Heaven: The Good, Mysterious, And Downright Confusing - #389 - P&I Podcast!

[Music] welcome to the provoke and inspire podcast learning how to follow jesus in a post-christian culture you probably can't tell from listening to this but i'm wearing purple shorts and that's just that's just giving me a boost like you can't even imagine i was wearing a really nice lilac sweater and it looked like in this picture a dull dull gray brown whatever i don't get it well let that be an outward representation of an inward reality really uh i don't know that was dark and bleak i'm just wearing black my my common attire so so there it is now that we've gone around the table and told everyone what we're wearing welcome to the promoted podcast it is it is uh look it's been a little while uh but we're grateful to be back together unfortunately uh we are still down anya she will be back soon fear not uh but in the meantime we will plow forward and we've got a great topic for you today we're gonna talk about heaven we're going to talk about eternity uh why this is something that seems to be built into everyone whether they believe it or not whether they acknowledge it or not there seems to be this ubiquitous sense of an afterlife what does that mean what does the bible say about heaven and how should that affect the way we live how should it uh impact our daily lives that that heaven is a real thing a real reality and then also maybe a couple ways that we can get it wrong and how that this can maybe negatively impact uh the way we live out our lives as well so that's what we're gonna cover today uh but before we do that if you leave us a rating and or a review on itunes uh that is a very helpful thing for you to do in fact we've had just just a flood of reviews and ratings recently uh i'm gonna read you know what i'm just gonna arbitrarily read this one uh episode 383 apparently is the title and then dash to help ben out on may 28th by lynn's eew so is that lindsay i don't know uh it says this i've been listening to the podcast a little less than a year and i feel like i've made a bunch of new friends i have not met any of you uh but the way you communicate with one another makes me feel like i'm part of the crew as i listen and then in brackets while i'm cleaning my house on friday um but beyond all that i love the content and the way you approach your topics biblical viewpoints that don't always see eye to eye but still you respect one another as you talk about it a great model for the church to follow you uh thank you for your important contribution to the dialogue in these days so thank you yeah thank you lindsay can i ask something what did that have to do with you you said something about it because i always ask so i'm assuming it was like to help out george what up he gave us the triple ladies ladies ladies ladies so that means that ben is a lady at least it gave me an opportunity to just float up into my head voice and just give you that little that little nice little vocal room uh george thank you how come you and your dad have that problem like being called ladies i don't know i don't know but look i fit in as well as i can with the people i'm around i'm a chameleon if you will adapting the culture of my times uh george thank you and review reviewer de jour thank you as well so leave us a rating on itunes five stars preferably and a review that's encouraging and it's nice to know people are listening and being encouraged by this so anyway plowing right forward real quick we are part of a missions organization called steiger we are building dynamic city teams all over the world reaching young people who are not looking to the church for answers and you need to be a part of this we have around 100 of these teams in various stages of development and uh if you just jumped on this podcast i spoke at a church over the weekend called brienne baptist in burnsville minnesota and i asked a lot of you to jump on this podcast so i want to give an individual shout out to you uh hopefully you don't regret this decision but go to steiger.org for ways that you can get involved because like i said and like i often say and i say i often say this but i just recently stole this from my brother aaron our mission is not hard it's impossible and so not only do we absolutely need god um and and jody's smirking so maybe he stole it from her and maybe she stole it from a panda who knows uh either way we need you steiger.org for ways to get involved so heaven uh let's just kick off this conversation right away when i say that the idea that that there is this uh universal sense of of heaven in people and it really feels that way i mean we often go onto the streets in our mission and talk to people and we've been doing a lot of street interviews at a big university where i live and almost universally people will say they believe in some sort of afterlife and so i think that that it's important maybe to emphasize at the beginning here that whether you're a christian or not this is an important topic the idea of of heaven and hell and i think um one thing we may miss as christians is that you know we often think about the idea of hell and it can often become this difficult thing to communicate outside of the church and there's always the guy with the sign that so graciously does it on our behalf and i'm like thanks chad not chad johnson chad whatever just fill in the blank name thanks craig thanks lionel thanks thanks thanks barry thanks barry for setting our agenda back 50 