5) It's a hotel California that you won't want to leave

The presence of God is heaven. There may be golf courses and bike paths, but you won’t leave the golf course and head for the temple so that you can enter into the presence of God. You’ll always be in the presence of God.

Awhile back I share with you what I find to be the most amazing verse in the Bible. “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.” (John 15:9 NASB) How can this verse be more amazing than John 3:16? Well, there are people out there I might be willing to rescue. I might even be willing to die to save them. But I wonder if I would be willing to have them move into my house and stay there for the rest of eternity? I want Nancy to be in my condo with me when we get to heaven. And I want her to stay there for the rest of eternity. My kids are also welcome, but they might be more comfortable living next door with their own mates (once God brings them together). I know what you’re thinking: in heaven we won’t be male or female or married to each other. Okay, fine! But I still want Nancy in my condo. Or maybe it will be her condo.

As for the rest of you? I want you close by. I want to visit. But I’m not sure, in my present configuration, that I want you to stay in my condo for the rest of eternity. (For the record, when we get to heaven, we will be made so perfect in love that we will all want to live in the same condo, but that’s not exactly the point I am trying to make just now.)

God wants me to live in His condo. For the rest of eternity. He doesn’t love me with a love that says, “I love you enough to save you, and I want you to come and visit me in heaven, but would you please not overstay your welcome when you come to visit?” God loves us so much that He wants us to come and visit. And then He never, ever wants us to leave. Not even for one moment. Not even for one moment in all the endless ages to come.

4) If heaven has an internet, will it connect to a heavenly amazon.com?

I think for the most part we have failed to understand God’s ultimate intentions for us. We can best illustrate this by examining what I would refer to as the common view of heaven.

In heaven, I’ll have this great condo. Better than anything on earth. I’ll be able to plant flowers and mow the yard if I’m into that kind of thing, and if I’m not, I’m sure that will be some kind of a service that will take care of it for me. Once I arrive and settle into my condo, I’ll want to scope out the neighborhood. I imagine that the place will look like one big park with lost of green and open spaces. But there should also be some structures that will allow me to do the things I like to do. A lot of you guys will be thinking about golf courses and lakes filled with very large and very hungry fish. As for me, I will want to know where the bike paths and the libraries are located. (When I walk into a Barnes and Nobles I always think that there is no way we won’t have these in heaven.)

The common view of heave will be something like an endless vacation at the best resort in the universe. We’ll spend all of our time joyfully, and of course, a couple of times a week, we’ll go visit God. We’ll probably worship Him in some kind of temple.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The presence of God is heaven. Take a tablet and write “the presence of God is heaven” at the top. Then repeat the phrase 100 times. Make little hash marks on the tablet to track your progress. The presence of God is heaven. The presence of God is heaven. The presence of God is heaven.

In Your presence is fullness of joy;
In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.

Ps. 16:11 NASB

3) Why don’t we associate God with pleasure? (part two)

In the last post I talked about how the commandments of God were given in love to keep us from destroying ourselves. I absolutely believe that is true. I believe that the tone of God’s voice and the feelings in His heart are very much like my tone of voice and the feeling in my heart as I pleaded with my babies to be careful to look both ways before crossing the street.

But I can’t stop there. I dare not go all mushy mush and present a picture of God that is distorted. God’s tone of voice is tender and pleading when giving commands to His children, but not everyone on this planet is a child of God. Scripture makes it perfectly clear that the wrath of God abides on those who reject His Son (John 3:36). The wrath of God is utterly, absolutely terrifying. How can my poor heart dare to open it’s doors to such a wrathful, majestic being?

I think we know God best when we realize that He relates to people from either end of the emotional spectrum, but not from the middle. We usually operate from the middle. We don’t absolutely hate or absolutely love anyone. The people we love sometimes get on our nerves, and if we are fair and honest, the people we don’t care for have some redeeming qualities. That’s being human, and frankly, I don’t see a problem with that. We should be growing into a deeper and purer love for our neighbor, but for the most part we operate in the middle of the emotional spectrum.

One of the reasons we find it so hard to really, really open ourselves to God is that we don’t want anyone to get that close to us. We have to hold some part of ourselves in reserve where it can be protected because every human being we have ever met, no matter how much they might love us, may at any moment get angry with us. Because of this most of us have a part of our hearts that we hold back, that we shield, even from the person we love most in this life. We may not consciously be aware of it, but this is what we are doing to each other and this is what we must stop doing to God.

