The NIV 365-Day Devotional Reading PlanSample

The Here and Not Yet

Good, true and beautiful — those are the attributes of the divine Hero’s heart, along with love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. He is compassionate and good, holy and true; and there’s an entire kingdom — heaven — where his heart defines reality.

Read

Somewhere beyond the earthly realms that we can see is God’s ultimate kingdom, heaven. It doesn’t have a location we can pinpoint. But it’s real and it’s somewhere, even though we don’t know exactly where. Revelation 21:2 speaks of the new Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven,” so somehow heaven is above us. It may be beyond all galaxies and universes or even outside of time.

While there’s much we don’t know about its specific location, there’s much that we do know about heaven. It’s where the Hero reigns, where he is all in all. It’s the place the Archnemesis fell from. And it’s where God’s throne is.

Think

Scripture tells us a lot about heaven; but since we’ve not yet experienced it, there’s much that remains a mystery. There is one thing that’s crystal clear: Heaven is where God’s ways are carried out perfectly. In the Hero’s kingdom, the Hero reigns.

That means that in heaven, there’s no sin and no evil. The fruit of God’s Spirit — “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22 – 23) — is the code of the kingdom. Justice reigns. Integrity is all that exists. Everything in the Hero’s kingdom is under his authority because he is King. Heaven is where everything is as the Hero wants it to be. It is very, very good.

Live

Right now, in a realm we can’t see but that is very real, there is a place where the Hero’s ways are the order of the day. It’s a perfect, wonderful place.

Taken from NIV The Great Rescue