What Happens When You Remember Heaven Is Real?

I know it's gonna be okay because Jesus died Rose again and I get to be with him forever. And so I can live this moment with that knowledge in mind. - Yeah. (upbeat music) - Hey there, you're listening to The Girl Talk Podcast. My name is Carol. - I'm Kelly. - I'm Trisha. - That you've joined us today. How do you live today keeping eternity in mind? That seems a little bit like an impossible question. How do you live today and be present in the life that God has given you today with your eyes on eternity? Here's what I thought of when I looked at that. You ever talked to somebody like Bennett up at a function of some sort and you're having a conversation with somebody and you're really sharing your heart and they're like looking over your shoulder to see who's next. That's so hard. - They're looking away, they're trying to get away. I have that happen to me a lot. - You know what you're doing to me. - You lean your head over to where there are. (laughing) - I'm over here. (laughing) - But I think there is a certain nuance to that when we talk about living in the moment that God's given us but also having a view of eternity in mind. So what decisions can you make in daily life that help you keep eternity in mind? - Well I think one of the first things we have to focus on is that there's only one thing we get to take to eternity with us. And those are the people that we love and care about who have given their lives to Jesus. We don't get to take anything else with us. There's nothing else. There's nothing we take, literally zero. We don't take anything except people. And so we've got to use that as our filter to say, how can I do whatever it is that I'm doing today to make sure that the people I love, the people I care about, the people I come in contact with, even maybe the people I don't like go, not maybe, I shouldn't say maybe, definitely the people I don't like. Maybe especially the people I don't like. Also go to heaven. - How do I love them in light of eternity? - Yeah. - And how do I live my life to point them to Jesus and point them to the gospel because time is short. Time is really short and zero of us are promised tomorrow. The only thing we do know is that at some point time all of us die. - That's right. - And so unless, you know, anyway, all of us die unless Jesus comes back first. We all get the opportunity to die. And once we're there in heaven, I already know coming back. I don't care how many books have been written about little boys that go to heaven and come back. It's not real. I mean, once you go, you're not coming back. - You don't want to come back. You're not coming back to then beyond mission for Jesus. - We're on mission for Jesus today. Once we're there, we're there. And we're just worshiping the Father and we're doing all the things that we do in heaven, which I don't know about because I've never been there. - It's going to be good. - Once we go there. - We know it's going to be good. - We're not coming back. Our job is done. - How much coffee have you had? - We got to do it now. - Okay. - Short. - Okay. - Let's get to mission. - Got it. - Yeah. - Got it. What about you, TK? What decisions can you make? - I didn't have as much coffee as her. - That's right. - I think I'll be all right though. The thing that came to my mind when you asked that question is, if I am living today in the moment with eternity in mind, I will have peace because I know it's all going to be okay. Mainly for the reasons that you just outlined, but I thought about this terrible habit that I've confessed to you guys before, which is I'm reading a book and I get nervous. I'll skip ahead several chapters. Sometimes to the end to make sure it all ends up okay. And once I know it's going to be okay, and that person doesn't, whatever, I can go back and I can enjoy reading the book because I know it's going to end up okay. And that's kind of like what you're talking about to me. It's like, I know it's going to be okay because Jesus died, rose again, and I get to be with him forever. So that's what came to my mind when you said them. - Yeah, and I think too, when your eternity has been changed and you realize the gravity of that, you know? - Yes. - I started praying a long time ago. I don't even remember when it was, but I prayed that God would never let me forget what it was like to be lost. Because one of the things that I think we do is we get so far away from our salvation experience, we forget what that was like, you know? To be hopeless, to not know what tomorrow was going to hold. Now, I don't know what tomorrow is going to hold for me. However, I do know that if anything happens on this earth, I know where I'm going to spend eternity. - Mm-hmm. - And I think sometimes we get, whether you've, you know, saved as a kid or you know, you're getting up on up in years, you forget those things. And so I think it's important for us to go back and remember in light of who we were, the decisions that we made, or mistakes that we made. And really think about what it means to be rescued, what it means to be saved, what it means to be headed down the wrong road and someone to come in and rescue you. - Yeah. - I think of this several years ago when we went through Hurricane Helene, and I was so inspired by so many stories of people being rescued, you know. And it was a revisit for me to those principles of, okay, you could not help yourself. And somebody named Jesus rescued you so that you could live life differently than you used to. And those are the things that kind of come to the top of my mind. I wonder if, I wonder if, did you over here, the phrase growing up, she's so earthly, she's so heavenly minded, she's no earthly good, you ever heard of that? - Oh, yeah, sure, yeah, absolutely. - You