All Things New - What Will It Be Like?

is to get into heaven, right? Like that is the destination. So when you're there, then what's the goal? You just sit there.

One of these days I die, and I go up to this place, and there's a gate, and there's a bunch of people, and I'm in the line, and then they're gonna decide whether I get to go through the gate, or I get kicked out. And everybody's gonna be jimmying, if you will, for God's presence at the time, and that there's not gonna be in any place for me with them. I always thought that this thing like a really faceless place. We're not gonna know who our spouse is.

We want to know our children. What kind of place is it? It's kind of a nothingness. Somehow I will transform into some being that's okay with having their face on the ground in front of God for eternity, and almost being afraid for eternity.

But apparently what I was told was hell was worse than that, so that's what I should want, because those are my only options. Oh, I get it. You can't hope for something that doesn't take your breath away, but we don't spend our unending life in heaven. It's gonna be right here on a restored Earth.

All your special places, all the things you love, we have so much to look forward to. So I want to keep talking about the hope, of the restoration of all things, all things being made new. It is a hope so much greater than just merely avoiding hell. Most of us came into the faith, because we were told if you don't follow Jesus, you're going to go to hell.

And there is truth there, that Jesus is the one who pays the price for our salvation. And avoiding hell is a big deal. Don't get me wrong, that's not good. But I want to talk to you about greater hope than that.

And a greater hope than just the amorphous kind of understanding of heaven that so many of us have, and have been given over the years. I want to talk to you about a hope, the writer of the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, described as a hope that can anchor your soul. A hope for your future, that when you really, really believe in it, and hold onto it, it can change your present. So we've been looking at some of the stuff that John Eldridge highlights in a book that he wrote called All Things New.

And he at one point in his discussion, he talks about goodbyes in life. And he shares a story about the loss of the childhood of his kids, and it resonated so deeply in my soul. For me, some of the most painful moments in my life, maybe actually the most painful moments in my life so far, have had to do with the letting go of my kids that I love. Courtney is my oldest.

And when Courtney was getting ready to go off to college, the truth I was reflecting on this week. I remember we knew it was coming, but I couldn't even talk about it. If I talked about it, I'd start to get emotional, I'd start to well up, and I just couldn't deal with it, the thought of going off to college. But the day it got closer and closer, and we looked at schools, eventually it became the day she was going to leave for college.

And again, it was the kids gathered around, and everybody said goodbye. We packed the car the night before, because it was gonna be so emotional. And everybody's hugging, and kind of crying, and Joan and I jumped in the car with Courtney, and off to school we headed. And it was about an hour and a half drive, and it wasn't all that much talking in the car.

I remember like if I started to think about it, or I'd start to cry, so it was just like, I'm gonna focus and get this done. And we drove all the way down there, and as I got off the exit on 95, and I started pulling up to the college, I thought to myself, here it goes, like this is like the worst thing that's about to ever happen to me. And I pulled into the campus, and I was expecting to see this bustle of activity, and it was very quiet, and I thought to myself, well, maybe this'll help put some bomb on my soul that's breaking, and we drove up to our dorm door, and pulled on it, and it was locked, and saw somebody there and said, hey, what's going on, my daughter's here for school, and they said, oh, that's tomorrow. So, pack the car back up, drove home, and did it all again the next day.

It was a completely true story. So it hurt like heck twice. I remember when my son John had his last wrestling match. If you wrestle, almost everybody that ever wrestled was the last time you wrestle, you lose.

It's just part of the sport, and I remember the last time he wrestled, and he lost, and he ran off the mat and went out in a hallway, and was just sobbing, and then I ran into the hallway, and John ran into the hallway, and we were all just sobbing, because it was the last time he'd ever wrestle, and I've done it with Caleb. Soon I'll do it with Caroline. It's hard. If you think about it, it's kind of, there's a point Eldridge points out for most of us life, especially the older we get, it becomes this long series of goodbyes.

Think of it, right? Many of you have already said, goodbyes you didn't want to say. You've said goodbye to your grandparents. Some of us have said goodbye to our parents.

Horrendously, some of us have said goodbye to our kids. We said goodbye to our own childhoods. The older I get it, it just seems like these goodbyes keep coming quicker, and they hurt like heck. It was interesting.

Jesus doesn't speak a lot about goodbyes. Jesus doesn't speak a lot about closing doors. It's steady speaks about a concept of the renewal and the restoration of all things, all of the things that you and I love. Here's what he said to those that follow, people like you and me.

