In the 19th century, astronomer Percival Lowell spent decades mapping what he believed to be the canals of a Martian civilization. Years of research. A life's work. Except it turned out he suffered from a rare eye disorder—and when he looked through his telescope, he was projecting the reflection of his own retina onto what he saw. He spent decades not mapping Mars, but mapping the back of his own eyeball.
Scripture Focus: John 14:1-3; 2 Corinthians 4:17-18; 5:1
Like Lowell, I'm afraid there are many of us who claim Christ and have built our spiritual lives on a misconception. And that misconception is this: that even though we're headed for heaven, there's very little we can know about it in this life. That heaven is a distant and vague and unimaginable reality and therefore has little relevance to the pain and trial and trouble we experience right now.
It's a tragedy to live your life with obscured spiritual vision—to walk through this world with a blurred and diminished understanding of where you're going to spend eternity.
Listen to what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18. He takes stock of all the affliction, all the suffering, all the beatings, all the shipwrecks, and he says this: "Momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."
And then in 2 Corinthians 5:1 he says, "For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
This body? It's a tent. How many of you want to live in a tent forever? No one. This body is a tent. You're going to live in a resurrected body for all of eternity.
This life is a motel. This is not your home.
People say, "I'm building my forever home." Even if it's perfect—pond, fountain, everything you want—you're going to feel unsettled. You know why? Because Ecclesiastes 3:11 says God has hardwired you for eternity. Solomon had a yearly allowance of 25 tons of gold, built forests and gardens, experienced everything this world could offer. And says, "I'm missing something at the heart level."
You know why? Because God has hardwired you for His presence and to be in the Father's house.
CS Lewis says at the conclusion of The Chronicles of Narnia, his main characters finally enter Aslan's country. And he writes: "All of their life in this world and all of their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page. Now at last they were beginning chapter one of the great story which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before."
Your entire life in this world is the cover and title page of a book that does not end.
1. Do you live like this world is your home, or like a pilgrim passing through?
2. How does a pale view of heaven affect the way you hold onto the things of this world?
3. When was the last time the reality of heaven affected the way you lived today?
Stay dialed in.