Do You Care About Heaven?

    Should it matter to us now what heaven will be like?
    I should say so! After hearing and reading from both church and non-church people what their assumptions are of heaven, having a Biblical understanding of what God says our ultimate home will be like, does matter. If heaven is really the place (or lack thereof) that many people think it is, it does not offer much incentive for people to want to find out how to get there. After all, the Bible describes it for a reason! One, is certainly to offer hope to the believer (which it only does when understood as a “good place” to be), the other is to be an attraction for those not yet on their way.
    And if it is not important for us to know what heaven is like, then the Bible would not offer so much information about it. A lot of people don’t even know that the Bible does tell us a lot about what heaven will be like. But it does!
    Christian philosopher and physicist Blaise Pascal wrote, “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end.”
    I think he’s right. We all seek happiness. But listen to what the great American theologian, Jonathan Edwards, said early in his life regarding his pursuit of happiness, “It becomes us to spend this life only as a journey toward heaven… to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life. Why should we labor for or set our hearts on anything else, but that which is our proper end and true happiness?” In a set of resolutions that he wrote for himself as a young man, he determined, “Resolved, to endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness, in the other world, as I possibly can.”
    Pascal and Edwards both had a wise handle on a God-given pursuit for all of us, happiness in the afterlife. After all, that is the ultimate of happiness. A few cheap thrills in the here and now will be over in a flash. But heaven is forever!
    But will it be a place of happiness? Or will it be eternal boredom?
    Because of the misinformation that is out there, largely circulated in the church world, lots of people think the latter. But in this series, HEAVEN (starting on Easter Sunday at The Bridge), we will discover that those who think so are dead wrong!
    I want to encourage you, be here for every message. Over the course of the next four weeks, with a Q & A format, I’m going to use the Bible to answer the most common questions about heaven.
    You are going to love this series! Join me at The Bridge as we learn what God wants us to know about Heaven.