G3 Insider

I like to post other pastor’s thoughts from time to time and I thought this heart felt cry for heaven on earth within the body of Christ was really good. It’s from Pastor Brian Johnson of Life Change Community. I want this to be the heart of Sand Lake.

God, let it be this way…

I can’t shake it.  It’s a phrase that haunts my thoughts at night, like some ethereal creature floating just out of my reach, taunting me.

There is this on-going debate going within me about this phrase.  It’s a war.  My soul says, “Yes, this CAN be.”   My heart says, “I so WANT this to be.”  My logic and observations declare, “This will NEVER be.”

The troubling phrase?   From the lips of Jesus:  “Father, let Your will be done on earth…JUST AS IT IS…in heaven.”  What does that mean?   What would life on earth be like, if even parts of Jesus desire came true?

Questions lifted my thoughts to heaven.  What is heaven like?  What will relationships be like?  Heaven will be filled with pure love and freedom from shame, and acceptance and peace with our selves, peace with others, and peace with God.

In heaven, we will live life with no reservations about others, where love prompts us to hope and believe the best about one another, expect the best, cheer for the best?

There, perfect love will cast out fear; fear of being rejected, judged, disliked, hurt.

I can’t get this thought out of my mind, this angst out of my heart.  Jesus EXPECTED that we could have some of the attributes of heaven, right here on earth.  I could.  You could.

So, why don’t I, in my life, in relationships, in interactions and conversations?  Why don’t we in our sanctuaries, our cathedrals, our churches, our services of worship?

Why isn’t the rule of heaven…well, the rule of the day?

To have heaven’s love existing between us would be a vision of revolutionary grace and mercy.  To have heaven’s love would find odd-pew partners side by side, engaging in conversation and laughter and hugs and worship.  There would be wounded marriage partners, bathing each other in forgiveness.  There would be adulterers and adulteresses, now clean, walking in the freedom of new life, free to experience new,  honorable love and meaningful love.  Addicts would be healed from shame, embraced by Christians, moving sober into a wonderful new day.  Republicans and Democrats would lay down agendas of their parties and find common ground under the rule of heaven.

That would be something.  Wouldn’t it?

And the Word of God, Jesus-the very living WORD of God, described in the written word of God– would have His rightful place as all wisdom and authority for life and love and relationships.

Opinions about one another would melt, prejudices would be cast off.  Hatreds would be forgotten, harms would be forgiven. Oh, if heaven could touch our planet, invade our home, fill our church, that would be something.

Wouldn’t it?

So, what I am doing about it?  Very little.  I hear sermons about forgiveness and yet people are not truly given second chances, fresh starts.  And I say nothing.  We talk about Christ making all things new, but it’s arbitrarily applied…and only some people are truly viewed as being brand new.

And I do nothing.

There still exists in the church a hierarchy of purity, an obsessive preoccupation with how things look and where popular opinion and majority rule.

Where is the rule of heaven, when forgiven sinners still toil under the harsh gaze of their brothers and sisters in Christ?  Where is the rule of heaven, when man-made consequences are imposed on fallen saints?  Where is the rule of heaven, when there is so little of the heart of Christ?

Where, O Where will Jesus’ prayer be heard?  When will His desire be allowed?  When and where will we have moments and places for God’s will to be done on earth JUST AS IT IS HEAVEN?

God, I want what you want. I want this place, that kind of love and life.  No, I need it.  I just flat need it.

And so maybe, what You prayed for, Lord, I am supposed to help usher in.  Maybe the rule of heaven is supposed to be the rule in my heart.  Maybe in me, loving others JUST LIKE I love myself, and hoping for others and fighting for others and helping others JUST LIKE I do so for myself, will be the start of heaven in me.

And maybe, I am not supposed to watch a sister shamed, a brother shunned, even after they have been forgiven by the sweet touch of Jesus.  Maybe I am to shout down pretense, stand up for grace and pull my sister and my brother to the front of the church to teach us, rather than to the back of the church to languish.

What if it started with one revolutionary who has been so freakin’ blown away by grace that he or she just could no longer stand those polluted pockets of Christianity that hold stingily to grace, like it’s a personal commodity—and so he or she would have to scream, “STOP IT!”  Stop the hypocrisy.  Live with consistency.  Do unto to others, let love be your rule, invite heaven into this place, and finally, FINALLY have some thing, SOME PLACE that stops looking just like the world and starts looking like some place Jesus would call home.

That would be something.  Wouldn’t it?

THY kingdom come., THY will be done, on earth JUST AS IT IS in heaven.  Amen.