! Wow! As I told our church this past Sunday, "No more debt-ceiling arguments and partisanship. No more Republicans, no more Democrats, no more Tea-Partiers, no more Presidents, no more Congressmen, no more...." Right now, that is a blissful thought, isn't it?


Have you ever lost someone that you love, and you know the emptiness that goes with it? No more death, ever again. Have you ever been burned by someone and you find it difficult to trust.  No more sin in relationships. No more children going to be at night hungry. No more poverty. No more disease. No more genocide. No more AIDS.  Do we even dare imagine a world without those pains?

And the most amazing thought is this. Any tear that you shed, for whatever reason, God, Himself, will personally wipe away those tears.

Getting homesick yet?

Extreme Makeover (Heaven Edition)

For most of us, our concept of heaven comes from Revelation 21:1-4. John, who was exiled on the isle of Patmos, had a vision of Heaven. Here is what he saw: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” 


In the next two or three posts, I want to whet our appetites for heaven by discussing John's vision. Today, I want to drill down on verse 1: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away...."Whatever heaven is today, after the rapture, after the millennial reign of Jesus on Planet Earth, God is going to create a new heaven. What will it be like? I don't really know. All I can say is that God is a master at radically transforming what is old into some something amazingly better. I mean, think about your own experience of transformation for a moment. Paul describes it this way in 2 Corinthians 5:17: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" 


Would you say that your life is dramatically better since you accepted Christ as your Savior? Is your new life more enriched than your old life? Is there a vast improvement? Most of us would say an emphatic "YES!"


So let me state the obvious. If God made such a radical, fabulous transformation from the old you to the new you, don't you think He is going to do a glorious work in transforming the current heaven into the new heaven! In fact, Revelation 21:4 uses the same phrase about the transformation of the new heaven as Paul used to describe our transformation...the old order of things has passed away! Talk about an extreme makeover! I can't wait to see it!

A Heart for Heaven

I believe the concept of heaven is under a spiritual attack. How else can we explain why there is very little homesickness for heaven among American Christians. When I accepted Jesus as my Savior, my home shifted from earth to heaven. The old-timers used to sing it this way: "This world is not my home, I'm just a-passin' through. And I can't feel at home in this world anymore."

But if most of us were honest, we would admit that, while heaven may a good place, we shouldn't have any sense of urgency about getting there. The reality is, most of us are pretty happy with the way things are here on earth. And if we were really honest, for many of us, our treasure is more on earth than in heaven. Our hearts drift more toward the things of earth than it does toward the things of heaven. 

But if we could really catch even a small glimpse of what awaits us, our hearts would be drawn home. Think of the best day you have ever had. The most enjoyable event of your life. The most fabulous place you have ever seen. Now, here's what the Psalmist said, “Better is one day in your courts, O Lord, than a thousand elsewhere.” (Psalm 84:10).  Just one day in heaven is worth a thousand of your best days here!

If that doesn't make your heart drift toward heaven, I don't know what will. 

Eye Has Not Seen

Most people in America believe in heaven, but when you begin the dig deeper, most have differing opinions as to what heaven will be. Some people think that heaven will be like an eternal church service...without the preaching. Everyone knows an eternity of preaching would not be heaven! You know, sitting around in choir robes, singing some fabulous worship songs, and enjoying a great time of worship. That would be cool for a while, but for some of us hyper-active people, after a decade or so, we would be looking at our watches wondering with this is going to end. I'm kinda in to the spectacular. While I enjoy a good worship time as much as the next person, I'm looking forward to hanging out with God when He is doing some of those amazing things like speaking the universe into existence, or creating unique things like giraffes and those running lizards that look like a movie monster. Man, that will be heaven for me.

They reality is, none of us have a real grasp of how wonderful heaven is going to be. Whatever our concept is, it will be infinitely more wonderful. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 2:9: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”  Let me say it again. No matter how wonderful your concept of heaven is, it falls drastically short of what it really is. 


So as we begin this week of thinking about heaven, let's just begin by trying to understand that every other place on earth pales in comparison to the splendor of our heavenly home!

Raising My Reality To Match My Theology

Jesus said in John 14:12: “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these.” That is an amazing statement. I heard Mark Batterson say this once, "we [all try to] make our theology conform to our reality. You have probably heard of the Jefferson Bible. Thomas Jefferson could not intellectually digest the miracles in the gospels so he extracted them. Everything that was left he compiled into his own version of the Bible called the Jefferson Bible. It’s a miracle-less Bible."

The truth is, I believe with all my heart that when Jesus says something, it is true! That is theology. The reality is, my experiences do not match what Jesus said in John 14:12. I would be thrilled if I was simply doing the amazing, wonderful, miraculous things that Jesus did. It is mind-blowing to me to think I could actually do greater things. But since there is this incredible gap between my theology and my reality, I have a real temptation to lower my theology to match my experiences. I start trying to excuse why I don't see greater things. I start trying to convince myself that Jesus didn't really mean greater things when He said greater things.


But I am doing spiritual warfare against that stronghold. I have decided that, rather than lowering my theology to match my reality, I want to seek God until my reality matches my theology. In other words, I want to raise my reality instead of lowering my theology. Thanks Mark for that amazing challenge. I hope you will accept that challenge as well.

