Heaven Touches

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. John 14:1–3 (ESV)

Heaven seems so far away. Think about eternity and the place you will be if you trust Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Heaven is right here, just a breath away.

The closeness of heaven

“To think of heaven as a place is more right than wrong, though he word could mislead. Heaven appears in Scripture as a spatial reality that touches and interpenetrates all created space. In Ephesians, Paul locates in heaven both the throne of Christ at the Father’s right hand and the spiritual blessings and risen life in Christ for Christians… A resurrection body adapted to heaven’s life awaits us, and in that body we shall see the Father and the Son. But while we are in our present bodies, the realities of heaven are invisible and ordinarily imperceptible to us, and we know them only by faith. Yet the closeness to us of heaven and of its inhabitants, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, the holy angels, and the demonic spirits, must never be forgotten: for it is a matter of solid spiritual fact.” - Concise Theology by J. I. Packer

Joy is the air they breathe

“Our loved ones now in Heaven live in a place where joy is the air they breathe, and nothing they see on earth can diminish their joy. Their joy doesn’t depend on ignorance, but perspective, drawn from the Christ in whose presence they live. If you’re following Jesus, no doubt your loved ones there are rejoicing over you. The great cloud of witnesses of Hebrews 12 is now up in the stands of Heaven and watching you on the same playing field they once ran on. They’re looking forward to hearing Jesus say “Well done” to you, and they may also commend you for your service of Jesus!” https://www.epm.org/blog/2020/Jun/3/loved-ones-experiencing-heaven - Randy Alcorn

The cloud of witnesses

“So I take the witnesses of Hebrews 12:1 to be the saints who have run the race before us, and have gathered, as it were, along the marathon route to say, through the testimony of their lives, ‘By faith I finished, you can too!’

The best way to illustrate this, I think, is with Hebrews 11:4, where the writer speaks of Abel and says, ‘Through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.’ So Abel is in the cloud of witnesses, and he is witnessing to us by his life through the Scriptures. This is the way all the witnesses of Hebrews 11 are helping us. They have gathered along the sidelines of our race and they hold out their wounds and their joys and give us the best high-fives we ever got: ‘Go for it! You can do it. By faith, you can finish. You can lay the weights down and the sins. By faith, by the assurance of better things hoped for, you can do it. I did it. And I know it can be done. Run. Run!’

So be encouraged when you plan your fall run with Jesus. There are dozens and hundreds and thousands of those who have gone before and who have finished the race by faith and surround us like a great cloud of witnesses who say: ‘It can be done! By faith, it can be done.’” https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/running-with-the-witnesses - John Piper