Tag Archives: faith

Jan 23 2024

Some things I know about heaven… and some things I don’t know


How much should I be expected to know? Not much. The following Bible passage discourages me from getting all bent out of shape because my knowledge of heaven is …well…limited.

9 But as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9 ESV)

If no one has seen it, no one has heard all about it, and no one has even imagined it, I’m not too disappointed that I’m not an expert on heaven. Having said that, God has given us just enough of a glimpse to peak our curiosity and cause us to be keenly interested. You will see in the remainder of this writing that my “knowing: is mixed with my “ignorance”. I will try to be honest so if you discover an untruth or something that needs correction, by all means drop a comment and tell me. (I have thick skin)

Some things I know

God Made it. In the first verse of the Bible we learn that God made the earth and the heavens in one swoop. In one sentence earth and all above the earth was created. But what is it and where is it? Well that’s something I don’t know. I told a friend recently that “it’s North of here” pointing upward. I believe there is the heavens (plural) which consists of what we can observe with our eyes and the best telescopes from the most distant platforms. I saw three Bible verses that mentioned the “heaven of heavens” and Paul mentioned “the third heaven”. I still don’t know where it is and to say more about that would be futile.

I was recently thinking that if someone told me to point toward heaven I would go outside and point my finger upward toward the sky and maybe I would be right. However, if a guy in Australia was asked the same question he would do the same thing i did, but because the earth is a round planet we would be pointing in exactly opposite directions. Go figure…

It’s God’s headquarters

The throne of God is there, angels are there, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is there. He sits on the right hand of God. Does he sit all the time or is that figurative? Jesus is still God/man. He is still in the flesh and he is there. In Matthew 6 the “Lord’s Prayer” is recorded. I think it is more correct to call it the “disciples prayer”. But Jesus was warning his disciples to not be hypocrites by praying, giving, and fasting to be seen of men. And in that discourse he suggested how his disciples should pray beginning with “Our Father who is in heaven” . Then later in the prayer “…thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. So there is no doubt that heaven is where God is. Mysteriously He is also everywhere else too. Think about that for a while!

Wherever the location of heaven is, it’s temporary!

Yes, you read that correctly. At some point in the future God is going to destroy the earth and the heavens and move his kingdom to the new earth he will create.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice saying “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 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, or the former things have passed away”. (Revelation 21 1-4 ESV)

Wow, what a packed 4 verses. We can learn much here.

God will not be distant any longer. He will live with his people

There will be no more sea

The new city of God will be the new Jerusalem

There will be no tears

There will be no death

There will be no mourning

There will be no crying

There will be no pain

All former things have passed away

That is quite a lot we can know about heaven but there is more…

According to none other than Jesus

There will be no marriages, no weddings in heaven.

“For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven (Matthew 22:30 ESV)

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the husband you love so very much will not be your husband in heaven. My deceased wife Jeanine Kay will be only a sibling. I see so many posts by friends on social media who are longing to be reunited with a deceased spouse. I suppose they have never read this passage or maybe didn’t want to believe it. But there it is. Marriage is only for time. It does not exist in eternity.

Shocker alert! Will we be gender neutral? What does “as the angels of God in heaven” mean? I don’t know. I know they are spirits, there is some sort of ranking, but we know little about the angels who worship God for ever. We know that some of them can be seen by humans when they want to be seen. In that way they are like Jesus in his resurrected body who is both body and spirit. He could easily disguise himself so that his closest friends didn’t know who he was until he wanted them to know. He could appear in a room without opening a window or a door and he still had scars from his crucifixion.

We will be “like” him

“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not year appeared, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2 ESV )

I will not venture a guess as to what that means but we will be more like the resurrected Jesus and less like the people we are now. That’s for sure. I think one fact that hinders our understanding of things in the future with God and his people is that we unconsciously attempt to imagine with the resources we now have. Our sight, sense of taste and smell, what we see, what we feel, and what we hear. Jesus in his glorified body transcended those limits and in some ways I don’t yet know, we will too.

We will be outside the limits of time and space

There will be no night, no sun, no moon

There will be eternal day with Jesus being the light

We will know our friends and family

We will know all of our siblings

On that day when my salvation is complete, finished sanctification, my love and affection will be perfect like that of Jesus. I will be just as pleased to see your mom as mine. I will love a sibling from a tribe I have never heard of as I will my dearest friend on earth. Try to imagine loving and being loved by God and all his people. Heaven sounds better all the time!.

The past is gone!

The last part of Revelation 4:21 says “…and the former things have passed away”. I have heard people talking about Aunt Betty looking down on a wayward boy hoping he changes his life. Or Grandpa is watching his grandson’s little league game from heaven. No, sorry, it isn’t happening. If I could look back on earth how could I not grieve for lost souls and friends who fell on hard times? It would be impossible.

