It's almost time for our annual mountain expedition. This year will mark our 24th Rocky Mountain Honeymoon. We call them honeymoons because we spend these weeks "alone together." It's just Nancy and me. I have some of my favorite pictures from past trips up on my computer desktop at home. When I see those pictures I often pause, if only for a moment, and allow myself to feel the same feelings I experience when I am in the mountains. I can almost taste the mountain air. It is also time for me to whip myself into shape. I exercise year round, but in the next two months I will be exercising more than I usually do. I'm also trying to drop some weight (down 16 pounds as of this morning). You could almost say that Nancy and I live in anticipation for that annual Mountain Trip. We daydream about it and we prepare for it.
One of the little insights that I have come up with is the thought that we are never more than twelve weeks away from a mountain vacation. This is true even though we only go once a year, and the reason that this is so has to do with the way we are experiencing the passing of time as we age. The longer you life, the faster time seems to pass.
When you are young, time seems to pass very slowly. I can still remember a four week period of my life that lasted about four months. I think I was in the 4th grade and the period of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed to last forever. It was like I was trapped in a time warp. Time just refused to move!
Now the holidays seem to come and go like a blur and a months seems to last as long as a week used to. So I have decided to use this to my psychological advantage. If a month seems like a week used to seem then my next mountain trip will never "feel" like it's more than twelve weeks away!
In the past two posts we have been exploring what the old time saints used to call being "heavenly minded." You become "heavenly minded" when you begin to think about heaven in much the same way that Nancy and I think about the mountains. We prepare for it, we daydream about it, and the longer we live the closer each trip seems to be. So how can you prepare for your trip to heaven and the life to come so that you will find yourself daydreaming about it?
Obviously it begins with conversion. You have to repent (give up on your own ideas about life and being to try to live the way Jesus wants you to live as best you can) and believe (that Jesus died to pay for your sins and that God the Father will forgive your sins and accept you into heaven if you believe). That's the way you begin, but many Christians never move very much beyond that beginning. If you want to take the next step you can't do better than reading Matthew 24:42-25:46. In this passage Jesus is teaching us to live with the rewards of heaven constantly in view. How can we actually do this?
At the beginning of each day we must pray to God for strength to live each day the way He wants us to live. Throughout the dayAnd at the end of each day we must pause and ask ourselves if there way anything in the way we spent our time that day that was pleasing to God. When you start to consciously live like this the results will amaze you.
Did you spend any time in prayer that day? Did you talk to God at all? God wrote that down in His book and He is planning to reward you for that (Matt. 6:6). The same thing applies to reading the Scriptures, attending Christian meetings, or doing things like reading this blog. You may have come to this blog today and started reading and thought to yourself, "Okay, he's actually not too boring today, so I guess I'll finish this." And then you walk away and forget that you even read the thing; but God doesn't forget that you read it. God doesn't forget one single time you spent reading His word or attending public worship. Not one single time. God doesn't forget one single act of kindness. God doesn't forget one hour of work that you did for a paycheck if you also tried to do it as an act of worship toward Him. In one of the most astonishing, life altering statements that you can ever read Jesus said that God will not forget it if you give someone a cup of water as an act of kindness (Matthew 10:42). Everything you've ever done is being written down in a book in heaven (Revelation 20:12). If you are a believer God keeps no permanent record of your sins but He maintains a permanent record of each and every thing you mange to get right.
So how will this all work out when we get to heaven? What will God do with this information? He will sit down in an interview with you and He will go over the good things that you did incident by incident. And yes, that will take quite a bit of time. It won't be a matter of minutes or hours. This interview may last for months and maybe even for years. And when the interview is over God will honor you for your service to Him in some way that will be very, very public and literally be everlasting. I have no idea who won the 1943 world series, but I can promise you that your good deeds will never, ever be forgotten by God or by the saints and angels in heaven.
And so you begin to live with this new, revolutionary perspective. You may be a little hit and miss at first, but as you continue on you will begin to get the hang of it. I'll try and do things for Jesus today and at the end of the day I will spend a moment or two thinking about what I did right. And the longer you live this way the more real heaven, and the heavenly reward will become. You'll start to anticipate it. You'll start daydreaming about it. You'll begin to actually think and feel like a person with an everlasting life span.
When death comes to those you love (who are believers) it won't cut you so deeply. You will begin to live with an everlasting perspective. You will know that whatever time we have left down here is very, very short, and that you won't be separated from the ones you love for very long. Months will begin to seem like weeks and years will begin to seem like months to you as you gain a more mature perspective on the passage of time.
And the longer you live this way, as your body ages, your heart will actually be moving in the opposite direction. You will be young at heart. Your body will begin to wind down; your physical energy will begin to diminish. But your heart will sing with anticipation of that which is to come.
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