Saturday, October 29, 2016

Living with Heaven in View

I've been reading the Puritans' prayers and they have a different perspective on how they view the world. For them, living with Heaven in view means, at least in part, that we seek to live our lives here intimating what our lives will be like there.

So, if our experience in heaven is that God will be our sun, then they sought to live today fully realizing that He is our true source of energy and life.

If our experience in heaven is that God will be everywhere present, all powerful, all-knowing, then they wanted to live confident of His attributes: when they prayed they wanted to pray believing God is all-powerful; when they were alone they wanted to embrace the truth that we are always "with Christ"and under His protection and care.

If in heaven we will gladly accept God's will, the Puritans would ask, then shouldn't we live today with the heartbeat: Thy will be done. If we really believe that in heaven God's will is perfect and good, then it only makes sense that His will for us today is also perfect and good. So shouldn't we surrender our illusions of being in control and receive His will for our lives?

Jesus certainly lived His earthly life with kingdom vision and values. When He tells His followers to "Take up your cross and follow Me" He's telling us to live in the kingdom of heaven today as He is. He calls us to give up any practices and the mindset that sees this world as our home, He says we need to die to that wordly mindset (take up our cross), so that we might follow Him, embracing today what our experience of heaven will be 'up yonder.'
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