It's one of the significant misunderstandings of our century: the choice of Heaven or Hell for a life after death.
The misunderstanding lives on every evangelistic track and reaction driven evangelistic approach of my lifetime. What will choose? The question of Heaven or Hell is like the old Choose Your Own Adventure series books that we read in the 1980's while we watched re-runs of The Little Rascals and Saturday morning cartoons like He-Man.
Besides the concern that people will raise on every side of the "choice" debate of the question (and we can talk about that at another time), is the meat of the misunderstanding. Is our faith in Jesus really only about what happens to us after we die or is there something to this salvation thing that we should be paying attention to on this side of the pearly gates?
Anyone that has heard me preach in the past few years is hearing that worn-out statement, "it's not about a get out of hell free card!" As if that is all we need and all we are called to work toward.
The question is also a reverberating rekindling of the Lordship debates of an earlier church era...is it enough that Jesus is my saviour for the eternal but not be my Lord in the now...?
The answer is simply no. No, it isn't enough, and the question of his lordship - the question of His involvement in our lives suggests our lack of relational understanding...what it means to be in intimate relationship with the God of creation.
A well known passage in the book of John resonates well with this idea of intimate relationship, with the necessity of seeing our salvation as more than just a "get out of hell free card", but a "live in the eternal now" experience.
Jesus tells his disciples,
"Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit for apart from me you can do nothing."
For so many of us, growing up in a transactional world, we struggle with the idea that we are called to simply abide, to be present in the presence of God. That simple and relational expectation is foreign and hard to conceptualize. We may run to the idea but struggle to see it fulfilled in our lives. How do we really abide? What does it mean and what does it look like to be in intimate relationship with God? Moreover, are you really sure we are actually invited into a relationship with the creator God of the universe? The one that made the whole of everything that we can see - even what we can't?
You see that it isn't just a future salvation? Even with all the questions of how and what and are you sure...the truth that clears up this misunderstanding of our pressing question remains, we are meant to live in real and intimate relationship with God now. In a very real way, eternity is now.
When we live into this real and profound truth, that the eternal is present in us, living in us as we abide in Jesus, the how's and what's and are you sure questions dissipate and we discover the answers through our experiences with Him.
Let me bring clarity to the how's and what's and are you sure's...when we abide - actually abide in Jesus, the answers to our questions answer themselves in the texts of scripture and the life we live in Jesus. The abiding looks like what we read in the Psalms...
"Come behold the works of the Lord...Be still, and know that I am God." Psalm 46:8a,10a
Scripture takes the guess work out of what it means to live into our relationship with God...just show up.
So often that is all we need to really do...
Just show up.
Be ready and willing to engage.
Listen and be present.
What does this all mean for you and me? For the now?
It means actually functioning in a way that is counter-cultural, in a way that reflects the eternal, not the temporal. When we see and experience eternity now - the showing up, the willingness to engage the holy, the listening and quiet presence, all become natural moments of our existence with God and the world around us.
It isn't just about the waiting for the life-after-death experience that we look to in hope, but the hope that exists in abiding in Jesus, the eternal one. You can live now in the eternal, the heaven on earth in abiding in Him.
What is stopping you from living with a heaven on earth - a real Eternity Now experience?