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| October 14, 2014 |
Today I bring you the final installment in my Contemplating Heaven series!
This series started off with an honest post written by my anxious little heart. Then we turned our attention to the joy God has set before us. And last week I tried to communicate why we need to contemplate heaven.
I think we're ready to take some time for a little HOW TO.
How to set yourself up to contemplate heaven:
*Read God's Word - This is water for your soul. It will be your biggest help in living the Christian life. You need to stay in it.
*Commune with God's people - This communion takes place through real life conversations, sermons, books, music, and even blog posts. You need to have a chorus of voices around you reminding you of who you are as a Christian and that your hope is in God.
* Preach the glories of heaven to yourself - Use Scripture that you have memorized or are memorizing to continually bring you back around to the truth. Your mind is one of your biggest enemies and it needs all the help it can get to stay on track.
Those three things are key and with them come praying and serving and obeying, all the while remembering that heaven is our home. As Sam Storms wrote on p. 170 of his book "One Thing",
"Heaven is characterized by the [eternal] increase of joy [in God]."
Let that sink in! Can you even imagine ANYTHING greater?
You might find it helpful to put together a list of things about heaven! Here's the list that I put together.
In heaven:
- We will be with and see God.
- Seeing God, we will be enamored with Him and His grace and His holiness and His kindness and everything about Him...Our joy in Him will be filling up and spilling over.
- We will be satisfied and yet always increasing in grace and knowledge and joy and holiness.
- We will hear the sound of perfected souls singing His praises.
- This joy in God and union with Him will go on an on for all of eternity and it will never grow old.
If you're like me, you have a serious tendency to focus on the here and now. It makes you anxious and afraid and downright sinful. Being reminded that my soul needs to set itself up to hope in God and more specifically, the promise of eternity with Him has really helped.
Taking the time to consider why I should contemplate heaven and then how to even begin going about it has been crucial. I hope that you have found this series both helpful and inspiring.
This earth is quite the place. The good news is, we're just passing through!
Contemplating Heaven Series:
Amen. A great reminder to fix our eyes upward. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteHeaven is going to be awesome :)
ReplyDeletewow everything looks amazing.
ReplyDeleteAnd thumbs up for haven :)
"- We will be satisfied and yet always increasing in grace and knowledge and joy and holiness.'
ReplyDeleteamen and amen.