4:13 Podcast: Can I Live Like Heaven Is Real? With Philip De Courcy [Episode 388]

Philip De Courcy: Our aspiration should be heaven. A man was asked one day, you know, "Do you expect to get to heaven?" He said, "I already live there." And there's that sense that I've got to have heaven on my mind. Heaven can't wait. It's not just a destination -- which it is, we started the broadcast -- it's a place.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right.

Philip De Courcy: But it's an orientation. It's a mindset. And as a Christian, I've got to bring that mindset to everything I ought to do. It's an aspiration. It's a longing. It should shape my thinking. It should affect the way I think about money, right? Because my treasure is in heaven. It should affect the way I pray, because we're told to pray, "Your Kingdom come." It should affect the way I sorrow and suffer because my suffering is not to be compared to the glory that awaits me.

Jennifer Rothschild: Sometimes when we think of heaven, we might imagine, you know, like, chubby cherubs and pearly gates and glowing halos and endless, endless, endless singing. But if that is all that heaven really is, what hope and relevance does it even have for us today? Well, fortunately, a biblical view of eternity can give us far more, way more.

So today's guest, author and pastor Philip De Courcy, is going to reveal the impact that a heavenly mindset can have on your everyday, right now life. You are going to hear engaging stories -- with, by the way, the most lovely Irish accent -- you're going to get theological insights, and, best of all, you are going to get a deep knowledge of Scripture. So let's get a very clear understanding of our inheritance so that we can live the hope of heaven right now.

Here we go, KC.

KC Wright: Welcome to the 4:13 Podcast, where practical encouragement and biblical wisdom set you up to live the "I Can" life, because you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.

Now, welcome your host, Jennifer Rothschild.

Jennifer Rothschild: That is my Seeing Eye Guy, my friends, KC Wright, with a little bit of sinuses going on. Did you notice? Our friends who have known you for a while --

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- they heard just a little bit.

KC Wright: A little bit.

Jennifer Rothschild: A little bit. I think it makes you sound manly.

KC Wright: Oh, thank you. Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: Anyway, I'm Jennifer, and I'm here to help you be and do more than you feel capable of as you're living this "I Can" life of Philippians 4:13. And it's just two friends here in the closet, with one topic -- one of my favorites, by the way -- and zero stress, because we are talking about heaven.

KC Wright: Ooh.

Jennifer Rothschild: I've written a Bible study on heaven. You know it's one of my favorite subjects.

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: (Singing) Heaven.

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, it's not just for someday; it's for this day. So you're going to love hearing from Philip De Courcy.

But before you do, you've got to hear from my friend KC, because he and I have been talking, talking, talking. I finally said, "You just need to stop" --

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- because we need to tell our friends, Because what you do not know, my people, over the holidays -- well, right before Christmas --

KC Wright: Right, right.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- and then we've had holidays -- it's been busy -- KC went to Vietnam on a mission trip. So besides all the beautiful spiritual fruit -- okay, you know the man. It's funny.

All right. So let's start -- tell them why you went to Vietnam. Give us just a brief overview of the beautiful spiritual fruit. But, like, I just want us to go to the funny things like you getting your suit tailored and how you preached and what they ate. All right, go.

KC Wright: Okay. Loved it, loved it, loved it. It was a trip of a lifetime. Ten days in Vietnam. The flight over there is a humdinger. Sixteen hours --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

KC Wright: -- from Los Angeles to Hong Kong. Then, wait, you're hopping on another plane to go to Hi Chi Minh City. Anyway, it was magical, it was phenomenal. One hundred said yes to Jesus.

Jennifer Rothschild: Hallelujah.

KC Wright: Yes. You know, with me, everything is a comedy show.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes, it is.

KC Wright: I mean, there's just never a boring moment in my life.

Jennifer Rothschild: So you preached?

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: And you had an interpreter?

KC Wright: Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Rothschild: But you didn't wear normal clothes when you preached, evidently?

KC Wright: So it is custom over there, you do not enter the House of the Lord with shoes on.

Jennifer Rothschild: Ooh. Well, I love that idea.

KC Wright: So you must be in socks. Now, if I would have known that I was going to be preaching in socks, I would have packed some nicer socks, right?

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

KC Wright: I mean, I just packed some boring socks because I didn't think anybody was going to be looking at my feet. But they are so sweet over there. I love them so much. They love to laugh. The Vietnamese love to laugh.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, no wonder they love you, because you're funny.

KC Wright: So we connected instantly.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

KC Wright: So you would kind of tell a one-liner, like, "Hey, good thing I'm leaving Tuesday because I've ate my weight in mango." And then the interpreter would repeat that and then the church would laugh, right?

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay, that's funny.

KC Wright: And then some of the pastors found out that I was single, and they were trying to find me a wife in the congregation.

Jennifer Rothschild: A little cute Vietnamese wife.

KC Wright: Yes. Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: But you didn't come home with a wife?

KC Wright: No.

Jennifer Rothschild: You came home with a suit though?

KC Wright: I did.

Jennifer Rothschild: All right. Tell us about the suit.

KC Wright: So it is a tradition with a lot of people -- and I just learned this -- that when you go over there, make sure you get fitted for a suit. Because a suit there, probably valued with U.S. dollars is over $1,000, right?

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

KC Wright: But you can get a suit there for $100.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's amazing. And they're amazing seamstresses.

KC Wright: They're beautiful.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

KC Wright: Right. So I got fitted for a suit.

Jennifer Rothschild: Wow.

KC Wright: I ate things I never thought I would eat.

Jennifer Rothschild: Like?

KC Wright: A lot of -- I watched a lot of people eat snail. I never did that. They were popping snail like I pop popcorn. Not this guy.

But I love the Vietnamese coffee. I brought J.R. home some coffee.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. And some Vietnamese tea --

KC Wright: That's right.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- I'm very excited about. I haven't even opened it yet because I'm still eating my way through Christmas leftovers and gifts, like chocolate and coffees from that. So I haven't even opened your Vietnamese yet.

KC Wright: Another sweet thing they did is every time I would preach, they would present me with a bouquet of flowers. Well, you know, as a guy, no one's ever given me flowers.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's beautiful.

KC Wright: You just don't do that here. But they want to honor you and love you with a bouquet of flowers.

They're so hungry for the Word of God. They worship like I've never seen people worship before. The children stand in the aisles of the church, hands lifted, weeping and crying. The hunger for God is incredible.

Jennifer Rothschild: Wow.

KC Wright: So God is moving in Vietnam, and I will go back.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes, you will.

KC Wright: They love to laugh, I love to laugh; they love Jesus, I love Jesus. But next time I'm bringing an empty suitcase to bring back more treasures for the people that I love.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right? Well, and who knows, you might need another suit.

KC Wright: Yeah. Right.

And one thing, one last thing. Like I said, my life is never boring. But when we were coming back into the country, we got through customs again. And when we hit security, of all the people's tickets to get flagged, mine got flagged.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, no.

KC Wright: So I got pulled into the back. My team actually --

Jennifer Rothschild: But the way -- and which country was this?

KC Wright: This was in Vietnam.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay.

KC Wright: I was leaving Vietnam.

Jennifer Rothschild: So you're in the Ho Chi Minh City airport?

KC Wright: Right, right.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, my gosh.

KC Wright: And I'm leaving. Yeah. So my entire team moves forward, but I'm being held back. My team was concerned. I was covered with the peace of God. Anyway, long story short --

Jennifer Rothschild: Why'd they pull you over?

KC Wright: Because I had an iPad and a ridiculous amount of magnets I bought for family and friends, and the magnets with the iPad was triggering the alarm, whatever it was, saying that there was a battery in my bag. Anyway, they laughed --

Jennifer Rothschild: Only KC.

KC Wright: -- they laughed it off and sent me back to my group. But when I returned to my group, I'm telling you, they were having a prayer meeting. They thought KC's going down.

Jennifer Rothschild: I love it.

KC Wright: This is the end for him.

Jennifer Rothschild: He's going straight from --

KC Wright: They thought I was being interrogated, but it was just magnets and an iPad.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, that makes so much sense.

KC Wright: Once again, never boring in my life.

Jennifer Rothschild: Never boring. Never boring.

KC Wright: But I can't wait to go back.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, I can't wait to see you in your nice new suit.

KC Wright: Yes, I'm going to wear it on Easter Sunday and preach.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, you're going to look so nice. A man in a good suit, that's a good look. That's what I'm saying.

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: I remember when Phil and I were dating, and he worked at the university and they had to still at that point wear, like, tie and -- I just thought he was so cute in his tie and his dress shirts and his suits. Mmm. Anyway...

KC Wright: You got to look sharp.

Jennifer Rothschild: You got to look sharp, that's right. A man in a suit is a good thing.

All right. Well, let's get on to this conversation with Philip, because, oh, my goodness, you know this -- because this is one of my favorite subjects. But I love this guy. He is charming. He just has the joy. When I got to go to Ireland, there's just a lightness and a joy just as a culture. He's got it. You can hear it in his voice. Anyway...

So let's introduce Philip De Courcy.

KC Wright: Philip De Courcy is the senior pastor of Kindred Community Church and a dynamic speaker on the national media program "Know The Truth." Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Philip became an engineer and also spent six years as a reserve police officer in North Belfast, where civil tension and terrorism were commonplace. After being called to full-time ministry, he pastored a church just outside of Belfast and then came to the United States where he graduated from the Master's Seminary and served in churches in Southern California and Central Ohio. He and his wife, June, have three grown daughters and one son-in-law.

Okay. Get ready for a great conversation. And you are going to love his accent.

Jennifer Rothschild: You will.

KC Wright: So here we go.

Jennifer Rothschild: So let's start with this, Philip: definition. Because so many people have so many different definitions of what heaven is. So tell me, what is heaven?

Philip De Courcy: Yeah. Well, before we go there, Jennifer, thank you for having me on the program. I appreciate you, your ministry. I know you've written on this subject yourself, and so I'm glad you've added to the church's knowledge of what lies ahead.

In terms of a definition of heaven, I think at the baseline, heaven's a place. In some sense, heaven's an orientation. But at the end of the day, in John 14:1-6, Jesus tells us, "I go to prepare a place for you." And I think we need to, you know, nail that one down to the floor. I think people think that heaven's a mindset, heaven's an experience on earth perhaps. But biblically, heaven is a place.

Paul talks about the third heaven, which I think is the heaven where God dwells and where the departed live until a new heaven and a new earth. And I think it's something we need to underscore. I think throughout church history at times, the church has been affected by Greek philosophy rather than biblical theology, where there was a discounting of the body, a discounting of the material, where things are ethereal and spiritual. But ultimately, heaven is a place where God dwells, where his throne is, where the angels abide and serve God, where departed souls of the saints are with God. Absent from the body, present with the Lord.

And then ultimately -- let me get into this, Jennifer. I think this is something I wanted to get in towards the end of the book when I talk about the new heaven and the new earth ultimately. So there's a present heaven right now. And in some senses, we could say it's a temporary heaven, because the ultimate heaven and the eternal experience of God's people will be back on earth, according to Revelation 21 to 22, where God will renew this earth, remake it, and we will be back on this earth in a resurrected body, exploring it, enjoying God. Almost Eden restored, Eden regained.

So I'll stop there. But fundamentally, heaven's a place where God resides, where the saints will dwell. It's a place marked by peace, joy, holiness, by the affluent presence of God and his glory, and it's a place I want to get to sooner than later.

Jennifer Rothschild: I know. The more you know about it, the more you understand why Paul says, "I long to be there." I long to be there.

Philip De Courcy: It's better, right?

Jennifer Rothschild: Right, it's better.

Philip De Courcy: It's better to be with Christ.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's better.

So here's the question, Pastor. Because what I heard you say is there is a present heaven. And I know, you know, people smarter than us call it the intermediate state. And then there's the eternal state of that, like, forever heaven of the new earth. But what does that mean for someone right now who just lost someone they love? They were a believer in Christ, they were in Christ, and they just died. So where are they right now, and are they alive in that place?

Philip De Courcy: Yeah. I deal with that in a chapter in the book. I call it "During the Interval." That is the interval between now and the eternal state of the world to come. And Paul addresses that. If someone's listening today, my heart breaks for you as your heart breaks. And it's not unspiritual to weep. It's not unspiritual to ache for the presence of a loved one. Paul doesn't dismiss that in 1 Thessalonians 4 when he addresses those who have loved ones who have fallen asleep in Jesus. But he would remind them, "We sorrow, but not as those without hope." And then towards the end of that Chapter 4, verse 18, "Comfort one another with these words."

So that's the beauty. We will sorrow, we feel the sting and the thievery of death in this present experience. But as Christians, if we're in Christ, if we have embraced the Gospel of Christ's atoning death and Christ's physical resurrection and him as the only mediator between God and man, then we have hope in the Gospel because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and though a man die, yet shall he live.

Jennifer, I love that story about D.L. Moody, the Billy Graham before there was a Billy Graham. And he said to his congregation one day in Chicago, "Someday you're going to read in the papers that D.L. Moody is dead. Don't believe it. D.L. Moody will be more alive than he's ever been before."

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: So to your question are our loved ones alive, yes. And sadly, there's a dark side to that. The dead are alive whether with Christ or without Christ, whether in heaven or in hell. There's a consciousness. There's an eternal conscious punishment for those who rejected Christ and trembled underfoot the blood of the cross, but there's an eternal conscious joy for those who are in Christ.

In the chapter -- we'll not get into the depth of this, but I'll hopefully whet the appetite. Whereas -- my mother died just a couple of years ago and it got me thinking a lot more about heaven. And she's with the Lord. So Paul talks in 2 Corinthians 5 quickly about three states. He talks about we're clothed. That's our present existence. We've got a body and we've got a soul. The body is subject to death, the soul is eternal. And when we die, there's a separation takes place where the body is put to rest in the grave. The cemetery means a place of sleeping. The body is kind of laid down like someone's sleeping to be resurrected.

The spirit goes to be with Christ. Absent from the body at death, present --immediately present. We don't believe in soul sleep, we don't believe in purgatory, we don't believe in some intermediate existence. It's earth to heaven or it's earth to hell. And that's the reality Jesus talks about, right? Two roads, two destinies, Matthew 7.

But you go from being clothed with the body to being unclothed. So I believe our loved ones are in -- their spirits are with Christ. Some theologians wonder, are they given a temporary body? I'm not going to fight that, but I don't see that. I don't see that promised anywhere. I think Paul says we're unclothed, we're naked. So the spirit is with Christ. And again, that doesn't mean they're less than what they were. Our identity's certainly tied to our corporality, but it is not the fullness of who we are. And God is spirit, without a body, until the incarnations, and God's real. So you can be in a real state as a spirit.

And then they'll be clothed again or clothed further. That's when Jesus returns with those who the spirits that are with him, perfected and returns, and their bodies are resurrected, 1 Thessalonians 4, 1 Corinthians 15, and now they're in that perfect state.

So long answer, but, hey, our loved ones are alive.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. We need that.

Philip De Courcy: If they're in Christ, they're with Christ. And they are enjoying his presence and they've no desire to come back, they have simply a desire for us to join them.

Jennifer Rothschild: You know, I've often thought how Lazarus must have felt when Jesus called out Lazarus, "Come forth." I wonder if he thought, No. Really? Don't make me.

Philip De Courcy: It's true --

Jennifer Rothschild: Don't make me come back.

Philip De Courcy: -- you know. That's a great thought. And he came back to die again --

Jennifer Rothschild: I know.

Philip De Courcy: -- you know. Poor man had to die twice.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Philip De Courcy: But again, a wonderful illustration of what we will enjoy. But it's a good thought. You know, it's a bit like -- again, Paul got a taste -- right? -- of heaven and saw things that no man should see. And you can sense, you know, the struggle as God humbled him back on earth, waiting. And in some sense when Paul says it's far better --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Philip De Courcy: -- he should know because he got a peek.

Jennifer Rothschild: He should. He did. He did.

Well, and what's interesting to me is -- you know, as I ask you these questions about heaven, I'm reflecting a lot, of course, of what the believer in Christ wonders about heaven. But here's the thing, Pastor. You write in your book that most people, humanity in general, has this innate belief in heaven. So talk to us about that. Because it's not just believers in Christ who thinks there's something that comes next. You contend that all humanity does.

Philip De Courcy: Absolutely. I talk about that in a chapter on John 14. You know, it's innate to the human nature. There's a desire for a heavenly state. There's a sense that this can't be it. There's a James Bond movie called "The World is Not Enough," and I've always kind of been -- you know, thought about that titling. People know this world is not enough. It's not.

And in the book I talk about three things that kind of fuel our desire for heaven and inform it. It's God's Word to us. Thankfully God has pulled back the curtain. I mean, 25% of the Bible is prophetic. The Bible is historic, but it's also prophetic. God wants us to understand there's a world beyond this world.

One of the striking words in the Book of Revelation is "behold" or "see." God wants us to see something beyond what our eyes can view, right? We walk by faith, not by sight. So God's Word to us fuels that. Where we read the Scriptures, the God who came from heaven wants us to be with him in heaven, and he helps us see something of what we can look forward to.

Then there's God's witness in us. The Holy Spirit has been given to us, according to Jesus, as an engagement ring, a sign of, hey, the bridegroom -- I'm coming back for my bride, and the spirit within you causes you to desire heaven and desire me.

And then as I've said, God's world around us. This is a fallen world. It's a sin-cursed world, it's marked by death, it's less than what it was. And we know innately Ecclesiastes 3, God has put eternity in our heart. You and I were talking before the broadcast here about my upbringing in Belfast. C.S. Lewis, he -- I'm paraphrasing. But somewhere C.S. Lewis talks about if we have got desires that can't be fulfilled in this life, it's got to be a harbinger or a telltale that maybe we're made for something more than this life.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: And the world around us -- I was going to say I love it. I appreciate Romans 8. We groan longing for the liberation.

And so God's Word to us, God's witness in us, God's world around us. But it all fuels this sense that, hey, there's a life beyond this life. That's why I call the book "Life After Life."

Jennifer Rothschild: Which I love, by the way. I love that phrase, "Life After Life."

And, you know, Pastor, as you describe that too, speaking of your kindred, C.S. Lewis from Belfast, he also talks about just these desires that we feel, as you quoted, but he talks about, like, a baby doesn't have a -- a baby's hunger doesn't mean necessarily that baby's going to be fed immediately, but it's a representation that food exists. And so as we've got this ache in this life for something more, it represents that something more exists. Even that groan of the beauty of this world, it's an imperfect beauty, but it makes us ache for more. So, yeah, it's all this -- they're all pointing. They're pointing to the reality.

