Heaven

Last week was a great week at CHBC. We had our VBS and I taught an adult class on Heaven. I have been reading Randy Alcorn’s book “HEAVEN” and found myself unable to put it down. It was great to search the Scripture and read that book on heaven and sense over and over a renewal of hope. That was the basis of my class in VBS. It was great. So many questions were asked about heaven and so many left unanswered but a whole lot of people in the Word searching them out. That’s what I’m talking about!

After I finished the third night I went home filled with excitement about heaven, so much so I was up til midnight still reading and studying. It was about that time I received a call from the nurse at the nursing home where my Mom is an alzheimer’s resident. She has been for ten years. Yes there is something worse than death. She was having seizures and they wanted her to go to the hospital. I took off over to the home and after talking to a nurse went in to see mom.

It has been hard over the years to see her physically here yet somewhere else mentally. This night it was particularly hard. I broke down and knelt beside her bed and prayed for her and for me. I decided to send her to the hospital to see what was going on. We arrived and she had had two seizures with the EMT’s and then she had one in front of me in the emergency room. It was bad.It felt like my heart was ripped out. We were in that room for 15 hours before they admitted her just to manage the seizures caused by the Alzheimers.

I realized as I sat there with momma that my study of heaven had not been just to teach at VBS or for any sermons down the road but it had been a gift of God to me for what He knew was coming that night. I knew my Mom and I had talked right after her diagnosis about Jesus Christ, her relationship to Him and heaven. I knew my Mom was a believer and follower of Christ and I knew that if she died that night that she would breathe her last breath here only to breathe her first breath there in the presence of Christ. God so comforted me through His Word and Presence and the assurance my Mom had given me in her confidence in Christ. I didn’t want to be there and see her in seizures and there were times that I wanted to runaway and times I wanted to question heaven, but God came holding me and I realized He was holding on to my Mom as well. I was able to whisper in her ear how much I loved her and it was going to be alright. I was able with confident assurance tell her that Janet and I would be alright, that her grandchildren and great grand children would be alright and in time we would join her in our real home in heaven in the presence of Christ.

We got through that night and the next and no Momma didn’t die and she is coming around and no I don’t understand it all, the whys and what fors, but I know in whom I have believed and I am persuaded that He is able to keep all that I have committed to Him until His return and I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love. Death can't, and life can't. The angels can't, and the demons can't. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can't keep God's love away. Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I pray that confidence for every person who may read this and that confidence comes only through Jesus Christ. To Him be glory!