560. An Eternal Perspective

Women World Leaders' Podcast

So many thoughts pass through our minds in a day, but for most of us, few of them have much to do with what God has suggested we think about. What might happen if we could change our perspective? May this podcast by host Julie Harwick bless you!

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Welcome to Women World Leaders podcast. I’m your host, Julie Harwick. Thank you for joining me today as we celebrate God’s grace in our lives, in this ministry and around the world.

Sylvester Foster Porter was the pastor of the small Christian and Missionary Alliance church we attended during my junior high years. In his early 70’s, he and his wife, Helen, were recently retired from being missionaries to the Philippines. They were old school. She played the organ and I never saw her wear anything but a dress, pantyhose and low-heeled pumps – never! He preached through the bible, verse by verse, taking more than two years to get through Revelation. He had several mannerisms that always brought inappropriate giggling from my best friend and me. Mostly bald, he had only a ring of white hair on the sides and back of his head, but it was full and thick. He had a habit of saying, “Oh Beloved,” when he wanted to emphasize something while he clapped his hands to each side of his head, making the hair he had instantly disappear. Seeing him go completely bald just like that always got us going. Whenever he referred to his youth, he’d say, “when I was young and red-headed…” Although I knew he was referring to the color of his hair, I always got a mental image of a small boy with not only red hair, but an entirely red head from the neck up. We were probably 11 at the time, so we were very easily amused. Helen had a common phrase she was known for as well. I can still see her shaking her curly white head and saying to other women of the church, “he’s so heavenly minded, he’s no earthly good!” I didn’t really understand what that meant, but the other ladies would nod and laugh, so I filed it away as something I’d figure out when I was older.

As I’ve thought about her odd comment over the years, I think I know what she meant, but I don’t believe it’s actually possible. Pastor Porter clearly loved the Lord. He loved to study God’s Word, meditate on it and share it with others. I suspect that when it was time for household chores or to listen to her plans for the day, he was often distracted by the many spiritual questions he was pondering. I’m sure she often found that annoying, but on the other hand, I know many women who would give anything to see their husbands occupied with thoughts of God and His truths.

Is it possible to be so heavenly minded, that you’re no earthly good? Colossians 3:12 tells us, “Set your mind on things above, not on the things that are on earth.” That seems like a pretty clear directive and confirmation that Pastor Porter’s mind was exactly where it needed to be. Although Helen Porter was the only person I ever heard use the phrase, “so heavenly minded, he’s no earthly good,” it was a common notion – at least during the life of Christian author C. S. Lewis. In referencing this popular saying, he strongly disagreed. “On the contrary, most of us are so earthly minded that we are of no heavenly or earthly good. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one.”

We are so easily distracted by things that seem to demand our immediate attention. We have jobs, household chores, families to manage, appointments to keep, friends who need us…the list goes on. And add to that Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, our favorite tv shows, movies and sports teams. With all of our obligations, we deserve a little me time, don’t we? There are so many demands on our time and energy, swirling around us like an ever-strengthening whirlpool, threatening to consume us. How could we possibly find time to focus on heaven and things we can barely begin to comprehend?

And yet, these are the very things that scripture commands us to think on. We’re given a list of them in Philippians 4:8. “Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” There aren’t a lot of things on this earth that meet that criteria, so it sounds more like a description of someone who is heavenly minded.

Jesus Himself was certainly heavenly minded. He talked about it 70 times in the book of Matthew alone. 54 of the 66 books in the bible refer to heaven. It’s interesting to note that the bible begins and ends with references to heaven. Genesis 1:1 opens with, “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The final chapter of Revelation says, “He showed me the great city, descending out of heaven from God.” Heaven was one of the last things Jesus talked about with His disciples the night he was arrested. In John chapter 14 we read, “In my Father’s house there are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” Those words were intended to bring comfort to the disciples who were about to face the most devastating 24 hours of their lives. They were also meant to bring comfort and curiosity to us.

As children, most of us did have quite a lot of curiosity about heaven. We asked a lot of questions and our parents did their best to answer. A very common question upon the death of a beloved pet is always, “do animals go to heaven?” As a child, I always thought of heaven as having everything I loved and nothing I didn’t, but as time went by, I thought of it less and less. I heard all the jokes about people who arrived at the pearly gates to be questioned by St. Peter and I saw movies like “What Dreams May Come,” that portrayed heaven as an unknowable, ethereal place as well as cartoons of people sitting on clouds, playing harps for all eternity. None of that made me eager to go there. I believe that one of Satan’s most brilliant moves was to convince our popular culture that heaven is incredibly boring, filled with a bunch of “goody two-shoes, sitting on clouds in white robes, looking like angels. Conversely, many people believe that hell is filled with people who liked to have fun on earth and are continuing the party in hell. It’s a little warm down there, but it doesn’t spoil the fun. Unfortunately, in the case of hell, nothing could be further from the truth. And fortunately, that’s also true of that diabolical view of heaven.

My impressions of heaven changed dramatically when I discovered author Randy Alcorn. He’s written numerous Christian fiction novels that have quite a bit of the story taking place in heaven. I was surprised and delighted at the way he portrayed it. The people who had acknowledged their sinful nature and received God’s gift of salvation through Jesus Christ did participate in awesome, extended worship services standing around the throne, but they did so many other things as well. They spent one on one time with Jesus, having their eyes opened to the way He was working in their lives when they couldn’t understand what was happening to them. They had work to do. Satisfying, fulfilling work that they enjoyed. They had their own private spaces, that God had designed specifically for them that included everything they had loved on earth as well as things they had never imagined. They were able to spend time with loved ones who had gone before them as well as ancestors they had never known and learn how they had been observed at times and prayed for through various trials. The author makes it clear that he is using his imagination in conjunction with what scripture does tell us about heaven and about God’s character. He doesn’t claim that his version of heaven is more accurate than anyone else’s, but he encourages readers to spend time thinking and imagining with him. He’s also written a non-fiction book called, “Heaven,” which I highly recommend. It’s presented in a question and answer format and he does his best to give the logic as well as the faith behind his answers. It’s not the sort of book you read straight through, because it’s deep and challenging, but it’s a great reference source for specific questions and will encourage you to spend more time thinking and imagining what heaven will be.

That’s exactly what I believe Paul intended when he wrote, “Set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth.” The days we spend on this earth are a miniscule fraction on the eternal timeline. And yet, we often live as if this is all there is, consumed by the cares of this world and oblivious to the next, where we will spend eternity. And I know, even trying to comprehend the concept of eternity blows our minds. We are such time-oriented beings, the absence of it is really beyond our comprehension. But God created humans to consider things that are beyond their comprehension – that is how we learn and grow and advance. And no doubt, that is why He challenges us to meditate on things that are above and even beyond our comprehension. That will cause us to learn and grow in our knowledge and appreciation of Him and His creation. It will cause us to advance in our spiritual walk with Him and prepare us for an eternity in His presence.

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