I have a few questions for you today: what are you living for? What is the motivation behind everything you do? When you think of the expected end; when you think of the ultimate conclusion what comes to mind? What for you is the final analysis? From where you stand, how far into the future is the end?
If truth be told, far too many people live only today; they are not thinking about the future. And if they are, it doesn’t go far enough. Their concept of the future is the next ten or twenty years. Not much more than that. Can you picture a future beyond fifty, a hundred or even a thousand years? Can you picture eternity?
When I was growing up as a Christian, some of the teaching we received was imbalanced. All the focus was on heaven and eternity. We sang songs like “this world is not my home”, “I’ve got a home in glory land that outshines the sun,” and “Some glad morning…I’ll fly away.” As a result, we were raised as a bunch of ineffective and irrelevant Christians who were completely detached from their environment. Consequently, we made no impact. We were terribly infested with an escapist mentality: “come Lord Jesus and take us out of this sinful world.” We were so heavenly minded that we were no earthly good. We just sat and let life happen to us. Now over the years that imbalance has been redressed (thank God!), but unfortunately, we have swung to the other extreme. We are now so focused on our lives on earth; we hardly ever hear any teaching about heaven or eternity. The only time most of us hear about eternity is when we get saved or when somebody dies. Consequently, a lot of us are now so earthly minded, we never figure eternity into what we do.
To heaven, Then What?
I think it is important that we live our lives with a consciousness of eternity. why? The truth is you are going to live forever - whether you are a Christian or not, whether you born again or not. So, let me ask you; Are you living for eternity?
Let’s take that one-step further: what will your experience of eternity be? For most Christians, the answer to that question is “I’m going to heaven.” But that only answers one part of the question. “I’m going to heaven” addresses the issue of where you will spend eternity. Still, there remains the question of how you will spend eternity; You’re going to heaven and then what?
In this world, we never visit a place just for the sake of visiting. What really makes the visit meaningful is what we do when we get there; how we spend our time there. We have not been taught nearly enough about how we will spend eternity. We have been told; “get saved and you will go to heaven”. But that is only the beginning of the story. Believing and getting saved only gets you into heaven. But when you get there, what will heaven be like for you? Think of your favourite holiday destination. Not everyone who goes there on holiday has same experience. Some have five star holiday; others have a budget holiday. And when someone you know returns from their holiday, you are more concerned about how they spent their holiday than you are about where they spent their holiday.
Now this is the key: what you believe determines where you will spend your eternity. But how you behave determines how you will spend eternity and both are extremely important. What you believe unlocks the door to eternal life; how you behave unlocks the door to eternal reward. Receiving Jesus Christ as the Lord and Saviour will get you into heaven; but how you live after you get saved is what determines what heaven will be like for you.Settle it in your heart right now; heaven will not be the same for everyone. What you do now will determine what happens to you in eternity. And I’m talking about the ordinary, mundane activities of life; things you might not even consider particularly spiritual. Your relationships; how you treat strangers; Your attitude at work; what you do with your leisure time; how you spend your money. Let me ask you again: are you living for eternity?
The choices we make in this life do not just evaporate and come to nothing when we die. They matter and will continue to matter throughout eternity. Remember, your eternal destination is the result of what you believe on earth; and your eternal compensation is the result of how you behave on earth. Both are extremely important.
