When We Think on Heaven
Nothing can stop us when our eyes are focused on glory. Fear is vanished, anxiety disappears, and worry exits the door. We become so enraptured with what we will experience in the New Earth that the cares, fears, and temptations of this present Earth quickly fade into the abyss.
There is something sanctifying about fixating our eyes on Heaven and the glories to be experienced there. It’s no wonder the Apostle Paul exhorted us to do so in Colossians 3:2, where he wrote, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (ESV).
Setting our minds and hearts on Heaven is not optional for the Christian. Amid the allurements of this world, indwelling sin, and Satan’s influence, it’s all the more imperative that we take heed of Colossians 3:2 by fixing our gaze on glory.
When we consistently obey this exhortation, several things take place, but let’s draw our attention to two.
Sin Becomes Less Appealing
I tweeted recently, “Today, think on the glories that await us in Heaven. I find that the more I think on Heaven, the less appealing sin becomes.” Indeed, it does. The more I stare at the glories of Heaven, the easier it is to ignore the deceptive enticements of sin.
It is when we daydream about the world and get caught up in worldly pursuits that sin is more prevalent in our lives. We give sin—whether intentional or not—a firm grip on our hearts when we take our eyes off the glories of Heaven. We lose the eternal perspective and replace it with the anxieties of this world.
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Effectual Calling and New Creation
After removing the stone, Jesus called with new creation power, “Lazarus, come out.” The heart that stopped four days before pulsed with new life. Lazarus walked out of his grave. Lazarus’s resurrection and gives a picture of what it is like for God to resurrect people who are dead in their sins spiritually. God takes what is dead and morally repugnant from sin and makes it into something alive and beautiful.
Like any other six-year-old, I lived life to the fullest. I climbed the cherry trees, played on the playground with my sister, and built my Legos. One day, a sense of dread and sadness began clouding my carefree days. I didn’t know what was wrong. I explained how I felt to my mom. She gently said, “You need Jesus.” At that moment, something extraordinary happened. I believed in Jesus. I did not have all the theology worked out in that moment of newfound belief. But I knew I needed Jesus. Desperately.
There is nothing more beautiful in the world than a person trusting and clinging to God for grace. True belief is the result of God’s effectual calling. And this effectual call is the dawning of new creation life.
It is often thought that systematic theology is abstract and theoretical. This is far from the case. The great truths of theology help us make sense of everyday life. We experience the truths of theology in life. Theology is systematic because each doctrine is dynamically connected. Effectual calling is organically related to the Trinity, election, creation, the doctrine of sin, atonement, eschatology, and all the other doctrines. Two theological relationships that continue to capture my attention are effectual calling and the new creation.
God’s Call and New Creation
God’s work in the heart is nothing less than a new creation. If God doesn’t do this work, people hear of the death and resurrection of Jesus and respond with anything but saving faith. Apathy, curiosity, mockery, or hostility are common responses to the gospel. But a person will only respond in saving faith if God calls that person and opens the heart to believe.
Just as God spoke and created the universe and everything in it, God speaks to the human heart and creates something new (2 Cor. 4:4). The God who said, “Let there be light!” says, “Let there be faith!” While the gospel is preached or shared, God creates something new in the heart of the person who responds in saving faith.
In systematic theology, the effectual calling, this new creation call, is also known as new birth or regeneration. Jesus taught that people must be born again to believe the gospel with saving faith (John 3:3–8). The Holy Spirit was active in the creation of the world. He formed it, brought order from the chaos, and made it beautiful (Gen. 1:2). The Spirit is also active in the new creation of the believers. Through the power of the gospel, the Spirit causes them to be born again, bringing order to their chaotic and dead hearts and making them spiritually beautiful.
God will one day restore the cosmos and make all things new. This new creation call to the individual through the gospel is the downpayment of resurrection life that will one day overtake all creation.
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Leap Day: How Clocks and Calendars Shape Us
Both the calendar and the development of mechanical clocks are rooted in the Church’s recognition of the need to see the world as sacred. Like the Sabbath and the feast of ancient Israel, time and seasons remind us that our lives are not ultimately our own and are instead part of the larger story of creation to redemption. In other words, as demanding as the clock can be, the Christian notion of time should help us from viewing the days of our lives in purely secular terms.