Philip De Courcy: That's why the New Testament talks about looking, right?

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Philip De Courcy: I mean, the first chapter in my book is called "Heaven Can't Wait," and it's based on -- all my chapters are based on an exposition of a passage because I'm committed to biblical exposition. It's Colossians 3:1-4. Seek those things that are above. Set your affection. You know, Jennifer, our longing, our aspiration should be heaven.

A man was asked one day, you know, "Do you expect to get to heaven?" He said, "I already live there." And there's that sense that I've got to have heaven on my mind. Heaven can't wait. It's not just a destination -- which it is, we started the broadcast -- it's a place.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right.

Philip De Courcy: But it's an orientation. It's a mindset. And as a Christian, I've got to bring that mindset to everything I ought to do. It's an aspiration, it's a longing. It should shape my thinking. It should affect the way I think about money -- right? -- because my treasure is in heaven. It should affect the way I pray because we're told to pray, "Your kingdom come." It should affect the way I sorrow and suffer because my suffering is not to be compared to the glory that awaits me.

And it should affect my appetite. I mean, Philippians 3:17-21, Paul talks about, you know, there are those whose God is their -- their belly is their God. They've got earthly appetites. But we don't. We desire the heavenly, the lasting, the eternal. It should affect the way we bury our dead. 1 Thessalonians 4, "Don't sorrow." Christian funerals should be marked by dignity, mourning, but there's got to be an element of celebration. We're not like the Greeks, we're not like the Romans, we're not like the pagans where we stare into a grave, a hole, and think that's it, that's where it ends.

And then it affects the way we face persecution, because we're willing to suffer for righteousness sake knowing that God will reward us, Matthew 5:12. And I could go on, but the point is this. Heaven, while it's a destination, it's a mindset. It's something that should, you know, shape our thinking and our living.

My dad's still alive, Jennifer. He's 92. He's a deacon, was a deacon for many -- he's not a preacher. But I heard my father preach a message once, and I've never forgot it. Here's a verse maybe your listeners have never thought much about. I don't know if you've reflected on this. It's Jeremiah 51:50, where the exiles of Israel who were in Babylon were told this as they worship and prayed towards Jerusalem. There's a little phrase that says, "Let Jerusalem come into your mind." And my father preached that very devotionally one day at my church in Ohio. And he said, "There's coming a new Jerusalem and a new world, and we've got to let Jerusalem come into our mind."

We're exiles. We're pilgrims. And I'm bothered -- maybe a subject you and I can talk about briefly. Why is it, Jennifer, the church doesn't let Jerusalem come into its mind? Why aren't we thinking more about heaven than we do? What's your own thoughts on that?

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, you know, I think part of it is we hesitate because that which we don't have certain knowledge about, we avoid because we don't like uncertainty. But the thing is, Pastor, we can have -- we may not have perfect knowledge about heaven -- I'm sorry, I got that wrong. Well, we don't have perfect knowledge. If we can't figure out all the answers to our questions, we avoid thinking about it. But we can have certain knowledge. Jesus said, "I go to prepare a place."

So unfortunately, I think sometimes we are all so committed to self-preservation, we don't want to think about death because we don't get to heaven until we die or until Jesus returns. We get too attached to the things of this earth, we get too involved in what's relevant and what's about me. And when you really think about it -- well, let me tell you this, Pastor. Okay, let me just say this.

When I first started studying heaven myself, the Lord really revealed to me that the reason I wanted to go there was very self-centered. I missed my dad. My dad died. I happen to be blind. My vision -- I will see, I will know, you know, I just -- I will be relieved of my suffering. So for me, heaven became this very Jennifer-centric experience, and that's why I wanted to go, until I really studied it and I realized that's not the point of heaven. Jesus is the Treasure of Heaven. It's that full union that my soul was made for. And when God began to shift my longings, I cannot desire earth more than heaven, because I know every longing I have will be fulfilled in heaven.

Philip De Courcy: That's good.

Jennifer Rothschild: And so I think -- you know, I gave you a lot right there. But I think that's part of the reason. We're so self-oriented that we just don't really clue in to -- if we really love ourselves the way Jesus loves us, then we would love heaven more, because that's where every desire is met.

Philip De Courcy: Yeah, I love that. And look, we don't want to discount the new body --

Jennifer Rothschild: No.

Philip De Courcy: -- and we don't want discount to the reunion of loved one. That's held out to us as the carrot on the end of a stick. But at the end of the day, you're right. You know, one of the things about Revelation 21:22, the new heaven and the new earth, the Lamb is the light.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: I talk about the splendor of the city in my last chapter. And Christ is the splendor.

And you know what the inverse of that is? I was convicted even as you talk. On the days I don't long for heaven, there's something missing about my love for Christ. Because if I truly long for him -- and that's what Paul challenges us. For me to live is Christ, and dying is gain. And when we don't want to die, or death becomes this -- it overwhelms us, if we've got more negative thoughts about it than positive thoughts, more fear than hope, we have lost sight of Christ.

And if I'm living for Christ -- I think John Piper talked about this one day in a sermon. I heard him at the Shepherds Conference. Here's the little syllogy he puts together. If I'm living for Christ, and heaven is more Christ, then death is gain, bring it on. Bring it on.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: And I want that. And I need to be in that state of looking onto Jesus, the author and finisher. Or I love -- Jude 24, is it? Looking for that mercy from heaven.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: You know, old Vance Havner talks about -- you know, he imagines a girl standing -- it's wartime -- standing on the platform. She's longing for the train that's about to arrive. But why is she longing for the train? Because of her soldier boyfriend on the train. And we long for the world to come. We long for the kingdom to come. We long for a world without sighing, crying, and dying. But, boy, it's who's on the train. It's who's -- it's who is coming, not what is coming.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. I'm telling you, Jesus is the Treasure of Heaven.

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[PARTNER INTRO - Palm Beach Atlantic University]

Jennifer Rothschild: I will never forget sitting outside Dr. Ingle's office right there in Borbe Hall at Palm Beach Atlantic University, where he helped me take my statistic exams. Now, some people call statistics "sadistics." And let me just say there is a reason for that. It was hard. And this was back in the day when computers and accessible software, they just weren't existent, or at least not what they are today.

And so being blind, I literally could not navigate all the charts and formulas to pull off statistics. So Dr. Ingles, he would sit outside his office -- because he was my stats professor -- and he would read the exam to me. He would help me navigate charts, and he would read me formulas so that I could take each of those tests. Amazing, right? Well, that professor, he perfectly captures the spirit of the university where I graduated, Palm Beach Atlantic University.

PBA is a relationally caring, academically challenging, oh, and spiritually enriching university that you need to know about for your kids and your grandkids. But can I just say this? Palm Beach Atlantic University isn't just for your kids or grandkids. It can be for you also. PBA offers online courses that you can enroll in bachelor's and master level programs that can fit your schedule, your goals, and your timeline. You got to check it out all in this amazing, caring Christian community.

So go to 413podcast.com/PBA to learn all you need to know. I promise you're going to love it, just like I know you're loving this conversation. So let's get back to it.

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Jennifer Rothschild: But, you know, like you said, there are side benefits to heaven, of course.

Philip De Courcy: Sure. A bunch of them.

Jennifer Rothschild: A bunch of them. In fact -- yeah, Revelation is full of the "no mores" and the "no longers."

Philip De Courcy: There you go.

Jennifer Rothschild: But here's a question that I have, that you talk about in your book, and I would love for you to address this. Because when we're talking about heaven, sometimes we hear about the beauty, the benefits, and then I think it leads to the question that some of us believe that there are different levels of heaven or levels of hell. Can you address that?

Philip De Courcy: Yeah, I believe that myself. I think there are degrees of reward and there are degrees of punishment. We'll concentrate mostly on what that means for the believer. Because in my book, I have a chapter on the Judgment Seat of Christ, which I think is a lost doctrine. And Paul talks about it in 1 Corinthians 3 and he talks about it in 2 Corinthians 5 and Romans 14. But as there are degrees of joy or reward in heaven, there are degrees of punishment in hell. I believe that hell is a place. I believe -- I don't believe in annihilation, I believe in the conscious eternal punishment of the lost. That's a hard doctrine to swallow, but it's in my Bible. It fell from the lips of the greatest lover of all mankind, the Lord Jesus himself.

And if we wanted an area to think about, Jesus talks about those -- there were some cities in Israel who rejected him and his disciples. And he says, "It'll be worse for you on the day of judgment than Sodom and Gomorrah." And the point was the greater the light, the greater the damnation. We live in the -- we're post Christ's birth. We're post Christ's death, resurrection. We're post his atoning death. We're post his miracles, his displaying of his deity. God has come and centuries of ignorance have passed, and God calls all men to repent everywhere. And so it's clear there are degrees of hell.

Now, we don't want to deduce from that, well, then, you know, hell at its lightest is a heavy thing, if I can put it that way. There's no comfort in that other than it does tell us God is just. And we are all accountable for everything we did, the works we do. You know, there's that scene in Gladiator -- and sorry, it's a guy illustration. But as that started -- right, Gladiator? Maximus, the beginning of the movie they're facing the barbarian hordes, the Germans, and he says, "What we do today will echo into eternity." And that's such a good little phrase. It's in the contemporary culture, and it's true. What we do today affects our eternity.

And for the believer, according to 2 Corinthians 5:9-11, we will receive reward and the pleasure of God and the commendation of God based on the things we did in the body, whether they be good or bad. We're saved by grace, by faith alone in Christ alone. But, Jennifer, faith in Christ gets us to heaven, but our work produced by faith will determine what we receive in heaven. And it's clear, Jesus says, you know, I'm coming quickly and my reward is with me, Revelation 22:20. You can't read anything other than that.

There's going to be different rewards for different Christians, you know. Has some person had dedicated their life to the mission field, with all its attendant sacrifices and hardships? You know, are they going to get treated equal to the believer that was -- you know, we'll see them in church twice a month? They dip their toe in here and they drop a little offering the plate. But where's that passion? Where's that ongoing pursuing of Christ?

And the doctrine of the Judgment Seat of Christ is a sobering one, and that's why we've got to make it our ambition, whether absent or present, to be found pleasing to him. We've got to live, you know, coram Deo. We've got to live with that sense that I will appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ. The word "appear" there is a strong Greek word. It means where our life will be made manifest. The hidden, the seen, the thought, the word, the deed, it's all going to get examined. Now, thankfully, you know, our sin has been judged.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes, thankfully.

Philip De Courcy: We will not be judged for our sins, praise God. There's no condemnation to those who are in Christ. But there will be a judgment of our works. And I think there will be degrees of responsibility in the new heaven and the new earth in the reign of Christ. There's a theory, possibly our resurrected bodies may have different elements of radiance and displaying God's glory.

I think it was Pentecost, Dwight Pentecost out of Dallas Seminary, said, Look, we're all going to shine, you know, but there's 25-watt bulbs and 50-watt bulbs and 100-watt bulbs. If there's any truth to that, I want to be a 100-watt bulb.

Jennifer Rothschild: Amen.

Philip De Courcy: I want to be Daniel 12 or Matthew 13. The righteous will shine.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: So I get into that in the book on the Judgment Seat of Christ. There's several aspects to God's reward. And that should motivate us, right? There's an old -- I forget. It's an old British missionary who said we have all eternity to enjoy our rewards, but only a few years to win them. So we got to get after it.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. Well, and he deserves it.

Philip De Courcy: The lukewarmness has got to stop.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: We got to be on fire for Christ.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. Yes. Well, and he's worthy of that. He deserves that.

Philip De Courcy: Amen.

Jennifer Rothschild: You know, as I studied this -- and I'm glad you addressed it. And I want to recommend, you guys that are listening, Philip's book here, "Life After Life," because judgment seat is a question I get a lot. And you need to study this. So I want to highly recommend that you look at his book and go deeper here.

But here's what I want to say about this also. As I studied it, the more I studied, I thought, why in the world would Jesus even regard us that much that he would even care to give us rewards, like, when he is our reward? When we deserve nothing from him, that he would honor us as his joint heirs enough that he would say, I see your good works, and you've glorified your Father, and now here's your reward. That's mind blowing. So our motivation alone should be just to honor him for that kindness he shows us.

Philip De Courcy: Absolutely. And then the other side, let's not forget, we were made -- I think I'm paraphrasing something I read years ago. We're made in the image of a working God. When God put man in the Garden, he made need him to work. Tend the garden --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Philip De Courcy: -- be a coregent with me, be a steward along alongside me. The fall comes, man becomes self-centered, works for himself. We're then redeemed in Christ and we're getting back to that, hey, let's be -- we're co-heirs and joint heirs with Christ. And we want to reflect the image of God that's now being remade in Christ, and that means working. Jesus said, "My Father works and I work, and the night comes when no man shall work."

So you're right, it's -- I mean, Jesus is enough. And we're trying to think through, so, you know, what's all the purpose of this? But you go back to our original purpose in the Garden, we were made to work and subdue -- exercise dominion. So we're getting ready. The Judgment Seat of Christ reminds us we ought to be working, we ought to be serving, we ought to have a resume that will please God, because our works will follow us, which is a very interesting little phrase --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes, it is.

Philip De Courcy: -- and a wonderful thing. My works will follow me.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. Yes.

Philip De Courcy: And the quality of them, the quantity of them. But while I will rest -- I talk about this in the -- what we'll do in heaven. One of the things we'll do is rest. But I don't think that means fold your arms, kick up your feet, where's the nice leather easy chair?

Jennifer Rothschild: Me neither.

Philip De Courcy: You know, it's rest from the works you once did, and find joy in them and you'll be rewarded for them. Like, God, after six days of work rested. He took -- it's good. He looked over his work and he said, "It's good." I want to get to the Judgment Seat of Christ with my life in this earth, the books are closed, and I hope there's enough there to hear the, "Well done, good and faithful servant," and I'll rest from my work.

But then I'll turn around in the new heaven and the new earth and I'll work again. And we'll be back to Eden where with God we will exercise dominion over this world. And I think Randy Alcorn -- I don't know if you touched on this, Jennifer, in your own book.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, yeah.

Philip De Courcy: We will have dominion over the galaxies.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: Our bodies may be able to travel from place to place quickly. So it's all fascinating. The world to come is a place of work. It's not a five-star resort.

Jennifer Rothschild: No.

Philip De Courcy: It's a place of work where we will achieve what man failed to achieve first time around. Does that make sense?

Jennifer Rothschild: Totally. Well, and if we are really made in God's image, which we are, of course, he's a creator.

Philip De Courcy: That's right.

Jennifer Rothschild: He made us to create and to be creative.

Philip De Courcy: Amen.

Jennifer Rothschild: And I think sometimes we associate wrongly work here on earth and work there on the new earth. Work here is sin stained. There's drive, there's failure --

Philip De Courcy: Frustrating.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, it's so draining. But that will be work that is to the glory of God and that gives us joy. So, yeah, I don't think we can compare the two because we live on a fallen planet and work here is fallen.

Philip De Courcy: And people have a mistake, right? You've touched on it. People think that work is a result of the fall and the curse. It's not.

Jennifer Rothschild: No.

Philip De Courcy: The curse is the frustration of it. The curse is it's less fulfilling. The curse is it can be turned towards idolatry and our own self-aggrandizement. But again, we're made in the image of a working God and, therefore, the life that God designed in a state of perfection in Eden will be returned to us in the new heaven and the new earth. And I'm glad for that.

Jennifer Rothschild: Me too.

Philip De Courcy: I mean, we'll be given projects, we'll build, we'll create, we'll subdue, we'll exercise dominion. It just blows apart this silly idea of, you know, the bodyless soul, you know, fluffing up a cloud as a pillow and strumming on a harp. That's not heaven. That's not even close to it. It's a caricature.

I mean, Mark Twain speaks for a generation around us where he talks about, you know, the caricature of heaven. He says heaven is like hell. Well, that's not. It's not boring, it's not tedious, it's not repetitive. It's expansive. It's glorious. I love the phrasing of Ephesians 2:6-7, where in the age to come he will show us the exceeding riches of his grace. Eternity will be a time of exhilaration and exploration, where our souls will expand increasingly in our experience of God, our knowledge of him, as he shows us and keeps on showing us the exceeding, never-ending treasure and riches of his grace. It's just phenomenal.

Jennifer Rothschild: And we'll need eternity to even begin --

Philip De Courcy: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- to absorb a tenth of it.

Philip De Courcy: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. So you just talked about the potential of our glorified, resurrected bodies on the new earth, so let's go there. Because according to Scripture, we don't know exactly what it will be like, but we do know we will be like him when we see him as he is. Okay. So what is the hope of heaven? What does heaven's hope tell us about our earthly bodies even now?

Philip De Courcy: Yeah, I love it. I have a chapter in the book called "The New You." And I begin it with kind of this analogy -- and if you go back to maybe a high school retreat or a reunion and the years have passed and you see someone and you go -- you don't say it to their face, unless you just want to get whacked on the nose, but you might say in your mind, man, they're a shadow of their former selves. You know, boy, they have changed. They have aged. You know?

But if you flip that, when you and I look into each other's face as the saints of God, we are a shadow of our future selves. You know, 1 Corinthians 15:35-48 describes the transformation that's going to take place. I love Philippians 3:20-21 where, you know, we're waiting for Jesus to come when he will transform our vile body. The Old King James. I grew up on that. And I'm not going to run from that, because the Greek word carries the idea that this present body, ultimately -- if you're in your 30s, your 40s or 50s, whatever. But as you get up into your 60s and 70s and 80s and gravitation takes its toll and all of that, you begin to see what Paul's talking about.

We have a body that will ultimately humiliate us, that will ultimately deteriorate. And there's a vileness and an ugliness. I've been there as a pastor, have seen the ravages of cancer and how it can leave a body in a very ugly state. And Paul's saying, but -- that's our present condition, but here's our hope. We're going to be transformed when Jesus returns and he resurrects that body that's been laid to sleep in the grave into his glorious body. The Christian faith is the only faith that boasts an empty tomb. Buddha's dead, Abraham's dead, Muhammad's dead. Jesus is alive in endless life.

