The Bible’s contrast is never between Heaven and Hell. It’s between Heaven and Earth. That contrast began when Adam and Eve (Hebrew for Human and Life) were banned from Eden (Heaven on Earth meant the fill the Earth), and they were left outside in the thorns and thistles and dust and death of Heaven’s absence from the Earth.Later in the OT, the tabernacle and later the Temple became little embassies of Heaven on Earth. Physical places of God’s presence on Earth. In the NT, God is said to have become flesh and tabernacled among us (John 1:14). Jesus was the very physical embodiment of Heaven on Earth. Later in the NT, the Holy Spirit indwells Jesus’s followers as they/their bodies become Temples of the Holy Spirit — embodied, physical places of Heaven on Earth. This is what YOU are — your body is — as a follower of Jesus!
1 Corinthians 6:19–20 ESV
Colossians 3:1-4 (NIV)
Colossians 3:1-2 (NIV)
Colossians 3:5 NIV
These are Earth without Heaven desires.Set your hearts… seeing with the eyes of your heart (Eph 1:18) – your imagination. Envision with your imagination so that you can experience this reality in your heart and mind and body. This is always how your life works. Your mind is always imagining certain realities or unrealities – and that imagination is what drives your desires and therefore your decisions in your life. This is how we were created — to be people with powerful imaginations that can actually see unseen realities and then create them or experience them. In Genesis 1, God first imagines and then makes it so. And he created us in his image to be the same way. But sin — Earth without Heaven desires of sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed — hijacks and captures our imagination. This is what creates your anxieties. Stress. Worries. Insecurities. Fears. These imaginations enter and affect your body in real ways.
But Christian meditation allows us to recalibrate our lives with the powerful images and imaginations of God's word given to us by his Holy Spirit. By learning to use our biblically guided imagination we can experience unseen realities and actually feel these realities in our bodies and in our lives in a way that shapes our desires and our decisions in powerful ways. Life-changing ways.
Galatians 2:20 (NIV)
The Bible has these multilayered images for us to imagine so that we can experience transcendent realities now, in this moment. Using your biblically-guided imagination, feel these realities into your body right now:
- You have been crucified with Christ.
- You have died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
- You have been raised with Christ.
- Christ is your life.
- Christ lives in you — the life you now live in the body.
- You will appear with Christ in glory when he returns and brings Heaven back to Earth.
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Our audio engineer is Diego Huaman.
This podcast is a ministry of The Crossing, a church in Columbia, Missouri, a college town where the flagship campus of the University of Missouri is located.