TransParenting is a thought-provoking call for mothers and fathers to remain exceptionally involved in their children’s lives even as they approach a more independent state of adolescence. Parents are indeed mentors who know and love their children better than anyone else and should never take lightly the development of each child’s spirituality, friendships, and more.
Rise up from slumber. Set your mind and heart on an inheritance that will blow your mind. Feel your heart flutter and find a new passion for life here and now. This is the call from Ted Dekker, who writes with passion and insight on the search for happiness and heaven.
“Are you desperately longing for heaven?” It’s a question that begs answering. Peter says, “we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth” (2 Peter 3:13). But, in fact, as Christians today are we? Are we actually looking forward to and longing for our eternal home?
Heaven plays a major role in my novels and nonfiction. Researching my book Heaven, I read 150 volumes on the subject, many long out-of-print. I’ve taught a seminary course “A Theology of Heaven.” I’ve received literally thousands of letters and emails about heaven. There’s a great deal I don’t know, but one thing I do know is what Christians think about heaven. And how seldom we think about it.
Sadly, Ted is right when he says “the church today has little passion for the coming life.”
What a contrast to the early Christians. Their pictures on the catacomb walls portrayed heaven with beautiful landscapes, children playing, people feasting at banquets. Believers throughout the ages saw heaven as a constant source of strength and perspective. It was their central reference point, the north star by which they navigated their lives. But today, heaven has fallen off our radar screens.
What God made us to desire is exactly what he promises: a resurrected life in resurrected bodies, in a resurrected community, with the resurrected Christ on a resurrected Earth. This is the eternal heaven that awaits us, and should daily capture our imaginations.
Ted’s right—we’re slumbering. We need to wake up and smell the New Earth. Taste the coming resurrection. The doctrines of resurrection and New Earth mean that this present world, though suffering under sin and curse, is bursting with clues and foretastes of the coming world.
The Carpenter from Nazareth is preparing a place for us. He knows how to build. He’s constructed entire worlds, billions of them. He’s going to strip the damaged paint off the old Earth, sand and refinish it, then present it magnificent and pristine. He says it will one day be our home...and His, for He will dwell there with His people, forever bringing heaven to earth (Revelation 21:3).
With the Lord we love and with the friends we cherish, believers will embark together on the ultimate adventure, in a spectacular new universe awaiting our dominion and exploration. Jesus will be the cosmic center. Joy will be the air we breathe.
And right when we think “it doesn’t get any better than this”—it will.
So listen to Ted Dekker’s wake-up call. You’ll never regret the world you’ll wake up to...not in a billion years.