→

At least I’ll be rested in Heaven:

::sigh::  It’s 5:30am on Sunday morning… I can’t sleep.  I don’t know why… I’ve sat tossing and turning in bed for at least an hour now… I slept for about 4 hours then have had a crappy time since then.  What sucks is that I have to get up for work in 2 hours.  So it looks like I’m gonna be dead tired today!    On the plus side, Sarah is working with me this weekend at the Creek and decided for us to take a nap after church because she thinks she’ll be dead tired…. WOOT!  I’m there!

In other news, I just read this site that I found posted on Anna’s site… It reveals 101 prophecies that the Bible makes of the end times and then tells where the world stands on them now.  Most of them (I’d say 80% or so) are dead on already, but a good 20% are still in the process and kinda vague… For example, the one is that there will be “signs in the sun” and they suggest that this could have something to do with the increase in sunspots and solar activity.  However, if you follow astronomy at all, you know that the sun is on an extremely regular cycle of sunspot activity and it isn’t out of the ordinary as of yet…  But as I said before, a good majority of these prophecies are either already fulfilled, or are on the verge of being filled.  It’s really kinda creepy/cool to see it happening before our eyes.  Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not setting a date for the end, but I AM pointing out that the Bible gives us hundreds of warning signs… and we’re hitting them FAST!

Recently our small group finished the book, “Everybody’s Normal Till You Get To Know Them” by John Ortberg.  There is a chapter about Heaven.  It describes how we are often fearful of going to heaven because we don’t know what it’ll be like for sure.  We worry that we won’t have experienced life fully down here yet… We worry that we’ll be missing out on life.  We ALL want to go to heaven… just NOT NOW!  Here’s an excerpt:

I believe one of the reasons many people don’t look forward to heaven is that we badly misunderstand what the Bible is saying about it.  Lewis Smedes, an ethics teacher of mine in grad school, used to ask students if they wanted to go to heaven when they died.  Everyone raised a hand.  Then he asked, “Be honest now, who would like to go right now, today, before the sun goes down?”

A few raised their hands slowly, giving what they thought must be the correct answer, looking around to see if they were the only ones.  They were.  Most people wanted a rain check.  They were ready to die, but not today.

Then professor Smedes asked who would like to see the world we live in set straight on its hinges once and for all, tomorrow: “No more common colds, no more uncommon cancers.  Everyone would have his day; there would be no second-class citizens.  Prisoners and slaves would be free; hungry people would have plenty; no one would lift a finger to harm another; and we would all be at peace with everyone, even with ourselves.  Anybody interested in that?”

There was a frenzy of hand-lifting.  Smedes said that if a new world tomorrow is what you really want, you want to go to heaven.

Redemption is always the redemption of creation.  God never creates something in order to destroy it; and if it goes wrong, he intends to redeem it.  Smedes notes that sometime ago there was a book written about “the LATE great planet earth,” as if we were to look forward to God’s destroying what he had made.  But Paul says that creation itself “waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.”  Far from being burned up or destroyed, Paul says that creation “will be liberated from it’s bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”  God loves this world that he has made, and, as Smedes says, “he has no plans to preside over its demise.  His plan is to make it right again.”  If in your heart you want that, you want heaven.

After reading that I really looked at MY view on heaven.  How do I feel about going today?  Honestly… I initially had reservations.  Much like the students in Smede’s class, I didn’t want to miss out on life.  I want to experience things that I haven’t yet!  I want to have sex!  I want to raise a family!  I want to be a husband and a father!  But most of all… I want to have sex! (Hey, I’m still a 21 year old male after all. )

Then we were discussing this topic in our group and it was realized by me that God is not a God of teasing.  God doesn’t show us something good and then give us soemthing crappy.  God isn’t into dangling stuff in front of us like a cat pawing at a toy on a string.  He doesn’t say, “Look what you COULD have… now here’s yours…” and hand us second-rate life.  NO!  Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” – John 10:10  TO THE FULL!  So bearing that in mind, I know that I can take the best experience on earth… I can take the best 5 minutes of my life… and realize that that moment is a far cry from the WEAKEST moment of heaven.  The WORST time I’ll have in heaven is going to be so much better than the BEST time on earth… At that point I realized that I was ready for heaven now.  I trust God to have the best in mind for my life… AND my afterlife.  A time is coming when I’ll be in true Biblical community with my very creator… and I can’t wait! 

Mood:  Awake… WHY!?!?!?!?