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Philippians 2:7-9, Hebrews 12:2, John 14:2-3

A Heavenly State of Mind

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
June 10, 2025

During the 2-hour 20/20 special on heaven, hosted by Barbara Walters some time ago, the question regarding the nature of heaven played a significant role. Richard Gere was interviewed (what qualified him as an expert on heaven, I’ll never know!). He suggested that heaven and hell were both here and now and were pretty much a “state of mind.” Many liberal theologians agree with Richard Gere. It’s not a place but just a state of mind. It can be experienced now. If you are in the heavenly state of mind, you are at peace with all, content, joy-filled, and at perfect rest with the world. Many Eastern religions recommend chanting as the means by which one might enter into the heavenly state of mind. It’s to escape from the hellish state of mind of confusion, regret, dismay, and anguish. These religions exhort us to escape the realities of our lives here and now while focusing all our energies on personal peace and happiness.

Christianity, on the other hand, teaches us to use our daily lives to deliver others from their sufferings and hardships in this life. It is true that heaven might be described as a state of mind. It’s the state of mind and heart that believes in God and His Son, Jesus Christ. According to the Bible, unless one enters into a state of mind of faith, one will not see heaven in the world to come. For those of faith, the knowledge of heaven in the next life motivates us to live active lives of service to others in this world. We are not to focus on achieving heavenly peace in this world for our own pleasure and edification but to focus on the needs of others around us by which we are investing in the heavenly world to come. Jesus said that he did not come to be served “but to serve” and to give His life for us all. His ultimate joy now is the result of His sacrificial life on earth. Paul explains this in his letter to the Philippians. He writes in Chapter 2, verses 7-9, that Jesus “…emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. …and he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name…” The writer of the book of Hebrews confirms this truth when he writes, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (See Hebrews 12:2).

Heaven is not a state of mind. It is a real place. Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, you may also be.” (John 14:2-3). It is the place where all our service in the lives of others on earth will be rewarded in a real and everlasting way. It won’t be something we make up in our heads or contrive to create through meditation. It will be real, and it will be glorious. Max Lucado explained it this way, “For all we don’t know about the next life, this much is certain. The day Christ comes will be a day of reward. Those who went unknown on earth will be known in heaven. Those who never heard the cheers of men will hear the cheers of angels. Those who missed the blessing of a father will hear the blessing of their heavenly Father. The small ones will be great. The forgotten will be remembered. The unnoticed will be crowned, and the faithful will be honored.”

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Revelation 19:1, Matthew 7:13-14

Much People

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
June 9, 2025

We usually use the word “much” as an adverb. It adds intensity to an action like we laugh too much, or the opposite, it doesn’t matter too much. In the days of the King James Bible, the word much was also used as an adjective in the same way we use the word “many.” It appears 25 times in the KJV, referring to people. When Joshua went out to go to battle, he had armies that consisted of “many people” (Joshua 11:4). The NIV calls this a “huge army.” In the Gospels, “much people” is now translated with the phrase “great crowds” or something like that. There are many more references like this. But the one I’m interested in this morning is from Revelation 19 and verse 1. It says that there will be heard a “great voice of much people…” who will be worshipping and praising God in heaven. The English Standard Version puts it all this way, “After this, I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just…’”

Jesus said in Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate, and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate, and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Was Jesus telling us that there wouldn’t be very many people going to heaven? Although we don’t know how many people will be in heaven, Augustine speculated that it would be the same percentage as the angels who fell (one-third; see Rev. 12:9), but the Bible nowhere says this. Others take Jesus’ words in Matthew 7 to be teaching that only a small fraction of all the people who ever lived will be in heaven.

Some scholars argue that this takes the passage out of context. B. B. Warfield, for example, says that Jesus is referring to ‘the immediate and local response to Jesus’ message, not to the ultimate and universal statistics of heaven.” Geisler also argues, “Indeed, granting that all who die in infancy go to heaven, that life begins at conception, and that the mortality rate before the age of accountability down through the millennia has been roughly half of those conceived, it would seem to follow that there will be more people saved than lost. This is to say nothing of much of the world’s population since the time of Adam being still alive at this time; a great revival before Christ’s return could sweep even more souls into God’s kingdom.” Also, if we keep Augustine’s analogy, there are two-thirds of faithful angels, there will also be two-thirds of all adult humans who will be saved. This is just speculation, but since we know that God does not “want anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance,” we can be sure that there will be “much people” to sing God’s praises along with the faithful angels.