And I have a friend, H.B. Charles, African-American pastor, who said Christianity is the only religion where the adherents go to the grave of its founder to make sure he's not there.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Philip De Courcy: I love that. I think he joked there's no skeletons in the Christian's cupboard.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Philip De Courcy: Right? We have a resurrected Christ who was resurrected bodily. It's a tenant of orthodoxy. You must believe that Jesus was raised from the dead bodily. And if you don't, according to Romans 10:9-10, you're not a Christian. But Jesus was raised physically, and we're going to be made like unto him.

And in the chapter, I -- we'll not get into this. It talks about six things about our resurrected body. It'll be physical. We're getting a body. C.S. Lewis said Christianity is the most materialistic of all the world religions. You know, there's views of nirvana and some kind of perfect state that's ethereal, spiritual, bodiless, you know, where we're all some little Casper floating about the place. No. We're going to be resurrected with a physical body that will endure.

Second, it'll be personal. We'll look like ourselves. Hopefully a little bit better, you know. I didn't get the beauty genes. My daughter said -- you'll like this, Jennifer. My youngest daughter is not married yet, and dying to find the right guy. She said to me one day, "Dad, I want to marry somebody like you, just better looking." So we'll be better looking, but we'll look like ourselves. Jesus was recognized, right?

Jennifer Rothschild: Right. We'll be recognizable, yeah.

Philip De Courcy: Matthew 17, Moses and Elijah were recognized by the disciples, which is interesting since they never met them --

Jennifer Rothschild: I know.

Philip De Courcy: -- which I think tells us we'll know each other in heaven -- right? -- you know?

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: Number three, it'll be permanent. It's a body that will be a glorious body, sowed in dishonor, raised in glory.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: It'll be a perfect body. It'll be a powerful body, you know, sown in weakness, raised in strength.

But the one I love, it's a pure body. It was sown as a natural body, be raised as a spiritual body. I think what that means -- not that it's -- spiritual in the sense it's not corporal or material. It's a body now no longer subject to sin.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: I get tired fighting sin. Don't you?

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, so tired.

Philip De Courcy: Sadly I have to admit, the things I would do, I don't, and the things I don't want to do, I do. But there's going to come a point where my desire to please Christ will be matched by a body no longer subject to unredeemed flesh, to sinful tendencies, and that's the thing I'm looking forward to most. So, I mean, we are a shadow of our future selves. We've got this living hope based on the resurrection of Christ.

I love this story. Have you gone cruising?

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: All right. I've gone. I like it.

Jennifer Rothschild: I love it.

Philip De Courcy: So I heard a story about this guy's on a cruise. You know, the ship hits a bit of rough water, it's bobbing up and down, he starts to get a little seasick. So he goes out onto the deck, get a bit of fresh air. He's leaning over the rails. He looks like death warmed up. And this crew member comes by and he realizes -- he's seen this a thousand times. He goes over to the guy and he says, "Look, I know how you're feeling, you know, but I want you to know that in all my years of sailing the seven seas, no one has ever died of sea sickness, although you might feel like you're about to." And the poor soul looks at him and says, "Don't tell me that. It's the hope of dying that keeps me alive." And -- look, that's no hope, right?

Jennifer Rothschild: Right.

Philip De Courcy: The hope of dying -- the hope of dying is not a hope. The hope of dying and to never die again, that's a hope.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. Yes.

Philip De Courcy: And that's ours. We're born on to a living hope. We've got that blessed hope of the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior and so...

You know, my daughter Beth, who was the one who said she wants to marry somebody like me, just better looking, she's over our disability ministry at our church. Or she calls it Indispensables. They're the indispensable part of the body.

Jennifer Rothschild: I love that.

Philip De Courcy: But think about the hope that Christianity brings --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: -- to the broken body --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: -- to those who are -- your own self has dealt with a physical ailment that's limited your ability to see. Christianity is promising a new body, a fully functioning body, with no downside, no death, no decay, no limitations, no disabilities. This is a message to sell. Amen?

Jennifer Rothschild: Amen. Hallelujah.

And here's the thing. The same Jesus who is going to restore and give us that resurrected body is the same Jesus who honors the body we have now, and so we need to honor it. Just treat it well.

Philip De Courcy: I like that.

Jennifer Rothschild: You know, treat it well because this is the body that God is going to resurrect someday and make new. So let's treat it well.

Philip De Courcy: I love that. Because again, we mentioned earlier in the broadcast -- and I think Randy Alcorn in his book deals a lot with this -- that at times the church has been affected by Platonism --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes, yes.

Philip De Courcy: -- Plato, by Greek mythology, that -- or even we talk about Gnosticism, which was beginning to enter the church in Colossi. And basically Gnosticism or Greek mythology is redemption. Salvation is to escape the body, to shed the body --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. No. Right. Right, as if it's inferior.

Philip De Courcy: -- and to get into some kind of pure spiritual experience. And that's not Christian.

Jennifer Rothschild: No.

Philip De Courcy: God is going to redeem our body. We're going to -- as we've said, we're going to have a material existence forever. And I love your point. So this is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Philip De Courcy: Our bodies are not to be abused. They're not to be cut. They're not to be -- we're not to abuse them through lack of sleep. Good diet, exercise. We're to take our stewardship of our body seriously so that -- I just downloaded an article I want to read called "Longevity," as in, hey, I want to get to heaven, but I'm on earth. This is my stewardship --

Jennifer Rothschild: Right.

Philip De Courcy: -- this is the preface of the never-ending story. So I want to have a body as much as I can that's under my control. Some things are not under my control. Some things you're born with, some things are hereditary. Get that genetic. But where I can control, I want to extend the life of my body. For what ends? That I may present it a living sacrifice so that I might prove what is that good and acceptable will of God. I want to have a life of full service to Jesus Christ. I want to die exhausted, I want to fall over the finish line and go to my eternal reward.

Jennifer Rothschild: Amen.

Well, okay. So since you just talked about the finish line, that's where we are in our conversation, unfortunately. And so can I just say, I'm so glad you've written this book, because what a rich resource. And 4:13ers, we're going to have a link to it at the end of the podcast, so hang on, because we're going to get here to the very last question, Pastor. Oh, my goodness. So hard for me to just pick one last question. But I guess this is it. Okay?

So we've heard all this about heaven, that it's a literal place, it's material, it's not just ethereal, and that it is a very present reality and can affect our today reality. So last question, what would it look like from this day forward if our present life right now was fully governed by our future life in heaven?

Philip De Courcy: I love that. We're back to kind of where we started, the Colossians then -- or Philippians 3, your citizenship is in heaven. That's such an interesting phrase. Because Philippi was 800 miles from Rome, but it was a Roman colony. And Paul is drawing from the world of politics there and he's saying to -- hey, if you're in Philippi, while it's not Rome, the language of Rome governs it, the architecture of Rome governs it, the politics of Rome governs it. Eight hundred miles away, but it feels like Rome in terms of commerce, politics, architecture, all of that. And he says, hey, we're not yet in heaven, but our citizenship is there.

Or Colossians talks about, you know, we are seated with Christ. Our life is hidden. We are ready in that sense in heaven. Our Savior's in heaven, our Lord is in heaven, we're in union with him through the Holy Spirit. So in that sense, heaven is a reality that ought to govern our present experience. It ought to govern our choices, it ought to govern our priorities. It ought to give us hope, it ought to help us redeem the time.

Maybe if I finish -- I remember hearing a preacher tell this story. I think it'll put an exclamation mark on what we've just said. We've got to set our affections on things above. We've got to let the New Jerusalem come into our mind. We've got to, you know, bring the thoughts of the throne of God, what's going on in heaven, the ultimate end of all men, that's got to determine our actions and behavior even today.

The story was told about a pastor who got ganged up on in his church and he got booted out in an angry members' meeting and congregational meeting. And so he goes around to his office, he's done, gets his stuff kind of into the box, and he's walking out to his car. And this old deacon who loved him and was so disappointed in how the meeting turned out goes -- and with a heart of concern for his pastor, he says, "Pastor, what are you going to do? What's your next step? How are you going to handle this?" And the pastor said to him, "It's okay. I'm going to heaven." And the deacon goes, "I know you're going to heaven. I'm talking about now. You just got booted, your life's been upended, things are upside down. Pastor, are you going to be okay? What are you going to do?" "It's okay. I'm going to heaven."

Now, the point of the story, Jennifer, is that's the way we ought to think. When the downturn in the economy comes, it's okay. I'm going to heaven. When we get a bad doctor's report, it's okay. I'm going to heaven. When things are tough, when we're persecuted for righteousness's sake, it's okay. We're going to heaven. Because you know what? Five seconds on the other side of this life, it'll all be washed away, and the incoming tide of eternal blessing will cause us to say it was worth it all when we see Jesus. So folks today, it's okay. We're going to heaven.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's okay. We're going to heaven. So whatever you face, it's okay. We're going to heaven. As I love to say, earth is short and heaven is long. So my friends, the reality of heaven, it really can change how we live right here, right now, here on earth.

KC Wright: Our citizenship is in heaven.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, it sure is.

KC Wright: And everything we do, the way we talk, the way we live, all should reflect where our true country really is. Man, this was so good.

Jennifer Rothschild: Wasn't it?

KC Wright: And it was even better because of his accent, right?

Jennifer Rothschild: I know.

KC Wright: So you need to get this man's book. Jennifer recommended it, and she wrote a whole Bible study on heaven, so she should know. It's going to be a fantastic read. Get yours today.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, I really do think it is a great resource. And I just think you cannot, my people, read too many books on heaven. So, of course, do my Bible study, absolutely, and read Philip's book.

KC Wright: We will have links to both at 413podcast.com/388. And you can win one of Philip's books right now by going to Jennifer's Instagram @jennrothschild.

And, of course, the Show Notes will get you more info on Philip's book as well, on Jennifer's video-based Bible study on heaven, and anything else that will make your life better.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. Amen.

KC Wright: So let's live like heaven is real. Let it give you hope. You can, because you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. I can.

Jennifer Rothschild: I can.

KC Wright: And --

Jennifer and KC: You can.

4:13 Podcast: What You Need To Know About Heaven [Episode 333]

Alex Kendrick: Stephen and I quote you.

Stephen Kendrick: Yes, we do --

Alex Kendrick: Yeah, we --

Stephen Kendrick: -- quote Jennifer.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, my gosh.

Stephen Kendrick: We got to spend time with you, and we did that Fathom event a few years ago.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Alex Kendrick: And Stephen and I have often quoted, "Jennifer Rothschild said" -- when you were talking about what you're going through in this life and what's to come, that Jennifer said, "Earth is short and heaven is long."

Stephen Kendrick: Yes.

Alex Kendrick: And so keep your eyes on what's coming. Don't put all your focus on this earthly life. Jesus said, you know, set your treasures in heaven, and that is the wiser thing to focus on. And we have -- Stephen and I have even both said the first thing Jennifer will see is what you would want to see the most.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. Right?

Stephen Kendrick: The face of Jesus.

Alex Kendrick: Oh, yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: The face of -- nothing else.

Alex Kendrick: And so --

Jennifer Rothschild: Nothing else can compare.

Alex Kendrick: Yeah, so we have quoted you a number of times.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, okay. I just got to say --

Stephen Kendrick: We're fans. We're fans.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, right back at you. Here's what I love about that too, you guys. I am just publishing a Bible study on heaven that comes out in January of '25 because of that reality: Earth is short, heaven is long. So we want to know about our forever home.

KC Wright: Welcome to the 4:13 Podcast. This whole month we're using the song you hear in background called "Ascending" by Michael O'Brien. Do you know why? Because this song is a part of our girl Jennifer's latest video-based Bible study called "Heaven: When Faith Becomes Sight." And we're celebrating around here for the whole month.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yep.

KC Wright: So welcome to the 4:13 Podcast, where practical encouragement and biblical wisdom set you up to live the "I Can" life, because you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength.

Now, here's your host, Jennifer Rothschild.

Jennifer Rothschild: Welcome back, our 4:13 family. And if you're new to us, we're so glad you're here. That was KC Wright, my Seeing Eye Guy. And it's just two friends here in the podcast closet, with one topic and zero stress. And, yeah, we're going to talk about heaven. But it's interesting. It's not just going to be me and KC talking about heaven. You're going to get to hear from some other voices. Well, you already did. Because when we started, you heard the voices of Alex and Stephen Kendrick, you know, the Kendrick Brothers. They were in the opening. And you probably guessed, this is going to be different, very interesting, and super fun episode because we really are about to hear from lots of 4:13 friends about heaven.

So here's why. I have been collecting -- anytime somebody said something about heaven, I've been collecting the audio clips. But here's the best part, at least to me. You are going to even get to hear the voice of my dad, even though he is actually already in heaven. So I have his voice recorded, and I can't wait for you to hear it.

So while I was writing the Heaven Bible study, KC, my mom would text me on most days and she would ask, "Are you going to be in heaven today?" Well, of course, she meant in the Heaven manuscript. But I tell you that because, of course, even though I wasn't in heaven literally, heaven was in me. The hope of it, the wonder of it, the anticipation of it. And so after steeping myself in what Scripture says about heaven, I feel so much more grounded and anchored in the reality of eternity, and I'm just growing in anticipation of my faith actually becoming sight someday. I will be living fully in my glorious unending. Oh, man.

Now, I'm not really ready to leave immediately, but I will tell you this, I am looking forward to that day. And you know what? That is what a biblical understanding of heaven really has done for me. And it can do that for you too. Ground you in eternity, strengthen you in the face of uncertainty, and it can anchor you in deep spiritual serenity. And I think you're going to hear that. So every time you hear something from one of these guests, you're going to hear that kind of serenity, that kind of hope. So these different voices that you're about to hear, they speak very candidly about heaven, and what they say is going to encourage you deeply.

So, my people, since heaven is real, like, what you believe about that day can really impact this day. And it did for the first voice you're about to hear, Karen Kingsbury. You know who she is. She's an amazing author, best-selling author, and now become a filmmaker. So she was talking about sinking her family's life savings into making this movie. And here's how her view of heaven impacted that risky choice.

Karen Kingsbury: It was trusting the Lord and being able to say, okay, even if it all falls apart, then this day, did I live this day well? Did I make the most of sharing his light and love, his joy and peace with the people around me? Did I live my life for Jesus to lead others toward him today? If this is the last day I get, and when the movie never happens, if the theaters never open, is it enough that we did this and we did this path and we made an impact on the people around us? And the answer was always yes.

And it comes back to -- and even on days when you might feel afraid or when I might feel anxious about something, I really quickly turn to Jesus and I hear him saying, "It's just earth." This is just earth. We have so much ahead. And so what impact we can make here, we will do by the grace and strength of God alone. And the rest, hey, we have eternity, so we don't have to worry about it.

KC Wright: It's just earth. Such a short, profound sentence.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

KC Wright: Don't you love that?

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, I really did. It's just earth.

You know, I find myself often, KC, saying earth is short and heaven is long. Y'all, we need that kind of perspective. It's an eternal perspective.

KC Wright: Hey, you got to have a conversation with Lisa-Jo Baker at one of the live events and found out that you guys share the same favorite verses.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yep.

KC Wright: And this clip will let you know what that is. And here's a hint. It all points to an eternal perspective.

Jennifer Rothschild: We share the same favorite verses.

Lisa-Jo Baker: Oh, we do.

Jennifer Rothschild: 2 Corinthians 4 --

Lisa-Jo Baker: Sixteen, yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- through 18.

Lisa-Jo Baker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Tell me why that's your -- well, first of all, can you quote it?

Lisa-Jo Baker: Yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. Quote it for us, because your accent will make prettier than mine, and then tell us why it's your favorite.

Lisa-Jo Baker: Sure. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed. For these light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all.

It will seem a sad reason, but it isn't. This was my mom's verse that she loved when she was dying essentially of leukemia. And we used to joke with her because her hair was falling out from all the chemotherapy and she would wear wigs. And then we were teenagers, we were super obnoxious, and when she'd get stressed about something, we'd be like, "Mom, keep your hair on, okay?" But she laughed because she said this verse, you know, though outwardly we are wasting away -- and she literally was. We watched her waste away before our eyes -- yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day, and that is what I saw in my tiny, frail mom.

I'll never forget her sitting in her hospice bed. But when she talked to God, I had never experienced that before. She was in this little blue nightgown, and she had a pink scarf around her head, and she was wasted away to almost nothing, but she was talking to God. And when she spoke to him, she kind of hit her fist into the side of the bed like, "Lord," and she talked to him with authority. And I was an 18-year-old teenager, who didn't know much about life yet, and I felt the shivers go up my spine because I knew she was talking to somebody real, that there was actually a presence in the room responding to my tiny mother. And we watched her grow into this shining human, and her tiny body just couldn't contain that anymore.

And when she talked to God, I realized for the first time God listens. And when I stood in that hospital room -- it was the night before she died when I watched her pray like that -- I felt like I was eavesdropping on a conversation between close friends. And I knew in that moment that everything I'd read or heard in Sunday school or been forced to sit through in church, suddenly it occurred to me that was real. There was a real place and a real God who was really involved in our lives. And I learned that firsthand through watching my mother.

So that verse is actually on her tombstone. And I'll just say, it's come full circle for me. Because as a woman now in her 40s, who has three kids -- say it with me ladies -- do we get to this point in our lives where suddenly in our culture there's this stress factor about age and weight?

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes --

Lisa-Jo Baker: Right?

Jennifer Rothschild: -- yes, yes.

Lisa-Jo Baker: And it's sort of exhausting. And I just felt like it had got to a point where I didn't want the scale to be the boss of me anymore. It was frustrating that there was that voice in my mind about weight. And I went back to that verse that talks about a weight of glory, and I thought to myself, you know, we have an enemy who wants to trick us into thinking you could possibly be weighed by a scale. When you are carrying in you an eternal weight of glory, it cannot possibly be measured by a scale.

And so for me, that verse from when I was 18 to now -- I'm 44, about to turn 45 -- continues to speak into my life, Jennifer, about -- when I think now about that line an eternal weight of glory, I think, yep, that's what I'm carrying inside these jeans. Don't care what the size says on the label.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's right.

Lisa-Jo Baker: Thank you very much.

Jennifer Rothschild: Do not lose weight. Do not.

Oh, my friend, death is not the period at the end of our stories; death is just the comma that transitions us from the prologue to the forever stories of our lives. It's like death just allows you to step fully into your glorious unending, finally trading faith for sight. That's kind of -- when I heard Lisa-Jo, I just -- that perspective is just -- man, brought me such hope. Anyway...

