Mission Venture Ministries

“As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven.” (1 Corinthians 15:48) 

In my walk with the Lord I heard the testimony of a man that now is a pastor. He told the congregation that he was on the verge of killing himself, but seeing a Bible that the Gideon society had left in his hotel room, he put the gun aside and began reading it and ended up dedicating his life to Jesus Christ. 

Scripture tells us that: “The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). 

It is God that leads a person to the gospel. Only God can draw someone to Himself, transform a heart, and change a sinner into a saint. We need to understand that God is sovereign, and the entire world is under His control. Anything that enters our life, whether it’s a blessing or a trial, comes because the Lord has a use for it in His plan, which is always for our good (Romans 8:28). 

Sometimes we wonder why God doesn’t put an end to our troubles and hardships, since He has the power to do so. But He’s working every event in our life according to the counsel of His will. We won’t understand it all until we see Him in glory. 

We need to comprehend that Christians are just passing through this world on their way to their permanent home awaiting them in heaven. Philippians 3:20-21 tells us that “our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.” 

Christ has prepared a “place” for us there (John 14:2), and it is there that we have “an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:4-5). 

In view of such a glorious future, we ought to live not as those who are “earthy” but, as our verse says, as “they also that are heavenly.” We have, indeed, been made “partakers of the heavenly calling,” and so should always, in all we do, “fix our thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our Apostle and High Priest” (Hebrews 3:1), for He represents us even now in the heavenly places. He has gone “into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (Hebrews 9:24), and we have, in effect, already been made to “sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6). 

In these bodies made of Earth’s dust, we need to be aware of our Saviors immeasurable love for us since He came so that “as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Corinthians 15:49). Paul vividly expresses this to the believers of Philippi, when he tells them that God “who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). 

Remember “in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52). 

Christians, indeed, constitute a heavenly people with a heavenly calling, even while still on Earth. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). 

So we must trust Him and His good purposes no matter what is happening in our life and obey Him in everything that we say think and do, until we see Him in heaven and hear welcome home. 

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