years really appreciate it and your khaki shorts um but i think heaven is a missed opportunity on some levels as a first of all it's as real it's a reality um and it's a powerful apologetic don't you think courtney that it's something that we can really talk about and appeal to in almost everyone we meet i mean even our neighbor that we continue to talk about um not a christian but he never even looks sideways at all when i talk about there being something else he intuitively says i will see my wife again you know he just intuitively recognizes that so so don't you feel like this is a powerful way to to talk to people is to just bring up something that may seem weird but really is really surprisingly normal yeah it's it's so powerful and i we often say this about like we've you said this before that we like we decide that people how people already feel about heaven so before we even get into a conversation we've decided that if we talk about heaven or if we talk about an afterlife we're weird we're a little bit nutty so we just and you might not even like consciously decide that but we in our heads have convinced ourselves that talking about heaven is too strange for people like too much to comprehend so we just don't even go there and i completely agree that it is a great point of bringing the conversation to a real heart level of like what do you think about when you die like we all it's something that we all have to think about like none of us can escape the conversation of where we go when we die because we all it's the only sure thing is that we're all going to leave this earth sometime and i think we it's a missed i know that i have missed opportunities because i just shy away from speaking about death because it feels too scary and too dark and too heavy right yeah yeah i don't for me it's it's um what i really like what you know it's i i guess i don't necessarily shy away from that because i'm in ukraine right now i have been for almost well about a month and you know we've been out on the street as well and just talking to people and and the more i the more i um just am out there and just talking to people and really talking about important things you know you really realize how how much you know how little people have without without god how little and how really how despairing they are you know so yeah i mean i for sure i understand you you know both of you but i i just think that you know these people need answers i need answers and and so it's i just yeah i just get so hard for just getting to the important things go ahead no well i was just going to say that beyond the need to to talk to people about eternity and that's absolutely the case i think that we can be more open about it and certainly when a tragedy strikes i think people are maybe even more uniquely open to it but i i do think just for any follower of jesus who's listening whether they're you know they're applying this to their conversations with those outside of the church or not i do think that there is this weird duality where on one level we are very aware of eternity and and almost anyone would acknowledge it on some level and yet the drift of the human heart is to never think about it it's like it's like a subtle hum like that we just kind of becomes drowned out with with the loudness of the li our life around us where you know that's why i always say you know and we we have this uh youtube channel called is there more and we made this video about um the strangest of time um and c.s lewis often talked about this how we fight time we resist time we feel like it's this alien imposition and so we're always trying to fight it you know with our surgeries and our creams and we're we're surprised when it's around you know when he uses this brilliant analogy let me just read his quote he says we are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it how he's grown we exclaim how time flies as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty it is as strange as as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water and that would be strange indeed unless of course the fish were destined to become one day a land animal and so he talks about this idea that we have this low-grade ubiquitous sense of an afterlife but even as christians and i think it's important to bring this up we have to fight to keep it frontal yeah because i think too often it becomes as courtney said something we don't talk about because it's heavy i'm not necessarily talking about that imagine courtney wasn't purely talking about it in an evangelistic sense just in life right we we kind of forget and then we become consumed and then and then someone dies right and you know that weird 24 hours depending on how close the person is week month year where you feel this new it's almost like the veil is lifted off your eyes for just a second and you're you're more sensitive you're more cautious you're more aware you hug your family a little more you're just kind of i don't know it's almost like you have a sense of it and then it goes away yeah i i was the the verse like that often is read at funerals and i think we saw that well done good and faithful servant and it's it is such a powerful verse and i it kind of gets a little bit watered down because we hear it so much but i was just thinking about that in terms of like when i meet jesus one day and i i want him to say to me like well done good and faithful servant in i don't know if i live in such a way on a daily or i remind myself