Now this next woman, she is one of my heroes. She has been paralyzed and in a wheelchair since she was 17 years old because of a diving accident. So I want you to listen to her eternal perspective and again just how that weight of glory gives her hope for today.

KC Wright: She's one of my heroes too. This is Joni Eareckson-Tada.

Jennifer Rothschild: "On This Side of Eternity," you're talking about practicing the presence of the Lord. But one day, sister, you will be in the presence of Jesus in heaven, right in front of him. So what does that mean to you? And how can the reality of that day -- how is that going to impact this day on earth for you?

Joni Eareckson-Tada: Oh, my goodness, you've just painted a most marvelous picture. Because I imagine at that point I'll be standing up --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Joni Eareckson-Tada: -- and I can hold the hands of my Savior and I will feel the nail prints in his hand. And I will say to him -- looking in his eyes, I'll say, "Jesus, thank you. Thank you for giving me grace, grace all those years I was paralyzed. Thank you so much." And you know what? When I say that, I know Jesus will know that I mean it, because he will know that I'm the one who for 56 years came to him every day, hammering human strength, "I can't do this," and he will know that my gratitude is sincere and from the heart. And nothing could please me more than that.

And as I said earlier, I want to do everything down here on earth that I can to enlarge my eternal estate, to stretch it. And we know that if we have the perspective that our light and momentary afflictions are just that, light and momentary, and have a godly response to it, then they are accruing for us an eternal weight of glory that is far more significant than the inconvenience of blindness, of paralysis, whatever else our listeners might be struggling with. I mean, it just far outweighs it.

So I don't want to diminish it; I want to enlarge it. I want to work for that day. I cannot wait to see the Lord Jesus and tell him thank you from the heart. I won't be mouthing my thankfulness; it'll be a river of living gratitude poured out upon him for glory upon glory forevermore.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, may we all have that same heart of thankfulness.

Now, I want you to hear from my ultimate hero, my dad. Now, I just can't wait for you to meet this guy. He really is my forever hero. I always call him my Hero Dad. So Lawson Jolly, my dad, he went to heaven in 2018, yet I am so privileged, I have his voice on tape. He was reading Scripture from a sermon -- my dad was a pastor -- and he gave this sermon just a few months before he died. He's reading out of Hebrews 11 about heaven.

Pastor Lawson Jolly: Verse 13 says, "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promise; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance." They were expecting something beyond death. They didn't get it while they were alive, but they knew it was coming and it was going to be theirs. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. They were just here for a period of time passing through."

Verse 14, "People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own." Just aliens in this world. "If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country -- a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them." God has prepared a city for these heroes and for those that die in the faith. Jesus spoke of it, you know, in John 14. He said, "Don't let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; you believe also in me. In my Father's house there many, many mansions. Now, I'm going to go and prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I'm going to come again, and I'm going to receive you unto myself so that where I am, you can be also."

Jennifer Rothschild: Amen, Dad. Amen. I am longing for that city, and I'm just so thankful that heaven is real.

KC Wright: Me too. That was so special.

Jennifer Rothschild: Wasn't it special?

KC Wright: So special.

Okay, now to a journalist who sought evidence for heaven. You're about to hear from Lee Strobel. And he helps us understand what heaven feels like by reminding us of what Jesus calls heaven.

Lee Strobel: But Jesus uses metaphors. And I'll end with one of my favorites when he's talking to his disciples. And he uses a metaphor of home, that heaven is like home. And I don't know if you've ever traveled internationally, maybe to a third-world country where conditions are difficult. But I've been to India. I've lived on, you know, a sleeping bag on the ground and eaten foods that were strange to me. And you do that for a period of time and you begin to develop a homesickness. You begin to long for home. And when you finally return home from this trip and you walk into the door of your home, it is such a place of wonder and warmth and security and grace that you're just overwhelmed by. And you crawl into your own bed and it feels so good.

And Jesus is saying to his disciples and to us, that's the metaphor I want you to hang on to. Heaven is like a home. It's like a real home. This is not -- in our world, this is not our home. We're just passing through this world. Heaven is like home on steroids. And so we will experience those qualities of grace and joy and wonder and appreciation, and I believe adventure and creativity, as we spend eternity in the presence of God.

Jennifer Rothschild: Heaven is our home. I mean, what Lee said reminds me of the Spurgeon quote that I won't quote perfectly. So, KC, read it for us.

KC Wright: "We are not far from home. Heaven is just one sigh and we get there. Our departed friends are only in the upper room, as it were, of the same house. They have not gone far off. They are upstairs, and we are down below." Isn't that beautiful?

Jennifer Rothschild: I love it.

KC Wright: Whoo! Chill bumps.

All right. Now from a journalist to a pastor. Pastors Lisa and Ed Young of Fellowship Church lost their daughter, LeeBeth, when she was just a young woman. Such a searing pain for parents.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

KC Wright: So Jennifer asked them if their perspective on heaven has changed, and here is what Lisa said.

Lisa Young: It's real, it's -- I had heard about books and things about heaven, and I can't really say that I read too many. I think more than anything -- which I will definitely read yours. But I look to Scripture to kind of see the truth text behind what we should imagine. You hear words like -- and I don't know. None of us really know. But I hear words about, oh, if, you know -- I'll tell you an example. My father passed away in 1997. And he was such a handyman, and he could just fix anything, build anything. And so whenever I'm fixing something, I'm like, oh, Daddy's looking down from heaven and he's so happy because I just fixed something.

And in reality, I now think that the glory of God is so magnificent, it would be a shame for them to be looking down on me because of so much that they have to see in heaven. And I don't know that that's accurate, but it's given me great comfort in my worship time, publicly at Fellowship Church or privately, to think about LeeBeth being before the throne and all of our loved ones being before the throne of God and in the most ultimate perfect worship ever. And ironically, as I worship, I am basking in the glory of God, but there is a hint of her presence right beside me because we're doing the same thing.

Jennifer Rothschild: Because you're fellowshipping before the throne.

Lisa Young: Right, right, right.

Pastor Ed Young: That's right.

Lisa Young: So I don't know that it gives us a clearer picture of what heaven is, but it does give us a greater desire to let people know that this is where they need to go.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, KC, I think we just need to hear the Word, so will you read out of Revelation 7 for us.

KC Wright: Revelation 7:9-10. "After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: 'Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.'"

Jennifer Rothschild: You know, I'm so glad you read that, because that is the reality that is happening right now. You know, I have a friend named Tammy Trent, and she lost her husband when they had only been married just about ten years. And she has said so many times Trent is not just part of her past; he's part of her future. Same applies to LeeBeth.

Anyway, let's move on, because there's going to be another voice here that you will recognize, Kathie Lee Gifford. And I want you to listen when I asked her what she would do -- when she gets to heaven, what's the first thing that she's going to do.

Someday your body is going to pass from death to life.

Kathie Lee Gifford: That's the good news.

Jennifer Rothschild: Isn't it?

Kathie Lee Gifford: Especially the older you get.

Jennifer Rothschild: You'll be free someday in heaven.

Kathie Lee Gifford: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: Frank's there, special people to you are there, Jesus is there. So -- you can answer this question however you want. You can be as spiritual as you want, you can -- whatever you want. But I want to know, what's the best thing that you're looking forward to doing or seeing or saying when you get to heaven?

Kathie Lee Gifford: Well, I always say people say all through their lives, When I get to heaven, I'm going to ask him about this, right?

Jennifer Rothschild: Right.

Kathie Lee Gifford: I'm not going to ask him about anything.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Kathie Lee Gifford: All will be revealed. There will be no questions. We will be in his presence, and that will be enough. Enough. And we won't even think about asking him a question. We will throw ourselves at his feet, which are also nail scarred. We always talk about his hands. But his feet were too. And we will throw ourselves at those feet and thank him and glorify him. And we'll say, "Okay, Jesus, what's next? We're here. Let's do it." Because our work will not be over, it will just be beginning.

Jennifer Rothschild: I don't think I've heard a sweeter answer. Thank you for that, Kathie Lee.

Kathie Lee Gifford: Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Yeshua.

KC Wright: Love that.

Here's one more new voice and then one last voice. This is Amy Baik Lee.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. I got to talk to her about tuning in to eternity even now. Because when you think about it, we live right now between Jesus' two comings, in the already and in the not yet. And we want to experience the full reality of heaven now, because the hope of heaven, the reality of heaven really can heal the wounds of earth. So listen to Amy's words. They're just filled with wonder.

Amy Baik Lee: I think I always had a nebulous view of heaven as a place where all things would be set right and that we would no longer have death and pain and crying, like Revelation says, but I don't know that I ever knew how to imagine anything beyond that. And I certainly hadn't looked any more closely at the different passages in Scripture that talk about it too, but there's very concrete language that is given to describe the restoration that is coming.

So we have the heaven -- I guess theologians kind of -- some of them call it the intermediary heaven where -- that's immediately where we go after death. But at the end of the world, and at the end of time as we know it right now, there will be a great remaking of this current earth, and we'll have the New Heaven and the New Earth and that will be a wholeness. It will be a restoration not just of things as right before they were unbroken, but something even more whole than that. A place where we will bring our creation mandate to bear, a place where we will be fruitful and multiply and spread all over the earth with, you know, work that is not cursed and with worship that pervades everything. And so everything that we're learning to do here as a mode of worship to God -- which is not just gathering in churches on Sundays, but it's all of the creative endeavors, it's all of the things that we do for one another -- those are the things that we will get to flourish in.

So I've just loved that, that we get to think about that and we get to look forward to a life that is full and busy, but not in our sense of busy as we think of it now. Living into the reality that Jesus has told us that the Kingdom of God is coming, but it's also here among us right now, and it's in the midst of us and it's breaking through. I think that there is all the worth of our lives summed up in that statement, that it's worth paying attention to the Kingdom in our midst and to the Kingdom that is breaking through. Because, yes, we're waiting for wholeness and healing and restoration, but here is where we get to walk with him. And here, I believe, is where we get to see God in a capacity that we will not get to see him in in the new creation and in restoration, because it's here that we see him right alongside the brokenness. And it's here that we get to wait for him and watch for him and see the overtures to his love to us breaking through no matter what the afflictions of the present moment are. And as that relationship with him grows and as that adventure grows -- and it breaks us at times, I know. But as we build that history with him -- when I think of what it might be like when we arrive to our long-awaited home and we look back, I think it will be those stories that we remember that make us cry, that help us when we come face to face with him to remember all that he has been to us and all that we know him to be, and that is going to add an immeasurably sweet note of worship to him for eternity because we have seen him here and we have walked with him here.

And so if anything, I would say as we're living on this earth, it's worth it to embrace everything that is given to us to the full extent that we can, to lean into our lament and our grief and our sorrow, but also our celebration and our joy, and to embrace that, because it's here that we'll get to see him and here that he keeps surprising us. So I hope that as that happens, that we fall more and more deeply in love with him as we understand the depth of his character and we see the constancy of his tenderness towards us.

Jennifer Rothschild: You know, KC, thinking about heaven, it really does just help us fall more in love with the Treasure of Heaven, Jesus. So let's walk with him now until the day he walks us home. And let's look forward. Because according to my dad, who you're about to hear again, it's going to be a glorious reunion.

Pastor Lawson Jolly: It's going to be a great reunion time. Reunion with those that you've loved on this earth, but they've gone on before. But it's going to be a reunion time with people we never saw on this earth. And maybe even we saw them, we never met them. And maybe even when we tried to meet them, we couldn't speak the same language or they were not the same color. But, oh, how we're going to rejoice for that reunion time, to know them then, to love them as a sister and brother in Christ.

Jennifer Rothschild: Thanks, Dad. Heaven is going to be a forever reunion, and I cannot wait.

And can I just say a big thank you to all of our friends who gave us such beautiful words about heaven today. I loved each one. So you might need to listen to this again. You need to hear what your brothers and sisters say about our eventual home. And I bet you need to share this with somebody, because you've thought of somebody as you've been listening who you know needs this kind of encouragement. So share it with somebody.

KC Wright: And I just need to give a shameless plug right here. Okay? Jennifer's new Heaven Bible study is out. And if you were ministered to by just these glimpses of heaven, buckle up, because her "Heaven: When Faith Becomes Sight" Bible study is video enhanced. So that means you get seven free teaching videos with it to watch on your own or to do with a group. You can read a free sample chapter and even watch the first video teaching at 413podcast.com/Heaven.

Plus, there are some really good extra resources right there to help you long for heaven. You know, Max Lucado said, "We say they departed, but they have arrived."

Jennifer Rothschild: Isn't that the truth? They have arrived. They have.

KC Wright: They have arrived.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, listen, my people, if you want to go, you need to know. Okay? So if you want to go to heaven, you need to know all about it. So I will say one last line and then my Daddy will talk to you as we leave. So here's my last line. Save your fork. The best is yet to come.

Take it away, Dad.

Pastor Lawson Jolly: You probably have heard that story about the fork. A lady was terminally ill and had her pastor to come visit her. And talked about the songs she wanted and just how she wanted her funeral service to go. And she said, "Now, there's going to be something unusual as I -- there I'm going to have a fork in my hand." And he looked a little strange, and she said, "Let me explain it to you. Because everybody that's going to come by is going to ask, 'Why is she holding that fork?' And then I want you to tell them during your message."

She went on to say, "When I was a little girl and eating at my grandmother's, and they'd start cleaning the table and taking the plates away, my grandmother used to say, 'Keep your fork, the best is coming,' meaning the dessert." She said, "And, Pastor, I want you to explain to them that's what that fork means. It's been a good life, but the best is yet to be."

Unidentified Man: Amen.

4:13 Podcast: Can I Become a Biblical Future Thinker? [Episode 332]

Jennifer Rothschild: Focusing on your future can change today. Research has actually shown that thinking about the future can actually improve your mental health. It can reduce worry, it can increase hope, and refine your sense of purpose. Sounds pretty good, right? Well, today we're going to break get this down to discover how thinking about your certain future, which is heaven, can make a huge difference in how you live today. I'm going to give you three ways to become a biblical future thinker. So get ready to lighten your load, get some practical strategies to fight the doldrums, and become the future thinker that God created you to be.

All right, KC. It's a new year and new focus. Here we go.

KC Wright: Welcome to the 4:13 Podcast, where practical encouragement and biblical wisdom set you up to live the "I Can" life, because you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.

Now, welcome your host, Jennifer Rothschild.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, hey, our friends. We're so glad you're with us in this new year. That was KC Wright, my Seeing Eye Guy. It's two friends and one topic and zero stress here in the podcast closet. And we are calling this year 20-20-thrive.

KC Wright: Whoo!

Jennifer Rothschild: We're pretty pumped around here. Because as you know, my latest Bible study, "Heaven: When Faith Becomes Sight" is finally available. It's only been out a couple of weeks, and we've gotten some really good reviews. But by the way, you may not know this. We were out of town when our shipment came in.

KC Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: And so Phil called you, KC, and said, "Hey, will you pick it up?"

KC Wright: It was such an honor.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: So what happened?

KC Wright: It was such an honor. I felt such a weight of responsibility on me. And because Dr. Phil and Jennifer do so much for me -- they never ask for anything in return. And so when the opportunity arises that I get to give back, I'm first in line.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, you're so nice.

KC Wright: So I fly over there in the Jeep, and here I find all these boxes at the UPS store, and I load my truck with Heaven. And I'm driving down the road in my Jeep truck with Heaven in my truck. And so I was -- I don't know, I got a little emotional. I know that sounds really weird.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's sweet, though.

KC Wright: But I was thinking about the impact, seriously, of every one of these books and how heaven is our home We don't belong here; we're just pilgrims, we're passing through.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

KC Wright: One translation says we're aliens, which I'm more --

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, you are kinda --

KC Wright: -- I can relate with that.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- some days, yeah.

KC Wright: But I was thinking about, oh, my goodness, God has penned yet another book through our J.R., and it's sitting in the back of my truck.

And so then I felt another responsibility. When I arrived, I had to just make sure all the boxes were perfect.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, don't damage Heaven.

KC Wright: Yes. Because they arrived undamaged.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's right.

KC Wright: I did not want to be the guy to --

Jennifer Rothschild: Right. Heaven is perfect. Keep it that way.

Well, I love it, KC, because you always have heaven in your heart. Then you had Heaven in your Jeep.

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: And then, ladies and gentlemen, we're very sophisticated here at World Headquarters. Our warehouse is in the garage. So KC stacked box after box after box in the garage.

KC Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: But I love it, KC, because Heaven, the Bible study itself, it's been out just a week or two, but it's already making a difference. And so I think Gretchen -- you've got some -- she caught some reviews for you, for you to read there to see how women are already responding. Which I love this.

KC Wright: Let me read some reviews, just to give you a taste. So, Rose, podcast hug to you. She wrote, "I highly recommend doing the study because it will change your life and perspective on how to live on earth and how important heaven is beyond wanting just to see family and friends."

Janet said, "I was reminded that our life here is brief and I need to number my days. Also love the statement that as wonderful as heaven will be, Jesus is our greatest reward."

Jennifer Rothschild: I loved that.

KC Wright: Yes. Marie wrote, "I love the concept that we can re-brand frailty with strength and dignity."

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, yeah.

KC Wright: And one other one that I loved, Marie wrote, "Eden had no tombstones" -- amen to that -- "and neither will heaven."

Jennifer Rothschild: Nope.

KC Wright: Whoo!

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, man.

KC Wright: You know, Jennifer, you said last week on the behind-the-scenes audio picture episode that earth is short and heaven is long, and that has really stuck with me.

And by the way, if you missed that, you will need to go back and listen. It was so cool to get just some ear candy, a little snapshot of being behind the scenes with J.R. And the bonus episode of Blue Flower Moments that followed, really inspiring.

Jennifer Rothschild: I know.

KC Wright: Also, you said that Ann Voskamp said you should promote your Heaven Bible study as beginning with the end in mind.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: Good idea, right?

KC Wright: So true. Because heaven is our future, it is the end. Well, actually, the beginning really.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

KC Wright: So you call it our glorious unending.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, it is our glorious unending. And if we really think about that truth, my people, like, if we really grasp that reality, it can change everything. It has for me. And so if we keep the future in mind, that certain future of heaven, it can change how we live today. I said it earlier, that focusing on the future can actually impact and change today.

But here's the thing. It can do that either for the positive or the not so positive. It's easy, though, you know, when you think about it, KC, at the beginning of a new year, to think about this brand-new future -- right? -- that lies before us. We've got all these days ahead that are full of hope and possibility, and we wonder what will unfold. It'll have so much hope and promise.

