McCullough Remember Heaven

Meditations on the World to Come for Life in the Meantime
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-4335-9918-7
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 176 Seiten

How the Hope of Heaven Shapes Our Lives as Christians in the Meantime What we expect from our future has tremendous power over our experience in the meantime-that's why the Bible places the hope of heaven at the center of the Christian life. But even if we affirm the reality of our heavenly future, we often struggle to long for heaven, much less to connect the promises of the world to come to the concrete details of life in this world as it is. If and when we think about heaven at all, it's easy to think of it like an insurance policy that will be there when we need it. But the Bible defines our future hope as an inheritance-a trust fund that is certain, inexhaustible, and freely accessible here and now. In this book, Matthew McCullough offers a series of meditations that model how to draw on the hope of heaven for everyday life in the meantime. Chapters connect specific struggles of life in this world-from dissatisfaction and inadequacy to anxiety, grief, indwelling sin and more-to specific promises of the world to come. Drawing on insights from Christian writers of the past, McCullough shows how the Bible uses the hope of heaven to help us now. - Offers Hope: Helps readers deal with feelings of loneliness, inadequacy, grief, and dissatisfaction to curate a healthy life perspective around God's promises - Biblical and Practical: Engaging meditations offer Christians applicable advice for living joyfully in light of the inheritance that awaits them in heaven - From the Gospel Coalition: This accessible book makes a great gift for students, pastors, and Christians of every age

Matthew McCullough (PhD, Vanderbilt University) is the pastor of Edgefield Church in Nashville, Tennessee, and the author of Remember Heaven: Meditations on the World to Come for Life in the Meantime.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mccullough, Matthew

Leseproben

Introduction

Set Your Mind

How the Hope of Heaven Grounds Our Lives as Christians

Another Christmas just came and went, along with a wonderful week away with our extended family.

We had been counting down the days to that trip from the time we finished our Halloween candy. We knew it meant a break from the grind of normal life. We knew we’d see grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins we only see a couple of times each year. We knew the favorite foods we’d be eating and that there would be presents. Our trip was packed with all this goodness and more.

Just a few days after returning, I could already feel it. The dreaded postholiday blues. Do you know what I’m talking about? I haven’t seen any scientific data to back this up, but I’ve seen enough life to know that this phenomenon is real. And it has two important lessons to teach us.

First, it is incredible what a difference it makes when you have something to look forward to. An exciting event on your horizon can change how you see everything else in your life. Adults are less bothered by annoying problems at work. Kids are less likely to bicker with siblings around the house. Even those facing terminal illness can draw inspiration and even some relief by thinking ahead to another Christmas with the people they love most. It’s simply wonderful to have something to look forward to.

The second lesson is more sobering. What we really need is something to look forward to that won’t leave us back where we began. This Christmas I got a sharp-looking, quarter-zip pullover sweater. I expect to be wearing it for the next decade or more, long after it’s gone out of style. But I know it will eventually wear out. Even more to the point, it doesn’t change anything about what I see when I look in the mirror. It can’t remove the not-so-hidden, middle-age paunch underneath. It can’t put a single hair back on my bald head. It hasn’t plucked the gray out of my whiskers. As for work, the stress I left behind was still stressing me out when I got back. My holiday was truly wonderful. I was right to look forward to it. But nothing I enjoyed about it lasted for more than a week, and I ended up right back where I started.

Hope matters. We can’t live without it. But what we hope in matters even more. We need a hope strong enough to bear the weight of our lives in the meantime. And that is precisely what we have in the hope of heaven.

What is the hope of heaven to your life as a Christian? That is the simple question I want to raise and help you answer through this book. The question flows from Paul’s words at the beginning of what may be his most beautiful and comprehensive passage on living as a follower of Jesus:

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. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Col. 3:1–4)

In Colossians 3 Paul talks about envy, idolatry, anger, and slander. He talks about kindness, compassion, patience, and forgiveness. He talks about sex, marriage, and parenting. Yet every bit of this portrait—from what sins to put off to what virtues to put on, from how we love one another to how we conduct ourselves in church and at home and in the workplace—flows from a mind that is set on things above.

Right at the center of the Christian life, Paul places an intentional, disciplined, cultivated focus on heaven. Does that sound right to you?

