You accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior. What motivates you to live faithfully for Him on earth? Is it to experience His endless joy? Is it to have unspeakable peace? Or how about limitless love? Or is it the blessings He brings your way?
All those things are good, but starting with the first church and continuing until today, the far-reaching motivation to live the Christian life well is to spend eternity in heaven. To have gates of pearl, a street of gold, and beauty untold are all wonderful. To have the absence of sickness, disease, death, and heartache is beyond wonderful. Even to have unspeakable, eternal love, joy, peace, and the other spiritual gifts, makes heaven a place to look forward to living there.
There is another reason that makes heaven such an attractive place. “Too bad you are blind,” someone said to Fanny Crosby. “With all your gifts it’s too bad God withheld your sight.” She answered, “My first request at birth would have been that God would remove my sight.” “Why?” “Because when I get to heaven my first sight I behold will be that of my Savior’s face.” She looked forward to seeing Jesus and being in His presence in heaven.
Jesus talked to His disciples and told them, that He would depart from them. That brought deep anxiety to the disciples, and He tells them not to be afraid. After that He said, “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:2-3). The disciples would see Jesus in heaven.
There are many wonderful reasons to look forward to being in heaven. The absolute best of them is seeing Jesus Christ and spending eternity with Him. Did I just hear a trumpet sound?
