Living For Eternity

I want you to think of your favorite color, if you don’t have a favorite then just think of any color. Now, think of a new color, a color you’ve never seen before. Take some time and try to ‘invent’ another color. Okay, so what just happened in your mind? Well, when you thought of your favorite color, you remembered something familiar, but when you tried to think of a new color, a color you’d never seen before, you couldn’t. You can’t just come up with a new color because all you know are the colors that surround you in your everyday life. That’s kind of like this life and eternity. We can’t imagine what eternity will be like because all we know is this life that surrounds us and that is familiar to us. Eternity is some distant, foggy thing that we can’t wrap our minds around. Yes, it’s true that eternity is tough for us to think about, but we do have some knowledge about it.

The Bible, over and over again, tells us to always look to eternal glory. Jesus tells us to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven, not here on earth (Matt. 6:19-21). He also tells many parables about the coming of the kingdom of heaven that I would encourage you to read (Matt. 22:1-14 and Mark 4:26-32 are just a couple of examples). Jesus talked so much and with such emotion about heaven and the eternal kingdom of God that we would be un-Christ like if we put this subject off to the side. Heaven is reality and we as Christians will be spending, well, forever there. We are so consumed with this finite life here on earth that we forget about our eternal lives waiting for us in glory with Jesus Christ. Francis Chan has a great illustration of this in this video:

I’m not saying this life here on earth isn’t important. It’s incredibly important, but it will only be worth something if we live it with eternity in mind. C.S. Lewis puts it brilliantly when he says, “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.”

In our personal lives and in our fellowship with other believers let’s make eternity and future glory a common topic in our thoughts and in our talks. And the more we do this, the more we will live our earthly lives to accomplish amazing things for the glory of Christ.

*I haven't read it, but I have heard good things about Randy Alcorn's book: Heaven.