heaven is...

Heaven is a realm where Jesus isn't pious/tame but unleashing "AWESOME!" to the Nth degree, all the time, without ceasing.

There is no sitting on clouds with harps for us... nor is it anything close to the absence of actual pleasure. We're in the midst of the whole version of the broken stuff we chase after.... including each other. True relational transparency is the norm, for the real you is revealed and emerges - not the fractured version you keep wanting to prove and justify to the world, but the Original You that is buried like a diamond under the dirt of this life.  The Lord Himself meets you with love and restoration and invites you into a feast! A party! It's an unending, unfractured journey of "THIS IS BEYOND WORDS!!!" that all are invited into through Jesus Christ but not many choose to enter.

Never forget: God isn't just "the man upstairs" or merely a presence in the universe, but He is completely thick in the thin parts of your life even now. (read that again) This VIP experience likewise isn't merely the after-party to this life but the Life He meant for you to be experience right now. He can give you glimpses of it if you trust Him today. So follow Christ...  believe, receive and call upon His Name... deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Him.

Are you in?

"And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God." (Revelation 21:3)

coming Home

Over the weekend, my family and I made it safely back home and smack dab into a very cold bout of weather. Granted, we encountered some heavy snowfall during our visit to Michigan, but personally I'm just not a big fan of the nippy winds. Having grown up the Chicago area, one might expect the "Windy City" would be the worst... but I found that a few years in college in Indiana (and all it's flat lands where the wind builds and builds upon itself before it slices through you) still make me squirm for a fireplace the most.

I'm writing this simply because there is something about curling up in your own space, whatever that space may be. I picked up my neighbor from the airport yesterday who came back from a week in Florida. Even though he walked back into this weather, he also found that "there's no place like home."

It would seem that we all long for something... a place where we can fully unwind as "ourselves." We usually define that as feeling able to put on our familiar pajamas and silly slippers, or perhaps take off the tie/hat/shoes/slacks/etc that we have to "put on" as we head out each day.

But perhaps there is more to that... perhaps our desire to curl up by the heater or fireplace is a sign of something even deeper than getting warm. Maybe it's more about that longing to simply be who we really are and were meant to be.

Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. (1 Cor 13:12, NLT)