Over the past several months, I’ve thought a lot about how much the church talks about heaven. A lot of our songs are about heaven. Pastors preach about heaven. When we evangelize, we focus on helping people find their way to heaven. We talk about the pearly gates, the streets of gold, the peace and joy we will experience, and that God will wipe away every tear. And we can’t wait until we get there!

However, I noticed that people talked about the place called heaven, but there was little mention of the God of heaven. There is an emphasis on being saved to spend eternity in heaven, but very little is mentioned about spending that eternal life with God. It seems that we have separated heaven from God. A. W. Tozer wrote in his book, The Pursuit of God, “Christ may be ‘received’ without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is ‘saved,’ but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little.”[1]

I liken this to going to an Airbnb. About every three years, we get together with our boys and their families for a large family vacation. We found that it worked well for us to rent a large home where we had plenty of room to sleep, relax, eat, and visit. And, everywhere we stayed, we always enjoyed the PLACE but never met the PERSON who owned the place. In the same way, we may be guilty, as Tozer says, of receiving salvation and looking forward to going to the PLACE called heaven but have not developed a special love for the PERSON of God.

And I have concluded that our focus is on the wrong thing for we cannot truly experience heaven without having a relationship with God. There is no heaven without God. We cannot separate the two. It is only in the Presence of God that we can experience the blessings and joy of heaven. It is only when we hunger and thirst for Him that heaven becomes a reality not only in the future but even here and now.

Therefore, I want to challenge you (and myself) to stop seeking the place of heaven and begin seeking the God of heaven. Ask the Holy Spirit to stir your heart to hunger and thirst for Him and the closer you grow in your relationship with Him, the more of heaven you will experience in your life.

[1] Tozer, A. W. 2013. The Pursuit of God. Minneapolis, MN. Bethany House: 23.