“Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.” Psalm 23:6 (NLT)
Someday my life on earth is going to end, but that’s not going to be the end of me. I'm going to live forever in one of two places: heaven or hell. My body is going to die, but I'm not going to die, because I was made to last forever by my Creator.
How long is forever going to last? Forever!
The Bible tells us why Christians should be the most confident about the future: “Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord . . . We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:6, 8 NIV).
I will never know how to really live until I'm ready to die. Only a fool would go through life totally unprepared for something that everybody knows is inevitable.
I'm going to die someday. If I've accepted Christ, then I'm going to go to heaven, to “live in the house of the LORD forever” (Psalm 23:6 NLT). In heaven, I'll be released from pain, sorrow, suffering, depression, and fear. The Message paraphrase says it like this:“He’ll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone” (Revelation 21:4).
For Christians, death is a transfer, a promotion. It’s on to better things and no more problems.
Those truths should change everything for me! It doesn’t mean life is going to be easy. And it doesn’t mean I will always be happy or always know what I should do or that I will never sin again.
But it does mean I can face the future without fear. God has taken care of my biggest problem, my salvation. He is never going to leave me, and I will live with him forever!
How is my confidence about the future reflected in my life? For me, I really feel assured when I think about it. I do however get caught up in distractions in which I don't remind myself of this truth,
When a follower of Jesus dies, why can we have hope within our grief? Because he has already paid the price through the atonement of Jesus Christ dying and taking on my penalty.