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Matthew 6:21

My Heavenly Home

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
June 8, 2025

Mary Slessor, an English missionary residing in West Africa, received word of the death of her mother and sister. She then wrote to a friend, “Heaven is now nearer to me than Brittan.” When I used to think of heaven, I would think of the wonderful biblical descriptions: the streets of gold, the beautiful colors, the tree of life, the end of sadness, sickness, and disease. I would picture a perfect world with complete harmony and ultimate fulfillment of my desire to know more about God. When my dad died in 1979, I began to think of heaven a little differently. It was a great place to go before (and, of course, it still is), but now I knew someone who was there. I had someone there. Then, when my Mom died in 1985, it became a more interesting place with a deeper value to me for reasons other than the joys and pleasures I’d experienced. When my sister died at 48 years of age in 1993, heaven started to look more like home for me. Then, Kathy’s mother died in 2012. Her younger brother died in 2024. The population of the people we know in heaven is growing. It makes heaven a little more interesting.  With my grandfather and grandmother on my father’s side who passed away before I was even born, I’ve often wondered what they were like. I think I’m beginning to understand the biblical description of all the patriarchs, as well as Moses and others. When they die, it is recorded that they “were gathered to their people.”

In my 78 years, especially in the last 20, I’ve seen many friends and relatives leave this world for the next. Every time I look at the obituaries in the paper, I see someone I know in the course of my life. I don’t so much think of heaven in terms of what wonders, pleasures, and joys await me as much as I do as a community of my friends and loved ones who have gone on before me. The residents of heaven are all my friends and relatives. Remarking on the same emotions, one commentator wrote, “It sometimes seems that so many of my loved ones have gone there that I know more people in heaven than I do on earth.” I can’t help but think, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).

In her book, “Who Walk Alone,” Margaret Evening tells of a dream that helped her understand the nature of heaven and hell. She writes, “In the dream, I visited Hell, where the sub-Warden showed me round. To my surprise, I was led along a labyrinth of dark, dank passages from which there were numerous doors leading into cells. It was not like Hell as I had pictured it at all. In fact, it was all rather religious and “churchy”! Each cell was identical. The central piece of furniture was an altar, and before each altar knelt (or, in some cases, were prostrated) green-grey spectral figures in attitudes of prayer and adoration. ‘But whom are they worshipping?’ I asked my guide. ‘Themselves,’ came the reply immediately. ‘This is pure self-worship. They are feeding on themselves and their own spiritual vitality in a kind of auto-spiritual-cannibalism. That is why they are so sickly looking and emaciated.’ I was appalled and saddened by the row upon row of cells with their non-communicating inmates, spending eternity in solitary confinement, themselves the first, last, and only object of worship. The dream continued . . . but the point germane to our discussion here has been made. According to the teaching of the New Testament, Heaven is community. My dream reminded me that Hell is isolation.”

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1 Corinthians 2:9

What is Heaven Like?

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
June 7, 2025

Children often have strange ideas about what heaven is going to be like. For example, 8-year-old Eric thinks, “It is a place where there is a lot of money lying around. You could just pick it up, play with it, and buy things. I think I am going to buy a basketball, and I am going to play basketball with my great-great-grandmother.” Seven-year-old Scottie says, “Heaven is up in the sky, and you could look down at circuses for free if you want to, except you have to ask God for permission first.” Seven-year-old David says, “Heaven is kind of big, and they sit around playing harps. I don’t know how to play a harp, but I suppose I should learn how to play that dumb thing pretty soon.” Finally, seven-year-old Tommy says, “I know what heaven is, but I don’t want to go there. I want to go to North Carolina instead.”  I think Tommy might be right. When I hear the cultural descriptions of heaven, I sometimes think I’d rather go to North Carolina, too. But I think the normal assumptions all miss the mark.

I don’t suppose we’ll ever be able to grasp the nature of the wonder and glory of heaven. As a matter of fact, the mystery of heaven makes it even more attractive. I can take the biblical descriptions for face value and not have to wrestle with making more out of them than’s intended. I know it’s a wonderful place. When Paul quoted from Isaiah that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9, Isaiah 64:4, 65:17), I’m confident that the details of the experience are hidden alright but the glory of the place and all the joy that awaits us is clearly what has been revealed to us by God’s Spirit as Paul continues to say in 1 Corinthians 10. Also, remember that when Paul speaks of the one who was caught “up into the third heaven,” he spoke of a person (probably himself) who had witnessed things that were unspeakable. He could not and knew that he should not talk about those things.

Marco Polo, the famous Venetian traveler of the thirteenth century, when lay dying and was urged by his attendants to recant—to withdraw the stories he had told about China and the lands of the Far East. But he said, “I have not told half what I saw.” Whatever awaits us is something beyond the scope of our experience on earth and, therefore, something we cannot understand until we arrive. Whatever is there, it will be the most glorious that we can ever imagine. Our sorry descriptions will all seem so futile. The most important detail about heaven is it is where God and Jesus live. When I see Jesus, I will become like Him! Billy Graham said in his book “World Aflame,” “Heaven will be more modern and up-to-date than any of the present-day constructions of man. Heaven will be a place to challenge the creative genius of the unfettered mind of redeemed man. Heaven will be a place made supremely attractive by the presence of Christ.” I’m sure Billy Graham is enjoying all of that at this moment. I hope to join him someday.