on a daily basis that the choices that i'm making that i'm going to the street to tell people about him i'm raising my children in love i'm loving my friends well experiences i think uh jody needs to not have her phone on i think that might be helpful um yeah no you know what i mean like i i need to this idea of heaven and i was totally talking about like my christian of course in terms of evangelism talking about heaven is important but in my own life how much more powerful and effective am i going to be in in the things that god has put in me if i have a view of heaven that i am doing these things not just laboring in vain i'm doing these things because my eternal reward is worth it like it is worth it to labor it is worth it to have burdens it's worth it to to dig deep in this present life because my eternal reward is waiting for me right and and i think again there's two there's two aspects that i think are critical as we begin here and one again is the fact that there is a ubiquitous sense of heaven that is in every person who acknowledges this the source of it or not and so as an apologetic tool it's incredibly powerful you can ask people and you'd be amazed at how open people are to the question what happens when you die now you're gonna get people that don't say there are gonna be people out there and jody i think you have a quote from stephen hawking to the point where yeah there are people who just say no there's nothing it's superstitious it's childish there isn't anything but i think overwhelmingly people think there is something and so that is an opportunity on the other end as a christian in your day-to-day life i do think we need a fight to keep it present as you said courtney it's about having uh the end in mind and knowing truthfully where we are all heading and the only guarantee that we all have um and i do think that's why it's important to dig into it because what i think well there's there's many reasons why we keep it at arm's length one is you know there's a spiritual battle i think if satan can convince us or get us to forget the eternal reality that is all around us the invisible reality that is more visible and more real than we'll ever know or will eventually know that will give us that will uh lead us to live lives that are less impactful um but then also i just think it's that it's so hard to wrap our minds around it's like we just heaven and hell and what happens when you die and it there is that that profound mystery and fear around the whole thing that i think on some levels we'd rather just not think about it i think i mean i i i have a quote that is just i i found this quote it's c.s lewis again um but i i love it and i i found it a few weeks ago when we were really looking at this and it's it's this it's heaven is that remote music that we are born remembering i think that's so powerful isn't that cool yeah i'm not sure if there's ever been a better writer than sans lewis i was just and and it it i agree with you that we don't think about it enough and and this study again this these studies have been so life-changing for me but this this study on heaven has made me think about it and it does change you you know it does it does because your life is there and when you start studying you know there's not going to be any tears there's not going to be suffering there you know sometimes we have this weird view of oh we're just going to have to we're going to just be singing you know one worship song one after you know for forever and i personally think yeah that doesn't you know i don't know about that but you know it's i don't know about that either yeah you know and and so but if there's no suffering and no nothing that we struggle with is gonna be there it's just gonna be perfection so i just think oh lord help me to remember this and focus on it and i think it does change you here and now as well yeah yep and and i think that's why this is so important is that though it feels impossible to grasp i think that you you felt in in the apostle paul you felt in probably those in the early church this this profound expectation of eternity and and maybe that was in large part because life was just harder because death was more near i think that is one of the weird uh maybe products of our modern environment is that we just don't experience tragedy you know with life expectancy and just how quickly life could go and of course it still can now safety is an illusion um i think we have become pretty isolated and insulated from from the daily reality of of death and and where things are heading now again that speaks of rich western people there's a lot of people on the earth even today that experienced that but i think if i can say this without being crass or tone deaf one of the things we've lost in how safe and comfortable we are is that we've become so isolated from the reality of what's coming next that we are shocked when death comes we are confused by it almost we're all we are it does throw us off until we can go back to this state of oh no that never happens you know what i mean like it's like yeah that happens but no it doesn't really happen it doesn't it's not going to happen to me and i think we we have to dig into this i think we this could be a good time to kind of dig into what the bible says about heaven and and to keep that frontal i mean you look you know so much of of paul's language you just felt this that he was torn right like he was almost on some levels wanting to go wanting to die i mean you