Hope in Heaven

| Hope series |

• What Is Hope
• Why Did Paul Say YOLO?
• Hope in Heaven

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Hope enables us to experience the good promises God has for us even while we’re surrounded by the troubles of this life. We saw last time that the Christian life was never meant to be (and frankly cannot be) done without a very tangible, daily hope in the promise of eternal life. It’s in this hope that we can experience joy in all circumstances because the promise of heaven is always present, regardless of what’s happening around us. In many ways, the key to joy, the key to being happy is this kind of hope. But how can we have a hope like this that sustains our joy?

What’s Heaven Going to Be Like?

In simple terms, to have hope in heaven we have to know a little about what it’s going to be like. To get excited about heaven we have to know what’s worth getting excited about. If we’re honest, I think our idea of heaven is one that sounds like it could get a little old. If it really lasts forever, is it maybe, possibly, going to get boring?

Let’s get honest and explore the Scriptures together. We’ll start with what we know about heaven.

God Himself Will Be with Us

“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.”

(Revelation 21:3, emphasis added)

The first and most foundational fact about heaven is this, God Himself will be with us fully and continually. Now, that either sounds like the most amazingly, overwhelmingly exciting thing you could possibly imagine, or it, well, doesn’t.

If words like exciting, moving, exhilarating don’t come to mind for you when you hear this, I don’t want that to make you feel bad. It should, however, make us wonder why. To understand what’s missing, we need to know why it would be exciting.

The truth is that this is only exciting when you really know God. When we truly know Him, what He’s like, through a genuine relationship/friendship with Him, the thought of finally, truly, fully, continually being with Him is enough to short-circuit our emotions. He is the truest friend I have ever had. Every kind of love I have seen and felt in this world pales in comparison to any single taste of His love He has shown me, even in rebuking me. When I think about how loved, how peaceful, how joyful, how cared for, how cherished, how satisfied, how fulfilled I have been in just one moment of feeling His companionship. That’s what makes this thought so exciting.

If you haven’t experienced Him in this way, I want this to encourage you that you don’t know what you’re missing. If you want to experience Him like this, it’s as simple as starting a conversation with Him. If you aren’t sure what that looks like, consider taking a look at our series Talking with God.

When we get to know Him through a real friendship like this it not only gets us excited about heaven, but it lets us truly experience heaven on earth in those moments with Him here and now.

Death/Pain Won’t Be There

In just the next verse, we transition from what we will have in heaven to what we won’t have, and the list is pretty impressive:

“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.”

(Revelation 21:4)

Now, it’s amazing enough what won’t be there: death, mourning, crying, even pain itself will all be gone. But what I love most is the way it communicates why He’s going to do that. He doesn’t just say these things are going to disappear as a simple matter of fact but illustrates it for us by saying that He will “wipe away every tear from [our] eyes”. He isn’t eliminating these things as part of His blueprint of heaven. He is removing them because He cares for us. He doesn’t just remove them from our future in eternity, though that would be plenty. He restores the pain they left us with from our past.

In this single phrase, He describes how He will overwhelm every question we have about why He didn’t get rid of these things sooner, why we had to experience death and pain on earth. He overwhelms these questions with more than just words, but with comfort, healing us fully from the pain they caused.

Will Heaven Get Boring?

There are so many more verses, but in just these two we’ve seen plenty of reasons to get excited about heaven. But there’s still something lingering in the back of my mind. I can see why heaven’s going to be awesome, but can it really keep being awesome forever?

I’ll admit there’ve been a few 3-hour church services that I was glad when they were over. When I’m on my billionth hour in heaven, is it going to start feeling like the movie Groundhog Day? I think we’ve all worried about the possibility that heaven could eventually get, well, boring.

We can’t let this linger as a question. It’s hard to have hope in something that we think will eventually get boring. And we saw last time that if we do not have hope in heaven, we will not have stamina to keep taking up our cross. So, let’s see what the Bible reveals about this.

We all know 1 Corinthians 13 as the chapter on love, but it’s also a chapter about heaven. The reason Paul gives for why love is so important is because it will still be important in heaven. He tells us we don’t need tongues or prophecy in heaven, but we’ll still need love. Heaven will be full of love. The chapter can almost leave you with a sense that love is the only thing we’ll need in heaven. Almost.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three…

(1 Corinthians 13:13)

Here’s what this is saying. It’s saying we will still experience all these things in heaven. We will still have love, we will still have faith, and we will still have hope. As I thought about that, it hit me. Hope? We’re in heaven, aren’t we? I mean, we finally made it. What’s left to hope for?

Heaven Will Keep Getting Better

If hope has a place in heaven, that means there is still something to hope for even once we are in heaven. To experience hope is to experience a joyful expectation of something that’s coming. What’s more, we know that we don’t hope for something we already have, but something that we are waiting to receive, waiting to experience (Romans 8:24-25).

So, this seemingly simple fact that we will experience hope when we’re in heaven, has incredible implications. What Paul says in passing at the end of 1 Corinthians 13 overhauls the way most of us understand what heaven will be like. Heaven will not be static. Heaven will not be repetitive. Heaven will keep getting better.

Now, this leaves us with a paradox. If heaven is absolutely perfect (which it is), if it leaves us wanting for nothing (which it does), how can it get better? It sounds impossible, right? I would suggest that it’s in fact the only possibility. Heaven would not be perfect if it never changed but remained static for time unending. Instead, part of what makes our life in heaven perfect is that it keeps getting better. Heaven is perfect because it is full of hope. In heaven we will have hope for something, wait for it with joy-filled patience, eventually receive it and experience its joy, only to find that there’s something even more exciting to hope for. This is why hope remains, because hope is essential to joy, and heaven is full of joy!

This is why hope remains, because hope is essential to joy, and heaven is full of joy!

Experiencing Heaven Now

We didn’t have the time to talk about everything, but I hope (pun thoroughly intended) that just this small sampling of what heaven will be like has gotten you excited! What’s maybe even more exciting is that the joy of heaven was never meant to be reserved just for heaven. As we saw in the first post of this series, hope is the present enjoyment of future blessing. God has given us the gift of hope so that we can enjoy, so that we can get excited about the good things that He has planned for us.

As I said above, God intends for us to experience a taste of heaven on earth today through our relationship with Him in the Holy Spirit. After all, the Holy Spirit is described as the guarantee, the down payment, the first installment of our inheritance (Ephesians 1:14). As we enjoy that blessing, we can add to our joy by filling our thoughts with hope in the rest of that inheritance. So, give yourself permission to hope, give yourself permission to daydream even about the good that God has for us in heaven. This hope is what allows us to experience the joy of heaven now. When it says that Jesus endured the cross because of the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2), it describes the idea of hope, that it was joy “set before Him”. We are meant to follow His example. This joy that comes from hope is meant to fuel our endurance each day so that we can take up our cross, so that we do “not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:9)