Walk
314. Habits for
Heaven
We need to form
habits for Heaven.
Why do bad things
happen?
Paul, the writer of the letter of Romans to the
1st century church in Rome was letting them know several things:
1. Man messed up his life by rejecting God and not
loving the truth; man became like an animal, governed by his instincts rather
than by his spirit.
2. God provided a way out; called the Gospel, good
news.
3. The way out is to become righteous, which means
to become part of God’s family through a blood covenant.
4. We cannot obtain this righteousness by what we
do, but by grace, which is through faith, and all of that is a gift.
5. Abraham is our example of faith. He put his hope in God, knowing He
could keep His promise even if things looked bad.
Romans chapter 5.
It starts out by saying that we have been made
righteous, which gives us peace with God.
Now we can have joy knowing that our glory is being restored, or knowing
that our original purpose, God living in us, is being restored.
Paul says that
even when we are in bad circumstances, we can still rejoice and be glad.
Why? Because we know that suffering produces
perseverance (patient endurance) and that produces character and integrity, and
that produces hope for eternal life, and this hope never disappoints us because
the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom God has
given to us.
He says that if you were
saved even while you were a sinner, how much more can you count on God saving
you in your bad circumstances now that you are His child. He says, count on it! But in the meantime, do not expect an
easy time of it.
I used to (and
sometimes still do) wish that God would make things smoother in my life now
that I know Him.
I can honestly say that God
has made my life so much better than I can ever calculate, but it has not been
without conflict.
I think that Christians
can misinterpret God’s plan for us here on this earth. The Garden of Eden was the starting
point; everything was perfect, well almost perfect. People look at that and expect God to return their lives to
something peaceful like Adam and Eve had.
The problem is, the Garden of Eden was the starting point, not the
ending point. The problem with
Adam and Eve was that they were people with free choices and they always had
the potential of rebellion in their hearts. Even if they had made it through the first few temptations,
they always had that potential to sin as free people.
We all start in our
“Garden of Eden” with kind of an innocence and a free will. But God has something much better than
returning us to Eden, He has New Jerusalem or Heaven in mind for us.
Heaven will be
made up of people who still have a free choice; they technically could
rebel against God, but during their lives they have made so many choices for
God that something inside of them just changed. They could rebel, but they will not. God will not have to worry about them
making the wrong choice. They
could, but during their lives on earth they have been through so much, they
have become so in love with Jesus, that they just would not even think of
it. That is real love; having a
choice, but exercising it for another.
So this hope that Romans
5 is talking about may be hope for now, that things will get better, but more
than that, it is hope of the end result, Heaven.
Heaven is beyond
our best dream. Think of the best
you can think of, and Heaven is infinitely better!
We are just called
to live on this earth for a short period of time. A teenager tends to think that his or her life
is forever; like 80 years old is so far in the future that he cannot even think
of it. But just let a teenager
look at a friend lying in the street with a bullet in his head dead, and life
starts to look shorter. We have no
promise about the next day, right now is the only promise we have for life.
We need to form habits for Heaven.
Esau could not turn to God; he formed a
habit of rebellion. Hebrews 12:15-17 (KJV) says, “Looking diligently lest any man
fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;
lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of
meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have
inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance,
though he sought it carefully with tears.”
Esau thought he could
live his life in the “world” as a selfish person and then turn his life over to
God later. He found out that he
could not. Why not, was God
rejecting him? No way! It is just that he had exercised his
spiritual muscles so far towards the world and Satan that he could not turn
around and repent.
We will not turn away from God if we form the
habit of obedience.
In the same way that we, who are in Heaven, will
not be able to rebel, those who do not go to Heaven will not be able to
repent. If all of their lives they
rejected submitting to the authority of the Word of God, God will not torture
them by taking them to heaven where all people will be under the authority of
the Word of God. If all of their
lives they could not stand worshipping God, God will not make them worship Him
in Heaven. Hell will actually be
better for them.
People in Heaven will
spend eternity loving, obeying and worshipping God, who is love. The God who loves us more than we love
ourselves; the God who gave up His most prized possession in order to purchase
us off of the block of slavery, that being Jesus His Son.
I heard a story from a
former member of the Mafia who got saved.
He said that when he was a young man, the older bosses purposely had him
caught by the police and he did a 5-year prison sentence; it was real suffering. When he found out, five years later on
his release, he wanted to kill them, but they hugged him and told him that he
had earned a rank in the Mafia that was secure. How? They told
him that everything he had done up to that point was perfect. He obeyed, he shot people, and he
collected money. But they did not
know how he would react when he would be under pressure to break his vow of
silence to never testify against another gang member. They said, “welcome home, son, you passed the supreme test,
everything we have is yours now.”
He was put in charge of hundreds of businesses worth millions of
dollars. He was “tested or refined” and passed the test.
Just think what the King
of the Universe will say to us after we go through bad times trusting Him.
Why does God test or refine us?
Deuteronomy 8:15-16 (Amplified Bible) says,
“(He) Who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with fiery
serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, but Who
brought you forth water out of the flinty rock, Who fed you in the wilderness
with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and test
you, to do you good in the end.”
Just think, when we are
in Heaven, we will still be free-will people, technically able to rebel against
God, but unwilling to do so. That
is because we have formed the habit.
God will allow us to live very close to Him. In some way, I believe that the more trials we go through
here on earth, the closer to God we will be when we get to Heaven. That is because we have been tested to
be free-will people who will not exercise our wills to rebel against Him. He has seen what we will do in tough
times. Each trial we go through
trusting God, Jesus and the Word puts us in a position to be closer to Him
forever.
So how can we rejoice when things are going
bad?
We know that it is getting us ready for
Heaven. We are forming habits that
will allow us to live close to God forever.
We know that the One Who
loves us actually lives in us.
We know that the One Who
loves us is in control of even the bad things.
The One Who lives in us
has already experienced much worse than we are going through, so what we are
going through will have to submit to Him and become something good.
When we overcome bad
things by faith in Jesus, God’s Word, we are overcoming some demons that are
holding other people prisoners. We
are actually doing spiritual warfare for the King of Kings while we are going
through trouble.
Romans 5:20 says that where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound.
The two words abounded and abound in Romans 5:20
are actually two different words in Greek. They are translated as follows:
Where sin strikes you
like an arrow (ABOUNDED), grace was there waiting, ahead of time (ABOUND).
What a deal! Nothing that happens to us can hurt us
IF we believe in and live by the Word of God. Even those things that LOOK like they are hurting us turn
into friends. During the time when
those things that look bad are getting us down, our hope is in Heaven, where we
will be forever someday.