And, of course, it also contains uncertainty. There might be a lot of hope, but there's still uncertainty. And uncertainty is often a whole lot less easy to be excited about and to embrace with anticipation. You know, what's going to happen with my kids at school, or what's going to happen with my mom's health, or my finances, or, you know, this job. You get the idea. We think about those things because it is pretty uncertain. And it's easier to be excited about what we know will happen. Like, I know I'm going to have coffee with my friend on Friday, or I know I'm getting that new car this year. Or at least we suppose we know those things. But even the coffee date or the new car, I mean, they're still not certain. They're not 100%. Our futures, like, no matter how much we plan at best, there's still an element of uncertainty.

So what if you could start this new year by focusing on the bright future that is ahead of you that is absolutely for certain? Because heaven is your certain future if you are in Christ, if you know Jesus. Now, even though it might feel like it's forever away, the reality of that day can really make a difference on how you live this day and all the days to come.

KC Wright: And, you know, this conversation is not just for those who are a little closer to heaven. It's for the 20- and 30- and 40- and 50-somethings also. And it's not morbid to acknowledge that, that someday we will be in heaven. I like to say it this way: there's 100% chance none of us are getting out of here alive. Right?

Jennifer Rothschild: Right, the statistics are true.

KC Wright: But it's actually wise to think about it. I was reading that there is actually science that affirms why focusing on the future is good for you. And when it is a certain future, like heaven, then it is really wise to do it.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. And I sent you that -- I know exactly what you're talking about. So part of that article talked about how our brains are anticipatory in nature. Because we're only capable of moving toward the future, our brains are wired to be future oriented, to anticipate. So that's why you might spend a little bit of your brain time speculating on what you think might happen. Or if you're like me, you have a Plan A, a Plan B, a Plan C. Okay, I might have some prepper tendencies. Like, I'm always planning. Seriously, I go out of town for two days, you should see my backpack. Like, I have everything you could possibly need. Like, one time I literally had one of those little heat pouches, like, that -- you know, it's like a hot pack, so you open it and it gets hot?

KC Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Just in case my back started hurting. Did I ever need it? No. But I had it. I don't know.

Are you that way, KC? Are you a prepper?

KC Wright: I have friends that are end-time preppers. Like, I have a buddy who -- he is ready for a zombie apocalypse at any time. And I kid you not, if World War III happens -- in Jesus' name it won't -- we're all safe in his home. I mean, he's got the food, he's got the -- whatever.

I mean, I prep for vacation really well.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, that's a great thing to be a prepper for.

KC Wright: And I do have a backpack in case something happens.

Jennifer Rothschild: So you could step out the house real quick with yourself?

KC Wright: I have things like that in my life.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. So you're a little bit of a future thinker --

KC Wright: Right.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- and that's good.

KC Wright: I have things in case of an emergency. Like, if the lights go out, we're good.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay.

KC Wright: You know, if the heat goes down, you know, yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, and the good thing is you have a friend who's prepared for actually --

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- anything that could happen, right?

KC Wright: For real. For real, yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: But I think a lot of us are that way. We focus on the future. So let's think about you -- okay? -- as you're listening right now. How does future thinking show up in your life? Future thinking, it can take the form of planning, strategizing, or anticipating. And that's really good stuff. We need people like KC's friend who are prepared, who think ahead and do all this and focus on the future. But the problem comes when you fixate on the uncertainty of the future. And maybe even you start to obsess about a worst-case scenario. Or maybe you anticipate, oh, it's just a matter of time till the next shoe drops. You know what I'm talking about. That kind of future thinking, man, that creates mental health issues like anxiety, like depression.

But here's the thing. Even if you aren't, like, a real depressed Eeyore kind of thinker and you don't spend a lot of time imagining those worst-case scenarios, just contemplating the uncertainty of life, it can create this kind of, you know, low-grade, free-floating anxiety and make you insecure, which can eventually lead to doom and gloom. And then if you find yourself depressed, it becomes this vicious cycle. Because research has even shown that many people who struggle with depression, they have parts of their brain that are supposed to be in charge of future thinking, they're not as active as they should be, which makes it really hard to anticipate positive future events like your beautiful future in heaven. What do you think about that, KC?

KC Wright: Okay, that is bleak. So let's think about this for a moment. In Christ, your future is not uncertain.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's right.

KC Wright: Sure, you don't know exactly how every chapter of your life will unfold -- we don't know that -- but you know how it ends, with your glorious unending, with your faith becoming sight. Can we just stop right there and ponder? Selah, calm, pause, think about this. When your faith becomes sight, you know your future is in heaven. One day our faith will become our vision. Wow.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right?

KC Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: I'm glad you repeated it. Because that is our reality.

You know, I've got this friend named John, and he was telling me that his daughter -- she loves to read, but she always reads the last chapter of her book first, because she says that it helps her get through, like, the hard chapters or the difficult chapters, the challenging chapters, the boring chapters, whatever, if she knows how the story ends. I love that, my people, because we know how our story ends. We have a certain future.

In fact, I just want KC to read for us, because I want the Word to speak for itself when it comes to our future. Just sit back, take a deep breath, and listen while KC reads these verses about your glorious unending, about when your faith becomes sight, about heaven. He's going to read these over you.

KC Wright: John 14:1-3. "Do not let your heart be troubled. You believe in God. Believe also in me. My Father's house has many rooms. If that were not so, would I have told you that I'm going there to prepare a place for you? And if 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."

Jennifer Rothschild: I love it.

KC Wright: 2 Corinthians 5:5-8. "Now, the One who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. Therefore, we will always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord, for we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord."

Revelation 21:4-7. "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new!' Then he said, 'Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.' He said to me: 'It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty, I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.'"

Jennifer Rothschild: Beautiful.

KC Wright: I hope I'm in your corner of heaven, J.R.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, I think you will be.

KC Wright: With all the 4:13ers --

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, I think we will be.

KC Wright: -- and Cece Winans leading worship.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, KC, I mean, you just read about it. That right there, that's our future.

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: It really is our future. So I'm curious, what would happen if you focused on that, my people --

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- on your future? What if you keep the end in mind, as KC said earlier?

You know -- I was a psychology major, KC. I know you know that. And in therapy, a mental health professional, she would help her client develop future thinking skills, because that would help reduce depression. And so she might, you know, really coach up and train her client to visualize the future. She may encourage her client to have some goal setting and to help that person who might be struggling with depression or anxiety. She might help that client ponder and get to know her future self. Like, think about what your future self is going to be.

Okay. So I was thinking about those principles, like what would happen in a therapeutic setting with a counselor. And knowing what Scripture says about heaven, what if we applied some of those therapeutic practices in a biblical way to ground us in eternity and make life better on this day? Okay? So I thought we would just go through these. And let's just consider how these following three practices might help this day better in light of the reality of your certain future in heaven. I want you to think about that day, think about how these three concepts, these three practices, might help you have a better day today and every day to come this new year.

KC Wright: I love this.

Jennifer Rothschild: All right. First one is this: visualize your future. Now, this is not some weird hooley-gooley out-there thing. Like, you know, visualize yourself being 100% successful and therefore you will be. No, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about in the context of what KC just read in Scripture. Visualize your future. I mean, he just read about heaven. Could you see it? I mean, I could. And so if you even read Revelation 22, you're going to see the river of life flowing, you're going to see the Holy City coming down from God. That's your future home.

Now, often when we think of heaven, like, we think of clouds and angels and harps and all these ethereal things that we just really can't relate to. But, my people, heaven, it's a literal place. It is a material place. It's not just ethereal, but it is literal and it is material. That means there is a present heaven right now. When my daddy died in 2018, my daddy went immediately to be in the presence of the Lord, in the present heaven, in the presence of God.

Now, there will come a day when Christ returns. And all of us who are in Christ, whether we have been in the present heaven or whether we are still on earth, will be ushered into the New Earth, our forever heaven, where we will have resurrected bodies. So think about it. How can visualizing your certain future in heaven, both the present heaven and the New Earth, improve your mental and emotional health today? What does your biblically-informed imagination see when you imagine heaven and you visualize your future, and how can what you see impact what you see today?

So for me, KC, when darkness just presses in, literally I visualize that city where Revelation talks about where we won't need the light because Jesus will be our light. And I'm telling you, the darkness of blindness suddenly doesn't feel so heavy when I visualize my future. Or when tears flow, like, when I'm just fatigued or sad and tears flow, I literally visualize the hand of God wiping away those tears once and for all. To feel the hand of God, to visualize that moment, y'all, that's what I'm talking about.

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: So pause and consider how you can apply this technique within the biblical confines of visualizing your future. And how's that going to strengthen you right now? How's that going to give you hope for this day? How's that going to build your anticipation for that day? So consider that. You want to visualize your future. Okay?

Second way. This is another technique to help you become a very biblically grounded future thinker. Okay? Second way, set some goals. So, like, if you were in counseling and you were just stuck in the doldrums or in depression, one of the things a therapist would help you do is figure out some goals, some short-term goals, some accessible goals, some realistic goals, some doable goals -- okay? -- because we need goals in life. Well, think about how the reality of heaven initiates and may shape some goals here for you here on earth. Okay?

So the present heaven and the New Earth, they are sure things. If that's true, which it is, then what kinds of goals could you implement here that would give you a greater sense of purpose and align your heart with that day, like, as you're pressing on to that prize that God has called you heavenward? So I'm thinking, KC, like, for me, it makes me persevere. Literally one of my goals in this life is I am not going to quit.

KC Wright: No.

Jennifer Rothschild: Because I know James 1:12 says that I will be blessed -- there will be a crown of life --

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- for me if I persevere, right?

KC Wright: Oh, yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: So it is a goal for me. I am going to persevere.

But I'll tell you another goal that I have learned to choose, because of the reality of heaven, is to love people more.

KC Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Just to love them more. Because the stuff -- like, accumulating stuff or having -- it doesn't matter. People do. And to love them well. I know that one of my goals is that when I get to heaven, I want to hear Jesus say, like he said in -- oh, man, was it John 13? "You have loved them like I have loved you." Like, that's a goal for me --

KC Wright: So good.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- because of the reality of heaven.

So I'm curious. Like, what about you? Do you have some goals that you just live by because of the truth of heaven?

KC Wright: Well, and one more about you, J.R. -- and I'm so proud of you. Jesus said, "If you love me, feed my sheep." And that is what's happening with the 4:13 Podcast. You love Jesus with all your mind, heart, soul, and strength. And each podcast we pray, "Father, use this podcast to reach one more heart with the Word." We are feeding his sheep.

But with me, all the things you said, You know, we've got this grace to run this race, and I am not going to quit. In "Finding Nemo," it's, "Just keep swimming." But honestly, you just keep going. Do not let the enemy of our souls win. We are the victorious ones.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes, we are.

KC Wright: The same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead dwells in us.

But one thing -- you know, we thank God for all the ministry gifts. And God has placed the evangelist and the prophet and the teacher and all that. But we're all called to the ministry of reconciliation.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes, we are.

KC Wright: And we can't be so attached to things on earth that we forget that people are the only things we can take to heaven, bring to heaven, right?

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

KC Wright: So just -- yes, we praise God for the evangelists, but we're all called to seek and save that which is lost.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. That's right.

KC Wright: There was a group of grannies that prayed for this troubled teenager when I was a mess, you know. And who can we pray for? Who can we invite? I read this stat this week that 82% of people would come to church if you just invited them, and only 2% of Christians invite friends.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's a good word.

KC Wright: But not only getting them to church, but we are to be the church everywhere we go.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, to love them like Jesus.

KC Wright: So the goal is to love and to also -- man, I'm telling you, we have all these conversations that don't mean squat. Politics and sports and the weather. Man, if you really love somebody, look them square in the eye and just say, "Have you made Jesus your Lord?"

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

KC Wright: "Can I tell you about the greatest love story ever?" "Can I tell you some Good News?" And then just tell them about Jesus. Like, I was this way before him and I'm this way now. And It's all through a prayer I prayed, and I can pray that with you, and I can get you a Bible, and -- just be about the Father's business, man.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, I love that. I mean, when Jesus was on earth, that's what his goal was, to be about the Father's business. He said, "I came to serve, not to be served."

KC Wright: Right.

Jennifer Rothschild: I mean, I think we can literally look at Jesus' earthly life and ministry. Whatever were his goals, boy, they'd be some good goals for us. So, yeah, I think it's important to think about our goals.

I remember when I was in seventh grade, there was a bulletin board -- I could still see then. And there was a bulletin board in one of my classrooms that said, "Set goals. Because if you aim at nothing, you will hit it."

KC Wright: You will hit nothing.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. And I'm like -- I've never forgotten it.

KC Wright: Wow.

Jennifer Rothschild: But I think when we consider the reality of heaven, setting goals here helps us. Because here's the thing, we don't want to get to the end, to our last breath, with this boatload of regret, thinking, oh, my gosh, I wish I had done this. Because we're not going to get to the end of our life and go, oh, man, I wish I'd built a bigger house, oh, man, I wish I --

KC Wright: Right.

Jennifer Rothschild: No. It's going to be, no, I wish I'd loved people better, I wish I'd listened more, I wish I'd invited -- you know.

KC Wright: It's true. It's true, yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: So, yeah, we got to think about those goals. So let's be goal setters, my people.

All right, third way. Get to know your future self. Now, I love this concept. Okay? And this is really just an exercise in choosing to live intentionally and to experiencing hope. Okay? Because there is a future you. There's a future you who will be alive and well on the New Earth in your glorious unending when your faith becomes sight someday. Okay? So what is she going to experience? What is he going to be like? How is he going to feel? Think about those things. Because it's true, you will be more alive then than you are even today. So visualize, think about, and get to know that future you when you're finally home in your Father's house.

2 Corinthians 15, by the way, if you read that whole chapter, you learn that we will eventually have a resurrected body. When Christ returns, we will have a resurrected body, a glorified body, and it will be like Jesus' resurrected body. Well, if you think about Jesus' resurrected body after he rose from the dead, he was here on earth for a little while before he ascended to the Father. And he ate --

KC Wright: Yeah, fish.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- he drank, he laughed, he loved. He was a part of life in its fullest sense. You will be also.

KC Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: You will be fully alive. And so I think sometimes we need to get to know that future us who's going to live unconfined and unconstrained.

Now, you know, when Jesus still was here on earth, yes, there were some laws of nature, but he didn't have to obey all of them. He still walked through walls if he chose to. And who knows what the laws of nature will be when we are there and nature has been renewed. But we will still be like Jesus was. We will have some kind of embodiment.

But even better, seriously, y'all, than the physical is the state of our emotions and our intellect. We're going to be fully redeemed, perfected. We are going to know as we are known. There will no more sin, there will be no sorrow, no pain. That's the you who's going to live forever in the presence of the Lord on the New Earth.

So what is that future you? Think about this. What would that future you, who's fully alive, free, mature in God's presence, what would that future you say to you right now? How would that future you coach you to have maybe a more grounded perspective or eternal perspective? How can your future self influence your present self? What would she say to you? Anything? Maybe that when you think about that, you might want to begin to change now based on future you. I know when I think about it, there's some things that I'm like, I don't know that I want to make a big deal of that because someday that won't exist anymore. I think I'm going to let that go. I'm going to forgive quicker. I'm going to let my future me influence my now me and grow in maturity.

So I think of 2 Corinthians 4:16-18. There's going to be a day when we are fully alive on the New Earth. And I'm going to look back on that day and think of 2 Corinthians 4:16 that said, "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we're wasting away" -- which that's us right now -- "inwardly daily we're still being renewed." And these light and temporary troubles, when we get there someday, our future us is going to say, see, it was working in you a far greater weight of glory. Remember all those things that you saw? You shouldn't have fixed your eyes on those things that were seen, because those were temporary. So what I'm saying now, what my present self needs to hear from my future self is, hey, keep fixing your eyes on the future, because that is your reality. So, my people, this result, the result of really having sound biblical future thinking, is boosted hope.

KC Wright: Come on.

Jennifer Rothschild: Don't you need it?

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: An eternal perspective.

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: And greater perseverance. So become the future thinker that you were created to be. Don't waste time getting weighed down by the troubles of today when you can be grounded by the truth of eternity. So when sorrow hits, visualize God wiping away those tears.

When you get caught up in the mundane and you feel like you're just starting to lose your shine or your sense of purpose, turn your mind to your future joy, your future self, and your future reality and make pressing on to the prize of knowing Jesus better, better, and better one of the goals, because that way it'll just be a sweet reunion when you get to heaven someday.

This is part of the way, quite honestly -- I'm being very candid -- that I manage blindness. I mean, I live completely present in the dailiness, in the moments of darkness, of blindness. I feel the sting of it. I feel the loss of it. I feel the weight of it. It's very fatiguing. I don't ever get a vacation from it. I just never escape the dark. But I do think about my future, that is just as real as the present darkness, and I imagine the place that blue flowers grow, where there's no night, the place that I'm going to dance and I'm going to run. And if you're there -- and I hope you're there -- I'm going to serve you coffee and we're going to fellowship together in the light, and it'll be the light that even these blind eyes will see.

KC Wright: This is so good. This is so good. I needed all of this. I know you did too. Such a good way to start a new year. Such a good way to reset our thinking and set our mind on things above. And this is a great taste of the kind of wisdom and encouragement you will get in Jennifer's "Heaven: When Faith Becomes Sight" Bible study. It's a six-week study and includes seven free videos of Jennifer's teaching also. You can learn more right now and get a copy at 413podcast.com/Heaven, or you can just simply go to jenniferrothschild.com/Heaven.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. And there you can find -- if you want to read the first chapter for free, check it out. You can do that. And you can also watch the first teaching video for free also there.

I also put together, KC, a Heaven playlist while I was writing the Bible study.

KC Wright: What?

Jennifer Rothschild: So I have all these songs that I listened to while I was writing, and I broke them up based on themes. So as you're reading and studying, you can listen to these same songs, and I think it'll help deepen the message. So that's there too. There's all sorts of good stuff there at jenniferrothschild.com/Heaven.

KC Wright: Yeah, and all sorts of Heaven swag, believe it or not.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

KC Wright: Like the cool "Earth Is Short, Heaven Is Long" T-shirt and tote bag. You need this beautiful study on heaven. You will learn and unlearn so much.

So become a biblical future thinker. You can because you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. I can.

Jennifer Rothschild: I can.

Jennifer and KC: And you can.

