The Hope of Heaven | Finding Hope for Earthly Struggles

A New Beginning presents a book from Pastor Greg Laurie, with help for those suffering loss, called Hope for Hurting Hearts. God has used this book over the years to touch many people. If you've lost a loved one, or if you know someone that's recently lost a loved one, it would be an excellent thing to get this book into their hands, because I really wrote it for them.

So we're offering you a copy of this book, Hope for Hurting Hearts, for your gift of any size. Available at Harvest.org Just imagine your first day in heaven. The sun is shining, the air is fresh and clean, and you have energy to spare.

No aches and pains, no car problems, no computer problems, no neighbor problems. So much of what now seems to absorb our time and sap our strength, we leave behind. Can I get an amen? Today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie helps us see how to fix our eyes on heaven and give us hope for our time on earth. Today we are going to talk about the hope of heaven. And I am going to ask you to turn in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 3.

Colossians 3. Let's start with a word of prayer. Father we ask now that as we look at the topic of heaven that we would see it for what it is. The great and glorious promise to every child of God. Help us to not approach this subject in a cavalier or disengaged way.

Because we are talking about the future home of every Christian. Help us to see it for what the Bible shows it to be. Help us to be changed as a result of understanding more about what Your Word teaches on this very important topic.

We ask all of this in Jesus' name. Amen. Hope.

That is a theme of our series. We have talked about hope for those that have lost loved ones. Hope for those that are facing crisis. Hope for both singles and married people. Hope for those who have prodigal children. But honestly there are times when things don't work out as we had hoped. That marriage unravels and never comes back together. That prodigal child never returns home.

That single person never finds a mate. That person in crisis doesn't have the happy resolution they were hoping for. Or that person that prayed for the healing is not healed and in fact they get worse. Well then what? Then just give up hope? No.

Listen. Then I recognize that whatever happens in this life be it wonderful or painful is only temporary. You know we make so much of this life but it comes and goes rather quickly. The Bible says in 1 Chronicles 29 15, "'We are here only for a moment, visitors and strangers in our land, as our ancestors were before us. Our days on earth are like a shadow gone so soon without a trace.'" I think we think far too much of this life and not enough of the next one. That is the main event that everything is building up toward. Eternity is well eternal.

Which means it goes on and on without end. Now when we are a Christian we know that we will be in heaven. If you are not a Christian the Bible says that you will be separated from Him initially in a place called Hades in a place of judgment and ultimately in hell or the lake of fire. So we want to spend all eternity with God I would presume. And this is the hope that we have.

Reminding us that I am passing through this life because I am a citizen of heaven. Listen. We all know this. Life is not fair. It is filled with inequities and injustice. Well sure there are times when good is rewarded and bad is punished. But far too often it is the very opposite of that. We see good people suffer. We see evil people succeed. But while it is true that life is not fair it is also true that God is good. He is also righteous and holy and He loves all of us.

And listen to this. One day in eternity God will right all wrongs. All those unanswered questions will be dealt with. The unfair things of life will be solved. Pain will be replaced by comfort. Tears will be replaced by joy and laughter.

Heaven is where losses are more than compensated for. This will give us a better perspective on the struggles of life. 2 Corinthians 4 and 17 says, Our present troubles are quite small and they won't last very long.

Yet they produce for us an immeasurably great glory that will last forever. So we don't look at the troubles we can see right now. Rather we look forward to what we have not yet seen. For the troubles we see now will soon be over but the joys to come will last forever. You know we see things in a certain way.

But that can change overnight. That can change in a nanosecond when we enter into eternity. For in God's presence there are pleasures forevermore. Heaven is the opportunity to develop and fulfill dreams bigger than anything on this earth. You see we must recognize that if you did not accomplish something on earth it can still be accomplished later.

Either in heaven or on the new earth when we rule and reign with Jesus Christ. And so this is important to realize because there are those that have very hard lives. There are those that have a life that is cut short. I can't think of anything sadder than when a child dies or a young man or woman leaves us and what we would perceive to be before their time. Or when a person has to live through life with a severe disability and it just seems like they lost out on life.

They got you know the short end of the stick if you will. Well granted they have lost and they have sacrificed and they have hurt. But God promises to compensate. God promises to make it up to them because you see there are going to be years ahead on the other side where they can realize their dreams and fulfill their potential. Because death for the believer is not the end of life but it is a continuation of it in another place.

