We find great significance and satisfaction in some efforts, less in others. We love our recreational efforts, but sometimes hate our vocational labors. Our hobbies are often as physically or mentally demanding as our jobs, but they don’t seem like work to us. At the same time, most of us participate in challenging activities requiring great exertion, yet fail to see these efforts as laborious. Sometimes when we hear “work”, we think “labor” a difficult and toilsome burden we must accept to make a living and survive. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience.
For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Our character will be changed and our struggles will be lifted:
We won’t have to strain to be ‘good’, struggle to maintain Godly relationships or behaviors. Not a place that lacks work, but a place where the burdens and struggles of life will be lifted. God promises Heaven will be a place of rest. Why do we love to sleep in on our days off? Is it just because we are lazy? Or is it more because we become so weary of the struggles of life? Many of us love to work, achieve and be productive, but also understand life’s burdens can simply wear us out.
“For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” “But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.” “…and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.” All of us appreciate beauty and excellence in our physical world because we are created in the image of God, who is not only the source of glory, but the ultimate example of glory: Glory expresses perfect beauty, excellence and greatness. Glory is a word used often in the Bible, but we sometime read right past it. We Will Be in the Presence of Perfect Glory But now abide faith, hope, love, these three but the greatest of these is love. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known. When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child when I became a man, I did away with childish things. We’ll be at peace with the truth:įor we know in part, and we prophesy in part but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. We won’t be frustrated and straining to understand and believe. Someday we are going to be in the presence of the one who understand everything. God’s perfection must certainly characterize the nature of Heaven, and the Bible describes how each of us, when united with God, will be transformed and made complete, in spite of our present earthly imperfections. If God has infinite power, it’s reasonable to believe He has the power to eliminate imperfection. Our expectations of justice, satisfaction and joy (given God’s holy and perfect nature) provide us with good reasons to expect a life beyond this one. If we are living souls (as described in Christian Scripture), there’s no reason to think our true immaterial nature will be limited by the fate of our physical bodies. There are good reasons to believe we are more than simple material beings.