When you think about heaven, you’re identifying the place where your Father is, your Savior is, your brothers and sisters are, your name is there, your inheritance is there, your citizenship is there, your reward is there, your Master is there…of course, being God and Christ…and your treasure is there as well.
To sum it up, heaven is your home.
We are strangers, we are pilgrims, we are aliens in this world. We are like space travelers who are on a planet not our own. We don’t belong here. Every time somebody in this world meets us, they’re meeting alien beings. We are the aliens, folks. We have arrived here but our home is somewhere else.
Everything we love is there. Everything we cherish is there. Everything valuable is there. Everything eternal is there. And yet here we are in the church of Christ … in this century, committed to indulging ourselves in this alien land. Self-indulgent Christianity is the kind of Christianity that’s lost its heavenly perspective.
The church today doesn’t hope for heaven, they hope they won’t go to heaven. They don’t want to go to heaven until they’ve had all that earth could possibly deliver them. And when that’s exhausted, and they finally are too old to enjoy it or too sick to enjoy it, then they’ll be glad that heaven is there to receive them. “But please, God, don’t send me to heaven yet. I haven’t been to Hawaii. I haven’t gotten my new car. I…I want to go to the Bahamas. I want to get a raise. I want a new house. God, please, no, not heaven.” What a jaded perspective.