He said, truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the son of man sits on his glorious throne, everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children's or fields for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. And he introduces this concept, which is new to us, the church used to sing about the hope of heaven. And now we're just so focused on trying to get some hope here. But the followers of Jesus, they were aware of this concept.

The prophets had foretold of this day, this promise. They had heard of the promise. And now Jesus was detailing the promise for them. When he spoke of the renewal of all things, that word renewal was a word, palim genassia, it was a Greek word, it was derived from two roots, palim which was again, genassia, which was me beginning.

And it harkens us back to Genesis, Genesis again, Eden restored. We get to go back to what we were made for. Our story ends where our story began. We get to begin again.

In life, there's not many chances to do that. That's why you can't speak about our destination, without understanding our origin, without understanding the beginning. That's why we spent the winter understanding from whence we've come in our series origins. If you've ever wondered about this world of ours, if you've seen something on the news, if you've watched what's happening to your kids, if you have tasted life in this world, I guarantee you there have been moments, maybe lots of moments in this life where your heart has wanted to cry and scream.

It's not supposed to be this way. It's not supposed to be this way. And you're right. Both are beginning and are ending.

Screams, it's not supposed to be this way because you and I were created for something so different. So, well, in the words we've got himself so very good. The writer of the creation poem, In Genesis, the writer of the creation poem, he says that we were created in the image of God with the breath of God to be in many ways like God, bearing his image. We were created as creatures with purpose and dignity.

We were created in love by love, for love to be loved. We were created to walk with God, to walk with one another naked, unashamed, no hidden agendas. We were created to reign in an unbroken world, to live eternally, forever and ever, enjoying God, his creation, each other at peace with all of it, forever and ever and ever. And that's why we wander around this place sometimes and go, man, it's not supposed to be like this.

Now, making a mistake about our decision to be our own gods has made and does make a mess of the world and our lives and others' lives. But Jesus' promise is that for those who would follow him, it will not always be like this. In the end, he is going to fix this. It is all gonna be made new.

Peter, who heard of teach about the palangenacea, he said this about Jesus. He said, heaven, this is where Jesus is right now, where God is, where those who have died in Christ, those who love, that's where they are. He says heaven must receive him, until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. Again, this is like the best kept secret in Christendom.

You're not just promised heaven. A promise of, it's so hard for us in that video, just said, to wrap our minds around, we're promised something far better. The word Peter used for restore was the Greek word, apochatostasis. It's the same word used to describe what Jesus did when he heals a paralytic's hand.

He doesn't give him a new hand. He restores the hand to its original state. That's the promise. That's our destination, the renewal of this world.

Everything that we love, remade, restored, and we get by faith to enjoy it together as it was meant to be forever and ever and ever, amen. Now, the conclusion of the Bible, John who is the follower of Jesus, he writes this book called Revelation, and he speaks of a pronouncement of God. This is what he said. He said, behold, I'm making all things new.

Now, notice God doesn't say, I'm not making, I'm not making new things. I'm making the things you love here, the earth you love, the places you love, the people you love, through faith by faith, I'm making them all new and perfect. For those who follow Jesus and who themselves will be made new, he promises that when this kingdom comes, nothing that is precious to you in this life will be lost. Nothing, no memory, no event, none of your stories, none of their stories.

He says, listen, if you would follow me in the world to come, no brother or sister or father or mother or wife or children or field that was lost will be. It'll all be returned to you. Now, what does specifically that mean? Here's my goal, my goal is to demystify this a bit.

So you begin to long for it, to hope for it, to rest in it and be changed by it. They've done studies on hope. You know when people are most excited for their vacation? You know when they're enjoying their vacation the most when they're planning it?

Statistically, you can check it out. You don't enjoy your vacation nearly as much as you think you're going to, right? Because you're so excited about going there, right? The hope of that gets you through long periods in your cubicle, right?

This is the concept of what I'm trying to get you. I want us to begin to hope, to believe, to get through this life, hoping, believing, demystifying the concepts of what would come next. Now, that was going to ask you, because I need you to buy this field. That's what Jesus would put it in.

So you need to buy, you need to sell everything else and buy this field. If I wasn't asking you, OK, well, I want you to be excited about the renewal of all things. Before the series, I said, OK, you're going to go to heaven. What are you going to do there?

You ever think about that one? I mean, how excited could you get? If you don't really know what you're going to do. I mean, float on a cloud, right?

That's the picture we see a lot of times. Play the harp. Check out the new wings, I guess. There's a lot of talking in the scriptures of singing, right?

