The Wonder of Forever

by:  Lonnie Lane

A gentleman wrote saying he had been praying for a wife for many years but… alas, no one has come to him. He’s
now afraid that God isn’t really hearing him. I imagine he’s far from alone
when it comes to this issue or any issue of unanswered prayers of a heart’s long-time
desire for that matter. Sometimes we long for someone to come into our lives,
and sometimes we long for those who have been in our lives in the past. First,
here’s what I suggested may be an answer for him.

Maybe you’re praying the wrong
prayer request. Why not pray that God will meet all your emotional needs and that
He will teach you how you can find your satisfaction in Him. Then perhaps, as
you become the best you that you can be by following Him more closely, He will
change your situation. I understand wanting to be married, but this life is a
short one really. Eternity with Yeshua is forever. Since He calls all believers
His bride, as strange as that may seem to a guy, I suggest that means finding our
greatest love relationship and emotional satisfaction with Him. I suggest that
as you go through your Bible and in prayer, focus on His love for you and your
love for Him. Fill your heart with Him – as your life’s intention, like King
David did. And then He may give you the desires of your heart when He becomes
the desire of your heart above all else. Rely on the Holy Spirit to show you
His love for you because “we love (Him) because He first loved us” (1 John
4:19).

You are surely not alone in your
desire to be married. It’s a legitimate desire. And it is not that God doesn’t
hear you. It may be that this response to your email is even His calling to you
to hear what He wants to say to you. You may not have been hearing His call to
you to make Him the desire of your heart. He’s there for you. He’s outside of
time and space, so He is always with us wherever we are and whenever if we’re
His. He will not turn a deaf ear to you, but He may well be trying to get your
attention so He can satisfy your heart and take you higher than you expected. When
we think He’s not hearing us, the best thing we can do is start finding out
what it is that He is trying to say to us that we’re not listening to. He’s
unlikely to say more when we haven’t heard what He’s already been saying to us.

I ended my email to this gentleman
with: May His peace flood your soul and bring joy to your spirit.  I was happy to receive a reply from him
in which said he found the suggestions very helpful. My prayer is some of you
will as well. While we’re on the subject, let’s look at this from the other
perspective, that of longing for people you know and love but, like the woman
who is not in this man’s life, they aren’t in yours. I mentioned above that
this life is relatively short, relative to eternity that is. While he or others
may be longing for someone to love and belong to, the flip side of this longing
can be for those who have been in your life and who you desire or long to be
with but for whatever reason, you are unable to be. It could mean parents,
siblings, children, or other family members or friends you’ve known your whole
life, or those who you’ve only known a short while but who have managed to wrap
themselves around your heart. We are separated from loved ones for any variety
of reasons, because of death or distance, chance or circumstance, now or later.
But here’s the wonder of forever. If they are the Lord’s and so are you, you
will be together again in heaven where there is no separation, no chances or
circumstances and surely no distance as anyone or anything is only a thought
away and you’re there! Okay, admittedly this is about deferring gratification till
you’re in heaven but the point is, as believers in Yeshua there is no such thing
as hopelessness or entirely unfulfilled longing. All will find it’s fulfillment
in Him either on this earth in this life or in life hereafter.  

I have found that right here in
this life you can take the love you feel for someone you cannot be with and
give it to the Lord and He will take it and make it something wonderful between
you and Him. You might find relief through Ya’acov (James’) words to “consider it all joy when you encounter
various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in
nothing” (James 1:1-3). When
you think that those words were written by Yeshua’s half-brother, who grew up
with Yeshua and had to deal with all that happened with Yeshua, including His
death, only to find Him alive again, I would imagine Ya’acov had quite a number
of trials to endure, wouldn’t you? What is it like to find out your brother is
God??!! I also wonder if he didn’t long to be with his brother after He
returned to heaven, way more than you or I could, having known him so
personally and loved Him as a brother. Certainly you could ponder this scenario
for a while, couldn’t you?

