Present with the Lord!

Sept. 23, 2013 Monday Message:

We’ve been examining the most-asked Bible/Christianity questions, and #4 is, “When you die, do you go straight to heaven?” A considerable amount of confusion and misinformation surrounds this topic, so once again we need to check our Bibles.

We must first understand that our soul, our true essence, is a spirit-being, just as God is a spirit-being. For the believer in Jesus Christ (and that’s the key, being a believer in Jesus, adopted into the Holy family,) the Bible says that after death our souls/spirits go directly to be with Jesus, while our body goes into the ground. Dust to dust. Our spirit can be with God right away because our sins have been forgiven by the work Jesus did. So, soul with Jesus – and physical body “asleep in the earth,” or as the Bible says, “away from the body, at home with the Lord.”

But when Jesus returns, everything changes. Our bodies will awaken and rise again, just as He rose again, and our spirit and body will reunite. If your body was sick or old or run-down, don’t worry – we will all be given beautifully restored, glorified bodies at that time. God-the-provider will see to it that we have exactly what we need as He creates (restores) the new heaven and the new earth. At that time, our eternal destiny won’t change; the precise “location” of our destiny is all that changes.

So remember: “Absent from the body – present with the Lord!”

Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship (JICF) meets every Sunday at 10:30am in the North end (gym) of the Oliver Ministry Building, 2647 Bloomington Ave., Minneapolis. This Sunday, Sept. 29, Pastor Michael Pilla teaches about the lost sheep and the lost coin, Luke 15. Join us!

NL