The Devil Would Prefer You Be A Naturalist

I'm slowly moving through the Heaven book. Loving it, but moving slow. Summer breaks are never as endless as they seem!
What I read today is something I love to think about and remember. Thought it worth sharing. Show of hands.... post comment if you have read "Heaven" by Randy Alcorn, or are planning to read it in the next few months. What did you think of the book if you did read it? Have you read any of his fiction? What did you think of it?

The more I get caught up in heaven, the more I see how people could see me as insane. I mean, let's be real here... those wonderful extremist are willing to blow themselves up for the truckload of virgins on the other side right? (how disappointed THEY shall be!) Are we in the same quack category as they are? Well, I guess it's easy to think of believers as nuts because of one thing....

The enemy has bestowed on us with our sin nature a spell of naturalism. Here is Alcorn:

"C.S. Lewis depicts another source of our misconceptions about Heaven: naturalism, the belief that the world can be understood in scientific terms, without recourse to spiritual or supernatural explanations.
In The Silver Chair, Puddleglum, Jill, and Eustace are captured in a sunless underground world by an evil witch who calls herself the queen of the underworld. The witch claims that her prisoners' memories of the overword, Narnia, are but figments of their imagination . She laughs condescendingly at their child's game of "pretending" that there's a world above and a great ruler of that world.
When they speak of the sun that's visible in the world above, she asks them what a sun is. Groping for words, they compare it to a giant lamp. She replies, 'When you try to think out clearly what this sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only tell me it is like a lamp. your sun is a dream; and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp.'
When they speak of Aslan the lion, king of Narnia, she says they have seen cats and have merely projected those images not the make-believe notion of a giant cat. They begin to waver.
The queen, who hates Aslan and wishes to conquer Narnia, tries to deceive them into thinking that whatever they cannot perceive with their senses must be imaginary- which is the essence of naturalism. The longer they are unable to see the world they remember, the more they lose sight of it.
She says to them, hypnotically, 'There never was any world but mine,' and they repeat after her, abandoning reason, parroting her deceptions. Then she coos softly, 'There is no Narnia, no Overworld, no sky, no sun, no Aslan.' This illustrates Satan's power to mold our weak minds as we are trapped in a dark, fallen world. We're prone to deny the great realities of God and the Heaven, which we can no longer see because of the Curse."

Now.... here is the part I love....that I sat across the dinning room table when my dad was still sitting up, and read to him. He was discouraged and tempted to doubt at the very door of death whether all he had put his faith into was what he would find when he walked through that door... I read this:

"Finally when it appears they succumbed tot he queen's lies, Puddleglum breaks the spell and says to the enraged queen, 'Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things- trees and grass and sun and moon and starts and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that.... the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow.'"
(oh, man, don't you just LOVE Lewis!!!! The astounding thing about Lewis is his endless imagery of the gospel hidden in his fiction and each time you read it you seem to peel back another layer and see more! How does he do that? And yet, on the whole, it is an amazing children's work to boot! Amazing.)

Alcorn goes on to say that the things in that world (lamp and cats) are actually reflections of the real world's sun and Aslan, not the other way around. Also, that earth is an extension of Heaven, created by the Creator, not Heaven being the extension of earth.
He then adds:
"Sometimes we're like Lewis's characters. We succumb to naturalistic assumptions that what we see is real and what we don't see isn't. God can't be real, we conclude, because we can't see him. And Heaven can't be real because we can't see it. But we must recognize our blindness. The blind must take by faith that there are stars in the sky. If they depend on their ability to see, they will conclude there are no stars.
We must work to resist the bewitching spell of naturalism. Sitting here in a dark world, we must remind ourselves what Scripture tells us about Heaven. We will one day be delivered from the blindness that separates us from the real world. we'll realize then the stupefying bewitchment fires of naturalism so that we may clearly see the liberating truth about Christ the King of Heaven, his kingdom."

One of my favorite songs is Toby Mac's "Loose My Soul" and these word are the highlight of the song (you can find the song on Youtube if you want to hear it)

Lord forgive us when we get consumed by the things of this world,
That fight for our love, and our passion,
As our eyes are open wide and on you.
Grant us the privilege of your world view,
And may your kingdom be, what wakes us up, and lays us down.

My Day and Heavenly Thoughts

My friend Tricia and I braved Costco and CVS deals with six kids today. Let's see ages...12,10,7,6,4,3. I was surprised we did as well as we did. We really were quite cool (though Tricia is always "cool" she is Miss Mellow!) the whole time. I did not realize how utterly exhausted I was till we got home and I unloaded my boatload of stuff and just crashed on the bed for a minute.

Other big trial...my allergies went into full swing today. For my sister/friends who will see me on Sunday anyway, my poor nose went raw from blowing yesterday and today. My eyes are burning raw, and my throat is itchy/sore. The big bummer is that generic allergy stuff does not faze me! Does anyone have any suggestions. Of course you know I have three kids so passing out from sleepiness is not an option. Well, it is, and it's tempting but you know.....someone has to be the adult around here. :)

CVS was a simple run, but a productive one! Five free toothbrushes. Three free toothpastes plus coupon overage, free 3M products (which will make my bible study times more fun 'cause now I have the highlight tabs! yippee... I was thinking of using yellow for highlighting favorite passages of heaven). I was supposed to get free razors too I think but they were out.

