Making It To Heaven

You will seek Me, and will not find Me; and where I am, you cannot come. (John 7:34)

You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13)

As a person raised from birth to live as a Christian, I have been seeking God, or at least some version of that, my whole life. In my early years I was not so much seeking God Himself as seeking to keep Him appeased enough to let me live for eternity and not burn in hell. I was never too sure about wanting to live that close to Him in heaven but I liked the descriptions of all the fun activities. And since the alternative was far worse I kept pursuing a life of trying to be good enough to fulfill all the requirements that were being handed me by religious people to make it into heaven.

I can see now that my mother was not satisfied with this kind of religion and was beginning to seek to discover something better, something more heart-oriented than the behavior based, controlling, external appearances kind of religion that was so pervasive all around us. She was agitating to experience and share a religion that would work more from the inside out based on love, but she met almost insurmountable resistance from my father and all the others who were firmly in charge of the church and religion. She died when I was only sixteen and never knowing how much things would change after her death, though it took many years to develop.

When I was somewhere in my thirties and had a family of my own, I began to feel confronted by the Spirit that the religion I had assumed was from the Bible was not the kind needed for true salvation. A rule-based religion focused primarily on behavior control and keeping up appearances was not the kind of religion that would bring about the desired results I needed to experience. Slowly I began to sense more and more the Spirit guiding me to challenge and expose many false assumptions I had grown up with in religion and to become aware that only a religion involving my heart and emotions along with my head would prepare me to live enjoyably with God for eternity.

When I read the above verse from John this morning, it suddenly aligned itself in my mind with the very similar verse from Jeremiah and really highlighted this important truth of a heart-based relationship with God. I was raised by people who opposed the idea of true religion as an intimate relationship with Jesus. Additionally it was considered dangerous to have a solid assurance of salvation, so you might be able to imagine a little of what my life was like in those early years. But this is always the sad result of living under the counterfeit system of religion that is based more on fear than on the attraction of love.

I am now learning more and more how important it is to keep my focus on knowing Jesus personally rather than becoming caught up in allowing guilt and shame or fear becoming the dominant force in my life. But this is far easier to say than to actually stay. In fact, Paul speaks of this as the fight of faith. And since faith is what happens spontaneously in a relationship with someone who is trustworthy, then the real battle is to keep my attention on deepening my relationship with Jesus rather than on trying to keep up the appearance of having a relationship without really engaging my heart in it.

When I look at the difference between these two very similar verses above, it become clear that the primary element other than seeking Him is my heart. Unless my heart is involved and engaged in the relationship there can be no lasting change in my life. I may attempt to look like what I think a Christian should look like and act like what people think Christians should act like, but unless I allow Jesus and His Spirit full access to the messy areas of my heart, my emotions, my painful, wounded places deep inside that fill me with shame and fear as well as challenging the intellectual beliefs that I hold to, I cannot enter into the kind of saving relationship that will prepare me to live in love with Jesus for all eternity.

Jesus repeatedly makes it clear that our greatest need is to come to Him. But in this verse He mentions those who may end up seeking Him but not being able to find Him because they fail to come to Him in the way necessary to encounter Him effectively. Unless I am willing to give my heart access and permission to come into the open along with my mind and I lay aside my obsession for keeping up appearances, I may never enter into the rest that Jesus promises those who come to Him. The rest that Jesus offers me is that assurance that I am loved, accepted and wanted in heaven and in the heart of God. It is a heart kind of rest and the only rest that really refreshes and brings new life into the soul.

Jesus, give me this rest today. Fill me with Your presence, Your peace, Your compassion and love and humility. Make me a channel of Your grace and peace to others so they will come to want to know You better for themselves.