Throughout the Bible, for example in Galatians 4:4 or Paul’s speech to the “Men of Athens” recorded in Acts 17, God is described as a God of historical precision. He is outside of but fully in control of time and place. This distinctive of the Judeo-Christian understanding of God stands in sharp contrast to pagan and polytheistic notions of deities and time, and dramatically shaped human history. Today, Leap Day, is an appropriate day to think about our relationship to time.
One of the earliest examples of time anxiety in history is found in the French song “Frère Jacques.” In it, Brother James is rebuked for sleeping and not ringing the Matins bells at midnight. The song reflects the seriousness with which the Church took the times designated for prayer. Following Psalm 119:164, which says, “Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous rules,” monastic liturgies included seven set times for prayer.
Initially, given the changing length of day and night throughout the year, liturgical hours were not fixed. Instead, the Church regularized the hours by measuring the passage of time. By the 1200s, the mechanical clock was invented to keep pace with a chime that signaled when to ring the bells for the monastic hours.
Not long after, mechanical clocks appeared in city towers. In 1288, the predecessor to the tower clock known as “Big Ben” went up across from Westminster Abbey. In 1292, a clock was built in Canterbury Cathedral. The oldest surviving tower clock in England, dating to 1386, is at Salisbury Cathedral. In addition to time, these clocks often marked heavenly phenomena. The most elaborate surviving example is in Prague. Installed in 1410, this clock told time using a standard 24-hour day, as well as in “Italian time,” which put the 24th hour at sunset.
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The Unexpected Blessing of a Rural Church
The love that welcomed me seventeen years ago, lowered my guard, and prepared my heart to receive the gospel, has done the same thing to many others over the years. It’s the love of God in his people—a surprising love to those without hope and without God—and it still draws the lost to their Savior today.
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
– John 13:34–35As I sat on a hard wooden pew in a tiny church listening to the preacher, my heart raced and beads of sweat covered my forehead. I blushed as I looked to and fro like a trapped rabbit before a hound dog, afraid to be seen if I moved, but filled with a panicked desire to flee. Even in my guilt and shame, my ears and eyes fixated on the pastor as every word he spoke resonated with and pierced my soul. The sermon centered on a woman who found faith and mercy, forgiveness and grace—words I had never heard before. She should have been ashamed, instead she openly and freely worshiped her Savior as she wiped Jesus’s feet with her hair and tears. I felt as if I were the only one in the room. It seemed the pastor spoke directly to me as one who knew my thoughts and feelings. Could he know? I twisted my feet in restless angst, wishing I were invisible. Yet I hung on every word, drawn to them like a magnet. The wrestling match within my soul ceased with a quiet solitary prayer for forgiveness and mercy. That was the day the Holy Spirit melted my rock-hard heart and redeemed me—the day I found true peace.
The town I live in is a small community in a rural Canadian province. By small and rural, I mean population: 700. We live a one-hour drive from the nearest city. The “big city” here is as populous as most people would describe a small town. Because of its size and location, many would think this community is insignificant, but it has proven not too small for God to do his mighty work. This little town was the last place I thought I would find the Lord—not that I even looked for him.
I didn’t look because I didn’t need him. Life was just grand, you know. I had it all—a husband who was my high-school sweetheart, best friend, and co-laborer in raising our two responsible pre-teen children. We both worked decent jobs which provided all that we could ask for including the standard two cars, a nice house with a view, and so much more. Somehow though emptiness and hopelessness still gnawed on my fearful soul.
The Lord often draws a lost person by the most unusual means. In my case, he used a guitar-teacher-turned-small-town-gospel-preacher. This former musician had just moved to our community to plant a new church, of which I cared little about. Church was for religious people, and I was not one of them. My son began taking guitar lessons with him, and he often came home with invitations to various church events. I grew curious yet resisted.
I met many from the church, each time captivated by their sincere love.
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