So, on to more reflections of heaven. BTW, is this meaningful to anyone, or am I a little overpowering with this subject? I hope you all find encouragement from it. I know I kinda started out with a shocking bang asking y'all to be comfortable with death. It will get better...promise. In fact, the truths to come are how I grew to become more comfortable with death, for the saved that is, and burdened for the unsaved. Truly burdened. Not wanting to prove myself right in knowing the gospel truth, but truly burdened that they would be free, and given a great future in heaven. Once you know about it more, you not only long for it always, you want everyone to have it too!

It is very hard to highlight what Randy Alcorn says, it is all so good. This is why I'm inviting you who are reading to pick up the book and join me. I will be going a little slower than I intended so if you still want to pick up a copy, I'm going to be on chapter one this whole weekend. One of the main reasons is that I want to pick up my own copy. I am reading the library one and my highlighters are craving some color time. I found a great way to really chew up the books I read when starting John Piper's "Desiring God". I chose three colors and used one for quotes from him that I liked, another color for quotes he quoted from others, and one last color for scripture referenced or quoted. This also helps when you blog journal about a book because you can find things faster. I need my own copy so I can do this so I will be slowing down until I can pick one up.

Today's soundbites from Alcorn's HEAVEN chapter one:

"I agree with this statement by John Eldredge in "The Journey of Desire": 'Nearly every Christian I have spoken with has some idea that eternity is an unending church service...We have settled on an image of the never-ending sing-along in the sky, one great hymn after another, forever and ever, amen. And our heart sinks. Forever and ever? That's it? That's the good news? And then we sigh and feel guilty that we are not more 'spiritual'. We loose heart, and we turn once more to the present to find what life we can.' "

The reason this spoke to me the first time I read it over a year ago now, was because I was one of those Christians. I had been taught about heaven but the description above was the impression I got of what it was. Now, I don't know if that was because of what my parents did or did not say, but it developed just the same. Even up to two years ago, I had resolved that, although that did not sound appealing to me, I figured that the heart I would have once I got to heaven would find complete delight in that sort of existence since God did promise the joy. I had no idea I was misunderstanding heaven. I should have dug into the word at that point but it was faster to just settle. I am glad that I was willing to trust God even if it seemed dull to me at the time. I think he delighted right then and there that he was about to reveal some wonderful things about heaven to me.

I loved this too:

In "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", Mark Twain portrays a similar view of Heaven. The Christian spinster Miss Watson takes a dim view of Huck's fun-loving spirit. According to Huck, "She went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn't think much of it...I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said, not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.'

The pious Miss Watson had nothing to say about Heaven that appealed to Huck. (And nothing, if we're honest, that appeals to us) what would have attracted him was a place where he could do meaningful and pleasurable things with enjoyable people. In fact, that's a far more accurate depiction of what Heaven will actually be like. If Miss Watson had told Huck what the Bible says about living in a resurrected body and being with people we love on a resurrected Earth with gardens and rivers and mountains and untold adventures- now that would have gotten his attention!"

Finally Alcorn says:

"We do not desire to eat gravel. Why? Because God did not design us to eat gravel. Trying to develop an appetite for a disembodied existence in a nonphysical Heaven is like trying to develop an appetite for gravel. No matter how sincere we are, and no matter how hard we try, it's not going to work. Nor should it.

What God made us to desire, and therefore what we do desire if we admit it, is exactly what he promises to those who follow Jesus Christ: a resurrected life in a resurrected body, with the resurrected Christ on a resurrected Earth. Our desires correspond precisely to God's plans. It's not that we want something, so we engage in wishful thinking that what we want exists. It's the opposite- the reason we want it is precisely because God has planned for it to exist. As we'll see, resurrected people living in a resurrected universe isn't our idea- it's God's!

(again...excerpts are taken from Randy Alcorn's book "Heaven")

....and don't forget the polls on the side..thank you to those of you who have answered.

Become Comfortable With Death

That is one major thing I have learned over the past two years. I remember thinking just a few short years ago how strange it was that no one close to me had ever married or died. Well, not really a few short years ago, about seven or eight. Then, my best friend got married and my grandpa died. Now it had jumped from far off, to close. Then, Rick's sister lost her precious baby girl at 6 months or so gestation, our good friends lost their six year old son, and my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Now death was my life.

At first this was very uncomfortable. Of course. It was stifling, suffocating and foreboding. Then, step by step the Lord took me on a journey into the depths of his wonderful plan for me and I began to grow. I began to absorb truth like a sponge and the reality of God's plans for his church, his bride, became my very hope and breath and is to this day. My salvation had a purpose instead of being just an end. It had a goal, eternity, heaven. In that goal I began to find joy right in the midst of painful death. I watched my dad wither away physically until there was so little left of him. I watched his smile and sparkling eyes fade. I watched him hold on to the truths he had known for so long. I talked to him a lot about ....death. I became friends with death. I became okay with it.