If you're not a singer, that's not that exciting. Those aren't bad things. But as I talked about last week, I'm not sure that all of us are dying to go to an eternal church service in the sky. I'm not sure that that's what we're looking for forever.

And the really good news is that is not what is going to happen. That is not what you were going to get. At the renewal of all things, this is really OK. Stick with me.

It's going to blow your mind, but it's pretty cool. At the renewal of all things, it becomes, it is not a new story for you. It is your story continued. It's your story, the one you're living now, but it is perfected.

What happens in the kingdom to come is tied very closely to what happens in this one. Let me explain what I mean in terms of what are you going to do, for example, in Genesis, in origins, right? Since that's where we're going back to. Here's what the scripture says.

God said, let us make human beings an army. To be like us, they will reign. You were created to reign over the fish and the sea, the birds and the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground. You were not created to be subjects in a broken world.

You were created to be rulers of a perfect one. This is why here we go. Something's all right. Since the dawn of time, this wonderfully creative, fully powerful creator, who is perfectly capable of reigning himself, for some reason, love, has chosen instead to partner himself up with his created, to reign with them.

I mean, you see this in the garden, right? Think about it. Would God not have been perfectly capable of naming the animals? Would he not have been perfectly capable of naming them better?

Who comes up with Artvark, right? You see God shaking his head going, well, that's not the one I would have gone with, but I guess Artvark, right? I mean, he made them, but he says to Adam, Adam, come here. Come here.

Here's what I want you to do. I want your input on this. We're going to name the animals. Give me some feedback.

I want to hear what you think. Actually, that's not even true. What he actually said is Adam, I'm a character. Here's what I want you to do.

I want you to name all these animals. God, you do it. Adam, here's what I want you to do. I want you to take care of this place.

I'm giving it all to you. You're going to reign here. This is yours. There's work to be done here, Adam.

There's work to be done to make it all it is meant to be. And it's going to be meaningful and fulfilling and purposeful. And God, who could do all of it by himself instead, he chooses to let us do it. And so he gives to man every talent, every ability, every skill that would be necessary to make his creation, all that it could be.

He could have done it himself, but instead, he gives his created the ability to do it. And he will walk with him. He doesn't give all of the talents to one man, but instead he says, no, go, be fruitful, multiply. Fill the earth, reign over it.

I'm going to go with you, but go and enjoy and discover it. Your gifts, your talents, take this place and reign. Now we know what happened, right? We spent a lot of time this.

Sin gums it all up. And part of the curse, right? We got kind of pulled out of the garden. Was the creation no longer was going to work this way.

It was not only going to work with us, the scripture says through painful toil, you'll eat food from it all the days of your life. Now it's going to produce thorns and thistles for you. And you'll eat the plants of the field, but by the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food. And work became just that.

It became work. Most of the sad reality is, most of us never, we're going to go to our graves, never doing what it is that we want to do or what we were made to do. Most of us never get to be who we're created to be. Do you know why?

Because you've got to go to work. But the cry of our soul, as we sit in our cubicles day after day, is there has got to be something more than this. And Jesus' answer is, there is, see, in the chapter of our lives to come, when the renewal of all things takes place and God restores us and the earth, he tells us to go do what we were meant to do. Again, last book, the Bible, John from his revelation, says this of Jesus.

He says, for you were slaughtered, and your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people in nation, and you have caused them to become a kingdom of priests for God. And what are they going to do? Rain. And they will rain on earth.

In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, it says we were created to rain. In Revelation, the last book, it says we will. When all things are made new, you and I are actually going to get to do what you were made to do. Poets will write.

Singers will sing. Dancers will dance. There will be no more working nine to five. All of us cubicles are destined for a special place in hell.

Amen. Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet, he saw this coming. He said, look, speaking for the Lord, he said, look, I'm creating new heavens and a new earth. No one's even going to think about the old ones anymore.

Be glad, rejoice forever in this creation. And look, I'll create Jerusalem as a place of happiness. Her people will be a source of joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and I'll delight in my people and the sound of weeping and crying will be heard in it no more.

Guys, in the renewal of all things, there will be cities there, buildings, art, theater, streets. If you think I'm making this up, if it sounds all too familiar, then you don't have a problem with me. You have a problem with Isaiah, who in the next verse said this, in those days, in these days, people will live in the houses they build and they will eat the fruit of their own vineyards. These are my houses in the kingdom, people are going to build.