know the famous philippians 1 21 for me to live is uh for me for me to live as christ and to die is gain like he he wanted to go because he had such a profound revelation of eternity and and so with with the right balance i think it's critical that we dig deeper into what the bible actually says about heaven so what does it say just off of what you were saying real quick ben i feel like i have i have two two friends who um have lost children like through tragedy and i don't i don't think i have ever met anybody who just like understands that that gap of earth and heaven and like they live with truly one foot out of of earth and it it isn't even though they miss their sons terribly like they they don't they know that this world has nothing to offer and i think like god is so gracious in preparing our hearts in that way for like the joy and the amazingness to come so a lot of us have not experienced that suffering but those of us who i can watch in my life who have truly experienced just the gut-wrenching loss of somebody they love in in like a child they know they know that this this world has nothing to offer to us and it to me it's so inspiring and such like a encouragement like i need to keep seeking after that joy that the that awaits me in heaven because it is going to be so so worth all the suffering on earth and i i just feel like if you are are concerned about like what what heaven might mean for you just go find somebody who's been through intense suffering and it will inspire you and and push you towards wanting to experience that joy of heaven and what the future holds for you yeah but but but are people really being honest when they say that they they never think i need something beyond this world i just think if you really are are looking at life and and looking at the world around us and the suffering that is there i just don't understand how you can just kind of go nope i'm i'm not i don't need anything i'm good i'm you know i've got everything that i need within me i'm i can deal with this life i just think that's i i'm speaking mostly from a christian perspective for myself like i don't i don't expect a non-christian to understand heaven but as a christian i have struggled with heaven like i our hearts are you know like i don't get it like i i i have come to the conclusion that it is okay that i don't understand heaven like i don't understand a lot of things that god does in this world i don't understand a lot of scripture honestly i don't understand the reality of heaven and so and i and i am okay with that but i also get that it's because i am on a um my fa my faith might be on a farther journey than some newer christians and so for me i heaven can be scary sometimes i'm just speaking from my personal experience that i when i think about the vastness of eternity my fickle finite mind is like holy cow like what does how do i live forever like what do i do forever and i'm such an actor like a activator i'm like what am i am i gonna have like things to do forever and so for me when i see friends who have really felt the the longing for heaven they inspire me and they encourage me that it's like you know what i this is something i want to long for like this world does not have it for me this world is not offering what i what god has created me for my heart is longing for heaven and so i just like i always try to like look for for ways to encourage me to long for heaven more but but i think that speaks to the point i was trying to make earlier which is that you know well first of all we have an enemy who is very active in trying to deceive us and and certainly in deceiving those outside of the church and that is a bit of a different conversation um that you were bringing up uh jody which is that i think people are uh again i think most people do have an have a sense of eternity i don't think most would reject it now even then um i think that it's complicated in terms of not wanting to define what that is so they don't have to submit to a higher power you know and then there's there's just spiritual blindness as it says in second corinthians 4 4 the god of this age is blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of god who is the image of god um or sorry the glory of christ that is the image of god um but again i think that that to courtney's point i i think that the that that we we have this this because heaven is so vast because it seems so incomprehensible um and also i think because we are still here um we can have this fear of it we can we can have this idea that it that it's that it's hard and far away but i think what courtney is saying that's so true is that the difficulties of life the trials that we experience the suffering that we go through i think part of how god refines us in that process is to reveal how fickle the things in this world really are and that that that there is a greater reality it kind of forces us to find the bottom so to speak it's like that our foundations fall apart it kind of it kind of forces us to drill deeper until we find something solid and to me what's the only thing that's truly solid is is jesus and what he offers us beyond this life and so i i i completely agree with that and it's one of the challenges of the world we live in today which is that we are so comfortable we have our 401ks and our fences and our seatbelts and our our amazing doctors and medicines and for the most part we are very shielded from the truth which is that we live in a failing world in failing