If you believe in the Son of God, then you are in a position that is the exact opposite of the rebellious sinner. Instead of the wrath of God abiding on you, the love of God abides on you. Theologians might cringe at what I’m about to say, but I think it will communicate well to the average layman. If you reject Christ, there is almost nothing that God is not willing to do to you. If you receive Christ, there is almost nothing that God is not willing to do for you.

Let us close with what I find to be the most amazing words in the Bible, even more amazing than John 3:16. “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.” (John 15:9 NASB)

2) Why don’t we associate God with pleasure?

We are born spiritually, morally, and psychologically handicapped. We are born in sin. It infects every part of our being. If we surrender to sin and begin to live for and in it’s lusts, we will utterly destroy ourselves. Because of this it is necessary for God to warn us. “Thou shalt not!”

This is why it is hard for you to open your heart to God. Over and over again God has stood between you and some sinful pleasure that you have desired and He has said, “Thou shalt not!” How can He be the God of joy when there is so much that He forbids?

Once upon a time I was a pastor in a very small town. I heard that a small boy had been hit by a car and taken to the local hospital. When I visited that family in the hospital, I discovered a heart breaking scene. The little boy was in intensive care and he was screaming with pain. I was sure that the doctors would soon show up with powerful drugs that would ease the pain, but I was wrong. There was a possible head injury. No pain relief could be given for at least 24 hours. The boy looked to be about four years old. He just kept crying and wailing and screaming. There was nothing anyone could do.

My own children were quite young at the time. First grade and preschool if I recall correctly. Darting around the neighborhood on their bikes. In and out of the road at times. When I got home I pulled them up into my lap and told them about the horrible thing I had just witnessed. And I reminded them, I pled with them, not to enter or cross the street without looking both ways. And as I held them there I realized I was giving them a commandment. “Thou shalt not run into the street without looking both ways!” And I had a sudden insight into the heart of God.

He is not a hard hearted God, He is a broken hearted God. And when He says, “Thou shalt not!” He is taking you up in His lap and pleading with you not to destroy yourself.

1) Is God pro-pleasure?

God is the God of pleasure, the God of joy. It is vitally important for us to come to believe this, not as an idea in our minds, but as the settled conviction of our hearts. The ultimate goal of human existence is to live consciously, continuously in the presence of God. When God makes Himself real to us we enter into a state where we can actually feel the warmth of His love. This experience of the love of God fills all the emptiness inside of us and brings the soul into a blissful state that is in fact a foretaste of heaven.

We can not experience God’s love and presence in this way until we open all of the doors of our heart to Him. The mind may be fully satisfied and eager to experience more of God, but the mind does not hold the key to the doors of the heart. The mind can not order the heart to open it’s doors to God’s outpoured love.

The heart is afraid to open up to God. Too much bad information has filtered through the mind and made it’s way into the heart. The heart is not convinced that God is love. The heart does not believe that it is safe for to let Him in.

While the mind cannot act directly on the heart and cause those doors to open, it can, by mediating on the goodness of God, slowly but surely reprogram the heart. As this happens, the doors of the heart slowly begin to open and God begins to flood the soul with His love. The purpose of this series of posts is to help you to renew your mind and reassure your heart. The goal of these writings is to bring you to the place where you can actually taste and see that the Lord is good (Ps. 34:8). If you can only get a small taste, just a drop of God’s goodness and love experienced in your heart, you will be on the path to discovering heaven on earth.

So then let us begin to know more and more of our God, and to experience more and more of His presence and His love.

You will make known to me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.

Ps. 16:11 NASB

Thoughts for meditation and prayer

Few things can be as important as grasping the nature of Satan's rebellion and how that relates to sin and temptation. Satan represents himself as the Ring Master in the circus of sin. His whole sales pitch is based on pleasure. "Come on in here, this is where the fun is."

This is one great big lie. Satan has no pleasure to offer you. Zip. Zero. Nada. None. This is because God is the God of pleasure, the God of joy. God had all the fun/joy/pleasure staked out before Satan rebelled. Satan can't create anything new, so all he can do is pervert a pleasure God has already created and offer it to gullible humans.

Thoughts for meditation and prayer

The darkness is the exact opposite of the light. The light is reason, sanity, love, and joy. The darkness is irrationality, insanity, hatred, and despair. Everything about the darkness is a lie. Dishonesty is at the very heart of the darkness. The heart of God is truth and love. The heart of the darkness is lies and murder. If this information seems abstract and unimportant to you, that is a sign of how far you have yet to journey on the road to moral sanity. You must not only learn to hate the sin toy, you must learn to hate the very essence of sin.