Many of us, if you've been around the church, you know there's going to be this great banquet when it all culminates. I mean, who makes the wine? You think God just zaps all this stuff into creation? Who makes the table?

Who cooks the food? Who sings the songs? Who makes the instruments? Can you imagine the taste of the food?

Can you imagine the music? Well, we're all doing what we were created to do. There is no working for a paycheck in the kingdom. There's only working for the king.

Jesus, when he was speaking of the palant, Genesia, when he boarded up, it was actually in response to Peter's question. Peter asked this question, the scripture says, Peter said to him, we've given up everything to follow you. I love this. What do we get?

It's funny, you read it and it just sounds so coarse, right? Like, what do we get? It just seems so selfish. Like, you're just waiting for Jesus to let him have it, right?

Like you, so I'm about to go to the cross and you're worried about what you're going to get. But Jesus doesn't rebuke him. In fact, he encourages it. He promises reward.

He's going out. And here's what you're going to get. Everything that you've given up, you're going to get 100 times more. There's stories and stories and stories recorded in the scripture about rewards in the kingdom to come.

And it's all summed up by Jesus when he says, listen, don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where maul is in vermin destroyed, where thieves break in and steal, store up for yourselves treasures there. He told a story. He said, a nobleman was called away to a distant empire to be crowned king and then returned. But before he left, he called together 10 of his servants and divided among them 10 pounds of silver, saying, invest this for me while I'm gone.

After he was crowned king, he returned and called in the servants to whom he had given them money. He wanted to find out what their profits were. The first servant reported, master, I invested your money and I made 10 times the original amount. Well done, the king exclaimed.

You're a good servant. You've been faithful with the little lion trusted to you. So listen to this. So you will be the governor of 10 cities as your reward.

Not 10 clouds. Not you're going to get a bigger harp. He's given more. He's given cities to reign over.

How he lived church, listen me now on this. Because we get this all confused. How he lived in this life impacted his reward when all things get made new. When all things are made new, your story gets told rightly.

We have this misunderstanding that the life to come is unrelated to the life we live. Dallas Woolard has a great line for he calls it the cosmic car wash. He said somehow there has been perpetuated in the church. This story that, oh, when we die, we all go through this cosmic car wash and we all come out the same.

We all just come out. We're all the same. Nothing that happened back there has any impact over there. And Dallas Woolard says it can't be further from the truth.

How you live here impacts who you are there. And it has lots of implications. One that's pretty exciting, though, is that the renewal of all things. Here's what I want you to know.

All of your hidden choices, all of your secret sacrifices, all of the decisions you made to maintain your character, to overlook offenses, all of these times where you've said, Lord, in this life, it's so hard. But I'm going to try to follow anyway. Your decision to stay in the tough marriage. Your decision to give all that money away.

Your decision to pass up on the promotion. Your decision to not backstab in the office. Your choice to make the awkward call that needed to be made. Your story gets told rightly.

Jesus says, don't worry about trying to get everybody here to know about it, because I know about it. And there is going to be reward. The other day, I snowed right, and I went out to snow blow the driveway. And I was trying to be a good dad, and Courtney's car was out there, and it was all covered in snow.

So I cleaned it all off, and I warmed it up, and finished the driveway. And now I was just going to move her car, so it was my soul, my life. I'm like, I'm just going to move this car, so it's perfectly positioned for her, so she backs out she doesn't worry about catching the corner of the snow bank. And so as I moved it, I was so worried about her not catching the corner of the snow bank, I caught the corner of the snow blower, and put a giant scratch all along the side of her relatively new car.

And I went inside, and there she was watching TV with her coffee, and I said, well, good news to bad news, court. And I remember, I said to her, there's an old saying that says, no good deed goes unpunished. See, we have a cynical view of that, but in the renewal of all things, every good deed, every right choice, everything you do in this life to follow Christ and invest over there, no good deed goes unrewarded. Jesus goes, build your treasure up there, the return is fantastic, it's like 100 times.

And then lastly, let me demystify this one for you. What are you going to be like there? Again, John said that he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There'll be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.

All these things, they're gone forever. And the one sitting on the throne said, look, I'm making everything new. And then he said to me, write this down. Make sure you write it down, because it's trustworthy and true.

No death, no sorrow, no crying, no pain. It's all gone. You will be you, will be, completely renewed. Body, soul, spirit, you're getting a new body.

Can I get an amen? Because this one is falling apart. I can get hurt now sleeping, which is not even exaggeration. Wake up and I'm like, I have no idea what I did, but I can't move.