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Revelation 4:1

Heaven’s Door

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
June 6, 2025

In the Rock and Roll era in which I grew up, there were many songs that referenced “Heaven’s Door.” According to Bob Dylan as well as Gun’s & Roses, “we’re knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door.” Alicia Keys is going to “march up each step until she reaches heaven’s door.” The infamous Jimmy Hendricks (or was it Led Zeppelin?) made the phrase “stairway to heaven” common language in the 60’s. I’m sure there were, and still are, many other pop culture references to Heaven’s Door. But they have their origin in John’s vision. I would expect that the Apostle John understood the world in much the same way as others in his day. He sees the earth as being covered by a “firmament,” a large canopy that stretches over the earth. He may draw his views from Isaiah. The Prophet explains, “It is he (God) who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in.” (Isaiah 40:22). This firmament keeps us from seeing beyond it into the heavenly realms. We have no idea what’s happening beyond it in the spiritual or heavenly realm. But in his vision recorded in the Book of Revelation, John sees a break in the firmament. He calls it a door. He writes in chapter 4, verse 1, “After this, I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven!” He sees what the normal physical eye cannot see.

Even though we’ve visited the moon and sent spacecraft into some rather distant reaches of outer space, the realities of heaven and the validity of John’s vision are in no way compromised. We still believe, at least I still believe, that heaven is a literal place but not necessarily a physical location that can be reached by a rocket ship or any kind of time travel from our physical, earthly position.

In his commentary on Revelation, M. S. Mills concludes his comments on this verse by writing, “What an inexpressible privilege it is to have Heaven’s door opened for us, to have the opportunity to view this ethereal scene! God has allowed us a preview of our eternal destiny, for in His love and through the gracious work of Christ, we need not fear the magnificent, awesome personage seated on that glorious throne. This fantastic privilege is solely based on the atoning work of Jesus Christ; otherwise, our sins would keep us eternally exiled from this: the Source of all holiness, the Source of all being, the Source of all life, and the Source of all power. The privilege we enjoy through Christ is the assurance that we will eternally be part of this scene and eternally have access to this supremely wonderful God! As believers, this is our happy, eternal lot.”

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Hebrews 6:19-20

An Anchor for the Soul

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
June 5, 2025

It’s not uncommon to speak of life as a sea or an ocean. It’s used as such in the Bible on occasion, and after having sailed the seas on three different Navy vessels, I’d say that the sea itself is the symbol of uncertainty. It changes daily with the wind and the waves. One day, it’s peaceful and calm; the next, it’s a cauldron of confusion and disarray. The unpredictable seas can be calm, restless, and tempestuous on the same day – just like the waters of life. Vessels upon the seas are at the mercy of every wind that blows and wave that swells. The Navy has made provision for such possibilities by equipping each ship with an appropriate anchor. According to one dictionary definition, an anchor is “a heavy object on a ship cast overboard to hold the vessel in a particular place.”

God knows full well the storms that we will encounter in life, and He, too, has equipped us with an appropriate anchor. Our spiritual anchor for our souls is the believer’s hope of heaven in the midst of the storms, trials, and struggles of this life. The writer of Hebrews talks to us about our hope of heaven. He refers to it as a “steadfast anchor of the soul.” (See Hebrews 6:19-20). He says, “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf…” Jesus said that he was going to prepare a place for us and promised to return to assure us of our travel from this world to His. He promises us that we, too, will be where He is. Our eternal destiny is not something we hang on to, but it’s something that he hangs on to for us. No storm or struggle or person can rip us free from His loving grasp.

Just as the ship’s anchor sinks into the invisible depths of the sea and finds footing, so too does our hope reach into the invisible reaches of the spiritual world and find a sure and steadfast hold for the stability and safety of our souls. Our hope attaches itself to the certainty of the invisible world to which the promises of God link us with an unbreakable chain. Our small vessels, upon a sea of turmoil and confusion, can find solid ground to hold it firm. In “The Loins Girded,” J. J. Knap puts it this way, “In this way we are safe,—eternity holds on to us. We have nothing to fear—the unchangeable God shall not let us go. Our salvation is certain—the Savior keeps us: our hope is anchored in a ground that is both sure and steady, and it shall never fail us.” The hope of heaven is our sure anchor for our souls as we sail the stormy seas.

