What role does heaven play on your mind?

As you go about day-t0-day living, how often is heaven on your mind? Do you think of it very often? As I have aged, I have found that it is part of the conversation more and getting to heaven is more of a desire than when I was younger. I remember as a young person a man named Bill who talk about heaven most of the time. My brother and I worked closely with him in construction. As we would work throughout the day on various projects, he would talk about heaven. It did not make much sense to me at the time. However, over the years, I have grown to understand his passion for heaven more. In a great conversation just yesterday, we spent some time around the table over some dominoes thinking about heaven. As we talked, it reminded me of this question, “What role does heaven play on your mind?”

The Bible

Let me begin with Paul the Apostle. Notice what he writes to the Corinthians:

Fourteen years ago I was taken up to heaven for a visit. Don’t ask me whether my body was there or just my spirit, for I don’t know; only God can answer that. But anyway, there I was in paradise, and heard things so astounding that they are beyond a man’s power to describe or put in words (and anyway I am not allowed to tell them to others). That experience is something worth bragging about, but I am not going to do it. I am going to boast only about how weak I am and how great God is to use such weakness for his glory. I have plenty to boast about and would be no fool in doing it, but I don’t want anyone to think more highly of me than he should from what he can actually see in my life and my message. (2 Corinthians 12:2-6, TLB)

Paul describes an event that happened to him fourteen years prior, which would have been sometime near his return to Tarsus from Jerusalem and when he was sent out as a missionary with Barnabas (somewhere from Acts 9:30 to Acts 13:3). Hardly anything is known from this time in his ministry. However, Paul explains this situation where he was either in the Spirit taken or physically taken to heaven. What he saw he is not even allowed to tell; yet, it was lifechanging for him.

Over the fourteen years, no doubt while being persecuted, when tired, when hungry, or when plagued by his thorn in the flesh, Paul’s mind had gone back to this experience. What he saw could not be unseen. What he experienced could not be unexperienced. This moment fourteen years ago no doubt impacted every day of his life. He saw Christ and experienced a foretaste of heaven by literally being there – whether physically or in the Spirit he was unsure.

Why does his experience in heaven matter?

I personally believe that this experience of seeing and experiencing everything about heaven fueled his godly response to all the trials and tribulations in his life. In the immediately following verses, he explains that it is possible to take “pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). No doubt when Paul was laying on the side of the road left for dead, he had this in mind. When Paul wrote about desiring to be with God but also realizing his need to stay to serve the believers in Philippi, he understood what was awaiting (Phil 1:21-24).

Consider how Paul described walking with God as a mature follower:

For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. (2 Cor 5:1-8)

In this text, you can see Paul’s description of the life-lived experience for every follower of Jesus Christ. The longer you walk with Christ in the Spirit, the more and more you desire to go to heaven. You desire to be with the Lord. We walk by faith; we are fully confident that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

Back to my opening paragraph… Why did Bill always want to talk about heaven, going to heaven, and wondering what heaven would be like? Because Bill had a long and intimate walk with the Lord. It was the natural reflection of a believer’s heart toward life and the future. Where did Bill get that perspective? From God working in Bill through the Spirit.

How does the Apostle Paul live daily? He walks confident in faith longing to be with the Lord.

Why would he so long to be with the Lord? Because he knew what we do not. He knew what was only a mystery to us. God had pulled back the curtain of heaven and showed him what truly awaited each of us. Paul knew exactly when it was. Essentially Paul communicated, “For the past fourteen years, I have lived every day with great anticipation of getting back there again. Next time, to stay with Jesus for eternity.”

How does this impact the way we live?

Let’s refer to Paul again and this text.

Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are well known to God, and I also trust are well known in your consciences. (2 Cor 5:9-11)

Paul lived every day with the anticipation of going to heaven again. However, until that great day, he was going to live a life that is well pleasing to God. In other words, he lived every day with the goal or aim to be a God-honoring, Christ-exalting person. Regardless of what happened to him in any day, he understood in real terms the future. Whereas we walk in faith having not seen the future, Paul walked in faith and anticipation of returning again.

How else did Paul live?

Paul lived as one motivated by the love of Christ, striving to live consistent for Christ as an ambassador. He told others about Jesus – as if God was using him to implore others to be reconciled to God. In other words, Paul knew that everything he said and did should represent Jesus Christ to others. Paul knew the truth. He knew the joys of heaven. And, with those realities in mind, he made it his goal to point as many others in that direction as possible.

Our question for this day: what role does the reality of heaven play in your mind and life?