No Sin, only joy and peace

Try to think of the most blessed time of your life, the most fun, the most fascinating, the most euphoric, the greatest peace you have experienced, the most beautiful thing you have ever seen or heard. Now multiply those experiences times infinity and you will not come close to the experience of living with Jesus in a place he prepared for you.

I know how you can get there.

There are many differences between you and me but in some ways we are the same. We are going to die. That is a fact that can’t be ignored. We are sinful people. God hates sin. To get into God’s heaven something must be done about our sinfulness. Only perfect righteousness will be accepted. Every human other than Jesus Christ is short of the mark. God loves you and made a way for you to be counted righteous like Jesus.

” For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV) God put all your sins on Jesus and he died like a common criminal, in your place, and for you. If you simply accept the final and finished work of Jesus for you God will count you righteous based on the perfect obedience and perfect sacrifice of Jesus alone.

11 “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:11-13 ESV)

The “who” in these verses can be “you”. Will you receive him? Will you believe on his name? Repent (change the direction of your life toward Jesus) and put your trust in Jesus and he will make you his own child. Not by the will of man, nor of human performance, but wholly of God.

Royce Ogle
Granbury, Texas

Sep 5 2013

Never Let Go – God’s Story of Healing Hurting Lives


neverletgocolorado

 

I might hold the record for starting to read books and never finishing them. Not this one! I began reading this book and couldn’t put it down, even though I knew much of the story.

God is always at work, even when He is the last thing on our minds, He is at work completing His sovereign plan to use unlikely people for His glory. The book “Never Let Go” by Mac and Mary Owen (with Travis Thrasher) is one of those stories.

It’s a story of the love of a boy and a girl, young and unwise, and the consequences of their mistakes. It is the sad tale of awful addiction and the almost certain ruin of a young family in its wake. It’s the story of a loving human father and a loving heavenly Father, both with constant, undying love for two mixed up kids who had strayed from their raising.

Mary Owen would never let go of the faith in God she had learned from her father. And, it seemed she could never let go of the loss and pain in her young life. Young Mary never considered letting go of her husband and the love of her life even though he was swirling out of control toward an untimely death because of drug addiction. Mary kept loving, kept doing the next right thing, and she kept praying.

The story unfolds the details of how God redeemed a young junkie to make him a great leader who would help hundreds of men and women beat the rap and know Jesus. It also, in an almost unbelievable narrative, tells the story of a past healed and reconciled. It’s about the God who loves His children also giving them the desires of their hearts for good measure.

For more than a decade Mac was an elder at our church here in West Monroe. He was a “recovery guy”. Everyone knew something of his past and everyone knew that he and Mary were going to the down and out and loving them to Jesus. My wife and I are honored to call these two friends. They are a precious part of our forever family and we love them dearly.

I encourage every person who reads this post to order the book at once and to read it and then share it. Tens of thousands of people need to know this story. There are those with no hope of a better tomorrow who might see a spark of sunlight as they read the story. Perhaps there are those who will be encouraged to start reaching out to others who have a hurt, a habit, or a hang up as they read this book.

Thank you Mac and Mary for telling your story and giving hope to others. I hope many lives find new direction as others learn to never let go as they follow your example.

Never Let Go can be purchased in these ways:

MacandMaryOwen.com

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Jul 25 2013

Faith Under the Microscope


“And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6)

As you can see from this Bible verse “faith” is very important. If you want to please God you must have it. The word impossible in the above verse shuts out every other avenue of pleasing God. You must have faith! But what is faith?

Often in the New Testament the words “faith” and “believe” or “belief” are interchangeable. There is a sense in which faith and believing are one in the same. Perhaps the best illustration of both uses is this passage from Romans 10.

5 For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. 6 But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:5-17)

Here Paul makes a distinction between law and grace and between works and faith. In verse 6 he speaks of “righteousness based on faith and in verse 10 says “one believes and is justified”. Then at the end of the passage in verse 17 he says “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ”. So believing and faith have the same meaning, and by the way, the same source. Did you notice? Faith comes. It is a simple concept to understand. A person can’t call on someone in whom they have not believed and they can’t believe it they haven’t heard of him and they can’t hear unless someone tells them.. And this is really important, the preacher of the good news that brings faith must be sent.

No one naturally has faith. Faith comes by the hearing of the gospel, or the word of faith. We know this is truth based on these two passages.

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. (Romans 8:7)

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14)

Unless God changes the heart and mind of a person who is not a Christian he does not have the resources necessary to submit to God or to accept the things of God. He does not submit, and cannot. And, he does not accept, and is not able. It is not a matter of a person making a decision to not accept God’s law, or the things of the Spirit, he cannot, he is unable to do so.

