God-centered Living

(a continuation of “Do I Love God for God?”)

Let’s be honest, how often do we actually think about heaven?

I mean really think about it? Not just a vague awareness of it, but truly dwelling on it.  Deeply longing for it with genuine excitement. An aching desire to be with God forever. Is that something that truly invigorates us on a regular basis? Or are we mostly just glad that at least we’re not going to hell when we die?

The whole point of heaven is being perfectly united with our God and enjoying an eternal relationship with Him. That’s the prize. That’s the destination. But if we’re being real—and I think we need to be—does that actually mean anything to most of us?

It’s easy to want to avoid hell. It’s easy to want to avoid pain, and everyone has that natural desire. There is nothing uniquely Christian about that. But a genuine desire for the person of God—loving God—that is entirely unique to those who have his Spirit working in them. Heaven is about God. Heaven isn’t just about escaping judgment; it’s about entering into joy. Heaven is not primarily about streets of gold or pain-free existence, or even reuniting with loved ones. The real joy of eternity is this: we get God. We will be fully with Him. And we will enjoy Him with no more sin, no more distractions, no more distance.

Do you have a consuming desire to be with God? Do you really love God like that?

If we do not truly love God for who He is, then we will not truly long for heaven for what it will be. I think many don’t long for eternity because they can’t imagine what could be enjoyable about walking streets of gold or swinging from gates of pearl for thousands of years. Our minds just get lost on the Bible’s descriptions of heaven. I’m not entirely sure what to make of all the aesthetic imagery the Bible uses to describe heaven. (keep in mind for the purposes of this article, when I reference “heaven”, I have in view either or both the intermediate state and the new heavens/new earth). I just know that whatever is meant by all those descriptions—it will be absolutely fantastic. Still, all the magnificent physical experiences of even the new earth will pale in comparison to the main feature of heaven, which is being with God. 

If what excites us about heaven is not God Himself, then we will have no real excitement for heaven, because no things or experiences can genuinely stir our emotions the way a person can. It all just feels too unreal and otherworldly for most of us. It doesn’t offer enough to connect to our current experience, so we lack the means to tap into its wonder.  We assume it will be some kind of good experience, but it’s not really enough to pull our heart’s attention away from the life we enjoy right now.

It should, though. Heaven should be breathtaking and exhilarating to think about. Simply being with God in heaven will be the greatest thing our souls could ever experience.

 But if we’re being honest, many of us just don’t feel that way about heaven. Heaven isn’t that exciting to us. We don’t long for it. We don’t even really give it a passing thought on a day-to-day basis.

 Perhaps it is because we haven’t really learned to love Him. Maybe we’re not sure what it would be like to enjoy Him for eternity. Maybe the thought of forever with God feels too… abstract. Or, if we admit it, a little boring. But I want to suggest something to you that might sound a little uncomfortable:

If simply being with God doesn’t sound like heaven to us now, why should we expect to want to be there then?

When Heaven Didn’t Sound Like Good News

I’ve been there. For a long time, I avoided thinking about eternity at all. For years, when I had especially wrestled with doubts about the genuineness of my faith, and even about the existence of God, eternity was the last thing on my mind. Whenever that pesky reality did however pop into my head, I would have to quickly escape from it and distract myself by any means possible. Every potential version of the afterlife felt unsettling.

If there was no God, and it all just faded to black at the end— then what’s the point of anything? Life would be completely meaningless. If God did exist, but my faith didn’t quite pass the test, then the thought of eternity in hell was unbearable.

And yet… even if everything I believed was true, and my faith did in fact stand the test—the idea of heaven still made me uneasy. I’d think, “It never ends? Like, ever? It just goes on and on forever and you’re stuck like that?” The thought of something going on forever, even if it was supposed to be good, felt weirdly claustrophobic. And I felt guilty for even thinking that.