You may not stop caring for the
person when you turn over your feelings for them to the Lord, but part of what
Yeshua took on our behalf on the cross is our grief and sorrows. This means our
sadnesses and unfulfilled longings. That can be for the spouse you do not have,
or the person you care about who isn’t able to be in your life today. In Yeshua
all things can be resolved. Whatever the issue, He is the answer and the
resolution. In a situation of loss, He is there to understand and see you
through it. “Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider
Yeshua, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession…. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but
One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 3:1; 4:15). In the meantime, you (we) are
exhorted by the Lord to live a full life in the here and now, “beloved, building
yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep(ing) yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our
Lord Yeshua Messiah to eternal life” (Jude 1:20, 21).  

I mentioned before that Sid and I
have been writing a book of testimonies of people who have been to heaven and
returned with their report of life in heaven. We’re thinking of calling the
book, “Heaven Is Beyond Your Wildest Expectations” because it is. Life in
heaven for anyone begins at a welcome area where your loved ones will greet you.
If you get there first, you can go to greet your loved ones as they come
through a kind of veil and are immediately transformed into an age that seems
to be about your thirties, about the age Yeshua was when He died. Unless of
course you died at an earlier age in which case you get to grow up in heaven. If
ever there was a reason to share the truth of the gospel with those you love if
they don’t know Yeshua yet, this is it, that you may share eternity “in the
presence of His glory, blameless with great joy” (Jude 1:24) with them.

When my mom was approaching the
end of her life in her 90’s, we used to enjoy talking about who would be there
to greet her as she came through the welcome area in heaven. If you think it
might be a blessing to those with whom you are unfortunately out of arms reach,
you just might want to tell your loved ones you look forward to one wonderful
day when you will meet them again in heaven at the welcome gate. And then,
together again, where there is no pain, no shame, no age or aging, no distance
or division, where nothing ends and everything is full of light and glory and nothing
will ever separate you again, you can truly live happily ever after.  

*  *  * 
* 

On to another email:  A woman wrote to ask this question: “When
I gave my heart to Yeshua, did I get grafted into one of the 12 tribes?”  There is a lot of misconception about
this issue. My answer to her went like this:  The very short story is you were grafted into Messiah
Yeshua, but not into the twelve tribes. Which tribe would you be grafted into
if that were the case? You can’t just pick one. Non-Jewish believers become a
part of the spiritual descendents of Abraham but not physical Israel. Jeremiah
tells us much about God’s intentions toward Israel. To begin with, the matter
of restoration: “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, “Once again they will
speak this word (in Hebrew!) in the
land of Judah and in its cities when I restore
their fortunes” (31:23). The
church was not restored “once again…in the
land of Judah” because the church never was in Judah in the first place, so
neither was Jeremiah spoken by them in Judah originally so that they are “once again” speaking his words. This
verse also indicates that Hebrew would be again spoken as the language of the
land. This is just one of many, many verses that talk about restoring physical
Israel back to her physical land. It is a fascinating study in itself.

Even when Gentiles are grafted into Yeshua and become part
of the Kingdom of God, if every believer was to become a part of physical Israel,
then no one would be distinctly Israel and the Scriptures that apply to Israel
specifically, to the physical descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, would
become meaningless. That is what “Replacement Theology” has done. It
has applied the covenant and promises of God that He gave specifically to
Israel as if they all applied spiritually to the church, that is to say, to all
non-Jewish believers. Essentially, that belief “replaces” the blessings God
meant for Israel and usually what results in Replacement Theology is that the Jews
and Israel get all the curses. It is an entirely corrupt and erroneous
theology. It has also led to some Christians thinking the church has replaced
Israel and, therefore, Israel is a non-issue with God and as a sad result, some
will find themselves opposing God if they join in satan-motivated hatred toward
Israel, all the while thinking they are on God’s side.  