"For me to live is Christ and to die is gain" Jesus(sorry for the fopah ladies, I meant Paul! Jesus would concur however!:)

No longer were these words to me that I just knew rattling off in my head.....they were startling truth. No one in the world today would ever want to say that death is gain. Even many Christians are not willing to talk about it. I learned how death is gain. I learned how different that made me from the world, and I learned about joy. Joy was the untainted happiness in the middle of the worst seeming circumstances I could there to imagine. I had never walked down a darker road, and yet, never had I seen the light of hope shine brighter. That light has stayed with me ever since and I consider my dad's death a gift in that regard. He would be so glad to sit and hear what all the Lord has taught me because of his passing...he would say it was very, very good. He would say "Yes, that's true". I relish that thought.

I forgot about the preface in the HEAVEN book. I forgot to add that in my reading. It was all I read today and here was the highlighted thought for today. It's shaking:

"Ancient merchants often wrote the words memento mori - "think of death"- in large letters on the first page of their accounting books. Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, commissioned a servant to stand in his presence each day and say, "Philip, you will die." In contrast, France's Louis XIV decreed that the word death not be uttered in his presence. Most of us are more like Louis than Philip, denying death and avoiding the thought of it except when it's forced upon us. We live under the fear of death.

Jesus came to deliver us from the fear of death, "so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death- that is the devil- and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death" (Heb 2:14-15)

What delivers us from the fear of death? What takes away death's sting? Only a relationship with the person who died on our behalf, the one who has gone ahead to make a place for us to live with him. If we don't know Jesus, we will fear death and it's sting-- and we should."

(Randy Alcorn "HEAVEN" preface page xxi-xxi)

Don't forget the polls to the right!

Time To Jump Into May

Thank you Kristen for discussing Bronte/Austen with me, LOL. That was fun. I was thinking when I was done responding how wonderful it is that we can have opinions on temporal things and yet it does not affect our love for the brethren because we have bigger fish to fry!

Namely, eternity!

So, May is dedicated to Heaven. Yes, I will putter around about everyday things too. But Heaven will be in my heart this month and therefore on my fingertips (rather than tongue:). Oh, the joy set before us! I start to ache inside and my chest starts to feel like it will burst when I think of heaven. I love how John Piper talks to his daughter about heaven. She honestly says that she does not want to go until she gets married. That was me. I even told God that. "Lord, I love you but I want to get married and have babies first!". I seemed to think that was better than heaven and something heaven can wait for. In my naivety I did not understand that the sin nature is a battle all the way through those stages of life and the same struggle I had to obey my parents then, would be the struggle to obey God the rest of my life. What I did not understand was that this is not a burden, but a joyful privilege! I am just beginning to understand these truths and God is showing me how he wants me to have the joy of heaven in the everyday life as well. But that's a rabbit trail.

So, I now burst for heaven, I long for it like nothing else. Longing for heaven is longing for Jesus. The last year I have related to Mary who poured her perfume on his feet and just longed to stay there. I long to be with my Savior. How deep my love has grown for Him! Not the iconic Jesus of religion, the Jesus of the universe, the creator and sustainer of my every breath! The giver of my joy, the helper and teacher of my heart (by way of His Holy Spirit), the holder of my purified position before the Father. My Jesus! Heaven is you!

And so much more...... that is what I want to talk about this month.

If anyone wants to read along with me, I will be reading Randy Alcorn's book "Heaven". I will be reading 16 pages a day and reflecting on scripture about heaven that is presented. Alcorn is a great C.S. Lewis fan and parallels a great deal with the imagery of the Narnia Chronicles. So, for fun I will also be reading those to the kids. I look forward to another run through them and especially "The Last Battle" which is so wonderful a parallel of heaven. Lewis GOT heaven. John Piper has said that Alcorn "Gets" heaven, and I agree. Even his wonderful reflections are not near the surface of the reality awaiting us:

" THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD,AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN,ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM." 1 Cor 2:9

If you can get excited about what has been revealed to man's heart.... oh, how excited you would be if you knew fully! I don't think our brains now could handle it.

So, walk with me....

Today I start my two month dedication back on the Figure 8 system and hour a day of walking. I commit to it because we are on break and that is a better time. I have 20lbs left to loose. I will be starting up another accountability site for those interested in joining me in similar goals and needing accountability. It will be a password site private only to the sisters who are struggling!:)

I'll come back here and let you know when it's going. I will continue to update my meters here and will be re-setting the walking back to zero. I covet prayers. I long to pray for others who are working on these goals.

"Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor." Ecc 4:9

(Looking at this pic above reminds me of an experience I had the other day. I walked out of Albertson's and there was a dark sky with a brilliant rainbow. Everyone in the parking lot was looking up at it. There was not alternative, it screamed out in glory! I thought to myself "what do they think when they see it?" "Do they hear God crying out 'I'm Here, and I love you! I've made a way! I plan to keep my promises!" Or do they see a scientific chance meeting of molecules. Sadly, I think it's the later.

Don't forget to do the polls on the side bar! Thank you!

(And don't forget to share a favorite recipe for The Cupboard on this post)