Friday, April 12, 2024
The Believer’s Great Hope
So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. (2 Corinthians 4:18 NLT)
Deep inside us there is a sense that there’s something more in life. No matter what experiences we’ve had, no matter how wonderful they were, they were only a glimpse of what is still ahead. We are homesick for a place we’ve never been to, and that place is Heaven.
The Bible says that we were wired this way, that God “has planted eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT). This simply means we have a sense there is more to life, and that keeps us moving forward.
It’s like the homing instinct we see in the animal kingdom. Our homing instinct, however, is for a place we haven’t yet seen.
If you are a Christian, then you are going to Heaven. Jesus said, “There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am” (John 14:2-3 NLT).
Interestingly, the Bible doesn’t tell us that much about Heaven. There are some passages about it, but not a lot.
For example, the apostle Paul had the unique experience of dying, going to Heaven, and having to come back to earth. Paul didn’t go into great detail about what he saw on the other side. But he said this much: “I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words, things no human is allowed to tell” (2 Corinthians 12:4 NLT).
For us to try to understand something as glorious as Heaven would be like a six-month-old baby trying to understand an explanation about the beauty of Hawaii. It’s very hard for us to wrap our minds around.
No matter what happens to us on this earth, it pales in comparison to this great hope.
Writing to the church in Corinth, the apostle Paul said, “For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18 NLT).
This is the hope of the Christian. There’s a better world ahead. Until that day, there is nothing that will completely satisfy our lives. There’s something greater than what we are experiencing now.
Yet not everyone has this hope. If you don’t have this hope in Christ, then you ought to be afraid right now. You ought to be afraid if you don’t know whether you will go to Heaven.
The believer has great hope beyond all of this. We have the great hope that a place called Heaven is waiting for us on the other side.
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