How the Promise of Heaven Affects Our Practice of Worship

How the Promise of Heaven Affects Our Practice of Worship BLOG By Vince Wilcox

I've recently published a short, verse by verse devotional on The Lord's Prayer. This week, we're sharing an excerpt from it on the topic of heaven. Whether or not you're a subscriber to Discover Worship—for a very limited time—we'd be honored to give you a free downloadable PDF copy of this 80-page study. Click on the button below to access the PDF. Or, if you'd rather get a Kindle or paperback version of the study, they're available at Amazon.com.

Matthew 6:9 “...Our Father in Heaven...”

Jesus addresses God with tender familiarity but also with profound reverence. For the Lord isn't just “Our Father,” he's also “Our Father in heaven.”

The only things we can reliably know about heaven—and there are many such things—are those God has chosen to reveal to us through his Word. In particular, we read that:

Heaven is the eternal realm where God’s majesty and mystery flow unrestrained from his person, where living creatures constantly praise him, saying, “‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come” (Revelation 4:8).

God’s faithful children go immediately to heaven when their lives on earth are complete (Luke 16:22, 23:43; 2 Corinthians 5:8).
Heaven will ultimately be recreated and reunited with earth (the “new heaven and new earth”) where God will be personally and physically present with his people for eternity (Revelation 21:1-5).

God created Adam and Eve to know him and one another in a physical place, forever. In the beginning, the physical and spiritual realms were unified. But humanity’s sin fractured this integration. Things are no longer on earth as they are in heaven. We not only lost the privilege of Paradise, but we also lost our capacity for intimate communion with God and one another.

Because of sin, insolence, ignorance, and indifference replaced a healthy reverence for our heavenly Father. If we were to actually experience the unapproachable light of God’s holiness (1 Timothy 6:16), we would be mortified by our utter ungodliness. Scripture reveals that even God’s servants were overwhelmed by his presence:

Isaiah was totally undone by his vision of God in the temple (Isaiah 6:5).

The disciples “fell facedown to the ground, terrified,” when they heard God’s voice at Christ’s transfiguration (Matthew 17:6).

The apostle John fell at the feet of the Lord “as though dead” in his vision (Revelation 1:17).

Without divine intervention, heaven would be a place of abject and unrelenting terror. But for his mercy, we would be consumed.

But God gives us more than mercy; he gives us grace.

While mercy is not getting what we rightly deserve, grace means receiving that to which we are not entitled. In Christ, God transforms enemies into family: “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household...” (Ephesians 2:19).

Though we may be residents of earth, believers are also bona fide citizens of heaven who are able to “...approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

The writer continues,“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ‘God is a consuming fire’” (Hebrews 12:28-29).

Notice the connection between acceptance in the Son and reverence for the Father.

Without Christ, we could never approach the King of heaven. In Christ, however, we are beloved by a heavenly Father whose Son has returned to heaven, saying, “...I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:3).

Heaven is a present reality and a future promise.

So, at the outset of his Prayer, Jesus reminds us that his Father is the High King of Heaven. As the apostle Paul will write: “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name” (Ephesians 3:14-15).

Our beloved Father in heaven is also heaven’s revered king. Neither truth negates the other. But together, these two truths make the gospel even more amazing.

We worship on earth—not just in the hope of spending eternity in God's presence with God's people—but in the certainty of that future promise being fulfilled.

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