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BY PASTOR BRANDON YOUNG
We are living in very troubling times, and there are struggles on every hand. We live in a cursed world filled with heartache and sorrows, and the curse affects all mankind. It is inevitable that all humanity will face pain and suffering. These heartaches rob us of our joy, contentment, and satisfaction. We can easily find ourselves wallowing in self-pity, anxiety, and depression. There is nothing in this world that can alleviate these feelings. The only reprieve we have from this world is a visit to our native country. We must take quick trips to Heaven and stand in the presence of God to recharge our spirit. You may be wondering just exactly how someone can take a trip to Heaven without passing away. 2 Corinthians 5:8 says, “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” We can absent this body without dying by approaching God’s throne in prayer. Prayer gives us a moment to leave this world and enter the realm of the Lord.
We need to daily leave these present sufferings and pain and enter our homeland in prayer. A taste of Heaven is in our closets daily if we would only take the time to pray! Colossians 3:1-2 says, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” Prayer is how we turn our attention and focus towards Jesus Christ and Heaven. We take vacations to our favorite location to escape our daily lives and to recharge and recuperate. When we arrive back at home we are in a better mood, and we are ready to go back to work with a better attitude.
Vacations are important to our mental, emotional, and physical well-being, just as prayer is the spiritual vacation we need for our souls. A vacation can cost thousands of dollars, but the cost to enter into the presence of God was paid for when Jesus died for our sins. All it costs to take a quick trip to Heaven is our time. We must be willing to steal away, turn off our phones and distractions, and seek the face of our Lord. This time with God is invaluable, and without it, we will fall under the weight of this sin-filled world. I found the following story online that demonstrates a quick trip to Heaven.
Richard Baxter was a very effective pastor in England in the 1600s. His whole adult life was spent battling one sickness after the other. He was harassed by a constant cough, frequent nosebleeds, migraine headaches, digestive ailments, kidney stones, and gallstones. He believed in supernatural healing and said several times he was restored to fruitful labor because of God’s direct intervention. He said once a cancerous looking tumor in his throat vanished while he was in the pulpit testifying to God’s mercies in his own life. Yet bodily suffering was with him to the end, and he once said that from the age of 21 he was “seldom an hour free from pain.” One of the effects of this suffering was to make him intensely conscious of how temporary his life is and how inevitable death is. Once, when he was 35, he was bed-bound by one of his diseases and thought he would probably not recover. He began to meditate on the joys of Heaven and the age to come in preparation for leaving this world. He focused especially on “the hope of glory” and began to write his thoughts. To his surprise he recovered, and his thoughts became a book entitled “The Saints’ Everlasting Rest.” He took up the practice of meditating on Heaven a half hour each day because of the powerful impact it had on his life. He commended the same thing to his readers. He said, “If you would have light and heat, why are you not more in the sunshine?”
When the rains of this life come pouring down, and the chilly winds blow hard, take a little trip to the Heavenly sonlight of Christ. These quick trips to Heaven will eventually turn to moving home eternally.
(Brandon Young is pastor of Harmony Free Will Baptist Church, Hampton)