—By MariaMaria #236 DO 2950 11/94

Heaven on My Mind!

1. (Three days after Dad's Homegoing:) Thanks for all your support and prayers during this time, we can sure feel them! And the Lord is making it so easy! I've got Heaven on my mind!—So I can't think about myself and the loss of Dad's physical presence. When I've got him so much in the spirit, how could I think about the flesh? Well, that was wonderful too, but this is super super super wonderful!

Setting Our Affection on Things Above!

2. Things have been going so well! The Lord has made it so easy. Thinking how Dad can be closer than ever before and how he is happier than ever before just makes me very happy.—And I'm not even really missing him that much because he is so close in spirit. I don't miss the Lord just because He isn't here in person, and it's a little like that with Dad. Of course‚ I had Dad here with me for so long, and his being gone in the flesh takes a little getting used to. But when I think of him in every aspect of his life while he was here, I am reminded how in each of those things he is now completely whole, perfectly strong, wonderfully challenged and absolutely able to do all the things his heart has ever desired, and most of all, work for his dear Family.

3. Dad didn't want me to miss him, and I know he is working very hard at helping me not to. In fact, I had a very strong impression that one of the conditions under which Dad said he would be willing to go to Heaven was if the Lord would promise to make it especially easy for me and his loved ones here who had lived so close to him for so long. Certainly something like this must have taken place, because the peace and well-being which I, and in fact our whole household feel, is nothing short of supernatural. It's been miraculous how the Lord has helped me to set my affections upon the wonderful things—and people—Above. Instead of lamenting Earthly losses‚ I am "grooving" on Heavenly gains!

4. Besides everyone's prayers, I think those wonderful messages the Lord gave about "Dad's Heavenly Welcome" were the greatest comfort for me! (See GN 609.) The Lord actually opened Heaven and let us see what was going on, almost like we were participating, and to get actual messages from dear ones was just the most wonderful experience! I think the Lord needed to give us some real pictures we could hold on to when we might be tempted to wish Dad were back with us. But after hearing and seeing those words and visions from Heaven, how could we ever wish anything to be different? And how could I even sorrow for Dad's physical presence when what I have now is far more precious?

5. I just flashed on the picture of the little girl who has dropped her dolly that she loved so much, and as you see the dolly falling to the ground out of one hand, she's reaching up to receive a real live dove that's coming down to land on her other hand!

6. I've been so richly blessed all my life—in my early years, and then multiplied one hundred fold in my life with Dad and the Family these last 25 years, and now multiplied many times over again with this wonderful wonderful gift of greater closeness than ever to Dad and to Heaven.

Death Swallowed Up in Victory!

7. We, of course, who lived with Dad daily for years, can't help but miss him.—Miss his fellowship, miss his smile, miss his caresses, miss his loving concern‚ miss his encouraging words‚ miss his beautiful songs, miss his bottle-breaking ways of doing things and all the tremendous things about him that we loved in the physical. But if God can give us the grace, and even more than grace—abundant joy and rejoicing and happiness for Dad because he has been released—I know that He can give it to anyone.

8. The fleeting moment of death—when the spirit actually leaves the body—should be swallowed up in victory, so that the fleshly moment of death does not traumatise us! Instead of focusing on his physical presence being taken away from us‚ we should see the wonderful event that is taking place as he enters the Heavenly realm where real life begins!

Seeing Things Through the Eyes of Heaven!

9. Thanks for your prayers for me.—As always, they are a wonderful boost. It's almost unbelievable the grace the Lord has given me for an experience that naturally would have been quite traumatic. When you think of the things the World goes through and what we're not going through, the difference is incredible. There's absolutely no comparison!

10. I've now experienced personally that God miraculously gives joy instead of sorrow, and great peace instead of pain, and there's no way to account for that, no possible explanation in the natural. The only explanation is that God has with great mercy and love allowed me to experience the same attitudes and feelings that exist in the Heavenly realm, where the inhabitants don't sorrow about things‚ they don't fret, they don't fear. Even when they're very involved with what happens down here, and even though they see things go wrong and loved ones go astray and the World go awry, they don't get worried, they don't get uptight, they reflect the Lord's viewpoint.

11. They see things differently Up There, as in that story that Dad passed on to us about Grandma's dream of Lamont meeting his sister Crystal in Heaven. In the dream, Lamont was walking along a beautiful tree-lined roadway and met his sister who had gone to be with the Lord 18 years before. He embraced her, and then he asked her, "Why aren't you grieving like all the rest of them?" And she replied, "We see things differently Up Here!" (See ML #818:33,34.)

12. We get so worried about personal weaknesses and failures. We get so uptight about what others are doing or not doing. We have such problems when things don't go the way we think they should. We have such a hard time if someone we love fails the Lord and goes back. We fret so about our children and their needs. We feel useless when confined to a bed of affliction, and our world collapses if a mate‚ parent or child dies. If we could only see things through the eyes of Heaven, what peace we would have about all of these things!

13. But we can see things the way God sees them, if we will! He has provided us a "peace that passeth all understanding," love that knows no boundaries, transforming power that makes us new creatures, the mind which is in Christ Jesus‚ the ability to do even greater works, the experiences of Heaven right now!

The "Divine Nature!"

14. "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature."—2Pet.1:4. What is the "divine nature"?—It is what God is, and how He thinks and how He acts. And look at the amazing thing it says here, that with these promises He gives us in His Word, we can be like He is! We can partake of those same attitudes, those same feelings, those same ways of looking at things by believing and putting into practice the promises that are right here in the Word.

15. We can transcend the confines of these earthly attitudes that keep us weighed down‚ sorrowful, fretful, worried and fearful. We can not only have a head knowledge of the fact that "all things work together for good to them that love the Lord, to them that are called according to His purpose," but we can actually believe it and practice it, so that it pervades every fiber of our being and we live it!

16. We can be cleansed of all those carnal attitudes and mindsets and mental habits that are earthly and not Heavenly. "Now ye are clean through the Word which I have spoken unto you."—John 15:3. We can be rewired "new creatures in Christ Jesus," where all of our old wrong attitudes and habits are passed away, "and behold, all things are become new"—right here and now. (2Cor.5:17.)

17. The more we live in the Word and believe it and practice it‚ the more we'll be in sync with that Heavenly realm and the folks who are There. The more we set our affections on the things of Heaven and not on the things of this Earth, the easier it becomes to live in this World while we are not of it. It would be wonderful to do a study on all of the Word that explains what the divine nature is, and how we can partake of it.

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family