Content With This World or Encouraged By Heaven

It may be that we are just too content here.  We are just fine with the way things are.  Money affords us the luxury of living without hunger, thirst, and, for the most part, pain.  If there are inconveniences, that's just what they are - inconveniences; most of which only need to be "fixed" before we die.  Make that note: get it all in before we die.

But do we really believe in heaven after we die?  Do we have hope that there is really a life that, for billions and billions of years, will be so much more familiar to us than this life?  Do we live in eager expectation of a time when things don't just get better or get fixed, but when all things are perfectly and gloriously recreated and are in complete subjection under Christ Jesus?

Do we believe that sacrificing things in faith, hope and love for others will really turn out to benefit us in heaven?  Does God reward those who diligently seek Him?

Does cancer, back pain, cerebral palsy, depression, bi-polar disorder, ingratitude, brutal persecution, and even unexpected death bring us to long for the day when we are "made perfect in holiness"?

I have to admit that I find myself quite content here, although I am slowly becoming less so.  It may be that I am getting older; and that my life as a husband, father and pastor now has more responsibility attached to it.  It may be that life is going by much faster than it ever has.

I trust that sanctification is playing a role as well - by His grace of course.  More than ever, I feel the loss of this worldly life with every step of obedience; from helping my children brush their teeth, to ministering in a more "dangerous" part of town than I'm used to.

Regardless of it all, I am becoming more aware and more convicted by the call to preach the gospel of Christ to as many as I can.  Ironically, going to the dark places (of my own heart as well as the hood) has enabled me to see more light.  I have seen the power of the gospel at work.  And I really like it.  I believe that Christ saves more now than ever.

In short, I am thankful that the Lord is enabling me to believe that heaven is worth giving up everything for.  My life is an absolute wreck right now; but I have never prayed more in my life.  Nor have I believed this much that Christ, via death, is truly gain.

I was encouraged today by Paul's words to the Thessalonians and I would like to leave those words with you.  It is my prayer that as the Lord sanctifies us, that we will be more and more encouraged by the truth of His inevitable return and by our glorious eternity in heaven:

For the Lord Himself will decent from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of GOd.  And the dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who hare alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.  Therefore encourage one another with these words (1Thess 4:16-18).