“As It Is”

What we believe about the afterlife changes everything, forever. 

Take about 10 seconds and get really honest with the question below. 

Do I see heaven more as a promise of 

escape from a broken world or as God’s 

will entering my world with restoration?

~~~

The preceding section was a quote from a devotional I was reading this morning called, “One Minute After You Die” from the YouVersion Bible app. I will be honest, I have never ever thought of heaven as God coming to restore us here on earth. Heaven, as I had grown to learn, is an amazing place to look forward to...  after death. It had only ever been, in my mind, for a later time - a far and distant day of hope and rejoicing.

But in the devotional, the writer introduces the concept of heaven as God restoring us here on earth, right now. This means heaven can come into the reality of our every day lives. In Revelation 21 it speaks about the creation of the New Heaven and the New Earth, and in verse 5 God says from His throne, “Behold, I am making all things new”. Now, I always thought that this meant a complete and total reset in the timeline of eternity. However, the devotional had a line that changed my mind. It continued to say "He didn't say he was making all-new things." All-new things... How incredibly hope-filled, is that!

God is in the business of making all things new, not all-new things! It is encouraging to know God has never and will never give up on His creation - us. He is so willing to renew and restore us because of His great love. Jesus reconciled our relationship with God through the power of His blood on the cross. When we believe in Christ we are brought into this restoration and we are made new! 

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. 

The old has passed away; behold the new has come." 

2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV

So today I learnt; heaven is mush closer than I had originally thought. Heaven is God reaching out towards us to restore and transform our lives to make us new, and "it is God's dwelling being made available to us both immediately and eternally by Jesus who is our living hope". When we hope in Jesus we can say, "your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven", and we can know heaven is here.



Blessings~