Break Up Your Unplowed Ground

As we continue our discussion on seeking God, let's look at what God says to us in Hosea 10:12: “Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground.” We are commanded by God to break up our unplowed ground. In a garden, unplowed ground is the ground that has been undisturbed and left alone. Due to neglect, it becomes weeded-infested, hard, and unproductive.


The call to break up this ground is a call to look into those areas of our lives that we have neglected, ignored, and allowed to become hard. Sometimes, the demands of our daily lives cause us to allow the spiritual side of our life to become unplowed. Hosea 10:13 tells us why it is important to plow our neglected spiritual lives: “It is time to seek the Lord until He comes and showers righteousness on you.” It our responsibility to to break up our unplowed ground. We do this by seeking the Lord.


How long should we seek Him. "Until He comes."Until He "showers righteousness" on us. The challenge is for us to prepare our hearts and our minds for our miracles; it is God's responsibility to come and shower us with righteousness. 

Big or Little God

This entire series is not about seeking miracles. It is about seeking God. Miracles will become a common experience in our lives if we seek God. Seeking God puts us in a paradigm where miracles happen!

In the opening scene of the movie Apollo 13, astronaut, Jim Lovell stands gazing at the moon, where in just a few hours, he will be propelled by a rocket to walk on the moon. He then raises his thumb between his one open eye and the moon. His thumb, though much smaller than the moon, actually blocks his view of the heavenly body. We understand why, don't we? But it is a game-changing principle when it comes to our seeking God. How big something is to you isn't really determined by how big it is. Your perception is determined by how close you are to it!

Shirlene and I went with another couple to Memorial Auditorium years ago to see Dan Fogelberg in concert. We were seated on the very back row of the auditorium. We were so far back, you could only see figures walking on the stage. It was hard to get excited about the concert because we were so far away from the singers and musicians.

God is huge! We all agree, don't we? But the problem is, sometimes we are so far away from Him, that its hard to get excited about Him or to see Him doing anything in our lives.

What's the answer? The Psalmist helps us in Psalm 43:3 (KJV): "O magnify the Lord with me, let us exalt his name forever." To magnify something means to make it bigger than it really is. Obviously we can't make God bigger than He really is, but we can make Him bigger than He is in our lives! We do that by exalting His name forever! As we lift Him up with our words, our thoughts, our actions, and our worship, He will become bigger and bigger in our lives.


And when He becomes a big God in our lives, we will see big miracles.

Unpredictable

Professional fishermen probably know more about fishing than a carpenter. But Peter and his friends had been fishing all night and had not caught one fish. Jesus then shows up and tells them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat, and then they “caught such a large number of fish that the nets began to break.” They actually called another boat to help with the catch and they both began to sink. Jesus did something uncontainable for them.

The truth is, that's what He wants to do for us too! He wants to bless us beyond our ability to contain it.

Acts 1-2 contains a fabulous story about another uncontainable event. It begins with Jesus giving the early church some instructions. Acts 1:4-5 say: “On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: 'Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit'.” They are told to wait for the promise! They had no idea what the promise really was or how it would transform their world, but they were to wait!

Verse 14 adds, “They all joined together constantly in prayer....” The entire church joined together in corporate prayer. Acts 2 is a result of the prayer meeting in Acts. 1. Acts 2:1-4 tells about the amazing event known as the Pentecostal Experience: “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”

The take-away from this amazing event is this: the Day of Pentecost was totally unplanned. None of the disciples woke up that day and made plans to speak in tongues. They started the day just like the last nine. The bottom line is...you can't plan Pentecost. But if you seek God for ten days, amazing things will happen.

What if we decided to have a ten day corporate prayer meeting? What if we sought God with the same kind of fervor? What if we truly heeded the promise of 2 Chronicles 7:14: "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land "? What if each of us really began to pray?

Don't miss it. The secret to healing for our land, our finances, our health, and our relations, comes not by seeking healing, but by seeking God. And when we seek God, we will quit telling Him our plans, simple seek His face, and leave the logistics to Him! Then, perhaps, just perhaps, the unpredictable will happen our lives as well!

Keep Praying

Daniel 10:12-14 is an amazing passage of Scripture concerning the importance of prevailing prayer. Daniel is seeking God for answers. For three weeks it felt like the heavens were shut up. On the 21st day after the initial prayer, Daniel gets his answer. He is actually visited by an angel. The angel says to Daniel, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me.”

It is important to note that Daniel's prayer was heard the moment it was prayed. But due to spiritual opposition (which ought to show us that if the enemy opposes our prayers, our prayers are important), the answer did not come for 21 days. Do you think Daniel was tempted to give up on the answer to his prayer? Do you think he became discouraged waiting for the answer? We don't know, but the angel says to him in verse 14 says, “Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.” The vision concerns a time yet to come. A time yet to come...faith looks forward to the time yet to come.

It took twenty-one days for Daniel to get clarity. We want clarity now. But sometimes we have to wait for the vision to make sense. Sometimes we have to wait for the promise to be fulfilled. Sometimes we have to wait for the miracle to happen. And let me close these posts concerning Waiting 101 by encouraging you to keep praying until it happens.

