
Week 5 / You Are Heaven-Bound in Christ!
This post is part of a series of weekly devotionals and discounts during the world-wide CoViD-19 pandemic. In wondering how I could offer relief in some small way, I thought about combining a weekly entry from a devotional I wrote several years ago and a 50% discount on one of my fiction books to offer a ray of hope. Sign up to receive each post into your mailbox every Wednesday morning.
Hebrews tells us “we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure…” That hope has a name, Jesus Christ and the testimony about him and his rescue found in the Bible. May you rest in him during these scary, frustrating times…
The first funeral I officiated was for a thirty-three-year-old man who died of cancer fourteen months after his diagnosis. He left behind a young wife and two twin boys who were three years old at the time. This young man died far too young.
My message centered around the hope this young man had, the hope of the gospel. This gospel-hope reminds us that the troubles of this world and the death that awaits us all won’t have the final word in our story, because it didn’t have the final word in Jesus’ story.
Because of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and exaltation, we’re all awaiting our final place of rest at our Savior’s side in heaven before he returns to restore this broken, busted world and resurrect us on a brand-new earth.
This is true of my congregant’s story as much as our own story. Who he was in Christ is who we are in Christ: heaven-bound!
Jesus promised he was going to go prepare a place for his children. Paul spoke of this place, an eternal home from God not built by human hands. He reminded us that our ultimate citizenship is heaven. It’s a place God has prepared for all those heroes of the faith Hebrews speaks of—the same place God has prepared for us and for the young man I buried.
In his first letter to the Thessalonian church, Paul reminded those Christians that they don’t grieve over the death of their loved ones like the world, because of their identity in Christ. We share that same identity. God says we’re heaven-bound, all because Jesus lives.
Our Anchor-Hope Reminders from the Bible:
“So, now, go and sell what you have and give to those in need, making deposits in your account in heaven, an account that will never be taken from you. Your gifts will become a secure and unfailing treasure, deposited in heaven forever. Where you deposit your treasure, that is where your thoughts will turn to—and your heart will long to be there also.”
Luke 12:33–34 tpt
“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?”
John 14:1–2 nlt
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.
2 Corinthians 5:1 niv
For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.
Philippians 3:20–21 nkjv
When the Messiah, who is your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
Colossians 3:4 hcsb
But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.
Hebrews 11:16 nkjv
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