But here’s what I’ve come to realize: the reason heaven felt so off to me wasn’t because there was something wrong with heaven; it was because I hadn’t yet truly understood the goodness of God. I hadn’t tasted enough of His beauty to want more. I didn’t really love Him. I wasn’t yet convinced that He is the reward of heaven, and the object of all my hopes and desires.

And so heaven didn’t stir my heart because God didn’t.

The Real Goal of the Gospel

We often treat the Gospel primarily as the news of how to escape hell. But biblically, salvation from hell is only secondary to the primary good news.

The real aim of the gospel is reunion. Restoration. Reconciliation. Jesus didn’t just die to get you out of something. He died to bring you into something. It’s not just that He saves us from something terrible. He saves us for something wonderful. Actually, someone wonderful. Himself.

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God…”
—1 Peter 3:18

He brings us to God; that’s the goal. And that’s what heaven is: the full experience of relationship with God with nothing in between. No more distance. No more veils. No more shame. Just His face, His voice, His goodness, His presence. Forever.

Not merely forgiveness for forgiveness’ sake. Not merely the removal of wrath. Not even just eternal life in some fantastic place. God Himself is the reward.

All the blessings of the Gospel: forgiveness, peace, joy, righteousness, rest, comfort, even the escape from hell—are glorious, but they are secondary. They are not the main point. They are gifts that flow from and lead toward the main point, the relationship, but they themselves are not the main substance. Being saved from hell is not the ultimate gift of salvation. It is the doorway into the ultimate gift: unbroken fellowship with the living God.

To say it bluntly: if your greatest joy in salvation is that you don’t have to go to hell, you’re missing the whole point of salvation. That’s not the Gospel in its fullness. The Gospel is that we get God. The Gospel is not just about the absence of the negative but about the glory of the positive. The greatest positive conceivable—God. That He is now ours, and we are His. That everything sin destroyed has been restored in Jesus, and the separation between us and God has been completely removed.

“I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

—Hebrews 8:10 (emphasis added)

That line echoes through all of Scripture, from the Garden of Eden to the glory of Revelation. That’s what we lost through sin, and that’s what Jesus came to restore. The restored relationship is not a bonus feature. It’s the whole thing. Everything else surrounding it are the bonus features.

And if that doesn’t ignite something in us—if that doesn’t stir our hearts or raise our eyes—then maybe it’s worth asking: Are we actually in love with the Giver, or just His gifts? Are we simply relieved to avoid hell, or are we rejoicing because we’ve been brought near to the One our souls were created to love? Because the ultimate joy of heaven is not comfort. It’s communion. And the beauty of eternal life is not in its duration; it’s in the object of our adoration.

If God is not our greatest joy here, He will not be our greatest joy there. And if He’s not our greatest joy, then we simply won’t long for heaven. Because He is what makes it heaven.

When we don’t truly love God for God, our Christian lives are largely lackluster and spiritually stagnant. This is why our love for God—not just His gifts—must be the driving force of our lives. It’s not enough to merely avoid wrath or gain blessings. That will never truly change us. Only a thoroughly God-centered Gospel can do that. The Christian life is about chasing after the God who first came after us. And the more clearly we see that He is the reward, the more everything else starts to fade into its proper place. The more we see His beauty in the Gospel, the more we love Him, the more we become like Him.

For the Joy Set Before Us

Our lives must be constantly forward-looking, so that we can live with the purpose and joy we are meant to. Heaven should take up space in our heads regularly. The joy of being with God in heaven should be a powerful motivator for us to tap into on a daily basis. It is how the Christian life is supposed to be lived.

When Jesus went to the cross—He was chasing joy.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
—Hebrews 12:1-2 (emphasis added)

But what was that joy?

It wasn’t comfort. It wasn’t ease. It wasn’t the end of suffering alone. The joy set before Him was the outcome of the cross—the restoration of relationship, a relationship centered around the joy of His own glory being shown and shared and rejoiced in. The joy of bringing His people home. The joy of redemption and spending eternity with His bride. Jesus endured the cross with His eyes fixed on the glorious outcome of His work, and so should we.