KC Wright: You know, while we were talking about heaven, one of my favorite evangelists, Dwight L. Moody.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, yeah.

KC Wright: Yeah. He said, "One day you'll read in the paper that Dwight L. Moody has died. But on that day, don't you believe a word of it, because on that day, I'll be more alive than ever."

And when he was dying, his son has an account of -- his dad was slipping out of earth into the reality of heaven, and he kept going in and out of his sleep. And he said, "I've been to the city. I've seen the children." And his son goes, "Oh, Dad, you're just dreaming. You're just imagining that." He said, "No. No. I've been to the city gates. Today is my coronation day."

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh. May it be, Lord, may it be.

4:13 Podcast: Blue Flower Moments - Audio Pictures [BONUS]

KC Wright: Welcome to a bonus episode, a beautiful bonus episode of the 4:13 Podcast, where practical encouragement and biblical wisdom set you up to live the "I Can" life, because you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. Now, settle in for a special episode about Blue Flower Moments.

Here's your host and my soul sister, Jennifer Rothschild.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, my goodness, my people, you're about to love this. So we've been talking about the Heaven Bible study around here, and a blue flower is very significant. And so you're about to learn why. So if we're new friends, I'm Jennifer, and I really do want to share with you some Blue Flower Moments.

Okay. So as I mentioned, in my new Heaven Bible study, I try to depict, like, the longing for heaven, the ache for our forever home using the motif of a blue flower. And here's why. I first learned about it from none other than -- you're going to be so surprised, KC -- C.S. Lewis.

KC Wright: What?

Jennifer Rothschild: If we've been friends for long, you know I love C.S. Lewis. And so in his book "Surprised By Joy," he called himself a votary of the blue flower. Well, that was so unique to me. So first of all, a votary, it's just an old-fashioned way of saying a devote, like someone who's devoted to. So I was like, okay, C.S. Lewis is devoted to the blue flower, and I am devoted to C.S. Lewis.

Okay. So what in the world does that mean? All right. Well, in German romantic literature, the blue flower was used to represent or to capture longing, transcendence, beauty, the ache for the eternal. Like, it's almost this longing that is unmet, yet the not being met is still very satisfying. It's just this beautiful ache that is satisfying in and of itself. Well, that's how I feel about heaven. I do have this ache for the eternal.

So for me, when I created what I call these Blue Flower Moments, they're just moments that awaken my longing for heaven. They, like, stir my spiritual senses and they make me cast my gaze toward heaven. So I just thought I would take you into my Blue Flower Moments through these audio pictures, and maybe you can open your spiritual eyes, open your heart, and see with me these Blue Flower Moments.

[AUDIO PICTURE #1]

Jennifer Rothschild: So here I am out on the deck. Spring morning. The rain is still just drizzling. And the birds. Like, where I'm standing, it's like surround sound, like all creation is saying, "It's almost time, it's almost time, our redemption." I wonder if this is what it was like that weekend when Jesus was crucified. I know it was so very dark and sad for the followers who were confused, but I just think creation knew the Master was about to bust through and reverse the curse and redeem this whole earth and all creation and all created beings from the curse of death. This must have been what it sounded like.

So now I stand here right now and I literally am turning my head to follow the whole width and distance of where I'm hearing all the sound. And I know my eyes right now cannot see one single thing except dark, but I can see it in my imagination. I can see the blue flowers blooming. I can see the rain droplets glistening on the leaves of that Japanese maple. I can see how the drops of water are pooling and puddling on the wood of the deck. In my imagination, I can see every feather on those mourning doves and cardinals. And I just know if this captures my imagination and I think this is like exhaling into a beauty I've never known, then what in the world will it be like? I cannot even imagine. It's beyond what I can imagine.

This right here is the blue flower. It's the ache. I'm just going to call this moment, this morning, one of the seeds of the blue flower. That longing, that ache, the joy that comes from being and wanting, the joy that comes from possessing and wanting more, that's the blue flower. So let these seeds grow and grow and grow and continue to awaken in me and grow in me this longing and desire for my true home, my true country, the true beauty. This right here, it's not the point; it's one of the pointers.

[AUDIO PICTURE #2]

Jennifer Rothschild: This is an audio picture at -- almost 9:00 p.m., right, honey?

Dr. Phil: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Like May 25th. We're sitting out in a cove in the boat. You can hear the water lapping up against the boat. We had music playing, but we decided the birds were more beautiful. And there were some crickets, but it just got quiet. Phil said a little mama duck and her line of baby ducks just passed us.

[AUDIO PICTURE #3]

Jennifer Rothschild: (The song "Thank You Jesus for the Blood" playing.) Listen to that. A little taste of heaven when every tribe, every tongue, and every nation will be basking in the glory of the Lamb. We'll all sing the same song that Jesus redeemed us. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus, for Women of Joy gathering all these women. Yeah. That glorious light is going to be in a place also where there is no more night. We get to live it now and look forward to it then.

[AUDIO PICTURE #4]

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, it is the Saturday night before Labor Day 2023 and I'm sitting out here on the deck for just a few minutes by myself. Close to 9:00 p.m. And Lori and Todd have been here all weekend, and we've had such a blessing of a time. It's been so much fun. Lori and I have sung '70s music at the top of our lungs, we've been out on the boat, we've been to dinner. We've just talked about everything and nothing. And I've known Lori Cooley for 32 years, and for 32 years she's been one of my dearest friends and richest treasures. And it's a blessing to have her husband, Todd, who's also my brother and such a dear friend of Phil, as part of this beautiful time together.

So just taking a moment to pause and think and thank the Lord for my friends and for his kindness in giving me my friends and this time to just experience the joy of it all. Maybe this is part of the ache, the longing, the recognition that how good this is is just a foretaste of what it's going to be like forever and ever, because I don't like the thought of it ending tomorrow. But maybe that's because there's going to be a forever beginning when it's never going to end. Pure fellowship forever and ever in heaven.

[AUDIO PICTURE #5]

Jennifer Rothschild: I can't really see, of course, the light very well, but I can always tell when it's soft, because it doesn't hurt my eyes. And so it's really soft right now. The light is very soft. So I just know that it must be that grayish blue beautiful soft light. I don't know. If heaven has a soundtrack, I think this must be on the playlist. All creatures of our God and King.

[AUDIO PICTURE #6]

Jennifer Rothschild: Sitting outside here at The Cove, the Billy Graham Training Center. There's a creek babbling beneath us. Listen to how -- when I came out here, I thought of the line from the song, "The Hills are Alive With the Sound of Music," and then I thought -- after studying heaven, all I could think when I heard all this beauty surrounding me is as beautiful as this is, what will it be when it's been redeemed and fully restored? Because this right here is still groaning. Wait till the glory. What is the New Earth going to be like? No wonder we have to have glorified bodies. These earthbound flesh ones just can't take it in. It's so beautiful. It is such a beautiful morning.

[AUDIO PICTURE #7]

Jennifer Rothschild: Early October, sitting out on the deck. Low '70s, warm afternoon with a cool breeze. Got me a cappuccino from Seven Brew, which is the new coffee shop near our house. Taking off the lid so that I can enjoy all the foam. Oh, yeah. It's the small things. It's the small things. Got to pause and notice the small things, because they represent -- they're like little glimpses, little shadows of all the good things to come.

[AUDIO PICTURE #8]

Jennifer Rothschild: Speaking of blue, can I ask you a question?

Jennifer's Grandson: What?

Jennifer Rothschild: So -- just because I want to hear what you just said about this. Did you think these blue flowers -- do you remember where these blue flowers were from?

Jennifer's Grandson: No.

Jennifer's Grandson: No.

Jennifer Rothschild: Do you remember that Gigi had --

Jennifer's Grandson: When you graduated?

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, like graduation? Yeah. It's when Gigi was teaching about heaven. But are they pretty still, or are they about to fade?

Jennifer's Grandson: They're still pretty.

Jennifer Rothschild: They are pretty.

Jennifer's Grandson: They're mostly blue and white.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, that's pretty, yeah.

Jennifer's Grandson: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Do you know what these flowers are called?

Jennifer's Grandson: What?

Jennifer Rothschild: Hydrangea.

Jennifer's Grandson: I might have actually heard of that.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's a hard word to say.

Jennifer's Grandson: Is that like flowers of God?

Jennifer Rothschild: They are like flowers of God. I like to think of them as flowers of God, because this flower reminds me of heaven because it's so beautiful.

Jennifer's Grandson: And I know that God is --

Jennifer's Grandson: And also [indecipherable] name?

Jennifer Rothschild: Well --

Jennifer's Grandson: And I also know that heaven is paradise.

Jennifer Rothschild: Heaven is paradise. That's right. How'd you learn that?

Jennifer's Grandson: Well, Mommy just told me that.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, Mommy's right, heaven is paradise.

Jennifer's Grandson: I think I knew that.

Jennifer Rothschild: You probably did. You know what?

Jennifer's Grandson: Because paradise means great.

Jennifer Rothschild: It sure does. It's going to be beautiful. Gigi just likes to imagine that there's blue flowers in heaven.

Jennifer's Grandson: Um, Gigi?

Jennifer Rothschild: What?

Jennifer's Grandson: So, like, in heaven, people just think, like, it's -- like the ground is made of water, but actually not. It's actually the whole town.

Jennifer Rothschild: The whole town is? Wow.

Jennifer's Grandson: Actually, the streets are made of gold, diamonds, and things like that.

Jennifer Rothschild: Really?

Jennifer's Grandson: And rubies.

Jennifer Rothschild: Wow. That's going to be beautiful.

Jennifer's Grandson: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Who gets to go to heaven?

Jennifer's Grandson: Grandpa Jolly.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, Grandpa Jolly went to heaven, that's for sure.

Jennifer's Grandson: Well, if you believe in him, then you will get to go to heaven.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's right, if you believe in Jesus, we go to heaven, yeah.

Jennifer's Grandson: But I must be nice?

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. Well, when we believe in Jesus, we are nice.

Jennifer's Grandson: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: But just being nice doesn't help us go to heaven. Only believing in Jesus lets us go to heaven.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURES]

Jennifer Rothschild: It is Christ who draws our hearts to beauty. He is the one who gives us capacity to even long for a deep joy that he alone can satisfy. So the Blue Flower Moments, they are pointers. They point to Jesus, who can satisfy every single longing.

So slow down. Notice your Blue Flower Moments. They are everywhere. And let each of those Blue Flower Moments draw you closer to heaven, and even more importantly, to the Treasure of Heaven, Jesus.

KC Wright: You can get a copy of the Heaven Bible study at 413podcast.com/Heaven or jenniferrothschild.com/Heaven. And there you can find Jennifer's heaven playlist, her favorite seven books about heaven, and even watch the first video teaching and read the very first chapter for free. Okay, enjoy your Blue Flower Moments.

4:13 Podcast: Behind the Scenes of Heaven - Audio Pictures [Episode 331]

KC Wright: Hey, welcome to the 4:13 Podcast. Do you like the new music? The whole month we're using this song called "Ascending" by Michael O'Brien on the podcast. Do you know why? Because this song is part of our girl Jennifer's latest video-based Bible study titled "Heaven: When Faith Becomes Sight." And we're celebrating around here for the whole month. So welcome to the 4:13 Podcast, where practical encouragement and biblical wisdom set you up to live the "I Can" life, because you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength.

Now here's your host, Jennifer Rothschild.

Jennifer Rothschild: Hey, friends. And that was my friend KC Wright, my Seeing Eye Guy. He's right, we are celebrating all month, because finally my "Heaven: When Faith Becomes Sight" Bible study releases today. I'm so grateful. It was a long time coming, and I am so thankful it is out in the world.

So I was with a friend of mine -- KC, you know her and love her -- Ann Voskamp --

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- and we were talking about my Bible study and when it was releasing. You know, I said, "January 2nd." She said, "Oh my goodness. Then you should promote it as beginning with the end in mind."

KC Wright: Oh, wow.

Jennifer Rothschild: Isn't that true? You want to begin 2025 with the ultimate end in mind, heaven.

KC Wright: I love that.

Jennifer Rothschild: I think that is just a great way to think about heaven. It really is. When our faith becomes sight, is our glorious unending. So this year let's do that, let's begin with the end in mind.

But since we're family, I thought it would be fun for you to hear some of the behind the scenes of me writing "Heaven." Okay. So before we begin with the end in mind, we're going to begin at the beginning. Now, what you're about to hear is a bunch of audio pictures. And if you've never heard any of my audio picture episodes, this is literally just like what you would do with your camera where you would take a picture of something and then look at it later. Well, because I can't see, I record things, and they're little audio snapshots of moments in my world. So I thought I would take you behind the scenes writing, or attempting to write, "Heaven." So we'll start with me in Florida. Because that's a very inspiring place to write about heaven, right? Well, not so much. I had high hopes, but very low output.

[AUDIO PICTURE #1]

Jennifer Rothschild: This is the sound outside my window here in Treasure Island as I'm working. I have a standing desk right under the window. And it's a cool morning, so the windows are open. Again writing on heaven. Trying, actually. Did I say writing? That's a very strong word. I'm reading about heaven and thinking about heaven and feeling writer's block about heaven.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #1]

Jennifer Rothschild: So I got home and then I was thinking, you know, I can write better at home. Right? But before I could write, I had to rearrange my office --

KC Wright: Of course.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- because that's what I do. Right? That's what I literally do with every new writing project. I redecorate, I rearrange. And so here you go.

[AUDIO PICTURE #2]

Jennifer Rothschild: This one here.

Kenzie Harkrider: Yes, ma'am.

Jennifer Rothschild: And then the only -- the other lamp I had on my desk --

Kenzie Harkrider: Yeah, you had one on your desk, one on the middle table, and then the one in the corner.

Jennifer Rothschild: So you prefer this one over here than the one with the white shade?

Kenzie Harkrider: The tall one? Is that what you're talking about?

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, mm-hmm.

Kenzie Harkrider: I think so. I think it would block the windows too much.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay, gotcha. That's all I need here. Okay. All right. So then I have that extra lamp that I could put somewhere?

Kenzie Harkrider: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. Okay.

Kenzie Harkrider: It's a pretty lamp.

Jennifer Rothschild: It is a pretty lamp. All right. Where is it right now, just so I know for later?

Kenzie Harkrider: It is -- where do you want me to put it? It's in here. So --

Jennifer Rothschild: What else do I have left? I have the --

Kenzie Harkrider: We just need to put your chair behind your desk and on the big metal trunk.

Jennifer Rothschild: Mm-hmm. With the silver service on it?

Kenzie Harkrider: Yes, ma'am.

Jennifer Rothschild: And then I have that other lamp?

Kenzie Harkrider: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: I think this is gonna look good.

Kenzie Harkrider: I think so.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's a different look, but I like it.

Kenzie Harkrider: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Does it look bigger?

Kenzie Harkrider: No.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. It's an odd shaped office [indecipherable] furniture in it. Okay. Let's just move my trunk into the dining room.

Kenzie Harkrider: Okay. I'm gonna leave the lamp in here with all the other stuff.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, on that trunk?

Kenzie Harkrider: By the trunk, yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. Thank you.

Kenzie Harkrider: So we know where it's at. Let me put your chair back.

Jennifer Rothschild: Thank you.

Kenzie Harkrider: New Bible study, new office.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, that's usually what I do.

Kenzie Harkrider: Late night office renovations.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #2]

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, I'm not really sure that it helped, because here's another example of my attempt to write.

[AUDIO PICTURE #3]

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. So now I decided to come sit at the kitchen table. And I am dressed and working with a second cup of coffee, and it is in a mug that says, "It Is Well With My Soul." I'm running the dishwasher. I've got my sun lamp at the table here for me and my prayer plant. So, like, here we go. Here. We. Go. Yes. It's only like 5:55. Yes.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #3]

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, then we went to Nashville, Tennessee, for a writers' conference. Now, let me explain what that is. A writers' conference is when all these different representatives from the publishing house gather and I, as the author, get to kind of share what the vision is. If I have a proposal written -- which I did -- I share the proposal. And then as a team we get to go through it and, like, see if there's any gaps or if they have any better ideas.

And so what's really cool, KC, is they include, like, someone from marketing, someone from art, someone from video, someone from content. So you get this -- you really do get a holistic from the very beginning experience. And it's super supportive to me as the author.

Well, you're about to hear a little bit of that. And at one point, the actual president of Lifeway Publishing House, Ben Mandrell, even popped in --

KC Wright: Wow.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- to be an encouragement, which was so sweet. So here's a bit of the writers' conference.

[AUDIO PICTURE #4]

Mike Wakefield: I'm very excited. That's what it kind of sounded like after I said that. We lost a few people, so -- you know. But great discussion this morning, guys, really great discussion. I appreciate it. I want you to continue to feel that openness to -- everybody to share, because we're going to need that as we talk about titles, that kind of thing, how we title the study. So that's what we're going to move into. We'll talk about titling and then we'll talk about cover. But I'm going to turn the titling portion of this over to Tina. Tina, I'm going to let you drive this a little bit.

Tina Boesch: I just told Jennifer I had one idea of what we might do. But in this case, I actually think she's brought some incredible possibilities to the table, so I'm not sure our Post-It Note method is going to be as helpful in this case. But in addition -- so first of all, Jennifer, I want you to tell us the titles you've been thinking through, the subtitles, and also the conversations you've already had with women and their reactions to these.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay.

Tina Boesch: And you guys also know if as we've been talking other possibilities have presented themselves to you, like, let's just make this a conversation around titling and subtitling. If you've had other thoughts, if there were things that Jennifer said that sparked an idea, feel free to bring those. We don't want to shut down any ideas and limit ourselves. But Jennifer also has some really good ideas.

Mike Wakefield: Come on in and interrupt. Come on. You can come interrupt.

Ben Mandrell: What's up?

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Hey, hey.

Jennifer Rothschild: (Humming "Hail To The Chief.")

Ben Mandrell: Hi.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's Mr. President.

Ben Mandrell: How are you guys?

Jennifer Rothschild: Glad to see you, Ben.

Ben Mandrell: Well, how are you? Are you being onery?

Jennifer Rothschild: He is.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Oh, man.

Jennifer Rothschild: He is.

Ben Mandrell: Always.

Jennifer Rothschild: No, I'm just here to make these people behave.

Ben Mandrell: What are we working on?

Jennifer Rothschild: Heaven.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: We've had such great discussion on the topic of heaven.

Ben Mandrell: Oh, this is the heaven thing.

Jennifer Rothschild: This is the heaven thing, yes.