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2 Corinthians 5:7

Seeing the Unseen

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
June 4, 2025

Kathy’s younger brother passed away last year. She had to go to California to help deal with the issues surrounding his death. It was a difficult time for her and for us as well. Larry had some hard moments before his death. He did not go gently into that good night. And we weren’t sure about his faith in God. He made a profession of faith in Jesus, so we rested on that. Yet, It caused us to think about and talk about how we will face our own passing from this world. We’re not afraid of death, but dying does cause us some consternation. It’s easy to lose heart in the face of such a reality that sits before each and every one of us. Paul knew what that was like himself. He suffered the failings of the flesh. As he grew older, he couldn’t see, hear, or walk as well as he had as a younger man.  At 78, I know what that is like. He watched death on its pale horse approaching and drawing closer with each passing year, yet he did “not lose heart.” He said that even though his “outer man was wasting away,” his faith in Christ and what awaited him in the afterlife sustained him through it all. He wrote it down by the inspiration of God’s Spirit so that we could follow his lead. He said in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “We do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day” (4:16).

Paul explains that his ability to maintain courage in the face of “wasting away” in the flesh is based on something he cannot see. The renewing of his heart, the very source of his courage to face his own decaying body, is found in something rather strange. In verse 18 of the same passage, he writes, “We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” In just a few passages later, Paul adds a summary describing his life on this earth, in this flesh, with these weaknesses. In 2 Corinthians 5:7, he says, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”

John Piper writes his commentary on this verse in his work entitled “Future Grace.” He says, “This (walking by faith, not by sight) doesn’t mean that he (Paul) leaps into the dark without evidence of what’s there. It means that the most precious and important realities in the world are beyond our physical senses. We ‘look’ at these unseen things through the gospel. By the grace of God, we see what Paul called ‘the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God’ (2 Corinthians 4:4). We strengthen our hearts—we renew our courage—by fixing our gaze on the invisible, objective truth that we see in the testimony of those who saw Christ face to face.” This means that our hope is built upon the revealed truth of God’s promises recorded for us in the Bible. Living by faith is not a leap in the dark. It’s a step into the light! A step into the light is a step into the truths of Jesus Christ! After all, He is “the light of the world.”

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Philippians 1:21, 1 Peter 1:3-4

To Die is Gain!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
June 3, 2025

After church one Sunday some time ago, we arrived at the Josie Harper Hospice House about 10 minutes too late to visit Kathy’s mom. Jenney (Jean) Shively passed away around 1:15 on Sunday afternoon. When we arrived she was still warm and had been posed in a very peaceful position. Her body had wasted away over the last couple of months by renal failure, and we watched her progressively deteriorate. Although we had been preparing for it for some time, it still didn’t seem real when it happened. We were disappointed that we weren’t there when it happened, but that’s something in God’s hands, not ours. We prayed together beside Jean and reminded ourselves and each other about what happens when a believer dies. It is one thing to be in perfect health and read passages like Philippians 1:21, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” It’s another thing to stand beside the bed of a loved one who just passed away and reflect on those truths. Whatever that verse means, it means there is something better (gain?) beyond this valley of the shadow of death for those who believe in God and His Son, Jesus.

Today, there is more and more interest in the New Age theories of what happens to us when we die. Deepak Chopra (The main popularize of Transcendental Meditation in the Western world), in his bestselling book “Life After Death,” said, “Whatever it is that occurs at death, I believe it deserves to be called a miracle. The miracle, ironically, is that we don’t die. The cessation of the body is an illusion, and like a magician sweeping aside a curtain, the soul reveals what lies beyond.” No one standing beside the deathbed of a loved one, or anyone who has suffered the untimely loss of a loved one would ever say “death is an illusion.” Chopra is wrong! Death is real, and we will all die. The Scriptures have laid out that truth for us for: “It is appointed to man, once to die.” Everyone dies! It’s an undeniable truth that shocks us every time we see it happen. It’s not a miracle either. It’s the way of all flesh. Our souls have no magic in and of themselves, as Chopra suggests. Chopra, instead of giving the dying hope, has destroyed the hope of many in his denial of the biblical hope that is found in Jesus Christ. The miracle is what’s promised by God through our faith in His one and only Son.

There was nothing miraculous about watching Jean’s body perish day by day, defiled by the poisons her organs could no longer process, and seeing her life slowly fading away. We know that those sufferings are over for Jean, and we find our comfort not in ourselves or in the human soul, but our comfort is in the God who formed us from the dust, sent His son to die for us, and gave us His Word. We have the hope we find in Peter’s words. He wrote in 1 Peter 1:3-4, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you…” While I was studying heaven for a sermon series, Jean was there. While I’m trying to learn and grasp and understand what the Bible teaches us about heaven, Jean is experiencing it right now. What happens when a believer dies? Jesus answered that question while he was dying himself on the cross of Calvary. He responded to the expression of faith by the criminal on the cross beside him. He said, “This day, you will be with me in paradise.” That’s where Jean is right now! That’s where all believers will be the day they die.

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