“God has his hands on the earth. He will not let go—even when it requires that his hands be pierced by nails. Both his incarnation and those nails secured him to Earth and its eternal future. In a redemptive work far larger than most imagine, Christ bought and paid for our future and the earth’s. A”

“Perhaps parents’ greatest heritage to pass on to their children is the ability to perceive the multitude of God’s daily blessings and to respond with continual gratitude. We should be “abounding in thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:7).”

“Our minds are so much set on Earth that we are unaccustomed to heavenly thinking. So we must work at it.”

“the video Homesick for Heaven: ”

“In 1937, Scottish theologian John Baillie wrote, “I will not ask how often during the last twenty-five years you and I have listened to an old-style warning against the flames of hell. I will not even ask how many sermons have been preached in our hearing about a future day of reckoning when men shall reap according as they have sown. It will be enough to ask how many preachers, during these years, have dwelt on the joys of heavenly rest with anything like the old ardent love and impatient longing.”

“To be truly happy—a man must have sources of gladness which are not dependent on anything in this world.” —J. C. Ryle”

“If I were to ask you, “What does the fine linen the bride is wearing stand for?” you might be inclined to say, “The righteousness of Christ that covers us.” Significantly, however, the text says something different: “Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints” (Revelation 19:8). It’s only because of the Bridegroom’s work that the chosen princess, the church, can enter the presence of her Lord. Yet her wedding dress is woven through her many acts of faithfulness while away from her Bridegroom on the fallen Earth. The picture is compelling. Each prayer, each gift, each hour of fasting, each kindness to the needy, all of these are the threads that have been woven together into this wedding dress. Her works have been empowered by the Spirit, and she has spent her life on Earth sewing her wedding dress for the day when she will be joined to her beloved Bridegroom.”

“As a biblical Christian, I must not only affirm the inspiration of God’s Word; I must also consciously critique everything else in light of Scripture (otherwise all else will unconsciously conform my mind to the world, the flesh and the devil). I must make an effort to evaluate my beliefs and lifestyle preferences by God’s Word.”

“The kingdom of God . . . does not mean merely the salvation of certain individuals nor even the salvation of a chosen group of people. It means nothing less than the complete renewal of the entire cosmos, culminating in the new heaven and the new earth. Anthony Hoekema”

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” —A. W. Tozer”

“We think of ourselves as fun-loving, and of God as a humorless killjoy. But we’ve got it backward. It’s not God who’s boring; it’s us. Did we invent wit, humor, and laughter? No. God did. We’ll never begin to exhaust God’s sense of humor and his love for adventure. The real question is this: How could God not be bored with us? Most of us can envision ourselves being happy for a few days or a week, if that. But a year of complete and sustained happiness? Impossible, we think, because we’ve never experienced it. We think of life under the Curse as normal because that’s all we’ve ever known. A hundred or a million years of happiness is inconceivable to us. Just as creatures who live in a flat land can’t conceive of three-dimensional space, we can’t conceive of unending happiness. Because that level of happiness is not possible here on the fallen Earth, we assume it won’t be possible on the New Earth. But we’re wrong. To properly envision Heaven, we must remove from our eyes the distorted lenses of death and the Curse.”

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (NIV)”

“God uses suffering and impending death to unfasten us from this earth and to set our minds on what lies beyond.”

“The fear of God is the death of every other fear; like a mighty lion, it chases all other fears before it.” —Charles Spurgeon   “We are more concerned about looking stupid (fear of people) than we are about acting sinfully (fear of the Lord).” —Edward T. Welch”

“The world as it was, and the world as it will be, is exceedingly good. The world as it is now, inhabited by humanity as we are now, is twisted. But this is a temporary condition, with an eternal remedy: Christ’s redemptive work.”

“Though the rest of the earth fell under human sin, Eden was for some reason treated differently. Perhaps it had come from Heaven, God’s dwelling place, and was transplanted to Earth. We don’t know. But we do know this: God came to Eden to visit with Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:8), which he would no longer do after Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden after the Fall.”

“Jonathan Edwards said in a 1733 sermon, “God is the highest good of the reasonable creature, and the enjoyment of him is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows. But the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean.”

“We’ve been conditioned to associate governing with self-promoting arrogance, corruption, inequality, and inefficiency. But”

“As human beings, we have a terminal disease called mortality. The current death rate is 100 percent. Unless Christ returns soon, we’re all going to die. We don’t like to think about death; yet, worldwide, 3 people die every second, 180 every minute, and nearly 11,000 every hour. If the Bible is right about what happens to us after death, it means that more than 250,000 people every day go either to Heaven or Hell. David said, “Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath” (Psalm 39:4-5). Picture a single breath escaping your mouth on a cold day and dissipating into the air. Such is the brevity of life here. The wise will consider what awaits us on the other side of this life that so quickly ends.”

“In the truest sense, Christian pilgrims have the best of both worlds. We have joy whenever this world reminds us of the next, and we take solace whenever it does not.”