I am the Way (John 14)

For most of my adult Christian life I have been focused on getting to heaven. I love to hear sermons about heaven. I love to sing about heaven. I look forward to living in heaven. No doubt eternal life in heaven is a great hope for all believers. There is so much about heaven that really appeals to me. The downside of this approach to the future is we can tend to isolate ourselves from the realities and troubles on earth and set our minds to waiting for the great escape to heaven someday. 

In more recent times I have become more interested in preparing myself, and others, for the coming of King Jesus. It is easy to be satisfied with having my ticket punched for the ride to heaven. But now, I prefer to focus on living life to the fullest measure here and preparing for Jesus to return and set up his Kingdom here. When I was a new believer I heard this statement about some people: 

"They are so heavenly minded, they are no earthly good."

 It was never Jesus' intention that we use our time on earth hoping for an escape to heaven in full health at a ripe old age. He left his followers with work to do. A quote by Eugene Peterson's book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, caught my attention. 

"There are two biblical designations of people of faith that are extremely useful: disciple and pilgrim. Disciple says we spend our lives apprenticed to our master, Jesus Christ. Pilgrim tells us we are people who spend our lives going to God, and whose path for getting there is Jesus Christ. There are no shortcuts"

"Life" in our captioned verse can certainly mean eternal life but I think it also means the abundant life now which Jesus said is a reason He came in the first place. (John 10:10). The abundant life includes worship, transformation, and doing what He has asked us to do. 

Disciples model the life of the master and they do what the master does. Jesus said: "go and make disciples." Pilgrims stay the course and never give up.