bodies and need a bigger better hope and so i think that's why we've got to press into the reality of eternity so that we live as we should i think that's kind of the point i think you're trying to make yeah i get that i get that i guess i'm just going to go a little bit of a different direction keep kind of pushing in this direction is is when and i i'm not just talking about um people that don't know god i'm i i think people that do know god if they're if they i mean like i like i here in ukraine when we were on the street we did this thing um where we talked about fathers there's such a problem here with fathers and alcoholism and not being there for the family and abusing you know the family and beating even beating kids and and and so we had this really really awesome um thing that we did on the street where we had different signs and it just said my father abused me my father has has rejected me or whatever which is or just is not there and people came to that one that was a very effective one and i guess what i'm saying by that is that there if we just if we just get a glimpse or just release maybe again slow down enough to to look at what life is really like without you know in this imperfect broken world because that's what we live in is an imperfect broken world and until we get to heaven like i i've been always like my hero evidently i mean i keep listening to him tim keller but he was describing heaven you know is like gold or a kingdom a feast like a wedding like a river of pleasure like seeing god face to face i just the more you focus on heaven and the more you focus on earth the more you are driven to heaven and to want to be like paul and saying wow i will be here to serve you jesus but i would i want to be there i think that's exactly what we're saying that's that's the entire purpose of this podcast is to make the intentional effort to make that focus because what i do not agree with is that the default setting of the human heart is not eternity i think we recognize acknowledge eternity but if left unchecked we become downward and inward it becomes about me and about this life that is the default drift of the human heart that is the the tide we have to fight against and it's a tide quite frankly we'll have to fight against forever and and i think again the point courtney was making is that suffering is one of those like tide redirecting moments that says whoa my health i can't rely on it my economy i can't rely on it my even my family i can't rely on it like yes these are good gifts and i should pour myself into these things but i think that that difficulty is that stripping away of the false hope that we have and things around us that aren't are not jesus that are not what you're talking about and so this is why we've got to push past the mystery and the maybe even the fear because i i hear you courtney i have some fears related to it too it's like the in i i am a mission driven person like my whole life is about i want to i want to solve a problem i want to fix a thing i want to conquer a dragon and solve a crisis what's having going gonna be if there's no crisis to solve if there's no one to be saved there's no thing nothing to be fixed what am i gonna do and by fix he doesn't mean like home fixing because he can't do anything in the house i have not wielded a hammer since the bright age of eight and it was a terrible experience and i said from that day forth i shall hire um no like you know what i mean i am a mission driven person and i i kind of get terrified about the idea of being in an eternal place with no mission to solve and again that's not that's just me being honest that's i know it makes more it's something that i can't even imagine i mean let me go ahead and read another c.s lewis quote uh because heaven is this beautiful amazing place made specifically for you like it says in john 14 2 and then i'll do c.s lewis bible first then clive staples uh in my father's house there are many rooms if it were not so would i have told you that i'm going to prepare a place for you jesus is specifically preparing a place for me and then c.s lewis says the mold in which a key is made would be a strange thing if you'd never seen a key and the key itself is strange thing if you've never seen a lock your soul has a curious shape because it is hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance or a key to unlock one of the doors in a house with many mansions your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone because you were made for it made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand i i heaven fits me better than i even know myself like i don't even know what i want you know i it was a season in my life where i was led to the phrase like i'm suspicious of even my own desires right it's like i need to be suspicious of even the things i want because god knows me better than i know myself and so when i compare my desires to my very limited view of heaven and that don't match up it's likely that my desires and my perception of heaven are off and therefore i need to trust in god but we've got to drill into this and and keep bringing ourselves back to these realities heaven and hell because both of which if properly understood would dramatically impact the way we live yeah yeah i i just i love the idea because we we somehow need to like you say keep heaven front and center and and and hell for that matter and i do think it's it's it's kind of a revelation that we need from the holy spirit to to