Revelation 18:14
All the fruit for which you longed has gone from you; all your luxuries and sparkling objects have been destroyed; you won’t find them anymore.
Eternal life is more descriptively translated as “The Life of God’s Coming Age”.
It’s more than simply living forever. If it’s only the aspect of never-ending living, then I’m thinking there’s quite a few of us who’d say, “Maybe I’ll pass on that.” Because the more you think about it, the less attractive it becomes. There’s the obvious thoughts of boredom, even if everything’s going just how you like. In fact, it might just seem super boring because of that!** That is, if we imagine eternity with the minds and lives we have right now.
But if we have received God’s Life, and are cultivating the growth of that very Life in us, allowing and fostering it to take over us in mind, body and spirit, then forever—as long as it’s thought of while possessing God’s age-to-come Life within us—sounds more and more appealing, more and more like home, our true home.
Jesus inaugurated God’s coming age. This is the age Revelation speaks of—when God’s kingdom is realized in full. Until then, we are privileged to help usher it in all over the world. And this has been happening for 2,000 years. Don’t let the media fool you, there’s more good happening on earth now than ever before. God’s kingdom spreads and expands, like a mustard seed infiltrating the cosmos, and germinating exponentially over time.
When we entrust our lives to Jesus, we are given the Life of God’s coming age. But much is up to us as far as how much of that Life we “use” or live on. The more we chase and hold on to the things this world offers us, the more energy and potential from God’s Life in us that is drained and wasted.
You can’t fully grab on to God’s world with both hands if you still have a grip on any of the things of this world which you think satisfy, or will be the fulfillment of your deepest longings.
Living in God’s domain (the King’s Domain—”Kingdom”), means necessarily forsaking the world’s domain as the object of your longings.
We are not merely living to get to some future, faraway, foreign place after we die, and that starts later. We’re living for/in God’s coming age which has already started with Jesus’s earthly life, and which we as active participants are gloriously tasked with bringing more and more into reality even before we die! And this, via God’s actual Life and energy in us, animating us as we bring God’s kingdom to fruition—God’s desires for how he’d like to see his world run.
We use the optimal energy of grace and Holy Spirit, for that is the only way it can really be done, and it is being done right now in our world.
Are you a part of this?
Are you feeding on God and actively bringing God’s coming age into reality in this age now?
**For an excellent commentary on this idea, watch The Twilight Zone episode 28, “A Nice Place to Visit” [pictured below].