think this is true, you think you can even be that way? - Absolutely, there you go. - Yes, I do think, because I also think that we have a tendency to think about, to be, I think what this means is that we are so focused on heaven, we're so excited about what is, Jesus is gonna look like and what he's gonna be like and what that experience is gonna be, that we forget that we have a job to do here. That God's given us the commandment. He's given us the great commission. He's given us a role to do. And it can get easy for people to say, and sometimes for us, even to say, oh yeah, I'm saved, I'm good. I don't, I'm just gonna think, I'm going to heaven, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna love it. I'm gonna, I can't wait to be there, when God's actually saying, yeah, that's fantastic, except you have a job to do. You're still here on earth for a reason, and that is to bring more people with you and to give me glory through the actions that you do. So I think that's what that means, is that you're no earthly good because you're not doing your job, because you're already in the family. - Yeah, our pastor calls that holy huddle living. - Yes. - When you just stay with that group and you're not trying to reach out kind of like that. That, that, I think that's what that phrase means too. - Yeah. - So think about you and making sure you're okay and you got your fire insurance that you don't reach out to others beyond the holy huddle. And it is, it is a commandment that we, we need to go reach out to people. One, one way I think that will hammer the point home of living for eternity is when you lose someone that you love. When you lose someone that you dearly, dearly love. And, and yes, I lost my grandparents and it was hard when I missed them, but when my mother died, that was when I went, hold on. She is not here anymore. Where is she? Do I believe all this? It's those moments that crisis of faith where it's like, I mean, my mom's gone. She in heaven, you know, it really makes you concretize what you think about eternity. And that moment did that for me. And once you go through that, once I went through it anyway, now I'm much more confident about what eternity means. - Yeah, and I don't think you would have said before your mom passed away that you didn't understand that. - Right, right, I thought I understood it. - Yeah, but it's a club you nobody wants to be in, but you'd completely understand it. It's like a different level of understanding. - I do, that's right, that's right. - Yeah, I've never been in that situation, right? 'Cause you had a close friend. - I had a close friend, yes, I have had a close friend, but not near like the experience of losing a mom or a dad. I forgot what I was gonna say. - That's okay, we're here. - It happens to us all. - Yeah. Oh, it's the difference in knowing and feeling. You know, yes, I think as believers, we know and we get that heaven is a different place. And I can picture people there kind of loosely, but when you're picturing someone you so deeply love who you walk through life together with for so long. - You just saw two days ago at a temple. - Yes, yeah, it takes on a different, it's kind of a different address. You know, it's just, it's a different kind of feeling. - Yeah. You know, here's what, and I think maybe you were the same. Once I, my parents were gone, I think my curiosity arose about heaven. Because I think sometimes what we think about heaven and conversely what we think about hell are not what the Bible says about those places at all. - That's true. Yes, and I think what happened for me was I wanted to know, it's like when somebody tells you, let's say come back from this great vacation. Oh, you gotta go in here. It's great and you look at all their pictures and it looks beautiful and looks like a great time. But until you've been there yourself, until you put your feet in the sand, whatever tropical place that is, which is what it would be for me, but until you put your feet there, you can't really know, right? I feel like losing somebody who's like a parent or a child or any spouse, yeah, I feel like that takes one step closer to put your feet on the sand. Is that makes sense? That makes perfect sense. And 'cause it's populated by someone you love, sure. And we all want to hope that I've sat with so many people who they're not sure about the salvation of their loved ones. And you want to say all the thing, oh, you'll see them again and you just don't know that you can say that, you know? And I think that's hard. But until you have been in that situation and lost someone, there's a step there in between that we get a little bit closer to what I think Heaven will be. And you know what, Billy Graham's got a great book called Heaven. Fabulous resource if you want to hear what the Bible says about Heaven. But I just think it's something that, we all think we know about when I think some of our ideas about what Heaven is are misinformed. Yeah. Yeah, you know, you see what, little people sitting on the clouds and eating flying a few cream cheese. I don't know why that's why that image in my head playing a harp, playing a harp. Those sorts of things. You had something to share. Yeah, I was just, I was giggling on the inside and a little on the outside. Thinking about travel, like I love to travel. And I'm not far away from my 50th birthday. And so we've been thinking about travel plans and now we're gonna go someplace and celebrate. And so I bought a travel book. Okay. That's gonna tell me all about this place I'm gonna go. It's got pictures, it's got, you know, what the cities are named, what the things to do in each of those cities are. Yes, the names of restaurants, the names of hotels, the names of attractions of monuments, of all the things you can see. And