Divine Impact Series

Have you ever seen the poster of “Deep Impact” from Harding? One year Harding University centered the theme of their yearly camp for high school students around the title: Deep Impact. They were playing off the movie that recently been released by the same title. The tease-line from the movie was: Heaven and Earth are about to collide. Harding made a small change to share a great truth – Heaven and Earth have already collided!

God has put something in our heart that longs for more than this life can ever satisfy – Especially when it comes to relationships. We spend so much time investing in so many different relationships. Yet time and time again we find that as good as we ever get it… there’s still something in our hearts that is unanswered. There is a part of us still longing for something more than the best human friendships, love affairs and family relations we ever experience. Know why?

Listen to this verse from Ecclesiastes:

“I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:10-11

God has made us to be:

Spiritual creatures – Living in this flesh confuses us, but we are creatures of spirit. Jesus tells us to worship in spirit, we pray in the spirit, at our highest and best we dwell on earth in spirit. There greatest and most important part of our being is spirit in nature. It isn’t satisfied with the physical pleasures or emotional joys of this world. It longs to be a part of something greater, something higher.

Eternal creatures – we were created with eternity in our souls. We don’t live a short shelf life and then turn in to food for worms. We are eternal. We are longing for relationships that go beyond the measurements of time. Relationships interruption, without end, without time.

Know what we’re looking for? Relationships that are so good – they could only be found in Heaven! Relationships so right – they could only be authored by Jesus Christ himself.

So lets start there. Lets talk about Heaven. Have you noticed how rarely we talk about Heaven in our churches? You’ll hear about in funerals… and we’ll talk about it as a promised reward for those who give their lives to Christ… but that’s about it.

We act almost as if learning about Heaven has no impact on how we live today. Perhaps we don’t talk about it much because we can’t quantify all the details about what Heaven will be like. Maybe we skip through it because it so challenges the limits of our human minds and sloppy theology. Maybe we give little effort to studying and learning about heaven because we’re afraid we might not ever see it. Or perhaps the real reason we don’t talk about heaven is because somewhere we got the idea that learning about Heaven is just pie-in-the-sky theology that has no real impact on how we are to live today.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, studying and meditating on Heaven is powerful. Through that kind of study God brings some important and powerful truths to bear on my life and on my relationships with others. And for just a few minutes this morning, that is what we are going to do. And I think when we’re done, you’ll agree with me – studying about Heaven will have a Divine Impact on who we are as a church – and on how the people of Jesus Christ live in fellowship with one another.

This morning, I’m going to assume you believe in Heaven – the reward of Afterlife, the Coming Kingdom of Heaven. I’m also going to assume that you’re willing to spend a little time mentally chewing on this place where Divinity dwells and to allow God to impact your daily life with His reward and rest known as Heaven.

When I learn about, study, discover and meditate on Heaven, God brings several powerful truths and influences to bear on my life. Lets look at just three. When I consider this coming Kingdom of God, --- Through Heaven God gives me…

A Divine Promise

A divine promise that life exists beyond my physical condition.

- God will give me a life better than how I look, how I walk…

- The first face the blind woman will see is Jesus himself…

A divine promise that life extends beyond my present circumstances.

It’s easy to feel as if circumstances are in control of us… For example – at the world’s fair some time ago there was an exhibit that – from a distance – appeared to show a man using an old-fashioned hand-pump to extract water from a well. But when he got close, he realized the gentleman was actually a painted wood figure, being run by a pump and pulley system operated by electricity. He thought the man was running the pump, when in truth the water pump was running him.