Not Happy In Heaven? # 1

Not Happy In Heaven? # 1

Not happy in Heaven? You are surprised at reading these words. Not happy in Heaven? Why, is not Heaven a place in which all who get there will be happy? Yes, but there are thousands and thousands who never will get there! They are not in the way to Heaven; and, unless they become quite changed, they will never get to it. And further - even if they did, if they could, they would not be happy there!

Still you are surprised. You have never perhaps thought much about Heaven - what sort of a place it is and what people do there and what makes it happy. But you have never had any doubt that it is happy. You have always heard it talked of as the happy place; you have heard people of all sorts say that they wished to go there when they died, and hoped they would go there. So of course you have always thought it must be a happy place.

If I asked you where you hoped to go when you died, you would answer, "To heaven."

But are you sure that you would be happy there? Are you certain that it would be a happy place to you? Let us look into this matter more closely.

There is no sin in Heaven.

Do you love sin? Is there some one sin to which you are more given than to others, one which you will not leave off - a "bosom sin"? Have you such a sin? You could not keep that sin in Heaven. But you love it. Nothing can make you part from it here on earth. Then how could you be happy without it there in Heaven?

Grant for a moment that you could get to Heaven just as you are: unchanged, unconverted, with all your love for sin still in your heart - how could you be happy there without your sins? You would not be fit for such a place. You would not enjoy it. All your tastes and pleasures would be different from those in Heaven. Heaven would be no Heaven to you!

But what do people do in Heaven? Read here: "Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple" (Revelation 7:15). Would that make you happy? Judge by what makes you happy now. Do you love the house of God? Are you glad when the Lord's Day comes, and you can go there again? Do you take delight in drawing near the throne of grace? Do worship and prayer give you comfort and make you happy? Prayer of all kinds - public prayer, family prayer, private prayer? If not, you would not be happy in Heaven.

What! You who neglect prayer in your family, and seldom bend the knee in private, and think it a burden to go to one service on Sunday, and perhaps do not even as much as that - can you suppose that you would be happy in Heaven, where they "serve Him day and night in His temple?"

Why would you love it there; any more than you do here? Why would not the worship of God in Heaven be as great a weariness to you as His worship on earth is? And then consider - here it comes only now and then; there it will be every day, day and night, always, forever. Would you be happy there?

And who live in Heaven? Not as on earth, people of all sorts, good and bad, serious and careless, holy and unholy - but only the holy. There will be none but holy people there. Do you love such people now? Are you glad to meet them? Do you take pleasure in their company and conversation? Perhaps not. Perhaps you rather dislike them, than otherwise. It may be that you sneer at them; and that (though you have no reason whatever to doubt their sincerity) you are in the habit of calling them hypocrites, and so forth.

If so, how could Heaven be a happy place for you? Heaven is the home of such people - their city, their country, the place to which they are going, and for which they are longing, the place where they will be forever - they, and none but they. If you do not love them now - would you love them then? If you do not like their company below - would you like it any better above? Only consider, you who mock them and jeer at them now - how would you feel toward them then, and how would you like to find yourself alone with them forever, with none of your favorite companions near, none near you but those very people whom you have disliked all your life long? Would you be happy  with them?

~Francis Bourdillon~

(continued  with # 2)