But what is the goal of every game, every player transaction, every contract and every move?  To win a championship.  In the world of sports, it is easy to identify the prize, and equally obvious what it means to keep your eyes on the prize.

We as Christians also have a “prize.”  There is a goal that we should be living for.  That prize is Heaven.

I asked two questions at the end of the last segment.  Let’s take just a little time to examine these.

1. How would you define Heaven?

Did you take the time to answer this question for yourself?  If you did, let me take a few guesses as to where you might have drudged up that definition.

• The um-teen-thousand sermons you’ve heard in your life.
• Different portions of the Bible.
• Your own concepts of what “paradise” might look like, feel like, and be filled with.
• Looking at the world around you and knowing what shouldn’t be there.

How did you define Heaven?  Was it pearly gates and streets of gold?  Was it a giant hill with a city and mansions on it?  Did you remember the river of life, or the lack of tears and sorrow and pain?  These are, of course, some of the bits and pieces the Bible gives us about Heaven.

Why ask this question?  Well, I believe that our view of Heaven determines the answer to the next question.

2. Do you wish you were in Heaven?  Why or why not?

If Heaven is so great, and this world so awful, do you really wish that you were there instead of here?  Does the image you’ve either been given or created for yourself stir up a deep desire, a perpetual longing for that place?

While writing this series, I happened to receive an interesting illustration in e-newsletter.

After dying in a car crash, three friends go to Heaven for orientation. All are asked the same question: “When you are in your casket and friends and family are mourning over you, what would you like to hear them say about you?”

The first guy immediately responds, “I would like to hear them say that I was one of the great doctors of my time, and a great family man.”

The second guy says, “I would like to hear that I was a wonderful husband and school teacher who made a huge difference in the lives of children.”

The last guy thinks a minute and replies, “I would like to hear them say: LOOK, HE’S MOVING!”

Does the last man’s response reveal your current perspective about Heaven?  It would be nice to be there, but I’d rather be here on earth.

To be honest, I’ve only learned what it means to long for Heaven in the past few years.  I served with a pastor for three years in Massachusetts.  One of the cries of his heart was to be with his Savior in Heaven.  The more he made mention of it, the more I was forced to examine my own desire for the afterlife.

After all, I just turned thirty, I’m married with two beautiful little girls, and my ministry is finally gaining a little momentum.  Would I really want to leave this?

This is, perhaps, why people wonder about whether those who commit suicide go to Heaven.  The argument is that they are, after all, only speeding on the fulfillment of their desire for Heaven.  But God gives us so much while we are here.  To take our own life, though on the surface seems to release us to our place of longing, actually cuts us off from our place of preparation and fulfillment of God’s destiny for us.  This is where the words of Paul come in to play.

…I know that what is happening will be for the good of my own soul…It all accords with my own earnest wishes and hopes, which are that I should never be in any way ashamed, but that now, as always, I should honor Christ with the utmost boldness by the way I live, whether that means I am to face death or to go on living.  For living to me means simply “Christ,” and if I die I should merely gain more of Him.  I realize, of course, that the work which I have started may make it necessary for me to go on living in this world.  I should find it very hard to make a choice.  I am torn in two directions – on the one hand, I long to leave this world and live with Christ, and that is obviously the best thing for me.  Yet, on the other, it is probably more necessary for you that I should stay here on earth.  That is why I feel pretty well convinced that I shall not leave this world yet, but shall be able to stand by you, to help you forward in Christian living and to find increasing joy in your faith.
Philippians 1:19-25 (Phillips)

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t want to be used by God on this earth, to live our families and friends and enjoy the life God has given to us.  But if you read the words of Paul, his first thought was not for those to whom he ministered.  In this rare act of selfishness, Paul instead thought first of what benefit it would be for him to be with Christ in eternity.

How have we come to the place where this temporal, fallen world comes to the forefront in our hearts and minds, far before that of a glorious, untarnished, never-ending, Christ-filled eternity?

I have tried to help unveil a few of the aspects that are sometimes left out of our more common examinations of eternity.  Our loves really do have eternal consequences, and we will be judged for what we have (or have not) done with eternity in mind.  We are in a state of preparation for roles and tasks that God has appointed unto us for eternity. 

But I cannot birth within you a desire for eternity.  That is something each of us must be willing to reach for on our own, and allow God to place within us.  It is part of that everyday battle to surrender our wills for His, as we crucify the old nature and give life and sustenance to the new.

Of course, our first response is that we want to go there, seeing as the alternative is anything but pleasant.  We’ve sold Heaven strictly as the alternative to Hell, and I think that we have failed to truly understand what it is all about and that we should truly long for “those pearly gates.”

Back in May I had started to think that if I was going to take this blogging concept seriously, that I needed to find a topic that I could write about for a while and devote some of my study time towards.

It turned out that I went on a road trip with my pastor for a week to Missouri and back from New Brunswick.  While there we were able to rekindle an old love: Starbucks.  Now, it’d been some time since I actually had a Starbucks, much less enjoyed one.  But for some reason we had Siren Radar that started halfway through Maine and continued the entire trip.

