Bible Poetry Reading Plan: Job 1-2
Why Talk about Heaven?
Colossians 1:3-5 3We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you,
4since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5because
of the hope laid up for you in Heaven. (ESV)
This month, foundations daily devotional is going to be focused on the topic of Heaven. The vast
majority of Christians today would say that their hope is in Heaven. What they mean by that is that
they hope to go to Heaven after they die. That is a very different thing, however, then having your
hope in Heaven. A person whose hope is in Heaven is a person who is actually looking forward to
going to Heaven. Most Western Christians today don’t actually look forward to going to Heaven; they
much prefer their ‘exciting,’ comfortable life in this lifetime to their picture of what Heaven is. This
truth is made obvious by the fact that so few Christians think about Heaven; very few Christians get
up in the morning and long for Heaven; very few Christians make choices to sacrifice in this lifetime
because of their longing for Heaven. The only sense in which most Christians hope in Heaven, is
in the sense that, we all have to die at some point, and so, since that is true, it’s a lot better to go to
Heaven after you die than to Hell. But what kind of a hope is that? That’s more of a default back-up
plan than a hope. The kind of hope Paul is talking about in the Colossians passage above, is real –
the kind of hope that motivates a person to take great steps of faith; the kind of hope that motivates
a person to make huge sacrifices; the kind of hope that infuses everything a person does – the hope
in a real place, called Heaven, which is so wonderful and so amazing that it’s worth sacrificing every
temporal thing in this lifetime in order to be successful and rewarded for all eternity.
PRAYER and MEDITATION
1. Do you look forward to going to Heaven? Have you ever thought much about this sort of thing?
2. How do you think having your hope in Heaven would change the way that you are living your life
today? What difference would it make?
3. What are some things that you ca
