Hearing His Voice #269

The voice said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must happen after this.”

Revelation 4:1

“He’s so heavenly minded he’s no earthly good.” That common expression describes someone who is fully preoccupied with spiritual truth and may seem to others to be out of touch with real life. But real life is all about God and His Kingdom, and what many people call “real” life isn’t very real in the eternal scheme of things. The fact is that we are only good to worldly realms if we have something of heaven’s truth to impart. The fuller we are of that truth, the stronger our impact can be. We best serve “down here” by going “up there” to fill ourselves with revelation from God.

John was given a startling invitation by a loud voice from heaven: “Come up here, and I will show you.” It’s also an unanswerable invitation from a human point of view. We have no ability to enter heaven through an open door standing above us without divine intervention to enable us. John would have surely gazed at that open door and wondered how to get to it if not for a sudden shift in his perspective. At once he was “in the Spirit” and viewing the panorama of heaven’s throne room. There he received visions that still inspire and amaze us today.

That’s a graphic picture of how we hear God’s voice. There is an open door standing above us, and we have no ability to enter it. Yet somehow, by being “in the Spirit,” we do. In that place of communion with the God who is on His throne, we perceive pictures and sounds and words that fill our hearts with the wisdom and purposes of God. Like John, we may not know how to interpret them at first, but we are somehow changed simply by the experience. And we become heavenly minded enough to offer exactly what earth needs.

Lord, I would love to come up there, but I can’t unless You take me. Fill me with Your Spirit, take the blinders off my eyes, show me the realities of heaven. Let Your Kingdom come on earth, in my life, as it is in heaven.