con you know to really ask him you know help us to me help me to consider or imagine what heaven is uh you know like like i was reading somewhere take the time and think about it until the glory overwhelms you and i think that's an aspect is that we have to we have to really pursue this and know in the grand scheme of things what is important is it that little concern that we have you know in our inner very comfortable lives or is it in the grand scheme scheme of things we are going to have to answer what is heaven and what is hell what is that doing to us what are where are we going to end up and where are other people going to end up just to really imagine what that is and and live it's kind of you know getting to the crux of life instead of just being lulled to sleep yeah yeah you know i think one of the questions i i wrote down was if we truly understood heaven how would it change the way we live um and one of the things i don't think i think about very much is the the reward of heaven and not just only the the being there as a reward and of course that's a reward enough but what's what's kind of crazy if you think about it is the bible often talks about reward like literal reward i mean matthew 6 19 don't store up treasures here on earth where moth where moths eat them and rust destroys them and wear thieves and break in and steal you know it talks about instead store of treasure in heaven where it will it's incorruptible uh matthew 10 42 and if you give even a cup of cold water to one of these lisa the fallers you'll surely be rewarded you know and then matthew 19 anyone uh everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or child or property for my sake will receive a hundred times as much in inheritance in the eternal life i mean crazy right god's actually gonna reward us and so i think that there is this um maybe one of the negative ideas that secular people have about heaven is that uh it'll de-incentivize us to care about the here and now right that if we if all we're doing is trying to just escape this place and who cares burn it down move on then that's going to not make us very good citizens and i think the opposite is true and not just as a means to an end of course i think when you properly understand god you know that he cares about the creation about everyone and everything that he has made but is that an is isn't that an interesting idea do you find yourself courtney not thinking too much as i don't think too much about the idea that i will actually be rewarded for how i live here on earth and i so my personality i kind of like default to being a rule follower and like kind of lee i probably follow fall into like legalism a little too quickly so i think if i focus too much on the reward that i'm going to get in heaven well that's not right because that's not the right message to send to people that are the right message to send to myself because i don't believe in the prosperity gospel and then my mind goes through all these like cycles of like i can't think about reward because that's not the point but it it's like it's very humbling for me personally to sit and rest in those verses and so encouraging and inspiring because it's like god is gonna reward us in heaven and i don't like i think i get so focused on doing the right thing and saying the right things and following the right way and not misleading the wrong like the wrong message of the bible that i can often miss like the very clear message that jesus is giving to me that when i by serving him and following him here on earth and giving my life for him like i will be rewarded in heaven and we don't even and i can't even fathom or comprehend the room that god is creating for me because i am not anywhere near as creative or imaginative as jesus is and so when i like think about all of that it is so exciting about the potential that is awaiting me in heaven and yeah so i think it's like we need to we need as christians we need to rest in that and then i think going out into the world we're going to be so much more effective in sharing the gospel because we are truly excited about what awaits us in the next life yeah i am i i don't know i just i just think you know when i think about you know that god is going to take me away from i'm just going to think i'm just going to talk about myself for the moment god is going to take me away from this place and i we don't have to we don't have to watch people be sick or we don't have to watch people try to re recover from being abused or all the things and and not even the the huge things but just the little things you know that we we can't even love each other properly he's going to take me away from that all of us that believe in him you know away from that and give us this perfect you know thing like david often talks about he says it's it's going to be david my husband your dad ben um that anything that we see we're we're in the mountains right now and it is shockingly beautiful but that's just a glimpse just a tiny glimpse of what it's going to be and and the more you fix yourself on you know this is what god's going to give me i want to do i want to do good things here for people i want to serve him just because i'm so i'm so grateful for what's coming up ahead yeah and i guess i'm specifically talking more about this this literal reward because it's a strange concept and as denise points out in her comment about just being apprehensive about it because of her catholic background you know and then you you