Ben Mandrell: Awesome.

Jennifer Rothschild: And we've had a great morning so far. We just went through content. Now we're about to do media, video. And great team.

Ben Mandrell: Awesome.

Jennifer Rothschild: Great input, great insights.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Yeah, yeah.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #4]

Jennifer Rothschild: Wasn't that awesome? I just really wanted you to hear that. Because my name may be on the cover of the Heaven Bible study, but there are so many names that make a project like this happen, and I am super thankful for each one of them.

So after all that collaboration and inspiration, I went back home and I got to writing. Now, buckle up, because you are about to ride along with me on my ten-month emotional and spiritual roller coaster. It was early mornings, it was late nights. It was dinner with Phil where I talked about it. You'll hear me very peaceful, you'll hear me procrastinating. And even panicking a little bit, but always persevering.

[AUDIO PICTURE #5]

Jennifer Rothschild: So I'm sitting here at the lake by myself. We made candles all day yesterday. And listen to this one. (Sound of a candle burning.) That is a good wood wick right there. And it smells like coffee. I decided to name this one Coffee Break, because it's got a coffee fragrance with a little bit of vanilla cream, like a French vanilla cream. So I've got my coffee candle next to my cup of Starbucks Verona.

And I also yesterday made blue flower candles to try to create something to go with my Heaven Bible study, which is what I need to work on today. Which is why I'm doing the voice memo, because I'm procrastinating, because this is probably the hardest day of study, because I gotta get everybody to the New Earth. In 1,500 words or less, I need to figure out how to get them there.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: So what was the breakthrough, then, for you?

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, it's not really a breakthrough as much as it's been a -- I don't know how to describe it. I think it helped me that I didn't read N.T. Wright's book until this week.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Oh.

Jennifer Rothschild: And then when I did, I was like, dang, the Lord's already showed me all this stuff.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: That's good.

Jennifer Rothschild: Like, that was my goal, is to learn it hard knocks, study Scripture, try to figure it out myself --

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- instead of just be influenced by a scholar and be influenced by a book. But I've been nervous that I'm missing something. So thankfully when I read his book, I was like, oh, yes. I mean I feel good about it.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: That's awesome.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #5]

[AUDIO PICTURE #6]

Jennifer Rothschild: It's just now about 7 a.m. and I'm sitting in my office. It's quiet in the house. And I lit a candle, my blue flower candle with the wood wick. Let me -- there, you can hear it. (Sound of a candle burning.) And I thought I would just capture how I start writing days. I'm getting near the end. And I had emailed Mike, my editor and friend, a few weeks ago because I was still dealing with the after-effects of COVID, and I had pleurisy, and Phil was in a car accident. Just so many things that were making it very difficult to persevere.

And Mike in an email sent me just some encouragement, but then at the very end you can tell he spontaneously prayed this. And he put it in writing. So literally ever since he sent the prayer, I have started my writing with this prayer. So I thought I would let you hear it. And you'll hear it the way I hear it, because I have to listen to it on my computer. But then I literally pray it as I hear it. So this could be a little cluttery, audio clutter, but this is -- welcome to my world. This is how I begin with prayer.

"Lord, hear our prayer as we commit all of this and ourselves to your keeping. We are trusting you to establish the work of our hands for your glory and for Kingdom work." Yes and Amen. "We are trusting the work of your Holy Spirit in each of us to help us say what needs to be said" -- yes and Amen -- "and not say what does not need to be said. Help us know truth from error. Help us be able to clearly communicate the message that you have given." And then he prays this for me specifically. "Hold tight my precious friend Jennifer close as she finishes her writing. Protect her, heal her, comfort her, encourage her, and strengthen her. May your favor rest on her." And I agree with that prayer, Lord. I need it. "Both of us" -- and I agree with that, Lord -- "and all who surround and contribute to this project are yours and are surrendered to you." And that means all my team, all the publishing team that will touch this. "It is for your purpose and for your glory. Amen."

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #6]

[AUDIO PICTURE #7]

Jennifer Rothschild: I have no confidence.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: You feel rushed.

Jennifer Rothschild: I feel rushed, I feel pressured. I have no confidence in what I'm doing. I literally have no confidence. Because I'm trying to write emphatically about things that are highly contested and somewhat uncertain. So I have no confidence. Besides the fact I don't have a seminary degree.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Uh-huh.

Jennifer Rothschild: I'm not that smart. I am very aware I don't know what I don't know, so I'm trying to handle it very judiciously.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: So I don't -- I'm not enjoying it. You want to know the honest truth? I'm ready to kick the football out of the stadium and run off the field. I am done. But I can't. So I literally have asked me all day today, I've asked meself, "Self, what else do you need to know about this?" Because I can't do it. And that's what I finally said.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: We can't cover it all. So I just went to -- okay, Peter, he wrote a letter when he was about to die.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Right.

Jennifer Rothschild: He was like, okay, people, in light of heaven and Christ's return, here's what you need to do.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Good. Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: So that's what I'm doing on one of the days. And then I've got -- that's my second to the last day.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: That's good. That's smart.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. And just let it go. (Singing) Let it go.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Yeah. And what would Jill do with it?

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, she'll just clean it up.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: She just cleans it up so that it's not so awful for Mike to try to read through.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Isn't that awful -- I mean, awesome?

Dr. Phil Rothschild: It is very awesome. Way to send it off.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: That was Week 5?

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: So you only have Week 6 to go?

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. And I'm out -- I mean, I've got the outline kind of. It's all dynamic.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: So I'm now setting up documents.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: And is it four days each week?

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, yeah, and then a Dash Living.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Right, right, right. Have you worked on the Dash Living yet?

Jennifer Rothschild: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Oh, yeah, you feel good --

Jennifer Rothschild: I'm doing them as I go.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #7]

[AUDIO PICTURE #8]

Jennifer Rothschild: All right, I'm in the house by myself. Phil's coming back today. And I finally got up at 4:15 this morning because I could not sleep. Because here I am near the end of the Bible study, and once again I still am getting all tripped up over the rapture and the Second Coming and communicating it clearly and how much and little to communicate and -- anyway, I just had a 26-minute conversation with ChatGPT, and he was very helpful. And if he's correct, he was very helpful. If he's not correct, then I will end up being even more unclear in what I'm trying to write. But I have only got three more days of study to write, and I'm having so much trouble landing this plane.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #8]

[AUDIO PICTURE #9]

Jennifer Rothschild: So the first day of Week 6 is "The Already and the Not Yet." Yes, Day 2, which I'm working on right now -- I'm almost done with, I think -- is this concept of sojourning well. And can you believe I'm congested again? Who am I talking to? Myself, I guess. I don't think I have Long Covid, but I surely am not 100% yet, and I wish I could get well and feel better.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #9]

[AUDIO PICTURE #10]

Jennifer Rothschild: How has your morning been?

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Good -- busy, but good.

Jennifer Rothschild: Good thing you had a day off?

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Yes. I'm grateful for that. So you're almost done 90%, huh?

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. It's just now doing the -- you know, the little exercise I'm having to do on people's last words.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Oh, yeah?

Jennifer Rothschild: Just, you know, making sure all my Scriptures are accurate and my questions are clear --

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Nice.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- [indecipherable] activity. But I think I've got the emotion, and there are thoughts and -- it's -- yeah. Like if I died right now, somebody could finish it easily.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Wow. Let's hope you don't die.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, I don't want to either, but actually, it wouldn't be a bad alternative after I studied it for six weeks.

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: I'm not sad about that idea.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #10]

[AUDIO PICTURE #11]

Jennifer Rothschild: All right. This is the day that the Lord has made, and I will rejoice and be so glad in it because I just turned in my manuscript. Can we all say hallelujah? So I am so relieved. And, you know, sometimes you have to just be done even if you don't feel finished. Trust the process, trust the True Author of all that is good, and trust my editor.

Anyway, I'm playing the song I've played the whole time. It's the Gray Havens. It's called "Far Kingdom." Oh, it just helps me visualize heaven. So I'm super thankful. It's been quite, quite the hard finish. And now I'm going to start working on messages. But I'm just so thankful that I've got the manuscripts done.

And is he good? He is good. Is he God? He is God. And am I grateful? I am grateful. So grateful. But I think I'm going to take a nap before I work some more. I'll finish the song, then I'll take a nap. Then I'll drink some coffee and then I will start to look at what I could possibly teach that I haven't already written.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #11]

Jennifer Rothschild: All right, well, you heard it, I turned in the manuscript. And after I turned in the manuscript, I prepared to teach it at my home church, to the women at my home church. And I just love the privilege of teaching the women at my church. And they're kind to let me do this, because I get to work out the kinks and, you know, figure out maybe what I had left out or what doesn't make sense before we publish and before I teach it on video. So that's a super big help. So big shoutout to the homegirls, the women at Second Baptist Church in Springfield, Missouri.

All right. But before I could teach, I want you to hear how we started. It was with Kenzie. She was creating for me a prop to use as an illustration. And then after you hear that, you'll hear us moving into the filming. And so after I've taught it, we are going to film the Bible study. And you'll even get to hear the voice probably of my stud husband. So here are some of the behind the scenes of all that.

[AUDIO PICTURE #12]

Jennifer Rothschild: So Kenzie is trying to make us a box of Neapolitan ice cream for me to use for my Heaven study that I'm going to teach at church before I film it. And she's trying to cut Styrofoam to fit inside an emptied and cleaned-out carton of Neapolitan ice cream.

Kenzie Harkrider: We don't have the fancy heat knife like everything suggests --

Jennifer Rothschild: No. So what'd you do?

Kenzie Harkrider: -- on the Google. I tried to heat up a regular kitchen knife --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah?

Kenzie Harkrider: -- and cut through it that way. That did not work.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh.

Kenzie Harkrider: So now I'm just kind of hacking away at it and seeing what happens.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, I told you it doesn't have to look good because -- in fact, if it looks pitiful when I use it on Wednesday night when I teach, there will be some crafty woman in there going, "I could do better than that," and I will say, "Could you please do that?"

Kenzie Harkrider: Please do that. Have at it.

Jennifer Rothschild: We need you to do that.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #12]

[AUDIO PICTURE #13]

Jennifer Rothschild: Lord, I thank you so much for the opportunity. And this is your -- this is your place we're going to be talking about. This is your Word. This is about your Son. So I ask you in the name of Jesus that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart would be acceptable to you, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

I want to begin with a question. 9/11. Do you remember where you were on September 11th, 2001? Yeah, right? None of us will forget that dark day. That was the day that on Flight 93, United Flight 93...

C.S. Lewis has a quote I love. He wrote -- in one of his letters to Malcolm, he was talking about joy on earth and how it helps us glimpse heaven. It's like little shafts of heavenly light. And he said this: "Joy is the serious business of heaven." Joy is a serious business of heaven. And so I have found some things for me that have brought me such joy that have helped me attach to heaven. And one of them is a blue flower. That's why you have blue flowers on your table, that's why there are blue flowers on your book cover.

The blue flower I first heard about a book by C.S. Lewis called "Surprised by Joy." He was talking about this ache for eternity and this longing for joy and how just longing for something beyond yourself is even satisfying in and of itself. And so he said, "I am a votary of the blue flower." And I was like, what is a votary? "Alexa, what is the definition of votary?" She didn't know either. Okay, votary is a very old-fashioned word, but it really means devotee, like you are devoted to something. So C.S. Lewis basically said, I am devoted to the blue flower.

So I did some research to find out what in the world he meant and learned that the blue flower is a symbol in German romantic literature representing longing and an ache for the eternal, beauty, transcendence, almost an unattainable desire for something that is so beautiful. That's how the blue flower is used in literature.

So then I became a devotee of the blue flower. And I imagine the blue flower. I imagine that heaven might even be carpeted with the blue flower, because the beauty, it just captured my imagination. That's what gods of heaven are supposed to do, my friends. They're supposed to capture us and make us think beyond today.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #13]

[AUDIO PICTURE #14]

Jennifer Rothschild: All right, filming the Heaven Bible study starts tomorrow, and so we came to the lake this weekend. I just finished sending my last outline to myself and correcting it based on the transcript that Kenzie gave me, plus Mike's changes. So I told Phil I was going to come outside and sit on the deck and process everything with the cicadas. The cicadas is one of my favorite sounds. I know to some people it's annoying, but at least my little section of the New Earth, I hope we have cicadas.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #14]

[AUDIO PICTURE #15]

Jennifer Rothschild: All right, so now I'm just going to try to discipline myself to not keep all these seven messages in my head all at once, but to try to rest in the Lord and wait patiently on him. Trust him, trust the process, trust how he works in me. And I'll review them all again today, but then I will only look at messages one and two tomorrow. That's it. And then on Wednesday, because I'm teaching three on Wednesday night, I'll look at messages three, four, and five, and that's it. Trust the Lord that he'll help me memorize them. And then on Thursday, I will look at the last two messages and no more. All right. And then Friday morning is the B-roll.

So I think we're going to come back to this lake so I can hear the cicadas in process and be thankful. Praise the Lord with the cicadas. Every creature of our God and King, we're all going to celebrate when I'm done with this project. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #15]

[AUDIO PICTURE #16]

Dr. Phil Rothschild: Thank you for what you've been doing this week. Thank you for using this beautiful bride of mine to study Your Word and to prepare and to deliver this important message for all of us so that we can live these days in the dashes in such a way that brings glory and honor to you and gives us a great hunger and thirst for our heavenly home. Thank you for all that you're doing. Thank you for these friends that have come each night to support Jennifer. So very grateful. Thank you for this team, Lord, that is -- all in the production and writing and editing. So grateful for all of these folks. And we're grateful for what you're going to do tonight. Would you please give Jennifer excellent recall. Would you give her peace to know that you are -- you are speaking through her. It's not her; it's you, your Holy Spirit empowering her.

[END OF AUDIO PICTURE #16]

Jennifer Rothschild: All right. That was my stud husband there at the end. He was praying for me on set. And I was so grateful that he did that when we filmed Heaven.

So now we are at the very end of the writing, the teaching, the filming, and so I asked my friend Michael O'Brien for a song that he could write that I could use as the Heaven theme song. And you're hearing it right now. It's called "Ascending," and it's perfect. I love that he had already named it "Ascending" before we chose it to be the Heaven theme song. So that means we're always moving on, moving up, moving forward onward and upward.

Well, my friends, all these audio pictures that you have just heard, I mean, they're just all part of the process behind the scenes. And the fact that there is actually a finished video-enhanced Bible study is just proof that God was in the whole thing.

KC Wright: Amazing. Wow, God.

So you will want to check out the Heaven Bible study for sure. You can go to the Show Notes right now, 413podcast.com/Heaven, or go straight to jenniferrothschild.com/Heaven.

Also, you do not want to miss the bonus episode that posts right after this, because it's all about the blue flower. And when you see the Heaven Bible study, you'll see it has a blue flower on the cover And the blue flower is significant. So keep listening to hear more audio pictures of Blue Flower Moments. They will make you smile and probably inspire you to create your very own.

Well, friends -- I mean, y'all are more than friends, you're --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, they're family.

KC Wright: -- 4:13 family. As Ann said, let's begin with the end in mind.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. Because earth is short and heaven is long.

4:13 Podcast: Can I Tune Into Eternity Even Now? With Amy Baik Lee [Episode 309]

Amy Baik Lee: Jesus has told us that the Kingdom of God is coming, but it's also here among us right now, and it's in the midst of us and it's breaking through. I think that there is all the worth of our lives summed up in that statement, that it's worth paying attention to the Kingdom in our midst and to the Kingdom that is breaking through. Because, yes, we're waiting for wholeness and healing and restoration, but here is where we get to walk with him. And here, I believe, is where we get to see God in a capacity that we will not get to see him in in the new creation and in restoration, because it's here that we see him right alongside the brokenness.

Jennifer Rothschild: Think about that sudden yearning, the way you feel when you see a sunset. Or maybe what about that pang of longing you sense when you attend a funeral? Think about those experiences that just capture your heart in moments of beauty or peace or even sorrow, those ones that you sense are just offering you a hint of heaven. Are these meant to do more than simply point you to eternity? What if they could help you live more fully on the way there?

Well, today, Author Amy Baik Lee is going to invite you to tune in to that spark of something that you can't see but you know is real. She is going to help you understand that those longings are designed to enrich and alter every single area of your life. So if you've ever wondered how to keep going in this world while you're holding on to the world to come, this podcast is going to offer you courage, companionship, and a stirring sense of the wonder of our journey home to Christ. You're going to love it, so let's get moving.

K.C. Wright: Welcome to the 4:13 Podcast, where practical encouragement and biblical wisdom set you up to live the "I Can" life, because you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.

Now, welcome your host, Jennifer Rothschild.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, hey, people. Jennifer here. My goal is to help you be and do more than you feel capable of as you live the "I Can" life of Philippians 4:13. That was K.C. Wright, my Seeing Eye Guy. Two friends, one topic, zero stress.

I got to tell you, this topic today, K.C. --

K.C. Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- it's near and dear to my heart. Because as you guys know, I've been writing a Bible study on heaven. And, in fact, it will publish in January of 2025. So if you're not signed up for my newsletter, my email, it's Java with Jennifer, you just go to jenniferrothschild.com and you'll see right there where you can sign up. And that'll keep you alert as to when this Bible study is coming out.

But why am I saying this, K.C.? Because we're talking about keeping our minds on heaven, but also because one of the questions that I've been asked several times about heaven is, do animals go to heaven?

K.C. Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: Ooh, right? And so it's because animals are near and dear to our hearts, at least most of the time --

K.C. Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- and so that is why I needed to ask you.

K.C. Wright: Oh.

Jennifer Rothschild: You have a puppy. I want to know how it's going with the puppy. In fact, some people, you know, they may not have remembered that you got Ellie a puppy. So you got Ellie a puppy. Tell us what the puppy's name is and how are things going. Because I asked him this before we start. He started to tell, I said, "Cut it down. Stop right now. You're going to tell all of us." All right. So tell us how it's going with the puppy.

K.C. Wright: For Ellie's 13th birthday, I wanted it to be memorable and so -- she loves puppies, and I did the deal and got her a little Dachshund -- little baby puppy. So cute. My mother has his brother.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh. I didn't know that.

K.C. Wright: So Mom has Cooper; we have Kobe.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, Kobe.

K.C. Wright: So praise the Lord, the Lord opened a door so I could release the rabbit from our home. Yes, we had a bunny. The things we do for our kids. Leo was never inside the home, by the way. He was in a condo in the back of the house. Anyway, so Leo --

Jennifer Rothschild: Leo left the home?

