From Randy Alcorn’s facebook page this morning:
“People are made for the eternal and therefore cannot be ultimately satisfied by the temporary. When you are made for another world you cannot be fully happy with this one. Realizing this can help us as we face both difficult times and wonderful times. ‘God has set eternity in the hearts of men’ (Eccles. 3:11).”
So true!
“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His godly ones.”
“But our citizenship is in heaven,
and from it we await a Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ,
who will transform our lowly body
to be like His glorious body,
by the power that enables Him
even to subject all things to Himself.”
Borrowing a copy from Jason’s mom, passed down from her dad, given by her brother – that’s the way this book has gone viral I suppose – I read “Heaven Is For Real” by Todd Burpo last week. I typically shy away from these first-person accounts of Heaven. One reason is that I am extremely skeptical. The other is the danger of putting a subjective story on par (or superceding) God’s Word. God has told us everything we need to know about Heaven in the Bible (cf. 2 Peter 1:3) and looking to outside sources to round out our understanding is most likely to be misleading at best and heretical at worst.
In this book, however, I appreciate how with every account Colton gives in the book of his experience, his dad (a pastor) quotes Scripture that correlates. For me, it’s not that having the Scripture validates the account so much as it gives me a reference point of truth to compare and focus on. There is no way I can know whether or not this boy really was in Heaven, or had an authentic vision, yet I know that even a sweet and sincere boy as Colton seems to be is tainted with a sin-cursed body and mind he can’t fully trust (cf. Jer. 17:9 vs. Heb. 4:12) and that the Bible remains the authoritative guide to depend on. I read it as a genuine account from their perspective, not attributing any intentional deceit or impure motives to this family, yet thought of it more as fiction, extrapolated from reality.
What this book did do for me, however, was expand my imagination to what Heaven could be like, consider how truths of Scripture could be fleshed out and it really did give me a greater awe and reverence for God, as well as a greater sense of Him (Father, Son & Holy Spirit each) involved in my every day life and an excitement for and confidence in what will be! If you can filter what you read through the lens of Scripture and not overemphasize a subjective experience vs. the objective truth in the Word, borrow a copy – you must know someone reading it!
On my birthday (woohoo * it’s my birthday * party party), I thought I’d post a passage on being born again! While birthdays are significant, and fun to celebrate the life God gives, celebrating the new life, a redeemed life – bought back by God and spiritually renewed in Christ through repentance and receiving Him as Savior – is way more significant!
JOHN 3 (The Message)
1-2 There was a man of the Pharisee sect, Nicodemus, a prominent leader among the Jews. Late one night he visited Jesus and said, “Rabbi, we all know you’re a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren’t in on it.”
3Jesus said, “You’re absolutely right. Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it’s not possible to see what I’m pointing to—to God’s kingdom.”
4“How can anyone,” said Nicodemus, “be born who has already been born and grown up? You can’t re-enter your mother’s womb and be born again. What are you saying with this ‘born-from-above’ talk?”
5-6Jesus said, “You’re not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation—the ‘wind-hovering-over-the-water’ creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom. When you look at a baby, it’s just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can’t see and touch—the Spirit—and becomes a living spirit.
7-8“So don’t be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be ‘born from above’—out of this world, so to speak. You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it’s headed next. That’s the way it is with everyone ‘born from above’ by the wind of God, the Spirit of God.”
9Nicodemus asked, “What do you mean by this? How does this happen?”
10-12Jesus said, “You’re a respected teacher of Israel and you don’t know these basics? Listen carefully. I’m speaking sober truth to you. I speak only of what I know by experience; I give witness only to what I have seen with my own eyes. There is nothing secondhand here, no hearsay. Yet instead of facing the evidence and accepting it, you procrastinate with questions. If I tell you things that are plain as the hand before your face and you don’t believe me, what use is there in telling you of things you can’t see, the things of God?
13-15“No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man. In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up—and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life.
16-18“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.
19-21“This is the crisis we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is.”
(cf. John 3:1-21 ESV)