Looking Forward to Heaven Part 1

Oh no. You did it again. You volunteered to watch some kids from the church for the weekend and you told your own children about it. And now they won't stop talking about it! They are bouncing off the walls, running up and down the stairs and, worst of all, asking repeatedly if it is the weekend yet. "How much longer to Friday, mom?" "Hey mom, is it almost the weekend?" "Ma! How much longer 'till Sammy comes over?" Every five minutes the subject comes up until you wish you hadn't told them until after the visitors arrived!

They begin to rearrange their rooms, planning where each person will sleep. Favorite toys are brought out to display proudly. Outfits are planned and activities are organized. Everything they come in contact with suddenly relates, in some way, to the upcoming weekend.

You try to distract them with other things but each idea fails. You put in a movie but all they do is talk about how much fun it will be to watch movies with their friends on the weekend. You take them to the park but all they do is ask if they can go again on Saturday. You tell them one morning that they can have ice cream for dessert after dinner (because by this point you'd rather hear about ANYTHING but the upcoming weekend!) but all they do is ask if they can have ice cream with their friends on Friday.

No matter what you do or how hard you try to distract them, your kids' minds are focused on that weekend.

This is how we should feel about Heaven. We should be so excited over the prospect of spending eternity in Heaven with God that our excitement is barely containable. We should be so utterly focused on it that our joy and anticipation is readily apparent to anyone we see. Everything in our life should point to it.

Do you love singing hymns and praises? Anticipate the day when you will be singing praises continually! Do you love studying and learning more of the Lord? Imagine the day when you will see Him face to face! Do you loathe the sin that constantly encroaches upon your life? Bounce with excitement that one day this will no longer be an issue!

Just as the children set up their rooms and picked the toys and games they would want to use with their friends, so should we be preparing ourselves for Heaven. The time of our sanctification is now and we should take full advantage of it.

The excitements and events of this world should not cause us to lose our focus for one minute. Graduation, boyfriends/girlfriends, marriage, jobs, kids, cars, vacations, houses, grandkids, retirement - nothing should be held in higher anticipation than Heaven. You find out in a doctors visit a week before you were to be married that you have cancer and three days to live? It's been nice knowing you, honey, but I'm going home!

I know this sounds awful, and I almost didn't type it but I chose to anyway. If we had a right view of God and of Heaven and of our sinful state here on Earth then we would have no problem with that example, we would wholeheartedly agree! We should hold nothing in comparison to spending eternity with Christ in His glory! Our death should be a much anticipated event and our joy should rise exponentially with each year we live for we know that we are that much closer to Heaven.

Come back tomorrow to read more about this.