DAY #361: The Hope of Heaven

Good Morning. It's very early. Sometime before 3am. I can't sleep as I think about my friend and ministry partner these past five years - Pastor Dave Bassard. As you will hear in our worship services this morning, our beloved Worship Pastor died last night. The family needs their privacy for now, so please direct any questions you might have to the Pastoral Staff and Elders.

In light of Dave's death, I thought I would share some things that I have been thinking about these past several months. Thoughts about heaven and thoughts about eternity. I pray they will bring encouragement to your heart.

When I say the word “heaven” most of us kind of put that in an “I’ll think about that later” category. In our minds we have three boxes of importance of thinking about things. The first box is Urgent. The second box is Not Urgent. The third box is After I’m Dead. And heaven is in that third box. Because of that we just don’t think about it much.

That is a huge mistake. Because there is no greater truth that the truth of heaven to give you perspective in life today, especially in those times when you face problems and you’re going to make it through. There’s no greater truth than the truth of heaven to give you the strength to make it through the tough times of life this next year. There’s no greater truth than the truth of heaven to help you see the great kind of life that God wants you to live. There’s no greater truth than the truth of heaven to reduce anxieties in everyday life and show you significance of everyday life.

There is a goal and a place called heaven that when you and I look towards it, it can make this next year into something we never dreamed.

The Apostle Paul made a pretty good impact on this world without ever making a New Year’s resolution as far as I know. This is what he had to say about this goal of this place called heaven. Philippians 3:14 “I strain to reach the end of the race and to receive the prize for which God through Christ Jesus is calling us up to heaven.” The Message paraphrase says it this way, “I’ve got my eye on the goal. God is beckoning us onward to Jesus. I am off and running and I’m not turning back. Let’s keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything that God has for us.” Do you want everything God has for you this next year? The joy that God has for you? All the significance in life that God has for you? Do you want the peace that God has for you? Paul says if you want everything that God has for you, focus on this goal, this place called heaven.

So for just a few minutes, instead of saying “I’ll think about it later” just for a few minutes would you focus on this goal and think about what a difference it could make this next year.

Paul pictures it like a race. The Bible often pictures our life like a race. He says heaven is like the ultimate finish line of life. What if I said, “I want you to run a race. I want you to run it well. I want you to do your best to win that race. I’m not going to tell you where the finish line is.” That would be pretty difficult. Yet that’s the way a lot of us try to run the race of life. We don’t really know where the finish line is. If you don’t know where the finish line is you either run a frantic race or a frustrated race.

If you run a frantic race you get up every morning. You run as hard as you can as fast as you can because maybe the finish line is that day. You just don’t know. Some of you ran your life this way this last year. You’re just worn out. You think, “I don’t know if I can do that again this next year.” You don’t have to. You don’t have to live life that way. That’s what the ultimate finish line of life in heaven does for us. It gives us something to look forward to.

Some of you may have lived a frustrated life this last year. You may have run your race like we would if we didn’t know where the finish line was. You just sit down and say, “Since I don’t know where it is, I’ll just wait until somebody shows me.” God shows us. He tells us here’s this ultimate finish line, this hope of heaven that you and I have to look forward to. We need finish lines. And the hope of heaven is the ultimate finish line.

Folks, heaven is an incredibly vibrant place. The Bible tells us that heaven is a material place. It is a lot more like earth that you and I imagine and a lot less like earth than you and I imagine. It’s a material place the Bible says. The Bible says that there’s going to be a new heaven and a new earth. That everything we’ve experienced here is just multiplied there. It’s perfect there.

Can you imagine, if you’re a surfer, riding a perfect wave every single time? That’s what heaven will be like. If you love nature, can you imagine a perfect sunset, a perfect waterfall? Can you imagine perfect relationships for every single relationship? That is the joy of heaven that we look forward to.

Heaven is the home that we all long for. The Bible often talks about heaven as being this home that we look forward to. Hebrews 11:16 says, “They were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland.” And Philippians 3:20 - it says, “But our homeland is in heaven.” That’s our ultimate home.


Psalm 16:11 says, “You have made known to me the path of life. You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.” A place of eternal pleasure, eternal joy. One of the ways that you and I make it through the realities of this life, the suffering and the struggles of this life, even the evil that we have to face in this world is to realize this isn’t all there is. This isn’t the best that it can be. I look forward to something better.

We watch a bunch of middle aged men, smelly from fishing, sitting around a campfire on a commercial on TV clicking their beer glasses together saying, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” I hope it does! I hope it get better than that! It does! It does get better than this.

Sometimes you need to grab on to that truth and recognize this isn’t all there is. Sometimes that’s the only thing that makes what we’re going through in this world make sense. It does get better than this. This is not the end of the road. There is an eternity that we look forward to.

Some of you next year, just a practical thing that you can do, take a little card and write that on it - “It does get better than this”. Stick it in your pocket so you can pull it out when you need it. If you’re stuck in a traffic jam 680 or 580, pull it out – “It does get better than this.” You’re smiling and everybody around you wonders why. But you have a different thought. Or you’re in a line at the airport – “It does get better than this.” Or maybe you get some news from the doctor and you’re hoping for good news but it’s not. It’s bad news. There are going to be moments in our lives this next year when we need to remind ourselves “It gets better than this.”

This is not the end of the story. There is a day that we look forward to, a goal that we look forward to and a place called heaven.

