By Al Johnson
“When you read that I am dead, do not believe it; I shall be more alive than I am now.”
— D. L. Moody
When it comes to the subject of heaven, many Christians, quite frankly, do not have much to say about it.
Why is that?
Part of the reason is that we have allowed heaven to become vague in our thinking. It has been reduced to clouds, images of angels that look like fat babies in diapers, and other ideas that feel disconnected from real life. But what if the opposite were true? What if, for the Christian, our eternity with Jesus was more real than what we are currently experiencing? What if heaven was not something distant and abstract, but something certain, weighty, and shaping the way we live right now?
Jesus taught us to pray that the will of God would be done on earth as it is in heaven. That means heaven is not meant to be a distant afterthought. It is meant to form us, to anchor us, and to direct our lives here and now. Heaven is not a side note in the Christian life. It is the end toward which all things are moving. It is the promise that steadies us in suffering, fuels our endurance, and reorders our priorities. When we begin to see it clearly, it changes how we live today.
This is why, starting this Sunday, I will be preaching a new sermon series called, Heaven. We are going to bring clarity to the questions people are asking, address the misconceptions that have confused us, and lift our eyes to the reality of the hope that every follower of Jesus is moving toward. My hope for this series is that we would become a people so heavenly minded that we are truly freed to live as God intended, fully present and faithful in the world he created, on earth as it is in heaven.
-Pastor Al