Let me repeat that. Death for the believer is not the end of life but a continuation of it in another place. God has other times and places where our dreams and our hopes can be realized.

We will be better off eternally because we suffered temporarily. Now I think of the here and now. God thinks of the by and by. I think of the temporal. God thinks of the eternal. I think about what will make me happy. God thinks about what will make me holy. He looks at the big picture.

Right. And so in this plan and purpose of God there may be things I have gone through in this life that make no sense to me now but when I get to heaven I realize I was a better person for it. I was made more into the image of Jesus Christ as a result of it. It opened up a new ministry I would not have had because of it. Or there will be something about it that I will look back on and I will say now I understand why God allowed that to happen to me.

So it will all be sorted out and I think that the argument for the greater good may be the strongest biblical case for why God allows suffering. But this takes faith. Because you see I can't see it right now.

I can only talk about it. I know it is there. The Bible promises that it is there but now it is something I merely hope for. But yet my hope is built on a sure foundation. And what is that hope? It is the hope of heaven. Paul spoke in Colossians 1 five of the faith that springs from the hope that is in you for heaven. You are pre-wired with hope. There is a restlessness in the human heart for something more than this world can offer. As Augustine said, quote, you formed us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. I will never quite find what I am looking for in anything this world has to offer.

In Romans 8 it says that I groan inwardly for the redemption of my body and it is in this hope that I am saved. It is a bit like an amazing little bird known as the golden plover. How many of you have heard of the golden plover? Nobody.

Ok. Allow me to introduce the golden plover to you. And this bird has amazing homing instincts. Gave to Hawaii, smart little bird. The plover migrates during the summer to the Aleutian Isles which are 1200 miles away.

There they mate. They lay their eggs and their little fledglings are born. And then after that the golden plovers return back to Hawaii. So that is amazing that this bird can fly from Hawaii to the Aleutian Islands and back to Hawaii again. With no GPS. They just do it.

Now built in homing instincts. Ok. That is amazing. Here is what is more amazing. Those little fledglings. Those little baby plovers. The little chicklets. When they are born and are old enough to fly they too make the journey to Hawaii of 1200 miles. This cute little bird grows up a little bit and flies to a place it has never been before.

Now how does it pull that off? Well God put a homing instinct in them. So listen. Next time someone calls you a bird brain take it as a compliment. Go figure.

Amazing. In the same way God has given to me and to you a homing instinct for a place they have never been before. The little plover has never been to Hawaii yet somehow it knows how to get there and it goes. In the same way you have never been to heaven but you long for it because heaven is your home. This is what the Bible means when it says in Ecclesiastes 3.11 God has said, eternity in our hearts. Just like the golden plovers we have this heavenly GPS.

C.S. Lewis calls it the inconsolable longing. And he says this and I quote, There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven, but more often I find myself wondering if in our heart of hearts we have ever desired anything else. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want." End quote. Well said.

Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment. Hey everyone, I want you to know about our app called Harvest Plus. Think of it as a Harvest version of Netflix.

We have all of our resources in one place. We have our movies like Steve McQueen The Salvation of an American Icon, Johnny Cash The Redemption of an American Icon, A Rush of Hope, and much more. Then we have our television program, Daily Devotions, and much more.

So go and download the Harvest Plus app. Well today Pastor Greg is comparing this life to the next. Helping undergird our hope of heaven while we are here on earth. Until that day that we get to heaven we effectively live between two worlds and these two worlds coexist simultaneously. Though we don't know a lot about heaven I think that heaven knows more about earth. In other words though I don't really know what my loved ones are doing in heaven right now. I think they may be more aware of what I am doing down here and I will develop that more in our next message that we are calling the Blessed Hope. But we have to be very careful in this area because I think if you have someone that has gone on before you to heaven you tend to wonder what it is like.

You want to know more. Maybe this is why some people will go to psychics in an attempt to establish some kind of contact. And maybe this is why there are books that are so popular today that are on the best seller list that have been written by people that say they have gone to heaven and have come back to tell us a story. Now maybe you have read some of these books.

I was looking at one the other day and I was concerned only a few pages in to find some discrepancies in it. And what I mean by that is things that did not line up with the Scripture. And what concerns me is I have met even Christians who will say, well I read in this book that heaven is like this and they you know believe the whole thing just because someone wrote it. Well number one maybe that person went to heaven and came back and did tell us a story. Maybe they never went to heaven at all.