You take your best day this next year, the day when all the cars part for you like the waters of the Red Sea and you just drive right through. And when everything in your schedule goes perfectly and you got done more than you ever thought you’d get done. Your relationships are just exactly like you’d want them to be. That day, you pull out the same card and remember. “It gets better than this.” The best day that you’ll ever have on this earth and it’s multiplied joy beyond that in heaven. Even on our best days, there is something in all of us that knows this isn’t all there is. There’s a longing for something more. There’s a waiting to be home.

I love what the preacher Vance Haffner said in his old age about longing for heaven. He wrote, “I’m homesick for heaven. It’s the hope of dying that’s kept me alive for this long.”

I wish I had more time to write, but I'm sure you're wondering when I'm going to land this plane. Let it suffice to be said that heaven is a glorious place, a joyous place. But, one last thing that is on my heart - there's a problem for many people we rub shoulders with. They are unprepared for heaven,

Philip Yancey writes, “A strange fact about modern American life is that although 81% of us believe in the afterlife according to George Gallup, no one talks much about it. Christians believe that we will spend eternity in a splendid place called heaven. Isn’t it a little bizarre to simply ignore that truth and act as if it doesn’t matter.” It does matter. Heaven matters in every day life.

It caused C. S. Lewis to write “If you read history, you’ll find that the Christians who did most for the present world were those who thought the most of the next world.”


Folks, if you have any doubt at all, if you’re wondering at all if you’re going to make it to heaven, if it’s a case of worry for you - if you hate talking to your children about heaven. If the thought of them asking a question about heaven terrifies you, you know you’re facing this anxiety in your life. You feel unsettled about the truth of heaven. There’s a couple of good reasons that we may feel unsettled.

Sometimes we feel unsettled because to us it seems so unclear. How do you know who gets in? How do you I know how you get in? Don’t you have to wait until you die and get all the books settled and figure it all out?

God sent Jesus Christ to this earth to give us the message. He sent Him to give us the message that it does not have to be unclear. We don’t have to be unsure about the hope of heaven. 1 John 5:11-12 “This is what God told us. God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life. But whoever does not have the Son of God, does not have life.” It couldn’t be more clear than that. Jesus came to say, “I want to show you the way to heaven, to eternal life. I’m the way to eternal life.” God knows that some of us don’t like to ask for directions. So He came to us. Before we even asked He said, “Here is the way to get to heaven. It’s through Me. It’s through Jesus Christ.”

Some of us have this picture in our mind of waiting in this long line that snakes up to the pearly gates of heaven and we just step one step at a time up to Saint Peter who has this book. In this book is all the good things we’ve done, all the bad things we’ve done. If we’ve done more good than bad, if it balances out right he’s going to say, Come on in. Each step we take we’re sweating more and more, hoping that somehow we make it in.

But we’ve got the wrong picture. Because heaven is a perfect place. Because it’s perfect even one imperfection will keep you out. It does keep us out. If you have even one bad thought, one wrong action, one sin in your life your entire life that’s enough to keep you out of heaven. It’s not a matter of balancing the books. Someone needed to wipe the slate clean for you to let us in.

That’s what Jesus did. That’s why Jesus came to this earth. That’s why He died on the cross. To wipe your slate clean. To offer you forgiveness. That’s why He’s the way. So the idea of the long line? You don’t have to stand in that line. Jesus gives you a fast pass out of that line. A different way in. You can know for sure, based on what He’s done. Heaven is a gift of God’s grace.

Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “I mean that you have been saved by grace through believing. You did not save yourselves, it is a gift from God. It is not the result of your own efforts, so you cannot brag about it.” It’s not based on what I’ve done. The more we base our thoughts on whether we’ll get into heaven or on what we’ve done the less sure we’ll be. The more we recognize it’s what Jesus did, the more security we’ll have.

If there were any gift I could give you, as we begin a New Year, it would be this - the gift of being sure that you’re going to heaven. If you’ve never trusted Christ with your life what better way to start the New Year than say to Him, “I want to trust You as the way to heaven.” If you have trusted Him but you’re still struggling with doubt because you’re basing it on what you’ve done, what better way to start the New Year than to say, “God, I’m going to trust Your promise. Not my feeling, not my thoughts. I’m going to trust Your promise today that I can be sure I’m going to heaven.” Would you like to know for sure that you’re going to heaven, have no doubt about it? You can. Based on God’s promises.

For those of you who are sure about your etenal destination, let me ask you this - who's going to heaven beacuase of you?

Many of you remember the moving final scene of the Steven Spielberg’s movie Schindler’s List where Oscar Schindler, the Polish businessman who used a portion of his fortune to put the names of Jews on a work list that would keep them from going to concentration camps. Faces, - those who escaped certain death because of his action – as he looks into their faces he has a moment of clarity. He sees things as he’s never seen them before and he’s talking to his friend, and says, “If only there could have been more. If only I could have done more.” His friend says, “There are 1100 people here. There are generations here because of what you have done.” But Schindler says, “It could have been more. That car – I could have sold it and it would have meant ten more people. Ten more people on that list. Ten more lives saved.” He ripped the swastika pin from his lapel and says, “This pin! It’s gold! That’s two people. At least one person this pin could have been.” He had a moment of clarity when he realized the difference between what we value on this earth and what is valuable in eternity.

I would pray for me and I would pray for you that this coming year, we would focus all our energies on helping people get to heaven.

In the coming days and weeks, pray daily for Cathy as she grieves the passing of her beloved. Pray for the Bassard children and grand children. Pray for them to live for the Lord and follow the Lord.

I love you guys. Stay faithful. Stay the course.
Pastor Mike