Questions in Light of Heaven - Blog - Eternal Perspective Ministries

Questions in Light of Heaven - Blog - Eternal Perspective Ministries

Here are some great thoughts from Randy Alcorn:

Setting our minds on Heaven is a discipline that needs to be learned. Pastors and church leaders should train themselves and their people to be Heaven-minded. This means teaching and preaching about Heaven. It means presenting a biblical theology of Heaven that can shape and transform people’s lives, liberating them from the shallow hopelessness of life centered on a fallen and failing world. Ask yourself these questions:

• Do I daily reflect on my own mortality?
• Do I daily realize there are only two destinations—Heaven or Hell—and that I and every person I know will go to one or the other?
• Do I daily remind myself that this world is not my home and that everything in it will burn, leaving behind only what’s eternal?
• Do I daily recognize that my choices and actions have a direct influence on the world to come?
• Do I daily realize that my life is being examined by God, the Audience of One, and that the only appraisal of my life that will ultimately matter is his?
• Do I daily reflect on the fact that my ultimate home will be the New Earth, where I will see God and serve him as a resurrected being in a resurrected human society, where I will overflow with joy and delight in drawing nearer to God by studying him and his creation, and where I will exercise, to God’s glory, dominion over his creation?

Where the Twelve Apostles Died » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog

Where the Twelve Apostles Died » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog

Judgment Day: May 21, 2011? – Justin Taylor

Judgment Day: May 21, 2011? – Justin Taylor: "Albert Mohler has some good background on Harold Camping’s latest claims (part of a larger pattern of false teaching), and closes his article with some helpful reminders:"

People Do Not Drift Toward Holiness - Desiring God

People Do Not Drift Toward Holiness - Desiring God

Hard work is not the opposite of grace, it is the result of experiencing grace.

D. A. Carson explains:

People do not drift toward Holiness.

Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.

We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
(For the Love of God, Volume 2, paragraphing mine)

The Gospel-Driven Church: 5 Things You Can Stake Your Life On

The Gospel-Driven Church: 5 Things You Can Stake Your Life On

This Week - KJV's 400th B-Day! A Short History of the KJV

A Short History of the KJV from St Helen’s Church on Vimeo.

A Gospel Prayer Based on an Historic Confession

Question 84. How is the kingdom of heaven opened and shut by the preaching of the holy gospel?

Answer: Thus: when according to the command of Christ, it is declared and publicly testified to all and every believer, that, whenever they receive the promise of the gospel by a true faith, all their sins are really forgiven them of God, for the sake of Christ's merits; and on the contrary, when it is declared and testified to all unbelievers, and such as do not sincerely repent, that they stand exposed to the wrath of God, and eternal condemnation, so long as they are unconverted: (Matt. 16:18-19; 18:15-19; John 20:21-23) according to which testimony of the gospel, God will judge them, both in this, and in the life to come.

from The Heidelberg Catechism (1563)

Prayer:

God of grace, the gospel is like a key that opens up all of heaven and unlocks dead-bolted human hearts. As you send your church to declare the good news, remind us that we carry a key and not a hammer; convince us that the gentle gospel promises to fit the contours of human life, opening minds to know and receive the forgiveness of sins through what Jesus has done. Today, unbolt my heart to accept the grace of Jesus. Amen.

from Seeking God's Face: Praying with the Bible through the Year