Heavenly Realities Here and Now

In accepting Jesus as your Saviour and King, you have a new life. That’s an amazing statement in itself, but there is so much more. ‘Set your eyes on the realities of heaven.’ How and why? What does it mean to set my eyes on the realities of heaven? What are the realties of heaven?

We know some of those realities. There’s no tears, no pain, no separation from God, and we will live in constant praise and peace, without the presence of fear or death or increasing persecution, hated and the ever seeming victory of the wicked. There will be no sickness or disease. How wonderful in the face of today’s fears surrounding Covid and our vulnerability to it!

The things of earth I know, but how can I think of heaven when I’ve never been there? It’s like me saying think about Spain if you’ve never been, there isn’t it? In the books of Revelation or Daniel, we see man’s feeble attempt to translate into human understanding and words the stunning beauty and mind-blowing realities of what they saw. All John could attempt was, ‘it was like’. He had no words to describe what he was seeing.

So how then do I set my sights on the realties of heaven? Well, the first bit we read said that, as we came to Christ, we have been raised to new life! It isn’t just reworking the old life, but actually doing away with the old life. So to be ‘raised to life’ means we must have died somehow.

So adding all that up, I can focus on the realities of heaven for, not only have I been there, I dwell there. It is not just when I die, future tense, but, when I died, past tense, and was raised up to new life in Him. For if my life is hidden in Christ and Christ is seated in heaven, then so am I. And even more astonishing to me is that I’m not quietly sneaked in the back or pushed to some forgotten corner as I’ve so often been by this world. No, for if my life is hidden with Christ, who is seated at the right hand of the Father, then, guess what, so are we who believe, in the place of honour, the place for the heir to the throne. ‘Blessed assurance Jesus is mine’, the hymn goes. Well, blessed assurance I am His! For in and through Him, I have all things.

Prayer: Lord, may Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven and, as I dwell in You, allow me to show this hope and the reason I have for such joy today with those I meet who haven’t experienced heaven’s realities, but live with the world’s painful hopeless reality. Amen.