The Christian life is hard. It requires endurance, sacrifice, dying to self. But we are meant to press forward, not just out of obligation, but with joy ahead of us. Joy that one day we will see Him. Joy that we will finally be home. With God.

“So we do not lose heart… For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”
—2 Corinthians 4:16–17

The Eternal Is the Real

If we’re going to live the way Jesus did, we need to see what Jesus saw. We need to think the way He thought. We need to recalibrate our view of reality itself.

We tend to primarily focus our attention on the life we have here and now we, because it feels the most real to us. This life we have now feels primary and heaven feels secondary and hard to put our finger on. But here’s the truth: heaven is not just some far off reality that is secondary and less real; it is the greater, more permanent, more real life. This current world, with all its noise and pain and distraction, is the fleeting version that is passing away. This life is the mist, the vapor, the tent that gets folded up and stored away. But our glorious future with God?

That’s the real thing. That’s what we are really made for.

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.
For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
—2 Corinthians 4:18

Everything we can see and touch now is passing away. But the things we can’t see: God’s glory, God’s promises, our inheritance, our place with Him—they are already set in stone. They’re not hypothetical. They’re not “possible outcomes.” They are reality. And when we fix our gaze there, we start to live differently here.

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
—Colossians 3:1–3 (emphasis added)

This is a call to spiritual sanity. It’s a call to wake up and live with eternal eyes. Not to be so caught up in this world’s noise that we forget which one we actually belong to.

“Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ…”
—Philippians 3:20

If we belong to heaven, then that’s where our eyes should be. That’s where our affections should point. That’s where our priorities should land. The things of this world—success, comfort, recognition, reputation—are all passing away. They’re not solid. They’re not ultimate. And Jesus knew that better than anyone.

Have you ever noticed how much Jesus talked about the end?

He was thoroughly forward-looking in the way He spoke. He was constantly pointing people to the future. Jesus lived with the end in mind. He taught with heaven in view. He frequently alluded to or made direct references to the last day, judgement, heaven, and eternal realities. I think this should cause us to reflect more on the space these realities take up in our heads on a daily basis. If the Son of God talked about eternity so often during His earthly ministry, shouldn’t we think about it more than occasionally?

A Closing Glimpse: The Nearness of Glory

So where does all of this leave us?

It brings us right back to the question we began with, the same question I wrestled with in my last article: Do I love God for God?

Because that’s what all of this hinges on.

Do I treasure Him as the ultimate reward? Do I want to be with Him more than I want His benefits and blessings? More than I want relief? More than I want answers, or healing, or success, or security? Do I actually love Him?

If I do, then heaven is not just a consolation; it is the utmost desire of my soul. It’s the ache that lingers even in my best moments here. It’s the place where all the fog lifts, and everything finally makes sense. It’s not a fairytale. It’s not a backup plan. It’s home. And if my heart is truly alive to this spiritual reality, then everything in me should be leaning forward toward that day with longing.

Because heaven isn’t far off. In the grand sweep of eternity, it’s practically already here. In fact, God has made our place with Him so secure, so final, so real, that Scripture speaks of it in the past tense. We are already seated with Christ in the heavenly places (Eph. 2:6). Our citizenship is already in heaven (Phil. 3:20). Our life is already hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). Our names are already written in the book of life (Luke 10:20). Our hope is not vague; it is anchored.

And if you stop for just a moment… you can almost taste it.

Imagine it.

He looks at you—not with disappointment, but with delight. With a voice deeper than thunder and gentler than rain, He says, “Well done. I love you. I’m proud of you. Welcome home.”

And everything in you—everything—collapses into joy. All your wounds are healed. All your longings are met. You are finally where you were always meant to be: face to face with God.

“They will see His face…”
—Revelation 22:4

Heaven is not far off. It’s near. Closer than we think. And the more we love God now, the more we’ll feel it—even now—as if it’s already begun.

Because in a sense, it has.

“And this is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”
—John 17:3

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the ESV® Bible.