For Gentiles who have come to
believe in Yeshua, the Holy One of Israel, by the way, you have become a part
of is the Kingdom of God, also called the Kingdom of heaven. The titles are
synonymous. To the Jews who heard Yeshua talk about the Kingdom, it had no
connotation of heaven to them. Salvation to the Hebrews was a national matter
when God saved them from their enemies. Consequently, when Yeshua talked of the
Kingdom what He meant was what had to do with Himself and all that He was doing,
with His work on the earth. Though we know it means life hereafter, it still
means what He’s doing on the earth. The people He preached to didn’t know about
Him atoning for sin. It hadn’t happened yet. What He meant then, was what He
was doing. He said to Nicodemus, “Unless
one is born again you cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). What does
that mean to you? What did you think He was talking about, seeing heaven? He
was discussing with Nicodemus His miracles, His teaching, the things He was
doing at that time. That’s what Nicodemus was asking about, how it is that He
could do those things right there in Israel among the people. He was the King,
though they didn’t know it, and all that surrounded Him was the Kingdom right
there wherever He was and in whatever He was doing and saying. But Nicodemus
was confused about how He could do the things He did. Neither would he, or
anyone else, really have an understanding of Yeshua as King or of the Kingdom
until they could see it by the Spirit, until they were born again.

So whether Jew or
Gentile, both must be born again and both then become equally a part of the
Kingdom of God which is entirely of the Spirit. Non-Jewish believers, some more
or some less, come to have a great love for Israel and the Jewish people,
because they come to love what God loves. That is not to say that God loves
Israel or the Jews anymore than He loves the non-Jews. That’s the beauty of
“one new man” or “one new humanity” of Ephesians 2:14,15. We’re all one in
Messiah. We do not lose our identity as Jew or “Greek” (Gentile) anymore than
we lose our identity as male or female. “For
even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members
of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Messiah. For by
one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or
free, and we were all made to drink
of one Spirit for the body is not
one member, but many” (1 Cor. 12:12-14). So to this dear lady asking the
question, I trust this allows her to feel as much a part of the Kingdom of God
without having to consider herself as part of the tribes of Israel. God loves
her just the way He created her to be. There are no second class citizens in
the Kingdom of God – because it is a picture of the wonder of forever!

If you are a Believer in Yeshua, if you were to die today,
you would find that there is nothing written next to your name in the Lamb’s
book of life except: “Paid in Full by the Precious Blood of the Lamb.” When you
belong to Yeshua, any sins you have committed have been erased and all that’s
there on your record are things for which God will reward you.

I know Christians who are so concerned with whether they’re
getting it all right or dying to self enough or being loving enough…. or
whatever. The focus is primarily on
themselves and how hard they are working to make sure they stay saved. Gosh,
that sounds exhausting. I lived that way once. Believe me, putting your trust
in God and enjoying the rest He gives our souls is far better. When could you
ever do enough to make sure you stay saved anyway? How could you ever get there
if tomorrow you might fail again? When do you get to the ‘resting’ part of
salvation if you’re always trying to avoid failing? Besides, it still isn’t
about what we do, but it’s about what He did. Does it mean we do nothing? Of
course not! We will be REWARDED for our deeds. Remember Yeshua talked about a
reward for giving someone a cup of cold water? He said, “For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink
because of your name as followers
of Messiah, truly I say to you, he will not lose his reward” (Mark 9:41). There really are rewards that God will give us for
some of the simplest things. We think “deeds” means big deal things, but He
rewards the hidden motives of our hearts, not how big a deal we may have made
happen outwardly and visibly. Sometimes we’re so concerned about where we’ve
missed it, that we’re missing some wonderful reward opportunities. One woman
who went to heaven told of how the Lord let her know how pleased He was with
her for baking cookies for someone who was very mean to her. He evidently knew
of the incident and rewarded her for “not
returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead” (1 Peter 3:9). I
find that highly motivating to go love someone for Yeshua today, knowing it
pleases His heart.

If all is forgiven in heaven, it’s easy to love there, right?
But all is forgiven here on earth too for those who have accepted Yeshua’s
atonement for themselves. It’s kind of an all or nothing thing. You either
believe He died for your sins or you don’t. It’s not like He forgave some sins
but not others. He just wants us to believe in His goodness and that He, and
not we, has done all that is needed to restore us to perfect acceptance from
Him. And since He has fully accepted us, then just like in heaven, we should
have no reason to hold things against each other. Forgive, Forgive, Forgive. Bless.
Bless. Bless. Therein is freedom! It
is answering Yeshua’s prayer that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in
heaven. 

Reprint of this article is permitted as long as you use the following; Use by permission by Messianic Vision, www.sidroth.org, 2011. 

Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible Copyright ©1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Calif.  All rights reserved. Used by permission.