If there is anything we all want to know as followers of Jesus it is the will of God for our life. The problem as I see it is “Knowing” is often very difficult to identify. Why is it so hard to discern the will of God when both the Lord and we want it badly? Something similar could be said about the 10 commandments in which we are told to love the Lord with all our heart, mind and strength and yet if we struggle to identify what love is we may never really reach the goal of consistently doing so. Knowing the will of God has so much to do with how we “Hear” God or don’t.

I have heard many sermons about the desire of Jesus with regards to going to the cross, as he was in the garden of Gethsemane just before the cross. The topic explores his obedience to God’s will in that it was even hard for Jesus to do the Father’s will in this case.  Did Jesus have second thoughts about his purpose for coming to earth as a sacrifice?

I recently heard a sermon on the last book of Acts in which the apostle Paul declared what he was preaching at the end of his life just before he was beheaded for his faith. Paul said he “Testified” about the kingdom of God, or in other words he witnessed to those around him about his faith and acceptance of the authority of Christ in his life. His testimony persuaded people that Jesus is who he says he is: the Messiah of God and the savior of the world.

Nearly 300 times the phrase “In The Spirit” is used.  Thus, it should be a solid biblical principle and standard we should live by yet I fear not only do we not walk in the Spirit but I think most of us don’t understand what scripture is trying to communicate with those of us who choose to follow Christ.

Much of Christian preaching today is about embracing God because he will bless us with peace, happiness and fullness.  I fear we have lost our basic Christian values that God has always communicated to humanity for thousands of years. At the core of Christianity, as it was for Israel, is the challenge to “GET RIGHT” with God and become a child of God by being adopted by him.

Ever since coming to Christ in 1969 I have been hunting for “WISDOM” because I realized how deficient I was without it. I discovered early in life that in order to survive in this world you need wisdom. Unfortunately I learned how to be street smart but not God smart. In other words, I could get away with dishonesty and lack integrity and yet fool people into believing me and trusting me so I could get what I wanted. In the end my success was always bittersweet and not what I knew I was made for. I gained “Fools Gold,” not real success.

If you have lived for any length of time as a true follower of God you will encounter periods in life when it seems your sense of God and his will are gone or at least obscured. These times can be caused by our own doing if we have drifted away from God but they can also come because God is removing his presence, or at least the awareness of his presence, to develop our inner self because the heart is so easily fooled and so easily twisted.

This is the second article on the subject of heaven so if you haven’t read the first article I suggest you start there before reading this one. I will be attempting to uncover what the world and the church believe about heaven, then see what the scriptures confirms. You may end up finding that your idea of heaven needs to adjusted or I may confirm what you always believed. Either way my hope is to help us know what we believe and how we can help others who are mislead or confused about what heaven is and how to get there.

It is so easy to read scripture with a blank stare and think you have edified yourself with the word of God even though you don’t understand what God just spoke to you. Simply reading God’s word doesn’t change us until we have understanding and even then change doesn’t happen until we surrender to God’s will in the thing he is speaking to us about. There are a lot of religious people in the world who are fooling themselves that God loves who they are and what they live for.

It is amazing to me how mixed up many Christian concepts of heaven are.  They seem to be a blend of what the world believes, what superstition says and what they might have been taught at church or in bible study group.  I think the average believer spends very little time in scripture and consequently they don’t voice their beliefs with other Christians because they can’t defend those beliefs. We live in an age where the average person, whether Christian or secular, has access to many different translations of the Bible and yet we still seem to know so little of what the word of God actually says about the subject of heaven….other than it’s preferable to going to hell.