Now, you might hear this, and it's like, oh, that just sounds like silliness, an unaging body. I mean, you think about it out of any, right? They weren't created as infants. Well, God created them back to the palagenosine.

Back to Genesis again. They were created, full blown adults, perfect eternal bodies. This is what we're going back to. I don't know what that age is, right?

What would be a good one? I don't know. Maybe. I'm thinking 20-something.

I don't know. But you might look at it and go, that sounds like fantasy world, right? But just like last week we talked about the creation of being restored, how it's all going to be restored, back to what it was meant to be. And I said, look, it sounds far-fetched, but you're going to drive home in two, three, four weeks from now.

Right now you drive home. Everything is dead, dead, dead. In four weeks you're going to drive home, and you're going to see nothing but flowers, and leaves, and trees. And it's all going to be renewed.

But the same thing is true of you. I mean, if you were at the flood a few weeks ago, I was coming home. I was trying to work. I'd be here for a few hours, and I would just go home and sleep.

And then you know what happened one day? Like, I was better. Last week I told you to sort of Caleb when he split his spleen in half a few weeks ago skiing. So you're not a rush to the doctor.

They show us the x-ray of Caleb's spleen. And you can see it's torn in half. They showed us the piece that's hanging off. And then they showed us the liver.

And they said, we're not sure if he tore his liver, too. There's a lot of blood over there. And I'm going, oh my gosh, this kid is going to die. What do we do?

And he goes, what does nothing we do? It heals itself. I said, what? He goes, yeah, as long as he doesn't lose too much blood.

This will heal itself. But we have a hard time to believe. I mean, do you know that the scientists will tell you this is true. It sells every seven to 10 years in your body.

Your body, your molecular structure, your cellular structure, completely replaces itself. This is what is happening in this world. It is happening right now. Why would it be so hard for us to conceive that it actually would happen that you would get a new body, a non-aging body?

My poor father, I mean, his body has been falling apart for years. He got arthritis when he was young. I mean, he's got spinal stenosis. He's had both knees replaced, his hip replaced, his ankles fused.

The guy can barely stand up, but he keeps telling me he's going to play golf. Every spring he tells me, this is the year I'm going to play golf. He's probably not watching. So he's probably not playing golf again.

I can't wait to play golf with my dad again. It's not just your physical body, though, which sees the renewal. No sorrow, no crying, no pain. The renewal of all things, our hearts are going to be set free from grief.

And the joy that this is going to bring to you will blow away the promise of physical relief. Jesus, when he announces his ministry, 30 years old, kind of lives under the radar screen. He comes into the temple one day to kind of identify himself as the hope of the world. He identifies himself by quoting from the prophet Isaiah.

And here's what he said. He said, the spirit of the sovereign Lord because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted and to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from the darkness for the prisoners. What will it be like for you when you are set free from everything that this broken world has done to break your heart?

To be set free from all of the internal junk and bondage and brokenness and pain. You know that voice in your head that keeps saying things to you? I had a friend that met me out in the hall last week when we were walking out. And he said, you know what?

I can't wait for the renewal of all things. The first thing I'm looking forward to is not hearing this anymore. That voice, it goes away. The guilt, the self doubt, the anxiety, the fear, the perfectionism, the fear of failure, the need to perform, the need to achieve, the need to compete, the wounds left on your soul, the father wounds, the sexual wounds, they all go away.

I thought about this yesterday. I embarrassed myself up here, but I might as well just share this one with you because the Lord pointed it out to me, so I go to the gym yesterday, but join it, take in my car. And so I needed headphones because I was going to do, I was going to be on the elliptical for a while. And so I couldn't find any, I have these, my son, these really nice Bluetooth bows headphones, go on your earphones, earphones, whatever, earbuds.

And they're very cool, you know, no wire, all the rest. And that's what I use when I go to the gym, but I didn't have them because you want to take my car. So I start scrounging through the drawers, you know what I'm going to do, this is home, so I start scrounging, they've got to be a pair of headphones around here. So I find an old pair of the Apple headphones that came with the phone.

So I go to the gym, I'm on the elliptical, I'm popping away. And in walks, I don't remember who it was, somebody. The first thought to myself was, well, this person's going to think I'm a loser because of these headphones. See, they don't know that they actually have a pair of bows Bluetooth ones at home, right?

But they're seeing you with these, so they're probably thinking that this is all I have. Where does this stuff come from? Do you ever just do one? Where does it come from?