think of it from an uh like an islamic perspective and like you know the reward for martyrdom and i think that there is this weird feeling around the idea of reward and it is a it is an interesting thing to understand theologically and we're so trained in our protestantism probably a few too many t's that we are so worried about anything that would be feel you know like merited in that sense and yet it seems pretty biblically undeniable that there will be a reward in heaven for for living in a certain way and so i don't want to over make this point but all that to say that that we need to recognize what heaven is because it incredibly affects how we live and what we invest in i don't wanna i don't wanna invest in the wrong things i wanna care about people and again i don't necessarily even worry about thinking this in a material sense because i don't think heaven is we don't even understand what reward means you know we may think we think reward and i think like an ice cream sundae on a jet ski you know but it's not that right it's so much more profound than that so i wouldn't even i don't even worry about categorizing or defining what reward is other than to say what would a perfect god give to a perfected version of me that would be the best thing ever that's reward whatever that is i can trust that god's got it i don't even worry about it i guess for me more than anything i just don't want to waste my life and i don't want to be like man i took a whole bunch of stuff that got chucked in a dumpster you know like that that's not the point of life i don't want to live that way and i want to have the right perspective which is why wrestling with this idea of heaven and really making it a consistent part of what you meditate on and dwell on it's not just one of those ancillary topics it's it's kind of the point it's kind of a big deal and so it's good that we're we're drilling down here and i think when you when you if you have the opportunity um to be with somebody as as they're dying and if that person is a christian obviously this is that's kind of important um but like for me i got to i was sitting with my my grandma as she as she was dying from cancer and like when you're with that person you can't you can't help but like you can't help but really fully understand the true joy and the true reward that is coming for that person and i don't think that that's just like wishful thinking i think that god gives us this amazing ability to um experience a spiritual realm in those moments so like as my grandma is dying i'm thinking like this is so sad that she's dying and it's so sad that she's had to suffer through this life and many ways of suffering um and i feel like i just i get emotional about it now because i know it's so true that my grandma had to work through horrible things in her life and then she got these terrible cancers and then she's laying there and she she doesn't she's in so much pain i think like i knew how much was waiting for her when she met jesus in that moment and i know that god gives us that amazing revelation in that moment to inspire us like it is worth it like it was worth it that my grandma had to suffer and still commit her life to jesus it was so worth it that she was abused and she experienced loss and suffering and abandonment and just so many awful things and she still chose to face her life and and point it all towards jesus and serve him and give everything for him and then when she was dying there was no doubt that as her body left that room she met jesus and you can you can feel it and not everybody gets that i would i would say privilege of being with somebody as they leave this earth but you cannot escape the deep understanding that there is so much more waiting for my grandma when she left this earth and how powerful god moves in those moments and you can't you can't deny it and i it's like man this life is so hard and it's so troublesome and and offers so much burdens but it is worth it and i love that jesus meets us in those moments and even meets us in regular moments of worship and then you get those glimpses of heaven you get that glimpse of what the spiritual realm is going to be like and then you long for that and so i think this also kind of boils down to how much are we asking to experience the holy spirit and when we experience the holy spirit i think we get a glimpse of what heaven is like and then we long for it we long for a deeper understanding of because you you get those we've all had those moments with jesus and we're like i want that high and i'm like i want that high all the time and i know that that's what heaven's going to be like because there will be no escaping jesus in heaven we will have a hundred percent that's camp high as i like to call it because you you experience jesus in a different way at camp and then you come home and it changes it's like that's what heaven is gonna be like this spiritual realm that we will never leave that we will never be away from and what it what an amazing like how exciting is that that we get to be with jesus and experience that fullness in him yeah i remember i had this strange season in my life where i don't know why i felt led to this but i felt led to praying that god why could you not produce in me such a awareness of you and reality of eternity that i wouldn't i would not fear death like i i started praying that like in a weird way i was like why could you not why could you not be so powerfully manifest in my life why could the reality