I remember being at a huge youth conference with thousands of people all worshipping at the same time. It was breathtaking and spiritually moving. I undeniably felt close to God. The speaker walked out on stage and said, “Isn’t this wonderful! This is what heaven will be like!” Looking back, I get where he was coming from, and probably what he meant, but I remember hearing one of my friends say, “I might take my chances in the other place.”
While I love good praise and worship, it did seem a bit dull that this would be all we would be doing for eternity. We get some of these images from parts of the bible called “Apocalyptic literature” where a window is being opened into the heavenly reality of what is going on around us rather than a peak at the future that is to come. The books of Daniel, Isaiah, and Revelation are filled with these images so that the hearers of the message can have a glimpse behind the curtain, so to speak, of what is really going on in the world. This is a different set of lessons for a different time. All I want to point to here is that there should be caution in reading books like Revelation as a prediction of the future because that is not the intention of that genre of writing.
There was a movement in Christianity that taught that God was far off in the distance. He set the world in motion and then retired to his heaven where he did not interact with his creation. This thread of Christian belief was common amongst many of the founding fathers of our country and has continued to have a hold in many of our churches. These teachings creep up when questions about the interaction of the Holy Spirit come up. It is often articulated, “The working of the Holy Spirit ceased when we received the Bible.” What happens to our prayer life when we believe God is far off in the distance and does not care to interact with us in his creation? How does this hinder a relationship with God? What does this do to our hope?
This week, we will look at the power of heaven and how it brings hope to us here and now. As we prepare to study more about heaven, here are some questions to begin with:
Where do your pictures of heaven come from?
Where is heaven?
When you think about how heaven is often described, is it self-gratifying and self-serving?
I really like how NT Wright describes heaven in his introduction to the participants guide of “Surprised by Hope: The Hope of Heaven”:
Heaven will not be a boring place, off in distant space, where we play harps, sit on clouds, and sing the same stanza of the same song forever. Heaven is God’s space, filled with peace, justice, and beauty. Heaven and earth are overlapping realities and the resurrection of Jesus has connected these two spheres more closely than we know.
Heaven is the control room of earth and God’s sovereign rule is present today. As we learn to walk with Jesus and live as God’s people in this world, the kingdom plan of God continues to unfold and be revealed. We are not waiting to fly off to heaven one day, but heaven is breaking into our present circumstances with each passing moment. If we pay close attention, we will see that heaven and earth are overlapping today.
One of the ways God brings his kingdom, “on earth as it is in heaven,” is through his people. You and I are invited to be vehicles God can use to bring his love, justice, and beauty to a world desperate for all of these things. The hope of heaven is not something we are waiting for, but it is what we enter each day as we follow Jesus and let his heavenly plans unfold in us.