Reconciliation offered to all
Key Verses: 4, 5, 8, 10, 15, 17,
Paul speaks of his longing to get rid of his earthly body. Don’t you have days when you just wish all the struggles of this life were over? I know I do. But there is a tug of war that takes place inside us. The Grandkids V Cool Summers. (Our grandkids live in FL, land of the hot summers.) This is just one of so many that take place in me. Maybe yours centers around taking the easy way out as opposed to doing the right thing. I don’t know, but every one of us has this kind of struggle. Paul wants to put on heaven. We are made for heaven. Earth is a temporary home.
But how can we be sure of this, that earth is only temporary, that heaven is permanent? We are given the Spirit of God as a down payment of what is to come. The Spirit shows us what heaven is going to be like. We get to experience is a small way the reality of God’s presence right here, right now. The problem most Christians have is that we don’t or we haven’t allowed God’s Spirit to really be present in our lives to any significant degree. Many have never really allowed the Spirit to be present with them, to comfort them, to envelop them. It can be a scary experience to come in contact with the Holy God.
For Paul and for us, we are either here or we are in God’s presence. As soon as we stop being here, i.e. we die, we become present with God. No limbo, no waiting around in God’s waiting room, no security lines, no background checks. The only thing that happens is the apportioning of reward based on the things we did and didn’t do while we were alive. Some won’t have much!
And this knowledge of the coming day should cause us to change what we do in the present, to be more focused on living for Him. We determine the condition of our eternity, whether full of reward, or partial reward. When we live for Him, when He is the center and focus of our existence, then we are moving toward full reward. When selfish ambition gets in the way, we are losing what could be.
We are new in Christ. We get a ‘do over.’ We get to start afresh. Christ’s work is about giving us a fresh start, a clean slate, a reboot with a new operating system. And because God has restored our relationship with Him, we can help others in the restoration process. We can act as the ambassador of God, helping to bring the two sides together. We help fallen, broken people to come to the God who will restore and renew. He will give them a new heart and a new life. Now that is something worth living for!
The Arnold Journey 