Anyway, if you haven’t noticed, Starbucks is printing blurbs on their cups by famous people, movie stars, authors, etc.  In fact, Rick Warren is even featured on some editions of the cup.  I had read that somewhere, but had forgotten about it as I have very little access to the chain out here.  But as we were waiting for the van to go through an oil change, I stopped and read the cup I was drinking.  Here is what it said:

“Heaven is totally overrated. It seems boring. Clouds, listening to people play the harp. It should be somewhere you can’t wait to go, like a luxury hotel. Maybe blue skies and soft music were enough to keep people in line in the 17th century, but Heaven has to step it up a bit. They’re basically getting by because they only have to be better than Hell.”
- Joel Stein; Columnist for the Los Angeles Times (Starbucks Coffee; “The Way I See It” #230)

Apparently, we as the Church of Christ have done a lousy job of advertising Heaven to those who are on the path that leads away from it.  We have somehow allowed Heaven to become so common and earthly that it shows up in cartoons as characters having received wings, a halo and a harp; movies are made of angels doing things that can hardly be called angelic; and commercials use angels as a gimmick to advertise the heavenliness of something so lame as cream cheese.

This final section on the line of eternity may only take a one or two more posts, so please stick with me.  I hope to be done this or next week.  But before we dive in, I have a bit of homework for you.

Ask yourself how you the two questions I’ve listed below.  Please, feel free to comment with your answers.  Be honest and open, and don’t worry about being right or wrong.  Right now, it’s just a way of seeing what the common conceptions of eternity are.  Thanks.

• How would you define Heaven?
• Do you wish you were in Heaven? 
  Why or why not?

If you thought that these were acts reserved for God alone, we have to take one thing into consideration.  For we know that Christ is King and Judge, and He receives those roles Himself because He is the Son of God.  But we, too, are sons, adopted as if we were born of the Father Himself.  Therefore we are joint-heirs with Christ.

First, let’s talk about how we became heirs.

You might think that it is being born again, of water and Spirit (see John 3), that makes us sort of “re-made” with a new Father, God.  But Scripture paints a very different picture.  Instead of Fathering us anew, God adopts us.  Now, I realize that on the surface, it doesn’t seem any different; but in reality it completely different.

For if we are re-made, Fathered anew, then God wipes out all of what we were and starts us afresh.  Though the forgiveness given to us does remove our sin as far from God and His memory as East is from West, we are not free of our sinful nature as long as we walk in our natural, corruptible bodies (see Romans 7:1-12; 1 Corinthians 15:42-57).

But adoption means that we are taken, filthy rotten in all of our sins, and lifted up, cleaned by the Blood of Christ (see Romans 5:6-11), and given a new nature that battles with our old one, until that day when we our mortal, corruptible bodies are exchanged for the immortal, incorruptible that Paul described in 1 Corinthians 15.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. So you should not be like cowering, fearful slaves. You should behave instead like God’s very own children, adopted into his family-calling him “Father, dear Father.”  For his Holy Spirit speaks to us deep in our hearts and tells us that we are God’s children.  And since we are his children, we will share his treasures-for everything God gives to his Son, Christ, is ours, too.
(Romans 8:14-17a, NLT)

We could go on and on just about the implications of Adoption.  But let’s just look at the fact that this adoption is so complete, that we are not just heirs of Christ, we are heirs of God with Christ.  And, we joint heirs, inheriting fully the same as He does, not in some lesser respect.

But when the proper time came God sent His Son, born of a human mother and born under the jurisdiction of the Law, that He might lead us into becoming, by adoption, true sons of God.  It because you really are His sons that God has sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts to cry “Father, dear Father.”  You, my brother, are not a servant any longer; you are a son.  And, if you are a son, then you are certainly an heir of God through Christ.
(Galatians 4:4-7, Phillips)

You see, Paul had a reason for addressing the church as brothers.  It wasn’t just because women didn’t have an equal place in the church, or because of his own sexist tendencies.

In that patriarchal society, it meant something to be a son.  Suddenly you weren’t just another member of the family, you were an heir.  Daughters weren’t heirs, only sons.

So to tell women they were daughters of God meant nothing.  But, to tell a woman that she was adopted as a son shed an entirely different light on her relationship with God.  Not only would she be equal with the rest of us who are adopted, but she was an heir – legally and fully – to all that God has for His children.

So then, what does it mean to be a joint-heir with Christ?  What is it that we are heirs to?

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds…
(Hebrews 1:1-2, NKJV).

We become heirs to all things, just as Christ is heir to all things.  We have the same inheritance that Jesus does.

Jesus’ inheritance is owed Him simply because He is the Son of God.  It is not because of His work here on the earth, of His miracles or sermons or prayers, or even because of His death and resurrection.  It is His simply because He is the Son.

But, because of His work on this earth, we have the opportunity become sons of God, not by nature but by adoption.  Who can imagine what wonders await us when we receive our inheritance in eternity?