So even our faith comes from God. Paul in other of his letters describes non-Christians as living in darkness and spiritual death. God must penetrate the darkness and give life to the dead. When the good news about Jesus is preached God awakens the dark minds of sinners to hear the record of His Word and faith “comes” to the heart of the hearer.

I know some will disagree with what I just wrote but if you do, what will you do with the plain, easy to read verses I posted just above?

Now, we know the source of our faith but what is it? How does it function? I suggest you consider that Biblical faith has three components.

First, Faith is Intellectual.

Before faith comes one must have access to a set of facts. The brain must hold those truths just as it does your phone number or your wife’s name. It is simply facts assembled. Many people never get past this elementary part of what faith or believe, or believing is. The Scriptures say the devils “believe and tremble“. Just to believe the facts about Jesus, even that he died and rose again, will not save you any more than knowing which direction Texas is from where you live. Head knowledge alone is not faith.

Secondly, Faith is Emotional.

Yes, you must hear the facts about Jesus and your brain stores them away and reasons upon them. But for belief to become biblical faith you must embrace those facts with your heart. At the center of your being, you must emotionally grasp and cling to those facts that you intellectually have learned. Back to that Romans 10 passages you see these phrases, “believe with your heart” (vs 9) and “with the heart one believes” (vs 10). I believe I live in Louisiana, that is a fact. But I don’t hold to that truth with my inner being, with my heart.

Thirdly, Faith is Volitional.

In the Bible the word “faith” (and believe, or believing, or believed, or trust, or trusted) is almost always a verb. For faith to be biblical faith it must involve the will. You hear the good news about Jesus, you store the facts. You then embrace those facts, they become dear to you. Now, by an act of the will you act on what you “faith” or believe.

How does one act? One way is by “saying”. Paul said it this way, “with the mouth one confesses”. The term “a confession of faith” is a familiar way to state this. All this means is that the one who has truly put his or her trust (faith) in Jesus will “say” it. You will tell someone, or many people. You might tell your best friend, or your spouse, or your pastor, or you might say it to a church full of people. But, if it is real Bible faith, you will “say” it.

In my view faith and repentance are sort of like the heads and tails of a coin. One cannot, and will not repent (change the mind and the course of lifestyle) if he does not believe on Christ. And, he will not believe on Christ and continue a sinful lifestyle. So if faith is the Bible kind of faith, that is saving faith, the person who believes will repent. Not only does a person validate faith by saying but also by showing.

And, those who put their whole trust in Jesus Christ should as quickly as possible be baptized in water. In the doing of baptism we are participating in one of the two great gospel symbols for Christians, the other being the Lord’s Supper, or communion. In water baptism, the new believer for a moment in time is completely submitted to another and as he is laid under the surface of the water he is acting out the burial of Jesus, and as he is brought up out of the water he is acting out Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. The one baptized is saying by being immersed “I believe in Jesus who died for my sins, was buried, and was raised from the dead”. And he is also saying, “I am dying to my old way of living for myself and my desires and I purpose to life a new life for Jesus”. So a person is baptized into Christ, for the remission of sins, is clothed with Christ, has put on Christ, and has been baptized into Jesus’ death. All of these terms have deep meaning but each of them also have some symbolism.

Biblical faith will lead the new believer to want to participate in the Lord’s supper, the other gospel symbol. As believers eat the bread they remember the body of the Lord and as they drink from the cup they remember the blood he shed for them and together they look for his coming and are united in his love and grace.

Good works will be a by-product of everyone who has faith in Jesus. Ephesians 2:10 says:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

“We” includes all Christians. We were made for good works. People who say they are Christians but do no good works are impostors and not Christians.

I could go on mentioning things that arise from a heart set on Jesus by faith. Loving like Jesus loves, forgiving like you have been forgiven by Christ, accepting others who are not like you because he accepted you and so on.

Without faith it is impossible to please God. Do you have faith in Jesus Christ?

Royce Ogle
Monroe, LA

Jun 17 2013

Trust and Obey


I started studying the Bible when I was in my early twenties. I had been in Sunday school classes, Vacation Bible school, and  church services but had never had an appetite for learning about God and the Bible. My interest peaked when I started growing up and realizing the responsibilities of being an adult. I was married, struggling financially much of the time, the few prayers I prayed were seemingly not being answered, and I was searching for truth.

As I began to read long passages of Scripture, (even whole books of the Bible), and tried to understand what they really meant to me, I was shocked that at least some of what I had been taught was in my view not biblical. Later, after I entered Bible school for ministry training, I was also shocked that there were so many different views of what I considered to be important doctrines among the staff. It was there that I first was convinced that people of good will can have differing views of many things in the Bible and still work together for the greater good of Christ and the gospel. I learned that the gospel of Christ is truly of first importance, it is the watershed of Bible doctrine and everything else is somewhat less important.