You do this, right? Somebody else does some of this stuff? I'm sitting there going, she's judging me, he's judging me based on my headphones, and I'm feeling inadequate. And that's funny, I guess, or sad.

But you know, when I was 17 years old, I was at a big time track meet bubble bar. I was jogging around warming up. And these two girls jogged by in the opposite direction. And they started laughing.

And I thought they were laughing at me. And I'm 50 years old, and it still hurts me to tell you that. I'm still embarrassed by that. What will it be like when all of that is gone?

I mean, if you could just taste the joy of it, if you could just get a sense of what it would be like, I think hope would come into full bloom. I mean, when you think about what this means for you, how about when you think about what it means for your kids, those people that you love, your sons and daughters are going to be healed of whatever it is that's happened to them? The social pressure, the hurts, the addictions that steal their lives. The things that you and I have inadvertently said to them that they carry all gone physically, emotionally, those that you love who have put their faith in Christ, they are going, what will it be like for you to be seeing them, the people you love, set free, and become the sons and daughters, the men and women that they were meant to be?

I had an aunt named Joyce. My grandmother, she was born with cerebral palsy. This was back in the 40s. My grandmother carried like a month past or two date or something.

And so when I went to mess with my poor grandmother's body up and then when my grandmother delivered, my aunt, it was a traumatic delivery. So back then, they would give you a sedative and knock you out. And so my aunt was delivered and my grandmother was in her room coming to waking up from it. And she was in a hospital and had two beds.

It was in the maternity ward. And the one woman that was next to her husband came in and said, greet his wife. Oh, I'm so excited. The baby is so beautiful.

Oh, did you see the baby? Oh, she's fantastic. But you should see that poor little hawk baby, which was my grandmother's little girl. And so my grandmother took care of my aunt with cerebral palsy, her whole life.

I remember as a kid, I didn't understand. I was six, seven, eight years old. And I would be coloring books with my 40-year-old aunt. We would color it together.

And I just thought to myself, what's it going to be like when my grandmother sees her little girl made new? See, I need you to feel this, because I need you to have this hope. Watch this. So Maddie was born.

And right away, we knew something was wrong. She had a piece of one chromosome missing. And our lives became all consumed by figuring her out and how to provide for her, but how to maintain our lives, too. So we called it Planet Maddie.

And on her planet, they don't do this. And on her planet, they eat like this. And they grow slowly. They grow slowly.

And they talk in high squealy voices. Other than crying and laughing, she did talk and say anything. Couldn't express herself well. You kind of understood her moods by just knowing her really well.

When you have somebody like Maddie, your friends kind of sort out right away, because the friends that can take it are your friends. And the ones that don't just drift away. Everything she did health-wise, she rebounded from. She looked so frail and she was so tough until we got the diagnosis of her heart.

This was like a crack in the shell of Maddie Invincible. Asked him, you know, how can you treat it? Can you treat it? And he said, there's really nothing.

He said, this is how she will die. And very kindly, but no mistake about what this diagnosis was. Yeah. We're in December of 99.

And yeah, she passed out. You know, we looked at each other and we said, it was her time. A tiny little person that never spoke had a huge, huge impact. So the hope for me started to rise in knowing that this wasn't the end of her story.

And when you're raising a child with no voice, you don't get to hear their voice. They're true, not just the sound, but their expression and their thoughts. So I long to hear her side, you know, to hear her input, to hear what did she really enjoy. And her time on Earth was really pretty short, less than nine years, but to have an eternity with her and to see the restored Maddie as a family and to have who we were meant to be now expressed.

So it's still sad. It's still painful and it hurts now to think about it. But it's not the end of it. It's not all there is.

It really is going to be renewed. It really is going to be different. It is so good. The idea of ever waiting in a new Earth, locking eyes, I know it will be her.

She'll be perfect and will run for each other. To be restored, I needed to feel that. What you were meant to be, those you love, renewed. I need you to feel that.

You will do forever and ever what you were created to do. You will receive in that life to come. And you will richly be rewarded there for all you have given up here. Those that you love for once and forever will be who they were meant to be.

It is not a distant, amorphous promise. It is a present hope. You can feel it. And if you do, it can be come for you and anger of your soul.

See us, Lewis, roll this. If we consider the unblushing promise of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promise in the gospel, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures. We're fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us.

And like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies and a slum, because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. Father, may we understand what has been meant, promised to each of us by the offer of a holiday at sea. In the great name of Jesus I pray.