It has been a month since I last posted. A lot has happened in the last month. Minnesota, Jamie's home, challenges/growth in my faith, and more! What I really want to talk about though is not my life, but my "after-life". At church on Sunday we heard about Heaven in a really great sermon. I got emotional as the pastor talked about all the things we'd encounter: how we'd greet our loved ones, continue to learn about God and His ways, explore, and how all our emotional, physical, mental, etc. pain would be taken away. He described how Jesus' hands, the hands that created the Grand Canyon and Niagra Falls, the hands that reached out from a manger, the hands that were pierced with nails for our sins, THOSE majestic hands that created everything would wipe away our tears. Golly this makes me teary-eyed just thinking about it! Haha! As the pastor continued to describe how those in wheelchairs would be running around, I watched a mother tearfully rub the arm of her son who was seated in a wheelchair next to her. We than sang "You Hold Me Now", which is a song that describes Heaven. It was beautiful and I was truly touched.
On the other side of Heaven though is hell of course. Francis Chan recently came out with a book called Erasing Hell. In light of recent controversey over Rob Bell's book that discusses how hell is the everyday problems way encounter like abuse, disease, etc., Francis wanted to look at what Scripture says and not put any of his own personal opinions in his writing. He wants everyone to know the truth, even if it's not pleasant. Because lets face it, hell is NOT pleasant. I just read something within the book that made me emotional (me? emotional? shocker! haha!) Francis writes about what Paul said about hell and the verse that made me emotional is 2 Thessolonians 1:6-9 which says, "God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the flory of his might." Wow. The part that really struck me about this is those we do not know God. This makes me think of my last blog post, and the people all over the world that might not even have access to a Bible and therefore would only learn about God from a missionary. This makes me so sad to think about...it just makes me want to go all over the world and tell everyone! This book is definitely opening my eyes and making me take hell more seriously. It's eternity and I don't want my family members and friends that don't believe in God to be in eternal suffering and loneliness. It breaks my heart to even imagine the pain. Heaven is so easy to attain, God makes it so easy and He gives us the choice! I just want everyone to choose Him! I know that God's ways are higher than mine and I don't always understand His reasons for things, but all I can do is be a light and witness. I can't risk another day not telling the people I know that don't believe about God. Forever is too long.
I'll update as I get further along in this book and as I learn more about this very difficult thing!
Love,
K
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