Life After Death - Part 6 “Raise Your Sites”

 It’s not that we don’t think often enough about heaven, it’s that we don’t think high enough about it.

 Your perspective of heaven impacts how you live on earth and How you live on earth impacts how you

will experience heaven.

1. We are hardwired to move in the direction of our focus.

Matthew 22:37 Jesus said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'

38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Colossians 3:1 Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights (affection, heart) on the realities

of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God's right hand. 2 Think (focus) about the things of heaven,

not the things of earth. 3 For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 And when Christ,

who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory.

2. John warns not to let pleasure, possessions, and power,

become the love of your life.

1 John 2:15 Don't love the world's ways. Don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the

Father. 16 For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in

our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father but are from this world. 17 And this world is

fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.

 Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels like he’s finding his place in it, while really it is finding it’s

place in him. C. S. Lewis

3. Everything and everybody is waiting eagerly for God's new earth.

Romans 8:19 All creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. 20

Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse. But with eager hope, 21 the creation looks forward to the

day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay. 22 For we know that all creation has

been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And we believers also groan, even

though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released

from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his

adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.

4. Culture says YOLO (“You Only Live Once”)

The truth is (“You Only Live Forever”)

1 Corinthians 15:19 If our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.

Matthew 19:29 Everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or

property, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much in return and will inherit eternal life.