Heaven.

I hear a lot of fellow Christians on the subject of Heaven talking about the rewards that we will receive. About how we’ll get all of these fancy crowns and mansions. There will be glorious streets of gold. It’ll all be so amazing and like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

But honestly, I don’t get why that’s so often the focus.

Yes, those things are wonderful and sure I guess I’m pumped for it because we all know I’m not going to see those things in my lifetime here.

But in Heaven we’re going to be in the presence, the actual presence, of our Lord and Savior.

I don’t think I’m going to care if I have a crown or a mansion. I won’t care that I’m walking on streets of gold.

Because I’ll be able to worship Him perfectly forever and ever. I’ll be able to sit at His actual feet and praise everything that He has done. I’ll be able to walk by His side for eternity. Isn’t that a thousand times more beautiful and incredible than riches?

Our human minds always go straight to the riches of Heaven, but that’s not even important. We will be with God!

Admittedly, I’m not really one to want to hurry my residence in Heaven along because there’s so much more that I want to do here. But when I started thinking about it like the presence of God rather than a place with lots of riches, it became something that I can actually look forward to. The fancy and gold part of Heaven has never really been what attracts me to it. It’s just Jesus that does.

No more pain, tears, heartache, injustice, anxiety, fear, hatred, depression… so that we can just continuously joyously worship our Father with our Father without those things as distractions. Wow.

There’s also this hope that I can look forward to a place where everyone is unified. There will be a unified and peaceful body of people, with different genders, races, languages, classes, educations, interests, country of origins, backgrounds and sins, together worshiping our commonality… God. It’s so beautiful to me. We live on an earth with so many arguments and wars and conflicts and disagreements, and Heaven won’t have that. We will finally look past our differences and live together peacefully. I literally can’t wait for that.

But I also think we often get caught up in “Lord, come quickly” because we’re tired of living in this evil, messed up world and want that peace. I know I’ve definitely thought that a few times in the past few weeks alone. But I think we have to start  remembering the people, so many people, who have never heard Jesus’s name. They don’t know about His love, grace, mercy, kindness, courage, and forgiveness. They haven’t heard of His incredible act on the cross. They don’t know, and we should have compassion for them because Heaven is going to be so great.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve asked the Lord to go ahead and come just because I know I’m going to fail a test the next day. But in the grand scheme of things, that is selfish. He can go ahead and come because I know I’ll be in Heaven with Him when He does. But what about the people who haven’t heard? We should love the world enough to pray that each person knows Him before they leave this earth. And I know God will come back whenever He wants regardless of what we want or pray or hope. But we should want to see every single person in Heaven with us.

So even wishing for just ourselves to be in Heaven with Him before His timing is selfish. We are still here, living and breathing, because He is using us here to spread the gospel. Embrace that. Yes, look forward to Heaven and think of it as often as you get discouraged by this world. It’s encouraging to know where our home is. But don’t waste your time here wishing you were there. You are being used with every breath for a higher purpose and calling and it’s important. Don’t waste it.

Ultimately, it should break our hearts every time someone dies without knowing Him. Even if they were the worst person on the planet. Even if we think they somehow deserved death.

It should break our hearts.

I guess there’s two actions to do from here that I want to challenge all of us to do:

1. Tell others about Jesus through words and also actions. Not for an extra reward in Heaven but because your heart is broken. And not just the comfortable or the easy or the ones you think deserve Jesus, but the ones that you know you’re the exact opposite from. The ones you know will be hard. The ones you know will take work. And do it with love. Love that person like Jesus so that they see Jesus before you even speak His name.
2. And try your absolute hardest to make this world as close to Heaven as possible. Yes, it will never happen. This world will never be perfect. Sin messed that up. But we can advocate for justice and mercy and peace and love and hope and joy and unity. We can make this world better and we should. We shouldn’t complacently sit around while terrible things happen because we know it will never compare to Heaven. We shouldn’t walk by the broken man on the side of the road. This is our home for the time being so we should always strive to make it better, more like Jesus. Be healers and peacemakers and bridge builders and lovers and uniters and joy bringers. Because Jesus himself prayed… “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10) And that should be our prayer too.
   

I imagine Heaven will be exactly like those moments of beautiful and intimate impromptu circles of friends in the middle of the parking lot singing songs of praise to the Lord in sweet fellowship. And it will be just as perfect as those moments. And those moments give me hope that snippets of Heaven can happen on earth too.

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The time I tried the Daniel Fast.

I’m beginning to write this seven days into the Daniel Fast, and I’m already doing a pretty great job at messing it up. I’ve cheated more than once, and I haven’t read a chapter of John every day.

It’s basically turning into a period of giving up sweet tea and donuts (not anymore on the donuts… Update: Or the sweet tea…) and overwhelming guilt.

The Backstory: My pastor asked our church to participate in the Daniel Fast as we begin the new year. If you don’t know what that is, it’s where you limit your diet by taking out meat, dairy, sweets and leavened bread for 21 days. You essentially eat like Daniel did in Daniel 1. In addition to this, we were supposed to read a chapter of John every day. So since everyone else was doing it, I figured I’d give it a shot. Why not right?

