Longing for Heaven

1 Pet. 1:5-7 (no post- everyone was here!)
1 Pet. 1:8-9

"whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith- the salvation of your souls."

Did you ever love someone that you have never met? Have you ever even cared about someone whom you have never met? Wouldn't that be hard? Peter knew Jesus. He spent every day with Him for 3 years. He spent time with Him, ate with Him, travelled with Him, and came to love Him. Peter is amazed that people could love a man whom they never met or spoke with. Truly something supernatural was involved in this ability to love an unseen man. How can we love a man that lived 2000 years ago and feel like we know Him more intimately than men who live today? We have fallen in love with Him from reading about Him in a book. Amazing.

"The salvation of your souls"- Here we discussed how our sins are washed away, but our salvation is not complete. "Now is the time to struggle and fight, tomorrow comes the crown". BTW, where is that from?

Then we had a looooong discussion of what heaven is like. The new heaven and the new earth may be more like things that we know than we think it will be. The God who created all of the nature that we see and also granted us relationships with other people, has somehow involved His character in all of His design and the end result in a perfect world may just be what life is like now with all of the sin removed.