Thoughts Heavenward

I haven't been so excited about a new book in quite some time!  A couple years ago, I heard that American theologian Jonathan Edwards meditated on heaven twenty minutes every day, and since then I've been convicted that I should become more heavenly-minded myself.  Not that I can compete with the superior mind of Jonathan Edwards, but maybe I can pull off a few minutes each day. Recently, friends of ours highly recommended Heaven by Randy Alcorn as a life-changing read.  I've decided that, over the next few months, I'm going to blog about Heaven as I read and meditate on each chapter and related scriptures.  Please feel free to comment as we go along; I would enjoy the feedback and dialogue. 

What are your thoughts about heaven?  Do you envision disembodied spirits playing harps while sitting on clouds?  Or do you think heaven will be one long sing-along in the sky (that's where I used to be in my thinking)?  Yesterday, a friend said she had always thought of heaven as being one continuous banquet where she could eat anything and everything she wanted.  (I like that! I'm much better suited for continual eating rather than continual singing!) Or do you see heaven as a boring place?  I once had someone tell me that he wasn't interested in going to heaven, because it didn't sound exciting to him.  If we are honest, we might have to confess to having similar sentiments.  But that shouldn't be so!  Randy Alcorn says of his book, "we'll see from Scripture an exciting yet strangely neglected truth -- that God never gave up on his original plan for human beings to dwell on Earth.  In fact, the climax of history will be the creation of new heavens and a new Earth, a resurrected universe inhabited by resurrected people living with the resurrected Jesus (Revelation 21:1-4)."  That sounds pretty exciting to me!


Where do we get our misconceptions about heaven?  Besides the lack of solid teaching on Heaven, Dr. Alcorn suggests that some of Satan's favorite lies are about the Christian's eternal home.  "Satan need not convince us that Heaven doesn't exist.  He need only convince us that Heaven is a place of boring, unearthly existence.  If we believe that lie, we'll be robbed of our joy and anticipation, we'll set our minds on this life and not the next, and we won't be motivated to share our faith. (p. 11)  Though Satan wants to rob us of the joy we have about the magnificent place God is preparing for us, discovering what the Bible says about heaven will cause us to glory in God's eternal Kingdom.  I'll end with this quote from J. C. Ryle:


The man who is about to sail for Australia or New Zealand as a settler, is naturally anxious to know something about his future home, its climate, its employments, its inhabitants, its ways, its customs.  All these are subjects of deep interest to him.  You are leaving the land of your nativity, you are going to spend the rest of your life in a new hemisphere.  It would be strange indeed if you did not desire information about your new abode.  Now surely, if we hope to dwell for ever in that "better country, even a heavenly one," we ought to seek all the knowledge we can get about it.  Before we go to our eternal home we should try to become acquainted with it.