I’m convinced that heaven suffers from a serious brand problem.

For some, the idea of heaven seems boring. This is a problem with a long pedigree. Catherine Earnshaw, of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, speaks from nineteenth-century England what many people feel today:

If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable. . . . I dreamt, once, that I was there. . . . Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I woke sobbing for joy.1

Do you see the implication? Heaven is literally a nightmare. As one writer sums it up, “Our ancestors were afraid of hell; we are afraid of heaven. We think it will be boring.”2 Many Christians may know better than to accept clichés about chubby angels playing harps in the clouds, but they don’t have more relatable images to fall back on. Why should I want to be at a worship service that never ends?

For others, the thought of longing for heaven feels a little bit wrong, as if there’s a zero-sum relationship between longing for heaven and loving the world as we know it now, with its precious people and their serious problems. “Heavenly-minded” is an age-old knock on people who are no earthly good. Karl Marx famously described religion as the opiate of the people, something to take the edge off their pain and keep them from taking action to make things better. I’ve heard Christians of my generation speak of heavenly-mindedness in pretty much those terms, as cover for indifference and inaction. Isn’t it self-indulgent to look ahead to an eternal world of bliss when real people are really suffering all around you?

For still others, the notion of heaven seems almost pitiful, more like loss than gain—as if heaven means the end of familiar joys in this world, joys that are significant and wonderful. Why should I long to be in some other world when I’ve got so much to live for in this world?

My sense, however, is many Christians simply aren’t thinking about heaven at all and, if asked, couldn’t say why they should be. Maybe it makes sense why an eighty-three-year-old widow with terminal cancer might long for heaven. But what about a twenty-three-year-old law student in her second year? What about a thirty-three-year-old engineer with his first kid on the way?

Throughout this book, I want to show that the issue is not whether you love this world and its joys, its people and their needs. The question is whether you have any hope beyond this world and what it has to offer. Concrete, unshakable, life-giving hope is the birthright of every Christian, and this hope is meant to touch every part of our lives in the meantime.

Sadly, I’m convinced that we tend to view heaven the way we view our car insurance. We know we need to have it, but God forbid we ever have to use it. The best thing about having car insurance is the peace of mind it provides: you don’t have to think about it until the moment you need it. Meanwhile your focus stays fixed on the car itself—what style you like best, what features you need, how you want to use it, where you want to drive it.

As the Bible describes heaven, it’s not at all like an insurance policy filed and forgotten. It is an inheritance you are sure to receive and, beyond that, an inheritance you can draw on right now. Throughout Scripture, the promise of heaven functions like a trust fund—certain, fully funded, and freely accessible while we wait for faith to turn to sight. I want to help you see the incredible riches stored away in that trust fund and how to draw on that wealth day by day.

But first, back to Paul and his crystal-clear, countercultural basis for our lives as Christians. Why should we set our minds on things above? Why does Paul lay this command as the foundation of the Christian life? I see three reasons, and these frame everything that follows in this book.

Hope Is Essential

Heavenly-mindedness is absolutely vital because what we want or expect from our future has a huge effect on our experience in the meantime. We humans are future-oriented creatures whether we like it or not.

We are not the only creatures with an eye on what’s coming, of course. Birds build nests in the springtime. Squirrels bury nuts in the fall. Bears store up fat for winter hibernation. But birds, squirrels, and bears operate on instinct, aimed at simple survival.

Humans alone have hopes and dreams. We imagine opportunities to crave and possibilities to fear. We train for careers. We plan for families. We save for retirement. We buy insurance for our houses, our cars, our health, and even our lives. Only humans make conscious choices now in the hope or dread of what might be later.

The question is not whether your view of the future shapes your life today. The question is which view of the future is shaping your life today and what effect it is having.

Tim Keller often used a helpful thought experiment to capture this point.3 Imagine two women hired to do the same job, under the same conditions, and for the same amount of time. They both have to perform the same menial tasks, hour after hour, day after day. They both carry on through the same sweltering heat in summer and the same freezing cold in winter. But one of these women was told she would receive $30,000 at the end of the year, while the other woman was promised $30 million.

Surely the one promised $30,000 would struggle to keep going....