I just kind of was thinking about that with Heaven. Like when my friend Kirsten died, that was the first thing I did is one of the things I did was went out and bought that, I bought Randy Alcorn's book of Heaven. And I was like, I wonder what it's gonna look like. I wonder what it's like. I wonder what it is. And so just like, if Fodders could just create a Heaven travel guide that would show us all the pictures, wouldn't that be, wouldn't that be neat? But you already made the point that if you go, you don't get to come back to bring back pictures. Oh, man, it's just, it's something you long for. You know, I want you to see it. I want you to see it. We should envision it. We should try to think about it, I think. And the closer we get towards it, I think we do that just more. Yeah, like if you're going to Italy, you're gonna look at pictures of Italy. So you're gonna think about Heaven. I had the Randy Alcorn book too, but I couldn't get through it. It was very, it was very dense. But there's just so many versions of it. Yeah, okay, okay, that's what I need. I need that, but it did fill you with excitement. Yes, so it could be like, I read a fiction book that he was part of writing based on what he said about Heaven. It was a fiction book. So I was a little bit more into that. And I loved what he said. He said, you don't know everything the second you get into Heaven because part of the joy of our experience is learning things. And so the second you get into Heaven, you then learn things and then you learn more things and you keep learning things instead of it just being, all of a sudden, okay, I know everything now. There's joy to come in things like experiencing things. My mom always talked about how she couldn't wait to get into Heaven. She's an artist and she had read somewhere that artists get to just throw color in the air and create something beautiful. And that was something that she always talked about. I can't wait to get Heaven and produce art and just throw things in the air and create beautiful things that honor God. So I think each of us will have something very special and individual for ourselves when we get there. - You know, one of the things I was just thinking about too is you were talking about that desire for Heaven. I can't wait to get there. I'm thinking about the people that, like, perhaps the people that live around me. And there's so many of them that I really like. And I'm like, I want you to be in Heaven with me and you don't know Jesus. So you're not gonna be there, but I'm gonna change that. I'm gonna change that so that you know Him and that you want to know Him so that you can go to Heaven with me. So I started thinking about that, about how great Heaven's gonna be. But wow, how great Earth can be as well when you have the hope of Jesus as compared to not having the hope of Jesus. And we don't have to wait for Heaven in order to have that kind of change in our outlook, change in our being, change in our, the way we live our lives, the way we see the world, the joy, that real joy that we have, we can have it now. And our friends can have it now. Our loved ones can have it now. Their lives can be totally changed if they give their lives to Jesus. They can have it now. They can have a little slice of Heaven right here on Earth. I love that I have a friend, her name is Jackie. And she just randomly, I'm sure it's not random, but every once in a while, she'll send a little friend group of ours and she'll say today could be the day. And sometimes she has snapped a picture of a beautiful sunrise or a sunset or a beautiful area where she's visiting and she'll just say today could be the day. And that always reminds me 'cause oftentimes when I've gotten that text, I hadn't been thinking about today could be the day. I've been thinking about, whatever fire I gotta put out over here or whatever struggle I'm having or the problem I'm trying to work through. I'm not thinking about today could be the day, but the truth of the matter is that there is coming a day and it will wake up and today will be the day. And I love what Revelation 214 says. And this is probably one of those things that we don't think about, but will be so great. Revelation 214 said he will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And those are the things that I look forward to as part of heaven and as part of the joy that we will celebrate when we're there. And we'd love to hear what you're looking forward to. And hey, before we get there, I just wanna say this right here. Now, if you're 1% unsure about whether you're going to spend eternity in heaven, can we just go ahead and take care of that right now? Here's what I want you to do. I want you to text the word Jesus to this number 8-1-8-9-1. I realize that's not, that's a short code for another number. But when you text Jesus to 8-1-8-9-1, we're gonna connect you with a resource that will walk you through scripture on how you can start your relationship and be 100% sure that you're gonna spend eternity with God in heaven. Would you do that right now? Text the word Jesus to 8-1-8-9-1. And if you do that, please let us know. We'd love to celebrate that right along with you. We'd also love to hear from you. If you wanna email us, [email protected], or you can also check in on the Facebook pages, whatever way you want to carry your pigeon. You wanna come see us. That'd be cool. Write us a letter 'cause you might do that anymore. We'd love to hear from you. We'd love you so much. And we want you to know Jesus and to make him known. That's the reason the girl podcast exists. And so if you can hear from you, we would love that. And you know what? We're gonna save you a seat next time we gather around these microphones for the next GirlTalk podcast. We'll see you then. (upbeat music)