I don't know. All I know is I have only one source to measure these things by and that is the Scripture. God has given us one book to tell us about heaven. And this is it.

Right here. Do you think God was waiting around for someone to go have this experience so they could come and now suddenly enlighten the rest of us and oh now we don't need the Bible anymore. Now we know these things.

No. He has given it to us in the Bible. Everything you need to know about heaven is right here. Listen to this. If it is new it is not true and if it is true it is not new. So someone comes along and says, I have a new revelation about heaven or about God that has been previously undisclosed. I reject it out of Him. No Greg you should be open.

No actually I shouldn't be. If I can't find it in the Scripture I am not going to believe it. So proceed with caution when you read any of those books and make sure they line up with what the Word of God says. But there is a supernatural world around us right now. And I think heaven is not as far away as we may think. We may envision heaven as being so distant. But the Bible never says heaven is distant.

It just describes it as the third heaven. There may only be a thin veil between us and the afterlife. Like right now I happen to know that we are surrounded by angels.

You say, well Greg are you seeing something I am not seeing? I am just seeing what the Bible says. The Bible says that the angel of the Lord encamps round about those that fear Him. And since so many of you here love the Lord and fear the Lord I am sure that our angels are nearby.

They are active doing the work of God in our life. And a good illustration of this is the story of the prophet Elisha in 2 Kings 6 where he was out with a servant. And they were surrounded by their enemies, a great military force. And the servant woke up and saw this army encroaching and started to freak out. And woke up the sleeping prophet and Elisha said, don't be afraid because those that are with us are more than those that are with them. And then Elisha prayed, Lord open His eyes that He may see.

And the Bible tells us that Elisha's servant looked up and saw the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. In other words that servant saw the unseen angelic armies of God. Can you imagine if God gave us just a glimpse of the other side how it would change the way that we think. It would change our priorities.

It would help us look at our problems in a new way. Another example of someone between two worlds if you will is the story of Stephen who was the first martyr of the church. And he was given a glimpse into the supernatural world. We read that when he was being martyred in Acts 7 Stephen full of the Holy Spirit gazed steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory of God. And he saw Jesus standing in the place of honor at God's right hand. And he told them, look I see the heavens open and the Son of Man standing at the place of honor at God's right hand. And as they stoned him Stephen prayed, Lord Jesus receive my spirit. And he fell to his knees and said, Lord don't charge them with this sin. And with that the Bible says he fell asleep.

What a moment that was. Stephen was between two worlds. Heaven and earth. I was speaking a while back with a woman who had a severely handicapped child. She said as a result of this that her life had been changed. And she said his life, speaking of her child, has placed my feet one in heaven and one on this earth. I thought that is a great way to put it. You know when something like this happens to you. When some kind of crisis happens it opens your eyes up to the eternal world and you suddenly start living in those two worlds in a sense. In other words you are aware of eternity. You are thinking in the light of eternity. You are planning your life accordingly. You are living your life accordingly. And that is a good place to be.

We should all be looking forward to that day with one foot on earth and another one in heaven. C. S. Lewis again wrote, quote, "'A continual looking to the eternal world is not a form of escapism or wishful thinking. It is one of the things that Christians are meant to do.'"

End quote. And that brings us to our text. Colossians 3. Because here is what Paul tells us we ought to be doing in the interim.

In the before life. Is we need to be thinking more about the afterlife. And he tells us in Colossians 3, "'Since you have been raised with Christ, set your mind on things above where Christ is seated on the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.'"

Now what does that even mean? Well to set your mind means to engage in a diligent active single minded investigation. This could be translated think or have this inner disposition or a simpler way to translate it. Paul is saying think heaven. Think about heaven more. And the verb used in this verse is in the present tense so it could be translated keep thinking heaven.

Put it all together. And Paul is saying constantly keep seeking and thinking about heaven. So our feet must be on earth but our minds must be in heaven. But sadly some of us will go a whole day, a week, a month without a single thought of heaven or eternity. But if we are living as we ought to as Christians we will think about it.

You say, well Greg how can I think about a place I have never been to before? Answer by seeing what the Bible says about it. The Bible tells us what heaven is and how it should affect us. Ian Bounds wrote these words and I quote, "'Heaven ought to draw and engage us. Heaven ought to fill our hearts and our hands and our conversations and our character and our features so all will see that we are foreigners, strangers to this world. The very atmosphere of this world should be chilling to us and noxious.

