Ask a hundred people what they think of heaven and you get will get a hundred different replies. Many and varied are the false perceptions of this life after death – but check out the Word of God, and you’ll discover your answer. Read the Scriptures and you will understand the truth.
Jesus tells us: I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. John 14:3. Heaven is where the Lord Jesus is and He reminds us of this many times. Jesus said: this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Him Whom Thou did send – even Jesus Christ, your Lord. John 17:3
The Christian life (the Christian faith) is having a relationship with a person. So too is the Christian heaven. It is continuing that relationship into completeness. And how the Lord yearns, with intense longing to be with those that He loves. Jesus said: Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me, may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. John 17:24
This was His final, intensely personal prayer to the Father in heaven. This was the earnest will of our Lord Jesus Christ. This was His life-purpose, being translated in a resolution shared with the Father. And Paul clearly tells us of his dilemma: for I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better.. Phil.1:23
Paul longed to be with the Lord. Paul longed to go to his heavenly home, but Paul recognised the ministry to which he was called. Paul also scripts the blissful state of the believer’s future with his own musings.. we read: we are confident, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. 2Cor.5:8.
This is the state that each believer should be in – longing to be with the Lord.. earnestly desirous of the Lord’s return so that we can bathe in His Presence: and so we shall ever be with the Lord. 1Thess.4:17 This should be our earnest desire.. to be with Him, forever – not just to escape the trials of life, for these are His training tools, but to be with Him; in Person – in spirit, soul, body, and truth.
He came to be with us and He came to be like us, so we could be with Him forever. The secret of a victorious life is knowing Him intimately and abiding in Him: you in Me, and I in you John 15:4 which is: Christ in me and I in Christ. The result of a victorious life is being conformed into His image and likeness until we can say with Paul: I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me. Gal.2:20
If each of us could really get this into our thoughts and minds and heart and being, I believe with all my heart that the trials of life would be put in proper perspective. We are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, whilst walking this sin-soaked world.
If we keep Christ as the centre of our focus we will overcome the stresses of life, for everything will fall into perspective. Maranatha – even so, come Lord Jesus. Revelation 22:20.
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