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Challenge

Let’s do a quick activity: when you finish reading this part, close your eyes for about 30 seconds and think about Heaven. What do you imagine? Who do you see? What will you be doing? Take 30 seconds to imagine this, and then open your eyes and keep reading.

Result

All done? Good, now what did you picture? Perhaps reuniting with family, friends, and loved ones. Perhaps you imagined going on epic adventures. Maybe you even imagined staying at home all day and watching TV and playing video games. Now, aside from all of those ideas, I want to ask one question:

When you thought of Heaven, did you think of God?

When a pastor asked me this question, it really stuck to me because, I for one, didn’t picture God in my image of Heaven. I was one of the aforementioned TV and video games guys. This exercise stuck with me because it showed me I was missing the point of Heaven. Yes, all of the things about family and friends and reunion are good and have Biblical support, but when we only think of those things, we miss the point of Heaven.

When we think of Heaven, we should be thinking of God first and foremost.

And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” — Revelation 4:8 

All of Heaven centers on God. The creatures there worship Him, and as His creation we are made to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That is the primary purpose of Heaven.

However, many of us don’t think of Heaven that way. We are selfish, and we use Heaven as a catch-all for everything that WE want in the moment. “Oh, in Heaven I’ll have the nicest house, I’ll have the best body, I’ll be the most popular.” These things shouldn’t permeate our thinking of Heaven.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? — Revelation 17:9 

Many times we let our selfish thinking penetrate ALL of our thinking of God, not just of Heavenly things. We think of God as a genie, a parent, or a president.

As a genie, we want God only to answer our prayers in the exact way we want them to be answered. If things get hard, or our prayers are answered differently than we expect, we become enraged and bitter towards God.

As a parent, we tend to only come crawling back to God when we mess up and get hurt. Like a kid crying for their mother after scraping a knee, we cry out to God saying “how could You do this?” after we encounter a slight struggle.

As a president, we think of God as too lofty and important to care about our needs and wants. “God is so powerful, he doesn’t care about what I do today.” News flash, he does.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. — Proverbs 3:5–6 

It is important, however, to acknowledge while it is not good, it is human to fall into all of these patterns of thinking at one time or another. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God. What we should do when we mess up is come crawling back to God and ask for repentance so that we can continue to live the way Jesus taught us to act.

The more we think about God as not just someone to go to when we mess up, but someone we have an active relationship with, we can realize just how much God thinks about us, and more than that, how much he loves us.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you. — Psalm 139:17–18 

Second Challenge

I have a second challenge for you. Sometime during the next day, when you are fully caught up in all of the distractions of the world, I want you to stop, and think about God. Actually think about Him. Think about how God created you in His image, how He sent His Son to die for us, and how He rose from the grave. Think about all these things and more. Be in prayer, and spend time listening to what God has to say to you. I set a reminder on my phone and found that it helps.

So take some time with God today. He wants to hear from you, and He wants to speak to you. He loves you, and the more you spend time with Him, the more you’ll realize the wonderful plans that he has for your life. 

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. — Jeremiah 29:11