The joy of seeking God is so valuable we ought to guard it with our lives. We should simply refuse to give it up. Real joy is worth more than anything we might exchange it for, and we ought to hold it in our hearts with a tenacious grip.
We may envision ourselves living within a particular set of circumstances. But if life unfolds according to a different pattern, we must still maintain our reverence. Our faithfulness should not depend on any particular set of blessings.
We don’t know what heaven will be like. But we won’t have found ourselves on the other side for one instant before we realize two things: (1) Heaven is very different than we thought it would be, and (2) it is much better than we thought it would be.
Make God the Source, the Center, and the One who encompasses every delight of your soul. Refuse to be satisfied any longer with your meager accomplishments. Aspire to a higher, a nobler, and a fuller life. Upward to heaven! Nearer to God!
The past is important, but it is not nearly as important as what happens next. We may have taken many wrong steps, but none of these matter as much as the next step that we will take. We must do the good that is possible to do right now.
Rather than give up our eternal desires and sell out to this world, we should seek the higher things with renewed love. And that’s just what we’ll do if, like our spiritual ancestors, we long in our hearts for “a better, that is, a heavenly country.”
If our spiritual progress is to reach its eternal perfection, our hopes must be centered on God’s glory, not on our own preferences. Nothing else will do for us all that has to be done. No other motivation is powerful enough to keep us going.
We can no more change the fact that God is our Source than we can change the fact of our physical parentage. And what God is always asking us to do in this world is dispense with our denial and deal honestly with our heart’s desire for Him.
God has made us such that we have an inescapable need for perfect, unmitigated, consummate fellowship with Him. That need cannot be filled in this life, even in Christ, and our tragedy is that we do not see how much more we need.
As Jesus ascended to heaven, He would not have spared His beloved friends and disciples the sorrow of this parting or scolded their broken hearts. For some tears are the tears of love. And the tears of love are ever the tears of gratitude and hope.
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