Walk

314. Habits for Heaven

We need to form habits for Heaven.

Why do bad things happen?

Paul, the writer of the letter of Romans to the 1^st century church in Rome was letting them know several things:

1. Man messed up his life by rejecting God and not loving the truth; man became like an animal, governed by his instincts rather than by his spirit.

2. God provided a way out; called the Gospel, good news.

3. The way out is to become righteous, which means to become part of God’s family through a blood covenant.

4. We cannot obtain this righteousness by what we do, but by grace, which is through faith, and all of that is a gift.

5. Abraham is our example of faith. He put his hope in God, knowing He could keep His promise even if things looked bad.

Romans chapter 5.

It starts out by saying that we have been made righteous, which gives us peace with God. Now we can have joy knowing that our glory is being restored, or knowing that our original purpose, God living in us, is being restored.

Paul says that even when we are in bad circumstances, we can still rejoice and be glad.

Why? Because we know that suffering produces perseverance (patient endurance) and that produces character and integrity, and that produces hope for eternal life, and this hope never disappoints us because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom God has given to us.

He says that if you were saved even while you were a sinner, how much more can you count on God saving you in your bad circumstances now that you are His child. He says, count on it! But in the meantime, do not expect an easy time of it.

I used to (and sometimes still do) wish that God would make things smoother in my life now that I know Him.

I can honestly say that God has made my life so much better than I can ever calculate, but it has not been without conflict.

I think that Christians can misinterpret God’s plan for us here on this earth. The Garden of Eden was the starting point; everything was perfect, well almost perfect. People look at that and expect God to return their lives to something peaceful like Adam and Eve had. The problem is, the Garden of Eden was the starting point, not the ending point. The problem with Adam and Eve was that they were people with free choices and they always had the potential of rebellion in their hearts. Even if they had made it through the first few temptations, they always had that potential to sin as free people.

We all start in our “Garden of Eden” with kind of an innocence and a free will. But God has something much better than returning us to Eden, He has New Jerusalem or Heaven in mind for us.

Heaven will be made up of people who still have a free choice; they technically could rebel against God, but during their lives they have made so many choices for God that something inside of them just changed. They could rebel, but they will not. God will not have to worry about them making the wrong choice. They could, but during their lives on earth they have been through so much, they have become so in love with Jesus, that they just would not even think of it. That is real love; having a choice, but exercising it for another.

So this hope that Romans 5 is talking about may be hope for now, that things will get better, but more than that, it is hope of the end result, Heaven.

Heaven is beyond our best dream. Think of the best you can think of, and Heaven is infinitely better!

We are just called to live on this earth for a short period of time. A teenager tends to think that his or her life is forever; like 80 years old is so far in the future that he cannot even think of it. But just let a teenager look at a friend lying in the street with a bullet in his head dead, and life starts to look shorter. We have no promise about the next day, right now is the only promise we have for life.

We need to form habits for Heaven.

Esau could not turn to God; he formed a habit of rebellion. Hebrews 12:15-17 (KJV) says, “Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.”

Esau thought he could live his life in the “world” as a selfish person and then turn his life over to God later. He found out that he could not. Why not, was God rejecting him? No way! It is just that he had exercised his spiritual muscles so far towards the world and Satan that he could not turn around and repent.

We will not turn away from God if we form the habit of obedience.

In the same way that we, who are in Heaven, will not be able to rebel, those who do not go to Heaven will not be able to repent. If all of their lives they rejected submitting to the authority of the Word of God, God will not torture them by taking them to heaven where all people will be under the authority of the Word of God. If all of their lives they could not stand worshipping God, God will not make them worship Him in Heaven. Hell will actually be better for them.

People in Heaven will spend eternity loving, obeying and worshipping God, who is love. The God who loves us more than we love ourselves; the God who gave up His most prized possession in order to purchase us off of the block of slavery, that being Jesus His Son.

I heard a story from a former member of the Mafia who got saved. He said that when he was a young man, the older bosses purposely had him caught by the police and he did a 5-year prison sentence; it was real suffering. When he found out, five years later on his release, he wanted to kill them, but they hugged him and told him that he had earned a rank in the Mafia that was secure. How? They told him that everything he had done up to that point was perfect. He obeyed, he shot people, and he collected money. But they did not know how he would react when he would be under pressure to break his vow of silence to never testify against another gang member. They said, “welcome home, son, you passed the supreme test, everything we have is yours now.” He was put in charge of hundreds of businesses worth millions of dollars. He was “tested or refined” and passed the test.

Just think what the King of the Universe will say to us after we go through bad times trusting Him.

Why does God test or refine us?

Deuteronomy 8:15-16 (Amplified Bible) says, “(He) Who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, but Who brought you forth water out of the flinty rock, Who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end.”

Just think, when we are in Heaven, we will still be free-will people, technically able to rebel against God, but unwilling to do so. That is because we have formed the habit. God will allow us to live very close to Him. In some way, I believe that the more trials we go through here on earth, the closer to God we will be when we get to Heaven. That is because we have been tested to be free-will people who will not exercise our wills to rebel against Him. He has seen what we will do in tough times. Each trial we go through trusting God, Jesus and the Word puts us in a position to be closer to Him forever.

So how can we rejoice when things are going bad?

We know that it is getting us ready for Heaven. We are forming habits that will allow us to live close to God forever.

We know that the One Who loves us actually lives in us.

We know that the One Who loves us is in control of even the bad things.

The One Who lives in us has already experienced much worse than we are going through, so what we are going through will have to submit to Him and become something good.

When we overcome bad things by faith in Jesus, God’s Word, we are overcoming some demons that are holding other people prisoners. We are actually doing spiritual warfare for the King of Kings while we are going through trouble.

Romans 5:20 says that where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.

The two words abounded and abound in Romans 5:20 are actually two different words in Greek. They are translated as follows:

Where sin strikes you like an arrow (ABOUNDED), grace was there waiting, ahead of time (ABOUND).

What a deal! Nothing that happens to us can hurt us IF we believe in and live by the Word of God. Even those things that LOOK like they are hurting us turn into friends. During the time when those things that look bad are getting us down, our hope is in Heaven, where we will be forever someday.