Blogger’s note: This is the first in a series of posts about The Lord’s Prayer. I’d love to hear your thoughts about heaven. Please comment below.
The first rule of communication is: know your audience. Broadcasters, public speakers, pastors, and teachers all face the ongoing task of learning about their audience. In prayer, you have an audience of one. To understand your audience, it is important to understand his where he lives.
Heaven is a mystery that has been misunderstood and misrepresented for as long as poets and pundits have tried to define it. While it will remain mysterious until you see it with your own eyes, you can try to understand the fundamentals.
God Lives in Heaven
God told Moses to create a Tabernacle—a tent in which God’s people could worship. Many years later, Solomon built a permanent structure, the temple, and dedicated it with a powerful prayer. Solomon acknowledged that neither a building nor the entire earth could hold God. He prayed, “Listen to the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place. And listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.”
While God dwells in heaven, he is also “close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18 NIV). The paradox of majesty and proximity is wrapped up in the title “Father.” When you pray to the Father, you are praying to one who’s wholeness cannot be contained but who is as close to you as your skin.
Heaven is Your Ultimate Home
Author and apologist Randy Alcorn wrote a landmark book entitled Heaven. He writes, “When Jesus told his disciples, ‘In my Father’s house are many rooms…. I am going there to prepare a place for you’ (John 14:2), he deliberately chose common, physical terms (house, rooms, place) to describe where he was going and what he was preparing for us. He wanted to give his disciples (and us) something tangible to look forward to—an actual place where they (and we) would go to be with him.”
Christians are ambassadors—emissaries from another country. The ambassador’s permanent citizenship is in her own country. Here she is merely representing her native land on foreign soil. You are an ambassador from heaven. When you pray to God in heaven, you are sending a letter home or asking for more supplies for your outpost.
What the Bible Says
We know that our body—the tent we live in here on earth—will be destroyed. But when that happens, God will have a house for us. It will not be a house made by human hands; instead, it will be a home in heaven that will last forever.
2 Corinthians 5:1 NCV
But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
2 Peter 3:13 ESV
The Characteristics of Heaven
Eternal Rewards
Matthew 5:11–12
Joyfulness
Luke 15
Peacefulness
Luke 16:19–31
Full of God’s Glory
Romans 8:16–23
Inheritance
1 Peter 1:3–4
Righteousness
2 Peter 3:11–13
Service
Revelation 7:13–17
Rest
Revelation 14:12–13
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