Its suns eclipsed and its companionship dull and insepid. Heaven is our native land and home to us and death to us is not the dying hour but the birth hour.'" Pastor Greg Laurie, pointing out how we are creatures designed for heaven by God Himself. Pastor Greg has more to come as he continues this insight here on A New Beginning. Heaven is our real home. The old hymn says, this world is not my home, I'm just a passing through. But it begs the question, are you sure you're headed to heaven? It begins with a relationship with God. Pastor Greg, someone can enter into a relationship with God today, can't they?

They can do it right now. And it's an invitation open to everybody. That's right. The Bible says, whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. So think of it this way. Maybe you're out in a riptide in the ocean and you can't get your footing and you're in trouble and you see a lifeguard call out for help and the lifeguard will rescue you.

The same is true spiritually. You're drowning in your sin. You need help. Jesus will save you. He will rescue you but you must call out to Him and you know how you do that? You do it in prayer. So let me just lead you in a simple prayer and you can pray this prayer after me. You can pray it out loud if you like and this is where you are calling out to Jesus to save you.

Just pray this. Lord Jesus, I know I'm a sinner and I know you are the Savior who died on the cross for my sin and rose again from the dead. Now Lord, I turn from my sin and I put my faith in you. Be my Savior, my Lord. Be my God and my friend. I choose to follow you from this moment forward. In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen. Hey, if you just prayed that prayer, I want you to know that Christ Himself has come to live inside of you and I have a resource I want to send you. It's called the New Believers' Bible. So the New Believers' Bible is the New Testament in the New Living Translation with hundreds of notes that I wrote that will encourage you in this commitment you are making to follow Christ. There's some other materials included as well in what we call the New Believers' Growth Pack, but let me get this New Believers' Bible into your hands as quickly as possible.

Here's Dave to tell you more. Yeah, we'll be glad to send it all your way free of any charge if you prayed along with Pastor Greg today. Just ask for the New Believers' Bible when you call 1-800-821-3300. You can reach us any time 24-7 at 1-800-821-3300. Or write A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, CA 92514. Or go online to harvest.org and click Know God. And then let us take a moment to thank you for praying for this ministry and for supporting it through your generous donation.

It's an investment in kingdom business. Isn't that right, Pastor Greg? Yeah, it's really true, Dave. And I believe it's so important because, you know, the gospel saves lives. It saves eternal lives because when a person believes in Jesus, according to scripture, they pass from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to the power of God. And then, of course, that changes the course of their future.

That impacts their children and their children's children. The gospel changes everything. And thousands and thousands of people respond every single year. Thanks to the Lord. Also, thanks to you for your investment in this ministry, enabling us to reach people wherever they are. So if this is something you care about, I encourage you to make a financial investment in A New Beginning and Harvest Ministries.

Yeah, that's right. And we really do appreciate your support. Thanks for partnering with us today.

It can make a real difference, not just for today or this week, but for eternity. So get in touch with your support today by calling 1-800-821-3300. That's a 24-7 phone number, 1-800-821-3300. Or write A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, California, 92514.

Or go online to harvest.org. Well, Pastor Greg, today is voting day. I'm sure that hasn't escaped the attention of many people. Is it important for believers to engage in that process, to cast our vote in the election? Yes, I think it's very important, and I'll take it a step further. I think, in a way, it's irresponsible to not vote as a Christian, because I have an opportunity for my voice to be heard. And the Bible says, to him that knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. Let's take a candidate that barely wins the election, and that candidate is pro-choice. Let's say that candidate supports abortion all the way to birth. Even after birth, this particular candidate might think it's acceptable to take the life of that innocent child.

This is reprehensible. What if my vote could have made a difference in that issue? What if my vote could have mattered on what person would be representing us in Washington, D.C., in issues of the family and other things that we hold dear as Christians? Your vote matters. Every vote matters. So I urge you to get out there and let your voice be heard. Oh, sure, I know the ultimate answer for America is a spiritual awakening, but we have a responsibility. We have an opportunity to have our voice be heard when we go to that ballot box and vote. Let's all do that today. God bless you. Until next time, more insight on our heavenly home and the hope it brings for our lives here on earth. Join us here on A New Beginning with pastor and Bible teacher, Greg Laurie.