Encouragement

Heaven, Part 4—Encourages Effort

by J.W. Phillips
03/26/25
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Heaven, Part 4—Encourages Effort

Whenever temptation tries to sink its hooks, we are more likely to take the bait if the lure seems near while Heaven seems far away. This is no surprise, really, because how one frames the picture usually predicts the outcome. If we frame it so we see only the immediate, we’ll react one way. But if we frame it with an eternity perspective, we’ll react differently.

By enticing our souls with God’s picture of Heaven—as a city and as a garden—we experience the strong surge of hope needed to intensify the desire for Heaven and thereby sustain our pursuit of it.

The heavenly perspective encourages effort.

Scripture amplifies this truth in I Corinthians, chapter 15, by discussing the resurrection of the believer and our subsequent entrance into Heaven. Having once set forth these twin truths, this chapter concludes by saying, “Be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (I Corinthians 15:58).

The challenge of diligent and dedicated labor is given here because nothing better stimulates someone to this kind of faithfulness than a strong vision of Heaven. Conversely, as A.W. Tozer pointed out, “When the followers of Jesus Christ lose their interest in heaven … they cannot be a powerful force in a sad and sinful world.”¹

You’ve heard the complaint that some people are so heavenly-minded they are no earthly good. Well, history offers a different testimony. The documented past proves that it's the people who valued the next life the most who made the greater contributions to this life.

A Christian never works so well, or fights so valiantly, than when he or she is captured by a strong hope for Heaven. But to live life with such impact and purpose, E.M. Bounds insisted:

The Christian soldier must put heaven strongly in his head and heart. He must see heaven, feel heaven, and keep heaven in the heart at all times. He will stand with unsteady step if heaven seems far off. He will fight feebly if heaven is dimly seen. [But] the full sight of heaven will give strength to his loins, zeal to his faith, glory to his future, and victory to his present.²

One man who knew this truth well was David Brainerd, an eighteenth-century missionary to the Indians in upper state New York. Braving an inhospitable forest where diseases and other dangers lurked, David Brainerd launched out where few dared to go.

In doing all this, he died before his thirtieth birthday—but not before exhibiting a passion that exceeded his peril! Onward was his direction because upward was his perspective.

So what exactly kept him going when the temptations to quit were many and severe? We are not left to guess.

David Brainerd wrote a journal documenting his innermost thoughts. This journal, never intended for human eyes, has become a devotional classic today, largely through the efforts of Jonathan Edwards, who was David Brainerd’s father-in-law (and in whose home David Brainerd died).

You may feel uneasy about reading someone’s private journal, but the great Jonathan Edwards interpreted the propriety of doing so when he had this journal published.

In one journal entry, David Brainerd wrote: “... my soul longed for an arrival in the heavenly country, the blessed paradise of God. Through divine goodness I have scarce seen the day for two months, in which death has not looked so pleasant to me.”³ So inspired by this vision of Heaven, David Brainerd gave himself even more nobly to the conversion of what other people called “savages.”

In reading a daily account of his life, we are struck by these repeated references to Heaven, such as this one: “My thoughts were much in eternity where I love to dwell.” Now by putting this in the present tense, we are made to know how real Heaven was to David Brainerd.

The reason these meditations could rally his heart is because, as E.M. Bounds once put it, “An eternal heaven of unsullied purity, of unalloyed bliss through endless years, is a doctrine which enables man and honors God.”⁴

The journey to Heaven isn’t always easy, especially when God takes us down character-building roads we never would have chosen.

J.C. Philpot, the nineteenth-century English preacher, described this journey God plans, which in some ways we would rather not take:

We are willing to walk to heaven; but not to walk there in God’s way. Though we see in the Scripture that the path to glory is a rough and rugged way; yet when our feet are planted in that painful and trying path, we shrink back; our coward flesh refuses to walk in that road. God therefore, as a sovereign, brings those afflictions upon us which he sees most fit for our profit and his glory, without ever consulting us, without ever allowing us a choice in the matter. And he will generally cause our afflictions to come from the most unexpected source, and in a way most cutting to our feelings—in the way that of all others we would least have chosen—and yet in a way which of all others is most for our profit.⁵

The question, then, is this: Will we accept the cross applied to our life and let it become the master-passion of our life? We said we would when we agreed soon after our conversion to take up the cross. But is that our position still? Are we today experiencing higher levels of Christ’s risen life because we have consented to lower levels of his crucified life?

 F.J. Huegel wrote:

 … if we have built upon some other foundation; if we have hardened our hearts to the irresistible wooings of Golgotha; if we have been unwilling to accept its eternal verities regarding God and sin; if the awful plunge of the God-Man into the abysmal ocean of human woe has not moved us to true repentance; if we have not joined the universal chorus that sings the praise of the Crucified—could heaven mean anything to us? Would we be out of place?⁶

The reciprocal dynamics of dying and rising will cycle through at God’s direction, and at some point with our permission, thus fashioning for the believer the very life the resurrection intended to produce. This sanctioned suffering of God is one, F.B. Meyer said, that “looks a hundred times into the abyss, and suddenly sees angels sitting.”⁷

Is this your experience, too? Or does such talk seem altogether foreign to what you have known?

As we think about our current progress and how our life measures up with the biblical mandate given in I Corinthians 15, we have to ask ourselves:

Are we steadfast, or are we pretty quick to quit?

Are we unmovable, or do we embrace all these ready-made excuses for flitting about?

Are we abounding in the Lord’s work, or are our efforts more token and occasional?

G.D. Watson said, “Notice how children in their play will begin a dozen enterprises in a day and leave them all unfinished at night.”⁸ But the child of God with Heaven on his heart won’t live his life with fits and starts, with sudden enthusiasm followed by aborted efforts.

So, again, the question: Have we matured enough in the Lord to remain steadfast?

If these questions stab us with conviction and leave us stuttering unsatisfactory replies, then we should consider the turnaround factor of the heavenly vision; for this alone is able to motivate a steadfast, unmovable, abounding work for the Lord.

Tozer wrote with conviction on this point when he declared, “It may be said with certainty that Christians who have lost their enthusiasm about the Savior’s promises of Heaven-to-come have also stopped being effective in Christian life and witness in this world.”⁹

But this must not be!

 Notes:

1. A.W. Tozer, The Tozer Pulpit, Volume 6 (Harrisburg, PA., Christian Publications, 1975), p.105.

2. E.M. Bounds, Winning the Invisible War, (Springdale, Whitaker House, 1984), p.148.

3. David Brainerd, The Life of David Brainerd, (Grand Rapids, Baker Book House, 1978), p 513.

4. E.M. Bounds, Heaven, (Grand Rapids, Baker Book House, 1975). p.35.

5. J.C. Philpot, “More Pearls From Philpot,”: found under Sermon Texts on the website sermonindex.net

6. F.J. Huegel, The Cross of Christ, The Throne of God, (Dixon, MO., Rare Books, n.d.), p.99.

7. F.B. Meyer, Christ in Isaiah, (Fort Washington, PA., CLC Publications, 2002), p.26.

8. G.D. Watson, Spiritual Feasts, (Salem, Ohio, Schmul Publishing Company, 1991), p.38.

9. A.W. Tozer, Who Put Jesus on the Cross? (Harrisburg, PA., Christian Publications, 1975), p.105.