What do you think heaven will be like? One episode of The Twilight Zone starts at the moment a stereotypical bad guy dies, and follows him through the afterlife. He believed that in heaven, everything should go his way, and during the story, everything does. Surrounded by his favorite ways to gamble, the bad guy exclaims “Dis must be heaven!” But he never loses at anything, ever. He plays poker, horse races, craps, and blackjack. The results? Win, win, win, and win, without stopping. So, what brings him great joy at first, turns into perpetual torture, and what the bad guy thought heaven should be like misses the mark by, oh, a few thousand degrees.
Based on the descriptions in Revelation 4:8-10 and 5:11-14, heaven is not where everything goes our way. The focus in heaven is not on us or our own wants and desires. The Twilight Zone bad guy got everything he ever wanted for himself in the afterlife, and he eventually realized he was in hell. Instead, the focus in heaven is where it rightfully should be - on Jesus.
So if you are planning on going to heaven, let me ask: for practice, are you giving Him the glory, honor and thanks for everything in your life now? A glimpse of heaven here on earth doesn’t occur when you get what you want. It comes when you praise and worship and say thanks to Jesus, keeping your focus where it ought to be. We need to rehearse now so that we can join with the thousands upon thousands of angels in their praise. Even just a simple “Thank you, Lord” for the seemingly mundane, everyday events in our lives can help prepare us. Look around at your blessings, and say “Alleluia” as part of your training. Say “Praise the Lord” any time, just for a dry run.
That way you can get ready for heaven, and you can join the praise that goes on for ever and ever and feel right at home.
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Feel free to print a post in a non-commercial publication (like a church newsletter), link to this site or a specific post, or extract up to 100 words from a post on to another site, as long as you provide a link back to the original post and include the following notice: “©, Sean Connolly. All rights reserved. Originally published at http://freerangedevo.blogspot.com/.”
However, you must have written permission to repost or publish an entire post from my site anywhere on the internet, use a post for commercial purposes including selling or licensing printed or electronic versions of my content, or alter, transform or build upon the content of any post.
