I have a precious friend with whom I correspond via email. She is a delightful young woman who is very inquisitive about the things of the Lord and she blesses me with her questions. I always try to back up the things I tell her with Scripture.
Recently, she emailed me and told me that she had been thinking a lot about heaven. She said that she wanted to ask me a question and that she did not want me to give her any Scripture or reference books on the topic. She just wanted to hear from my heart how I felt and what I thought about the topic. (I’m a BIBLE teacher…it is very hard for me to respond to a spiritual topic without using Scripture, but I tried to do as she requested.)
I thought it might be instructive to share her question to me here at The Point, as well as my response back to her. In doing this, I am anticipating that some of my readers will be able to add so much to the discussion about this topic. So, here’s her question. Feel free to jump in and leave your thoughts on the topic.
QUESTION: “What do you know about heaven?”
MY RESPONSE:
Heaven……
I believe that the sense that I have of ‘this earth and all that it contains just doesn’t really satisfy’ will be gone the moment I take my final breath on this earth. I believe that the first face I see will be that of Jesus, the one who died to make it possible for me to be in heaven. What will I do? How will I respond? Will I stand and praise Him? Will I fall on my knees? Will I go ‘face to the floor’? Will I laugh? Will I cry? My senses tell me that I will be on my face before Him, thanking Him for the love and the mercy and the grace that He showed me. I believe that I will feel Him take me by the hand, bring me to my feet, look into my eyes and say, “Well done, my child”. Oh sweet friend, there are so many mistakes that I have made in my life and so many things that I have messed up, but His blood has done away with all of those. I pray that the love I feel for Him, the ministry and the things that I do now will give Him reason to say, “Well done, my child.”
I believe in my heart that heaven will be a jillion times better than our very best day on earth. When you think of the very best day of your life, what do you think of? Now multiply that by at least a million on the ‘best day’ scale and you have the very beginning of what a day in heaven will be like. If music brings you joy, the music in heaven will be unbelievable. If prayer and praise bring you joy, the praise to the Father and the Son will bring you to your knees. If nature awakens a sense of awe of the Creator, then heaven will be more beautiful than anything we have ever seen on this earth. I believe that there will be animals of all kinds and flowers that absolutely take our breath away with their beauty. I think the food will be amazing—flavors so rich and wonderful that we are blown away. The sleep will be deep and refreshing. Our recreation will be fun and relaxing. Our worship of God will be rich and full.
I cannot wait to see my Daddy who has been in heaven for 6, almost 7 years. On this earth, he was stricken with polio as a teenager and walked the rest of his life with a full leg brace and crutches. He died from colon cancer. Now, in heaven, he walks without crutches. There is no cancer, no pain, no lifeless legs. His body is healthy and whole. There will be no more pain. No more sickness. No more evil. No more uncertainty. No more fear. No more anxiety. No more miscommunications. No more depression. No more blindness or deafness or diabetes or heart disease or cancer. No more earthquakes. No more war. No more death. Can you imagine a world without all of that? It is more than my mind can even comprehend, but I long for it so.
I believe that we will all have jobs. Remember in the garden of Eden; Adam’s job was to tend the garden and take care of the animals. Well, I believe that whatever our giftings were here on earth, they will be used to God’s glory in heaven. I have the gift of teaching. Perhaps I will teach in heaven. My Daddy was a builder and developer. I believe that God will use his talents to develop and build the new earth after the final battle has been waged here on the old earth and it is no more.
I cannot wait to talk with the giants of our faith…..Joshua, Paul, the woman at the well, Spurgeon, Graham, missionaries who have been martyred for their faith, Corrie ten Boom, and so many others. I want to hear their stories of how God was faithful to them in the good and the bad.
I believe that ‘boring’ will not be a word that will never be found in heaven. Even though we will be in God’s presence continually, I believe that we will be continually delighted to learn new things about the Father, the Son and the Spirit. I think that we will laugh with Christ about funny things that happened on earth and in heaven. I believe that we will thrill to see the Father smile at us as we worship Him. I believe that we will be the objects of the curiosity of the angels. They cannot understand salvation for they have never needed it. I believe that we will be completely blown away by how often we were protected from harm here on this earth by angels.
Am I excited about heaven? You’d better believe I am. I am blessed by my life here on earth, but really, if I really believe that all I just wrote about heaven is true….why in the world would I long to stay here? The process of death (sickness, disease etc) is what I dread, but not the actual dying. I believe that the moment I take my last breath here on earth will be my first breath in heaven. It will be like stepping through a door and changing clothes as you step through. Off with the old body and on with the new in the twinkling of an eye.
Heaven is a subject that I can get very excited about.
“And now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. To God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever more. Amen!”
