Life Today is Controlled by What We Think About Heaven

Church family: Have you found eternal happiness on earth? Do you long for more of this life on this earth more than an eternity in heaven with God in a perfect heaven? If so, that is a dangerous place to be. Earth tempts us to desire to stay and enjoy its fleeting treasures more than enjoying the eternal, incomparable, uninhibited presence of God. If we are delighting in the delicacies of this world, it has hard to get our spiritual tastebuds to desire anything else.
 
Puritan, Thomas Watson wrote: “The promises of God are flowers growing in the paradise of scripture; meditation, like the bee, sucks out the sweetness of them. The promises are of no use or comfort to us, until they be meditated upon.” Setting our mind and heart on heaven will release our grip on the treasures of this world. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Mat 6:21). God wants us to consume, digest and treasure His promise to us of recreating everything. 
 
This week we get to Revelation 21, the new heavens and the new earth, believers are promised that this present heaven and this present earth that we know today will pass away and be recreated. We are promised that we will be recreated with resurrected bodies with no sin, no death, no sadness, no pain, no mourning, and no crying. We will be enjoying for eternity the presence of God the Father and Jesus Christ as we dwell with Him in heaven. We will inherit a tangible, physical cosmos where everything will be made new… everything! Meditate on that for a time. Why are things made new? Because God is present. God’s presence is what makes heaven - heaven. There will no longer be any separation between us and God, only perfect communion
 
If we never meditate on these truths of heaven we will be dulled by the world. We will run the race of faith more slowly and carelessly. Temptation and sin will become more and more appealing as we listen to its alluring pleasures more frequently. We will lose our everlasting joy because we are always caught up in the cares of this present world. 
 
This is not the life Jesus called us to embrace. We are told to, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2). Our life today is controlled by what we think about eternity. Do you see the promise of eternal heaven as glorious and magnificent? Or do you see it as a bore and a killjoy to what you are experiencing on earth? What you believe about heaven will determine how you live today and how you die tomorrow. What you believe about heaven will control how you respond to temptation and sin. What you believe about heaven will control how you meet trials of various kinds today. What you believe about heaven will control how inexpressible your joy is today. Consume the promises of heaven and meditate on them frequently to enjoy
a living hope today.
 
Revelation 21:3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
 
I look forward to worshipping with you Sunday, Steve