Heading for Heaven

Sunday 12th January 2025

“In my Father’s house are many rooms.”
John 14:2 (NIV)

Heading for Heaven

What is your idea of heaven?  Before reading on, it is worth pausing for a moment to picture what it is…

My feeling is that our ideas of heaven are often individualistic and centred on pleasure.  It is about me enjoying the things I find most pleasurable: beautiful surroundings, beautiful food and drink, beautiful weather.  Such ideas are not wholly wrong.  Heaven will certainly be enjoyable!  How could it not be, when there will be “no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4)?

But the Bible’s vision of heaven is essentially relational – not to mention the fact that it presents us with a vision not merely of heaven but of “a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1).  So it will be more physical, more real, than we generally imagine.  But let us for a moment dwell on the relational aspect of heaven.

We have it straight from the mouth of Jesus, speaking to his disciples the night before he died: “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2-3).

So, we are to picture ‘heaven’ as a house belonging to our heavenly Father, where we will be with Jesus and his Father (and the Holy Spirit as well), and it will be for ever.  It is utterly relational: all those who trust in Jesus will be with the Lord and with one another.  Of course, that is not the only picture God gives us, but it is a true picture.

Knowing where we are heading helps us to know what is important now.  If our destination is relational, so should our journey be relational.  So, nothing is more important in this life than our relationship with the Lord and our relationships with other people.  No wonder, then, that the two great commandments are to love God and to love our neighbour.  Being ‘heavenly-minded’ will mean giving a high priority to these relationships, and that is why church is so vital: it is a taste, an outpost, a promise, of heaven.

Prayer
Lord, thank you that Jesus came to be where we live, so that we can go to be where you live.  While I wait to go there, to you, help me to live as if that’s where I’m heading.  Amen.

Yours warmly, in Christ,
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister)