Week 9

H is for Heaven.

“H” is the last letter in our FAITH outline. Heaven is where we’ll spend eternity with Jesus. Jesus says in John 14:3: And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, [there] ye may be also. That word “if” could be better understood as “since”. It is a conditional statement. It’s means that He is already going and since He is going then…

If we are to spend eternity there, what is it like? It seems a lot of people believe Heaven is what they make it to be. If you like ice cream, then you’ll have all-you-can eat ice cream. If you like sports, your Heaven will include a big screen TV with the sports package. Is Heaven what you make it out to be?

That is our selfish view of Heaven. Like now it is not about us. It is about the one who created us. I believe that our desire will be to worship God. Don’t get me wrong it will be a great place where all hurt and sin is wiped away. Originally God made a place that He was pleased in, Genesis 1:31. Sin messed that up and I believe he’ll make a restored earth. The way he originally intended it to be.

We don’t have to wait until we die to experience Heaven, that eternal live starts now with Jesus. Because of our sins, our live are limited (Romans 6:23), but once we repent of our sins and put our trust in Jesus, we have a promise of eternal life. We don’t have to worry what will happen when we die. God makes us a new creature.

John 10:10 say: I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. This doesn’t mean that we somehow we’ll have a perfect life after trusting Jesus. We don’t somehow get that dream job, hit the lottery, and our life will be free from all troubles. That abundant life is an eternal life. We have the assurance of knowing that when we die our eternity will be spent in Heaven.

People think that when you become a Christian, all the sudden life is boring. I know just the opposite. It is not that we “have” to stop doing certain things. It is that God gives us a new heart. We are a new creature. We now have new desires. What is better then having new desires and being able to do them? I think of it like this. I think running a marathon is torture, but some people love the idea and live to run them. Their desire is to run that marathon. When their desire is fulfilled then that is a good thing. Same thing with being a Christian, our desires change. We want to go to church and worship God, we want to do what is right. We want to share Christ with others. When those desires are fulfilled then we are happy.

Our Visits

Josh and I went door knocking on a road behind the school. Our desire was to tell people about the new services and if we got a chance, to share the gospel. We knocked on a lot of doors and left a lot of flyers, but didn’t get to talk to many people. The only person we really go to speak with was already saved. We didn’t share the gospel, but we did get the info out about the new services and we also had a great time of walking and talking.

Prayer Request

Pray that opportunities will come up during the week for me to share my faith. At the beginning of class we discuss some “life witnessing” experiences we have, and I realize that I haven’t talked to anybody. Pray for our new church services at the school. Pray that they’ll be able to reach the lost in that area.

Week 8

H is for Heaven

Heaven is where we’ll spend eternity with God. Jesus said in John 14:3 “if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, [there] ye may be also. This is what we all look forward to as Christians, eternity with God. Because of our sins we deserve to be punished. I can at least speak for myself; I’m a lying, thieving, blasphemer. Because of this we must be punished. I know I’m not the only one, because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, Romans 3:23. We deserve Hell, but God in His wonderful grace paid that penalty for use that we may be saved and enjoy eternal fellowship with Him. WOW! In Romans chapter 5 it talks about how it is very rare that someone give there life for another; maybe even more likely will someone give their life if the person is righteous, but God commanded if love for us, in that, while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

Heaven starts now with Christ. We don’t have to wait to experience heaven, heaven is here and now. Jesus said in John 10:10 “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have [it] more abundantly”. This doesn’t mean that we wont have any problems when we begin to follow Christ or that we’ll become wealthy. The Bible doesn’t promise that. When we are saved the Holy Spirit dwells in us and we can enjoy a wonderful fellowship with Christ. We’ll have hope and piece that no matter what happens we understand that God is in control. God is great right now, but can you imagine how great He will be when this distraction of the sinful flesh is removed.

H stands for Heaven, but it can also stand for how. How can we have eternal life and Heaven. Throughout the past weeks we’ve been spelling out the meaning of the word FAITH. FAITH can also stand for Forsaking All I Trust Him. That can be summed up with two words: Repentance and Faith. Forsaking, Repent, or Turn from our sins and believing that we don’t have anything to do with making ourselves right with God. And Trust Him. Put our faith in Jesus and Him alone for our salvation. We know for sure that He will save us remember Romans 10:9 “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

If you haven’t repented of your sins, not just ask for forgiveness but turning from those sins; and put your trust in Jesus, then I plead with you today to do that. We don’t know how long we have in this life. Life is short, like a vapor that is here at one moment and gone the next.

Our Visit

We didn’t have any visits this week. It was raining and we don’t want to track water and mud everywhere. We had an extended class, had some singing to praise the Lord, and group prayer. The prayer time was awesome.
The prayer time was an answered prayer in itself. My wife has been discouraged and has been praying that God would do something awesome this Tuesday. She was expecting something on a visit, but it ended up being right there in our FAITH groups. God taught us that He is faithful. We may be expecting one thing, but He’ll answer prayer in is own and even more powerful way. When doing God’s will of going out and spreading the Gospel, Satan tries to hit hard. We had a few people experiencing that. One of our members needed to stay home. We got her on speaker phone and included her in the prayer. When Gods people get to gather and pray it is an awesome experience and something great is going to happen.

Payer Request

Pray for our FAITH members and their struggles. Pray for a friend Daniel that is trying to get away from drugs that has been an everyday habit for over a year. Pray that I will be more bold in my sharing the Gospel. Pray for the safe return of our pastor and the group from our church that are in the Philippines. The small picture above that I used since we are talking about Heaven, is a shot from the Philippines on Monday.