Eternity... Now?

As I shared before, I've been really examining myself lately about how I live. A friend of mine recently said as I was lamenting about my recent difficulty with the "Eat. Sleep. Work. And Accumulate Stuff." mentality of modern culture that it seems like there's a "Let he who dies with the most toys win" mindset that even the church has not escaped.

The dangerous "name it and claim it" style preaching that has become more and more popular shows how even our Christian sub-culture is effected by this mentality. Praying to God for a pay raise so that we can afford a second vehicle. There was recently an article written in a Grandville, MI newspaper about a 20 million dollar building program initiated by a local church, the page went on to state that one in five people in their city live in poverty. The question remains, did God need a larger house to match North America's growing waistline?

Anyway, I was in a local high school again this week and talking about the importance of, as Rich puts it, "Doing your own Leg Work"... that is, going straight to Scripture yourself moreso than relying on other to interpret God's word for you.

The exercise we did was to examine familiar passages of scripture and to try to interpret them ourselves, without the hindrance of church tradition etc. As we read John 3:16, perhaps the most common scripture in the Bible, someone asked, "well, what is eternal life"? I let a few people answer, before turning to John 17, I began reading in verse 1: "Father, the time has come. Glorify your SOn, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."

They were fascinated as we discussed the implications of this idea that eternal life is not for after we die here on this earth and are transported to some other location... but that eternal life is wrapped up in the very essence of "knowing" God and relating to him through Jesus. In essence, eternal life is not for us after we die, but begins here and now as we begin to know Jesus.

This is an exciting subject, and the teenagers faces lit up as they began to connect the dots. "Is this what Jesus meant when he prayed "Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven"?"

I realized that there is a profound shift that happens in our thinking when we realize eternal life starts now, that our job as followers of Christ is to live out this "Kingdom mentality" on earth... to give the world a glimpse of what God's intention for it was. We walked out of these with a cool new phrase that had been birthed... they'd heard "give 'em hell".. but they were excited to know our job is to "give 'em heaven" to a world that has only known hell.