I could make up excuses to why I’m sucking at it like food is my ultimate weakness and even though John is one of my favorite books of the Bible, I’ve read it so many times in the past year that I just don’t want to read it right now. Plus I’m doing a pretty solid job of keeping up with She Reads Truth at the moment and adding a chapter of John each day will probably mean sacrificing one of them, and that’s just the truth of my current state of Bible reading.

But honestly, those excuses don’t matter because my heart wasn’t in it. It still isn’t.

But despite all of that, the Lord is still faithful and He has taught me significantly  more in these days of attempting and failing miserably at the Daniel Fast than I think He would have if I would have executed it perfectly.

I realized that I love food. Maybe too much. I don’t really know. I just know that I don’t have much self-control when it comes to food. Maybe I’m gluttonous. I only overeat occasionally though, and I can mostly control my portions. But I just can’t turn down free food, and sometimes I drool in grocery stores. I love food especially the food that you can’t eat on the Daniel Fast. It’s delicious, and I thank God for it. Life would be boring without good food.

Can food be an idol? Probably. In fact, our whole day is planned around meals (and class and work and everything else that’s important to us), but maybe it should be planned around time with God instead. Whoa. That’s intensely convicting isn’t it?

But food isn’t bad. Besides the fact that we need food to survive, I think back at all of the sweet, meaningful times spent with friends and family over meals or coffee.

I’ve also realized how damaging legalism can be to me. I’m not saying in any way that this fast was legalistic. But I am saying that I made it that way. I held myself to a standard that I couldn’t reach. I looked at the list of foods I wasn’t “supposed” to eat for 21 days and made it into a set of strict rules to follow. I do this often with so many different things. I even make my relationship with Christ that is full of love, kindness and forgiveness into a set of rules I have to follow. If I don’t follow them, He won’t love me. I won’t be good enough. But that’s the furthest thing from the truth. The truth is He loves me regardless of whether or not I follow the ten commandments at all times. Regardless of whether I succeed at the Daniel Fast. Granted I should repent when I sin but the point is He loves me, and because of that He forgives me when I fail Him. When I break His heart by turning down the path well traveled instead of the narrow one, when I turn my back on Him and walk the other direction, when I run right past His open arms into the arms of something else, when I sin.  He loves us at our weakest and most disgusting moments, and that’s what makes the gospel so beautiful.

My promises will never be good enough. I won’t keep all of my promises. I can’t because I’m not perfect. I am human. Flawed. But God always keeps His promises because He is holy. His promise to love and care for me. His promise to forgive me when I mess up. Never failing and never ending. His promises are forever. I am so thankful for that.

I have to remind myself that God doesn’t call us to a new law. He calls us to a relationship with Him. Christianity isn’t supposed to be a set of rules and regulations. And I know that. It’s been drilled into me since I was born. But I make it that way so often. Do I really act like this is a relationship? Or am I just trying to be as good as I can because that’s what I am supposed to do? So I can impress God or other people?

It’s not a set of rules. It’s a relationship. And relationships are messy. They are far from perfect. They’re up and down. In and out. Sideways. You argue. You cry. You smile. You fight and make up. You forgive and forget. You move on. You laugh. You serve. You give. You sacrifice. You hug. You hit. You walk away. You communicate. You reminisce. You encourage. You comfort. You get mad. You hate. You love. It’s a roller coaster.

And that’s exactly what we have with God. Thankfully one side of the relationship is perfect, but my side… definitely not.

Every relationship is different. My relationship with my sister is different than your relationship with yours. So my relationship with God is going to look different than yours. What works to grow your faith is different than mine. Your spiritual gifts are different than mine. Our struggles, where we find our joy, how we tell others about Jesus, where and when we pray, everything is different. And that’s okay. We don’t have to all look the same. We don’t all have to interact with God the same. We don’t have to act out our faith the same way. And so often I look at other people who seem to have it all together and seem to be such good Christians, and they are, but I compare myself to them. Then I think that maybe I should be acting more like that girl over there or sharing my faith like that guy on the other side of the room, but what if that just doesn’t work for me? What if I’m not good at what they do? Because God has gifted me and called me to something different. Something unique to me.

This may be why there’s so much disagreement among Christians. Because we’re all unique and we think we’re the only one who’s right when in reality God is the only one who’s right. But isn’t our uniqueness what makes it so beautiful? That God can reach such a wide variety of individuals. That He doesn’t just love one specific set of people who are all similar. That despite our dissimilarities we are all the same in that we are all sons and daughters of Christ. Heirs to His throne. We (should) love each other despite our differences because we’re all the same. We’re all loved by the one who created us.

Finally I realized that for the first time doing something remotely close to the Daniel Fast, it wasn’t wise for me to start with a 21 day fast from my favorite foods. So, I think next time I am going to fast on my own when God tells me it’s a good time, how He tells me it should be done and for how long I should do it. It’ll actually be something attainable where my heart is in it. Where I’m not guilty because I’m failing man, but convicted because I’m failing God. Where I can grow as a Christian and grow closer to the Lord. Then eventually maybe I’ll try the Daniel Fast again because I don’t hate the idea. It just wasn’t for me this time around.