On earth as it is in heaven ...
Wow.
That was my response.
Wow.
I heard this thought from D.A. Carson this morning and I just had to stop. Press pause. And reflect on how I’ve allowed it to happen in my life. Here’s what he said:
“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.
•We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance
•We drift toward disobedience and call it freedom
•We drift toward superstition and call it faith
•We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation
•We slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism
•We slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”
Wow.
Then I read Exodus 34:11-17:
“But listen carefully to everything I command you today. Then I will go ahead of you and drive out the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.
“Be very careful never to make a treaty with the people who live in the land where you are going. If you do, you will follow their evil ways and be trapped. Instead, you must break down their pagan altars, smash their sacred pillars, and cut down their Asherah poles. You must worship no other gods, for the Lord, whose very name is Jealous, is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you.
“You must not make a treaty of any kind with the people living in the land. They lust after their gods, offering sacrifices to them. They will invite you to join them in their sacrificial meals, and you will go with them. Then you will accept their daughters, who sacrifice to other gods, as wives for your sons. And they will seduce your sons to commit adultery against me by worshiping other gods. You must not make any gods of molten metal for yourselves.”
And then it hit me: This really CAN be heaven on earth right now. How? No matter where I’m at, I must recognize that this is God’s creation — all of it — and I must possess the land and bless the land for His sake. Wherever I’m at, I must remember that it’s His and I must treat it as such.
But I must confess that far too often I become like the worldly situations I enter into. I begin to speak like them. Think like them. Act like them.
Instead, I must bring Christ into those worldly situations.
In other words, on earth as it is in heaven.
Because it really can be.
(Tim Kolodziej is the author of this piece and founder of EnspireU.com. When he’s not behind a laptop or presenting to corporate clients, he can be found inside a gym helping young athletes create their own unique future — one rep at a time. Click here to connect with him by email.)