of you not be so vivid and visceral to me that i would literally not fear death you know and and it's somewhat related but there's a you know jordan peterson talks about you should raise yourself up and it's yourself you know and it doesn't work but to be the kind of person that everyone else can rely on at your dad's funeral that's what he talks about he's like you should be the one that is strong like not in a frontal way not just it's a front or it's an act but that you've built such a resilience of character that you're the one that everyone can rely on and it it was interesting because it's here's a you know a secular attempt to essentially say be the kind of person that is so resilient and so aware of reality and so has developed that strength and he's doing it in a way that i don't think works but it made me go i want to be the kind of person that is so in tune with the holy spirit so aware of our mission you know it's like the it's like the original salvation army it's like they call death graduation you know it's like you've done it you're ready you've moved on you know and it was this i don't know i just feel like we we could get to that place and it doesn't make it easy and doesn't mean we don't experience loss the two one of my favorite verses in scripture are two words long and it was he wept you know it's jesus weeping with you know over the death of lazarus when he finds out his friend dies um so jesus experienced loss and suffering we will too but i don't know that this to me is inspiring to say that let's not fear this let's press into this let's live in light of it and let's let it revolutionize how we live because that's what's happening it's where we're going right and and so i don't want to live this dual life of like here and now and then oh yeah it's out there and i'm shocked into reality everyone's small and then i fade back into inward downward i don't want to do that anymore i want to live i want to get everything i can be in light of what's coming next i want to get everything i can out of here and i feel like it's that paradox of the more you put your heart and soul into what's coming next the more fully you will live alive here yes yeah i i want to yeah oh you just felt like you you know you had to add that right there go ahead jody take the plate back up let's get back to ten thousand foot oh and courtney can hang out you're bringing out peanuts well in that case i'm staying do you have a closing thought and or remark for us are you asking courtney no you jody i don't know i just like this whole thing you know like in hebrews it talks about you know people re the heroes of the faith they realized that they were foreigners and strangers on earth and just i've just been challenged by this study to really understand that you know that it it changes everything here when you think okay i'm i'm a foreigner here that's actually reality what are you laughing about steve steve oh my goodness you know you try to you try to say in you know kind of a deep thing in this podcast and nope it's not my fault i don't i don't sleep enough it's not my phone steve puts a strange little picture up and i just i love that i gotta send that to michelle oh you love this i hate this okay that's my part oh that i love that red let's close on this note don't lick toads everyone hey we have wait wait i got to tell you my frog story and then this is this is like such a spiritual thing no not really but we've lost i've lost it you guys wait wait wait we have these puddles of of water around here you know they're big puddles of water and these there's these little frogs courtney i'm gonna cover your picture up okay no it's okay this is not gonna be serious okay um and there's these little frogs that are in the water and you know what they do have you ever seen this it's so funny i have to keep oh my goodness they they just when they they turbulence turbulence i'm out of here no no i want to hear about the frog keep going keep going keep going talk okay you know these the frogs they go in the water and then they they just they their legs are like flailed out to the side and then they float and just they do seriously they're just like this their two back legs are just flailed out and then they're just ready they're just going i'm going to get those flies and then it's a strange oh that's sugar you should take a video and then we can post it to the provoking inspire facebook page i know i'm serious i'm serious hmm so am i all right let's have a deep pause so that steve can make sense of the ending here wow jody thank you for that comment uh anyways so no i'm just i'm creating a fake transition so we can edit it better uh thanks for you all thanks for everyone that listened uh we appreciate it hopefully this was an encouraging conversation for you uh as i mentioned at the beginning leave us a rating and review on itunes or elsewhere share this with someone give them a firm pat on the back and be like hey bucko check out the provoked inspire podcast uh uh well i don't know i think it works uh that's it otherwise we love you uh i'm gonna get a warm sack of ham at the grocery store and uh we'll talk to you next time i'm gonna go and eat pierogies oh come on that sounds like a lot of gluten oh what are you gonna what are you gonna [Music] pierogi [Music] you

Channel: Provoke & Inspire

Views: 41

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: Mhn47U2Jl_4

Length: 47min 45sec (2865 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021