Expectations

Simeon...moved by the Spirit,
waiting on the promise!

Let me say this up front: I think Spirit-filled and Spirit-led people ought to be the most confident people around. We should live with a constant expectancy. We should live our lives with a constant optimism of what God will do next!

Luke 2:25-30 tells the story of an elderly, Spirit-led man by the name of Simeon. Notice how many times we are told of the Spirit's influence on Simeon's life: “Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the Temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took the boy in his arms and praising God, saying: ‘Sovereign, Lord, as you have promised you may not dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation’.” We are not told how long it had been since the Spirit first revealed to him that he would see the Lord's child, but the Scripture does say He was waiting!

The word wait means to await with confidence and patience. It is living in constant expectation. That is the way God calls us to live our lives...with confidence and with patience. We are confident that God is working amazing miracles in and around us. We are patient that He is not slow in keeping His promises as some understand slowness (2 Peter 3:9). 

We must be resolved that we are waiting on God for the long haul. As we take the long view, we are able to keep things in perspective.

We must avoid discouragement when God doesn’t meet our deadlines. Oone of two things happens when we get discouraged. Either we just give up on the miracle and stop believing, praying, and hoping. Or we are tempted to manufacture our own miracle. Remember when Abraham and Sarah were promised a child. When it didn't happen on their timetable, they manufactured their own miracle through Sarah's servant, Hagar. Ishmael was born, and we are still seeing the consequences of that manufactured miracle in the Middle East today.

Let me encourage you to remember today, it’s always too soon to give up on God. Keep seeking, keep believing, and keep waiting...you will experience miracles!

Digging For Your Miracle

There can be no doubt that God gave the Israelites the land flowing with milk and honey. After all, it is called The Promised Land. However, when it came time for Joshua to lead the people across the Jordan River and into their inheritance, the inhabitants of the land didn't roll over and play dead. The Israelites had to fight for their land. They had to occupy it. They had to cultivate the land. In other words, they had to work for their miracle!


There is an old adage that says Pray like everything depends on God; work like it depends on you. While I am not certain of all the implications (or the accurate theology) of that adage, for the purposes of this thought, I think it is appropriate. While we are trusting God for our miracle, we need to keep praying until we receive an answer. Sometimes we pray a prayer and then expect our miracle to materialize. But it doesn't normally happen that way (remember, that day is as a thousand year verse). 


Deuteronomy 8:7-9 contains a powerful principle for us: “The Lord is bringing you into a good land--a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.” God gave them the good land. It had everything...they would lack nothing. But they had to dig copper out of the hills. God didn't form perfect pennies and lay them on the sidewalk for them. He didn't create a fabulous copper water pipe infrastructure for them. They had to dig it out of the hills. 


A powerful principle is found here. Most miracles are buried somewhere. If we think our miracle is going to be easy, we will become discouraged. But keep digging...the Promised Land is a good land!

Waiting On Your Miracle

Most miracles are forfeited
because we give up too soon!

We have been exploring A Crash Course In Miracles for the past three weeks. This past Sunday, I shared with you the concept of Waiting. As a church that holds the Pentecostal experience as valued and treasured, we have been focused on Acts 1 and 2. Allow me to remind you of a couple of observations. First of all, we cannot, individually or corporately, experience the Pentecost of Acts 2 without the prayers of Acts 1. Acts 1:14 says, "They all joined together constantly in prayer...." For ten days they met in prayer. On day 10, the miracle of Pentecost occurred. I am encouraging our people to join together, pray, and seek God for our local church to experience a revival of God's Spirit at HVCC.

Secondly, let's be careful to not box God into our paradigm of Pentecost. Remember, until Acts 2, the word Pentecost had a totally different meaning than we, this side of Acts 2, usually infer. Before Acts 2, Pentecost was a Jewish Feast. But God totally redefined Pentecost on that day in the Upper Room. Wouldn't it be amazing, if He did something so extraordinary that it would again redefine Pentecost? Don't limit His creativity or His power!

As we moved into this third week of understanding Biblical miracles, the thought that has challenged me over the past few weeks is this: What if the disciples in the upper room had quit praying on day 9? Would the early church (and us today) have missed the outpouring of the Holy Spirit? What if Joshua and the people of Israel had quit marching around Jericho on the fourth time around? What if Naaman had only dipped five times? What if Elijah had only looked for rain twice? Would they have missed their miracles if they had not been willing to wait? I can't prove it, but I think most miracles are forfeited because we give up too soon.

2 Peter 3:8, 9 says, “Do not forget this one thing, dear friends: with the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promises as some understand slowness.”  We usually use the analogy of a day is like a thousand years when we are trying to comprehend the days of creation; but, the analogy is actually used concerning God keeping His promises. The truth of this great passage is this: God may seem slow in answering our prayers with the miracle that we need; but remember His slow is not our slow!

So let me encourage you today...Don't give up! Don't quit praying! Don't quit marching! Don't quit dipping (you know what I mean)! The Lord is not slow in keeping His promises.