What we will be
‘What we were, what we are and what we will be’ was the title of the 22nd Sussex Youth Conference.
Mick Lockwood applied this to believers’ lives (but it had some relevance to our meeting place too, as the new Ebenezer Chapel in Brighton had only opened two weeks previously!).
‘What we were’, we were reminded, was not the usual self-estimation of ‘Pretty good on the whole’, but how God saw us. Each of us is unique, but sinful. What we are like spiritually is far worse than we can possibly realise, because of the deceitfulness of our hearts. This led us, if now Christians, to humbly accept the invitation to turn to God.
So we are now blessed, with a focus on God himself, following Christ’s lifestyle and doing his work. ‘What we will be’ is beyond our understanding, but effectively Jesus says (as in the upper room with his disciples), ‘Heaven is where I am, and I want to spend it with you’.
Jesus came, suffered and died so that we would no longer be separated from God by our sin. Now, heaven is no gamble or vague, uncertain hope; nothing can spoil our heavenly home. ‘Everything will be perfect in the presence of Christ himself’.
God willing, we return to Hailsham Baptist Chapel on 7 May 2011, when Steve Nowak from Brighton will speak on ‘Christian living in a world of lies’.
Martin Humphrey