So it was that my training was a mixture of ideas, opinions, and traditions all of which were supported by the Bible according to those who taught them. We were Southern Baptists, we were “free will” people, with many of us coming from the Free Will Baptist perspective. My parents fit that description. Both of my parents were shaped by Free Will Baptist preachers from the hills of Western North Carolina. In their understanding of God and salvation there we many, many more ways to lose your salvation than to find it.

By the time I was in my late 30’s my mother (who was blind) had been exposed to many, many hours of Bible teaching by a variety of teachers by way of radio. She was greatly influenced by J. Vernon McGee, and by her fairly new pastor, Rev. Kenneth Ridings, a great Bible man. My dad had been saved and was on fire for Jesus, and he too, had left some of the old teachings that he had learned in his earlier years. He had been baptized in his 20’s but it was pretty obvious to my mom and everyone who knew him that he really was born again much later in life. His passion was Jesus and telling others about him until he went to meet him in the late spring of 1993.

I was in my late 50’s when I first started to grapple with what some refer to as “the doctrines of grace”, known more widely as Calvinsim, and more narrowly as “monergism”. It was not that I was reading writers who embraced the TULIP of Calvin, it was quite the opposite. I was reading my Bible and started to see dozens of texts that I usually either ignored or believed as I had been covertly taught, “they don’t mean what they say”. The more I studied and read the Bible the more I saw! I came to the place where I had to deal with those obvious truths, many of which were the opposite of what I had believed for decades and taught myself.

It became clear to me that I was in a theological pickle, so to speak. I could not embrace the 5 points of Calvinism, at least the way I understood them. Neither could I any longer believe as some of my friends that election and predestination are “not true”. I was and am a member of great Church of Christ and trust me, “Reformed” or “Calvin” are ugly words in the minds of most Restoration people.

Somewhere around my yearly 60’s, (I’ll be 68 this month) it all started to come together. My mountain of a problem had been that I was trying to find out which doctrine was right. I thought I must believe either the doctrines of grace, or be a full blown Armenian. I knew for sure I was not a true blue “free will” guy and I couldn’t buy all that the Reformed guys were saying, so I was “between a rock and a hard place’, as the saying goes”.

I have said this many times before but I don’t believe people get it. My options as a Christian, as to the written revelation of God is not “either, or“! Christians are not given the liberty to pick and choose what parts of the Bible they will believe and live by. Our’s is to try, the very best we can, with God’s help, to believe and live by ALL of the scriptures. Of course we must use the wisdom God gives to understand it in context, we can’t ignore the widely accepted methods of biblical interpretation.

When dealing with complex and difficult differences in the Bible there is a better option than “either, or”. The far better option is “both, and“. If it is in the Bible it is true! I now have peace about what I was finding in Scripture because I just believe it! Does God bring men to himself and open their understanding and cause them to repent and trust Jesus? Yes! Is man required to repent, and does he have the freedom to say yes or to reject? Yes! The Bible emphatically teaches both, and both are true. So let’s just believe what God says and let him be God!

Today I stumbled across something that perhaps makes much more sense of this idea than I can convey myself. I quote from Justin Taylor’s blog…

What is compatibilistm?

D. A. Carson provides a good introduction when he argues that the following two propositions are both taught and exemplified in the Bible:

  1. God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions in Scripture to reduce human responsibility.
  2. Human beings are responsible creatures—that is, they choose, they believe, they disobey, they respond, and there is moral significance in their choices; but human responsibility never functions in Scripture to diminish God’s sovereignty or to make God absolutely contingent.

Carson right argues that “We tend to use one to diminish the other; we tend to emphasize one at the expense of the other. But responsible reading of the Scripture prohibits such reductionism.”

“Hundreds of passages,” he suggests, “could be explored to demonstrate that the Bible assumes both that God is sovereign and that people are responsible for their actions. As hard as it is for many people in the Western world to come to terms with both truths at the same time, it takes a great deal of interpretative ingenuity to argue that the Bible does not support them.”

I agree! I was mowing my lawn today as I thought about these things and it dawned on me that most of us believe as Carson does to some degree. We hold that a sinner is required to repent and that he has the God given free will to choose to follow Jesus, to come to faith and be baptized. All very true. But, why do we pray for him to come to God? If we don’t on some level believe that God can move a man toward repentance and faith, why pray? If we ask God to change the person’s will are we not admitting that God can change it?

I believe that almost all of us who are Christians would agree that we would not be believers today except for the work of God in our lives. When Jesus said to those rough cut fishermen and others who would be his inner circle, “Follow me”, could they have refused? Yes. But it’s a big deal to me that they didn’t.

Royce Ogle