My wife once asked me why I preached so much about death. I said, 'It's because it's the only thing I'm certain that the congregation will do!' We often hear of eternity and heaven in the sermon and in the prayers Believers pray, but are we really convinced with Paul that, 'For me, to live ins Christ and to die is gain'? (Phil 1:21) And Paul goes on to say 'I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far' And yet apart from some Christians who are clearly very near to death I don't commonly find Believers sharing that same desire. In fact the desire to be healed seems far stronger than to experience what is better by far, which is to be with Christ. So do we really believe that? We might well say, 'we do', but most of us don't really appear to be that eager. Why? I'd suggest that one of the reasons is that we're not very excited about what we'll be doing in heaven. Eternity does go on for a very long time and if we're not doing too much and just chilling out perhaps it doesn't seem very attractive. Go through any graveyard and you'll often see the inscription RIP on many of the graves.
When we've been there ten billion years
Bright, shining as the sun
We've no less days to Rest in Peace
Than when we first begun
Exactly! That doesn't raise our levels of anticipation nearly as much as looking forward to going on holiday to the Greek Islands or wherever. Is that all we're going to do in heaven; simply rest in peace? Boring.....
So for many years I've been on a mission to get Christians excited about heaven. And the older I get the more I try to minister this to myself.
Now I could detail a lot of things that we will probably do in heaven (Read Randy Alcorn's book; Heaven - even though it's too long and probably a bit overblown) and it would have to begin with worship. Perhaps in another blog I will go into this in more detail, but essentially in heaven we will be Explorers.
In John 17:3 Jesus prays: 'Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.' So in eternity we'll be forever exploring the truth and wonder of God and because God is eternal they'll always be more to find out. We'll forever be exploring but never exhausting the depths and meaning of the Cross of Christ and they will always be more wonders and treasure to discover there. And Paul tells us that we're seated in heavenly realms so that in the coming ages we'll be able to see the immeasurable riches of his grace (Eph 2:6,7) which I always think of in picture form as watching an eternal firework display of ever increasing colours and lights.
And think about this. Why is the Universe so vast? I'd suggest it has to be big enough for explorers who'll be living forever. Let your imagination ponder that one to give you something to look forward to.