Hope, Visions of Heaven, Words of Endurance
Heaven – A Treasure we Can Enjoy Forever
It’s easy to ignore heaven when life is sailing along smoothly, but suffering has a way of focusing our attention on heaven and what is truly important in your life. In her book, Heaven Your Real Home, Jone Eareckson Tada, who has been paralyzed for more than three decades, writes, “Broken homes and broken hearts crush our illusions that earth can keep its promises that it can really satisfy. Only the hope of heaven can truly move our passions off this world – which God knows could never fulfill us anyway – and place them where they will find their glorious fulfillment.”
God does not want us to live our lives on earth as if eternity doesn’t matter. In fact, Scripture tells us that everything we do has its reward on earth or in heaven. We can focus our hopes, dreams, and actions on what God considers to be valuable, and it will result in permanent, indestructible reward in heaven (1 Corinthians 3:10-15). Or, we can set our sights on accumulating earthly treasure which will perish and be worthless in eternity (Matthew 6:20).
God’s desire is that we “may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance…” (Ephesians 1:18).