Listening to the song ‘Roses’ by Andrew Ripp brought a thought to mind...
“Your heart is a portal to Heaven”
Let me explain…
In this world that was once perfect, beautiful and intimate, made for relationship and glory… what we are living in resembles the end times far more. We see so much wrong, so much hurt and so much pain… we see people divided and contrasted, conflicted between desires and realities, overcome with comparison and judgement. Some who believe in something greater and some who don’t.
Chances are that if you’re reading this, you are one of the hugely blessed ones. Not because you have a high paying job or a nice house, a car or live in a safe neighbourhood! But simply because you have opened your heard to the possibility of more, to the prospective of eternity, to a life with God.
You have a bright hope and a future and the vision of "one day in eternity" rests easily in your heart.
Even in this hurting and broken world… you know that it won’t be that way forever! Yet in the timeline of our day, there seems to be a chasm between the easily celebrated lives and the ones worse off… We allow the situations we are in now to define what we view of what’s to come.
Why?
Why are we so caught up in the struggles of today, comparing ourselves to others, speculating and judging….
Could it be that we’ve lost sight of heaven? That we’ve lost sight of the glory we’ll see in Heaven? Because the truth is that we, as the people of faith, have to believe in Eternity all the more to be able to share the joy for it with those around us!
As someone who's been surrounded by all sorts of people of all sorts of beliefs my entire life, what constantly stands out to me is that my life can truly be the window through which they have the opportunity to meet my God. You’ve likely heard it said that you might be the only Jesus someone might meet… but have you ever considered that your life could resemble a glimpse of heaven that could draw another soul to the Kingdom?
Children of the Kingdom live in the light of a better life that is to come and that shines far greater than anything that we might face in our day today. No struggle or hardship, loss or failure could compare with the wrongs that will be made right when our Saviour returns, and it’s out of that perspective that we find our joy, that our saviour has made everything beautiful in it’s time and in His hands lies the perfection of eternity.
It's out of this desire for what He calls perfection and paradise that our lives can display a taste of joy that isn’t a reflection of our day-to-day circumstances.
When we acknowledge that we’re not living for the present times, but for a time when we will be face-to-face with our creator, we discover the strength that lifts us above the rest of the world.
A strength to trust and obey
A strength to take His yoke
A strength to lean not on our own understanding
Because let’s face it, our society doesn’t want another religion of rules shoved in their face, they want to experience truth and possibly more than that, they want to experience goodness. And the only true goodness is the goodness from the God of goodness. And to taste that goodness, we’ve got to lift our eyes above the world and onto the goodness of what it means to Worship the Glorious God in Heaven.
So we have to show them! We have to show them the Glory of the eternal for them to desire relationship with the Glorious Jesus now! Because if that ‘one day’ glory can’t be reached immediately, we’ve got to really really really want it! But that’s exactly why we walk the walk of faith. Not because we gain now, but that we will gain when the cracks are healed and the darkness is wiped away. We don’t walk the walk of faith because it takes our struggle away but because one day we will not face the struggle. We don’t walk the walk of faith because it ticks a box to make me feel good now but because it’s what the Book I read told me to do. Faith is for everyday because faith is for eternity. We don’t walk the walk of faith because we have a great reward now but because our great reward will be ultimately fulfilled in eternity. And that’s why we have to shine heaven through our lives to those whose hearts aren’t yet in heaven.
Our longing to see the day when we are with our Saviour in perfect paradise is what they should see when they look at the way we live. How we conduct our lives through our daily choices should shine of that one day in paradise. Because paradise is attractive and desirable, our lives must be desirable to the ones who look in so that they may ask: What are you living for?
And out of that, we can boldly say.
Jesus!
So that’s why your heart is a porthole to Heaven. It’s an opening for them to see the greatness of the world to come.
1 Corinthians 13vs12 MSG
"We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!"~ X ~
Comentários