K.C. Wright: Leo went to a family in our church. They have two little girls. And the girls love the bunny, buying things off Amazon for the bunny. The bunny's on a leash, the bunny's potty trained. It's crazy what they've done with this rabbit. And so now we're down to Brennan the Doodle and the Dachshund Kobe.

Jennifer Rothschild: Now, is the Dachshund Kobe potty trained?

K.C. Wright: No. That's where I'm about to lose it. I'm about to lose it. I'm serious. I have to re-dedicate my life to Christ every single morning because this thing gets me out of the spirit in 2.3 seconds. I'm fleshing out. I'm a very clean person and I cannot get this dog potty trained. I cannot get this dog potty trained. And I was venting to my hairdresser the other day -- I don't think I should call my -- the gal who cuts my hair my hairdresser?

Jennifer Rothschild: Stylist.

K.C. Wright: Stylist.

Jennifer Rothschild: Hair stylist.

K.C. Wright: There you go, because that sounded weird.

Jennifer Rothschild: No, it just sounded like you were 85 years old.

K.C. Wright: I got to keep all my man cards. I got to keep them all.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay, so you were venting to your stylist.

K.C. Wright: And she goes, "Oh, yeah, I had one of those dogs. My husband and I, two years to get that thing potty trained." And I'm like, "I don't think my hardwood floors can hold up for two years."

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, K.C.

K.C. Wright: So anyway, I don't know. I don't know. I need all the prayers.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, maybe Kobe won't go to heaven. If it's works based, he's on probation.

K.C. Wright: All dogs do go to heaven and receive their golden tail.

Jennifer Rothschild: They sure do. Lucy did.

K.C. Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's right.

K.C. Wright: We still miss Lucy.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, my goodness, we do. But you know what? I don't miss the accidents on the carpet.

K.C. Wright: No.

Jennifer Rothschild: I will "Amen" to that.

K.C. Wright: Right.

Jennifer Rothschild: All right. But anyway -- so good luck with that.

K.C. Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: But you -- Kobe because it sounded similar to Cooper and they were brothers, or because of Kobe Bryant? Why Kobe?

K.C. Wright: No, it's just --

Jennifer Rothschild: You liked it? Cute name.

K.C. Wright: Ellie picked it out. I mean, there was a long list of names. She had searched and she came up with Kobe. And she loves this dog.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, I'm glad.

K.C. Wright: Oh, she loves Kobe. Me, not so much. Not so much.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. Well, maybe this conversation, then, with Amy is going to help you have an eternal perspective about this.

K.C. Wright: Okay.

Jennifer Rothschild: All right?

K.C. Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: So let's introduce Amy.

K.C. Wright: Amy Baik Lee holds a master of arts in English from the University of Virginia. She works at a desk overlooking a small cottage garden in Colorado, usually surrounded by her husband's woodworking projects, her two daughters' drawings, and music that sets the tone of her words. So are you ready for this?

Jennifer Rothschild: She sounds lovely, doesn't she?

K.C. Wright: I know. She sounds like one of our people.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

K.C. Wright: She is now one of our people.

Jennifer Rothschild: She is, she's a 4:13er.

K.C. Wright: There you go.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes, we're ready.

K.C. Wright: So let's listen in on Amy and Jennifer.

Jennifer Rothschild: Amy, I have looked forward to this conversation because of what your book is about. So let's just start with this for our listeners. In your book, you use the phrase "homeward longing." So let's start with that. Okay? Give us a definition of what a homeward longing is and, like, how does someone know if that's what they're feeling?

Amy Baik Lee: Yeah. I define "homeward longing" as something that starts with the word "sehnsucht," actually. So it's a word that C. S. Lewis used to identify a certain kind of longing that we have, often when we're confronted with beauty that seems almost too great for our souls to handle. But it's the kind of longing -- other people have defined it as a longing that is deep and poignant and it makes you look to things -- maybe places where you have been, but more often somewhere that you can't quite pinpoint, and it might feel like a homesickness for a place that you've never been. And so sehnsucht, plus the Gospel really to me equals homeward longing in my sense.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay, I love that. Now, I'm a C. S. Lewis geek, and I know that phrase and that word, because this reminds me very much of being a votary of the blue flower.

Amy Baik Lee: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: But could spell sehnsucht for our listeners. We're going to have it in the Show Notes. But could you spell it for us, or am I putting you on the spot?

Amy Baik Lee: Not at all. It's a German term. It's s-e-h-n-s-u-c-h-t.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. And it's okay if you don't remember the word, but you know what it means now. It's this longing, it's this deep achy, wonderful feeling.

And so, Amy, everyone feels it? And if they do, do they always recognize it?

Amy Baik Lee: I don't know if everyone feels in the same way at least. I think that it is very tied to the truth that God has placed eternity in the hearts of man. But I think we have different words for it in different cultures, we have different nuances and descriptions of it.

And then, I'm sorry, your second question was do we all know what to do with it?

Jennifer Rothschild: Or do we recognize it? 'Cause sometimes I wonder if we feel this thing that we can't name. So does everyone recognize it when and if they do feel it?

Amy Baik Lee: Again, like, I don't know if we do all recognize it as the same thing. I think -- actually, that's why in Chapter 3 I kind of go through similar terms that people have used as kind of adjacent terms to sehnsucht. But it was helpful for me on my own journey to kind of try to separate out the similar and yet distinct longings that we might also feel, like homesickness or nostalgia, because to me those are slightly different types of yearning.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay, I love that distinction. All right. So you mentioned your own journey. So some might be thinking right now, how did she come to this? I mean, this just doesn't just drop out of the sky and you start thinking, hmm, I think I feel a longing; hmm, I wonder what it is. Okay. Give us a little picture of your journey that got you to this place.

Amy Baik Lee: Yeah. Well, I open the book with the earliest moment that I can remember really. It was around age nine or ten or so in North Carolina. And I had gone with my family on a walk and come across this view of a meadow on an adjacent hillside. And it wasn't, I don't think, anything magical about that particular meadow itself, but maybe it was the meadow and the moment and the way that the light cut across it. But that's the first moment that I can remember standing somewhere and being absolutely taken with the sight of something and feeling it almost to a piercing degree and not knowing what to do with it, except wanting more of it.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, yeah.

Amy Baik Lee: So I had moments like that throughout my childhood and into teenage and then young adulthood, and I didn't really ever have a name for them. They just kind of would light up a certain moment in my days and then pass by. But it wasn't until I came across C. S. Lewis' writings actually in "The Weight of Glory" and "Surprised by Joy," somewhere around high school, I think, that I started to realize there was a name for this kind of moment and this kind of longing. And then even then I didn't really have a desire to pursue it much further.

But I would say it was probably after I moved to Colorado, about 13 years ago, that I started to become more familiar with Christian communities. And they were largely art and faith communities where people were freely talking about this longing. Except the interesting thing was that in discussions about sehnsucht, or this inconsolable longing as Lewis puts it, people would talk about it and then be sort of at a loss as to what to do with it.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Amy Baik Lee: So I would hear questions like, well, are we just supposed to -- is it meant for more than just stopping you in your tracks? Is it meant for more than just making you feel the distinction between the brokenness of the world and the wholeness that is coming in God's restoration? And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that that longing, when it was allowed to break open in my life and awaken me to the seen and the unseen and eternity breaking through our current reality, I realized that it had really just affected every single area of my life.

So then I started -- I think that was the seed of the idea and the desire to want to tell a story that might encourage other people to lean into the longing and see where it might lead them. And that's really the hope of the book, that it will lead ultimately to a deeper love of God and a recognition of his love for them.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, because he places that longing within us. And when we do begin to feel the ache and long for the satisfaction, even that, as C. S. Lewis said, is very satisfying in and of itself.

But it is not supposed to be a dead end. It is supposed to lead us onward. Because as you mentioned earlier, you know, when you're combining that with the Gospel and this idea that God has placed eternity in our hearts -- okay? So I'm curious if in Scripture -- are there any examples you found in Scripture of eternity pulling at our hearts?

Amy Baik Lee: Yeah. So that verse that I mentioned before about God putting eternity into man's heart, that's from Ecclesiastes 3. I love actually the -- there's little phrases throughout the New Testament where God is acknowledging that we are not at home yet. So in Hebrews 11, in the ESV, you have a reference to us as strangers and exiles on the earth, or the people who came before us in faith were strangers and exiles on the earth. And then 1 Peter urges us as sojourners and exiles to live holy lives. The Phillips translation puts that as strangers and temporary residents.

And then there are other verses about we are clothed in a temporary dwelling, we want our transitory life to be absorbed into life that is eternal. And so I think all of that points to a recognition of our current status as people who are away from home and who long to be home. But everything inherent in that, our current reality, the work that we've been given, and the longing that anybody would have being away from home like the exiles in Babylon were, or had, I think all of that is expressed through these phrases and through the encouragement, yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: It captures -- because there's something in us that resonates with it, you know? Sometimes emotionally we're just like, yeah, exactly. And we can't always identify why that is. But you mentioned being exiles. And sometimes we don't tap into that experience. And so I think it's interesting that in your book you write that, "The owner of the home I seek became an exile in my place." Okay, I want to repeat that one more time for our listeners. Okay? "The owner of the home that I seek became an exile in my place." Okay, unpack that for us, Amy.

Amy Baik Lee: Well, I think that's just a way of looking at what Christ gave up for us in order to become one of us and to take on for us and rise that we may have life. And I think it helps me to think of the Gospel in those terms, because sometimes we need a new phrasing of it or a new almost story (audio cuts out) for it to realize how strange and wonderful is the tale that we're in and what has been done for us. And so that is the story of the Gospel, that we didn't have a right, we didn't have an inherent right or a holiness that would permit us to dwell with him forever, so he is the one who left his place and came that we might be able to join him and dwell with him once again.

Jennifer Rothschild: Beautiful. That's so beautiful.

So, you know, as you're describing that, so much of this ache, this eternal longing, is showing what we're made for. But it also kind of points to a destination, a someday. And so if you asked anyone listening right now, Hey, do you want to go to heaven? Of course, yes, we do. Are you longing for heaven? Yeah. Well, kinda, sorta.

In your book, though, it's interesting, you give three practices that have helped you embrace God's promise of new creation, which is eventually heaven someday, the New Heaven, the New Earth. So how is that different from simply wanting to go to heaven? And can you tell us what those practices are, those three practices.

Amy Baik Lee: Yeah. I don't really spell them out in bullet points. I guess they're kind of woven throughout the narrative. But, yes, I think this journey has been so wonderful for me in helping me to realize that -- I think I always had a nebulous view of heaven as a place where all things would be set right and that we would no longer have death and pain and crying, like Revelation says. But I don't know that I ever knew how to imagine anything beyond that. And I certainly hadn't looked any more closely at the different passages in Scripture that talk about it too. But there's very concrete language that is given to describe the restoration that is coming.

So we have the heaven -- I guess theologians kind of -- some of them call it the intermediary heaven, where that's immediately where we go after death. But at the end of the world and at the end of time as we know it right now, there will be a great remaking of this current earth, and we'll have the New Heaven and the New Earth and that will be a wholeness. It will be a restoration, not just of things as -- right before they were unbroken, but something even more whole than that, a place where we will bring our creation mandate to bear, a place where we will be fruitful and multiply and spread all over the earth with work that is not cursed and with worship that pervades everything. And so everything that we're learning to do here as a mode of worship to God, which is not just gathering in churches on Sundays, but it's all of the creative endeavors, it's all of the things that we do for one another, those are the things that we will get to flourish in. So I've just loved that, that we get to think about that and we get to look forward to a life that is full and busy, but not in our sense of busy as we think of it now. But anyway...

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, not a frenetic busy, but a fullness. A fullness.

Amy Baik Lee: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. So you said something I want to make sure we clarify here. You mentioned that in the New Heaven, New Earth, when all things are restored, that we will be able to cooperate with this creation mandate. Okay. You said -- is that just being fruitful and multiplying? And, if so, what does that look like?

Amy Baik Lee: Well, yeah. I mean, yes, it's being fruitful and multiplying, but not just in the sense of, you know, spreading in terms of number, banding together in communities.

But Nancy Guthrie says some wonderful things about this in "Even Better Than Eden." And also to share some more -- and I think I quote her in the book as well. But we're talking about the creation mandate for us as sub-creators, as Tolkien would say, that we have a charge, a responsibility, an identity built into us to create in the pattern of the Master Creator. We're creating not things out of nothing, but we're creating -- we're constantly creating. We're called to create, to be created, to take joy in bringing things into being, whether it's a story or it's a beautifully crafted pot or gardening and tending the earth. Like, all of these things are part of the charge that we are given to live full lives in Christ.

And so when Jesus says that, "I have come and I have come that they may have life to the full," that's now part of the imagery that springs immediately to mind to me.

Jennifer Rothschild: And it's all just a shadow, isn't it? It's just a shadow of the fullness to come.

All right, so here we are on this side. I'm curious if you've had any surprising places that you've seen a glimpse of God's glory or the wholeness that he promised.

Amy Baik Lee: Yes. I'll just weave this into the three practices that I --

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, good.

Amy Baik Lee: Sorry. I did mention earlier, but --

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, it's because I jumped ahead. So good, go ahead.

Amy Baik Lee: So I think three ways that have helped me to keep the reality of the restoration at the forefront have been to look for him in daily moments of beauty and to receive those as live communication from him. And those are constant surprises because I'm never sure what he's going to show me or how he's going to show up in a day. And I try to record some of those.

Another mode, I think, has been to encounter the world through eyes of wonder. And a lot of times that comes through being around a child, actually, because they're so good at it.

The third one I would think of, actually, in terms of surprising places has been in the midst of pain. That one really surprises me. Because I have some chronic conditions, and I think the thing that I grapple with most is the anxiety disorder that I have that kind of exacerbates everything else. But I have seen him come through in unexpected places in the midst of pain so that -- in such ways that his presence is undeniable and it feels like -- I'm going to quote Tolkien again -- but it feels like a eucatastrophe. It feels like a surprise that arises suddenly out of darkness. And it's not where it should be, but you have joy in the midst of pain. So I'm exceedingly grateful for that, and that has been one of the most surprising places that I've seen him come through.

Jennifer Rothschild: And that is accessible to all of us when we are in Christ and he's in us. And I appreciate you sharing that, because I think a lot of us think that the beauty of God is reserved only for the beautiful moments and the beautiful places, and there is a beauty that comes in the midst of the darkness.

I have a friend, an author named Margaret Feinberg. She calls it in the brutiful, the brutal and the beautiful. And, yeah, that is where we can see. So I appreciate you sharing that.

All right, we're going to get toward our last question here. And, Amy, what I'm mindful of is -- well, and I'll just disclose this. I am writing, actually, a Bible study on heaven, so so much of what you're talking about is resonating with me, besides the fact that I'm a major Lewis geek. And you can never overquote Tolkien and Lewis, may I just add.

But here's the thing. We can get so focused on the then, that the now seems lesser than. Or we can get so -- like, okay, Lord, I'm just waiting to exhale on that day when you're going to make all things right, yet through Christ we have been made right in our relationship with him here. So my question to you -- and this may be a more difficult one to ask. And so for those of you out there who are so concrete in your thinking and you're hoping for a list here, you may not get it. Okay? So just ask the Lord for wisdom as we're kind of talking through this last question.

But, Amy, how would you suggest, in some practical ways, that we can actually steward this life now, our temporary home right here right now? Not treat it as lesser than, but treat it as the best gift God has given us?

Amy Baik Lee: That's such a good question. I think that's at the heart of what I'm trying to do with this book. I would say living into the reality that Jesus has told us that the Kingdom of God is coming, but it's also here among us right now and it's in the midst of us and it's breaking through. I think that there is all the worth of our lives summed up in that statement that it's worth paying attention to the Kingdom in our midst and to the Kingdom that is breaking through.

Because, yes, we're waiting for wholeness and healing and restoration, but here is where we get to walk with him. And here, I believe, is where we get to see God in a capacity that we will not get to see him in in the new creation and in restoration, because it's here that we see him right alongside the brokenness. And it's here that we get to wait for him and watch for him and see the overtures to his love to us breaking through, no matter what the afflictions of the present moment are. And as that relationship with him grows and as that adventure grows -- and it breaks us at times, I know -- but as we build that history with him.

When I think of what it might be like when we arrive to our long-awaited home and we look back, I think it will be those stories that we remember that make us cry, that help us when we come face-to-face with him to remember all that he has been to us, and all that we know him to be, and that is going to add an immeasurably sweet note of worship to him for eternity because we have seen him here and we have walked with him here.

And so if anything, I would say as we're living on this earth, it's worth it to embrace everything that is given to us to the full extent that we can, to lean into our lament and our grief and our sorrow, but also our celebration and our joy, and to embrace that, because it's here that we'll get to see him and hear that he keeps surprising us. So I hope that as that happens, that we fall more and more deeply in love with him as we understand the depth of his character and we see the constancy of his tenderness towards us.

Jennifer Rothschild: I think that was well said. Beautiful, Amy.

You know, so much of her conversation, obviously, K.C., reminded me of C. S. Lewis, but especially the part -- you know, it reminds me of "The Great Divorce," what she was talking about. Because when C. S. Lewis gets to what he thinks is heaven, he meets with, like, his master teacher, and the teacher says, you know, once you get here and you look back, you realize -- I'm paraphrasing -- it was heaven all along. I mean, it was beautiful.

K.C. Wright: Of course it reminded you of Lewis. She is our kind of people.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes, she is.

K.C. Wright: I really loved how she brought out the reality that Jesus said the Kingdom is coming, but it is here. It is breaking through even now.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

K.C. Wright: The Kingdom is here.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yep.

K.C. Wright: Here is where we get to walk with him. Here is where we get to experience him in a way that we won't experience him later.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. I thought that was really cool, because here is in the brokenness, right? Then we will be whole. So when we arrive and we look back, there will be even sweeter praise for how we walked with him and knew him here.

K.C. Wright: All right. This was so, so good, I want to listen to it again.

And you need her book. You may know someone, while you were listening that came to mind, that also needs her book. So we will have a link on the Show Notes, as always, so you can get it. And we will have a link to Nancy Guthrie's book that Amy mentioned.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, yeah. Good, good. Yeah.

K.C. Wright: Plus, we are giving one of Amy's books away. Go to Jennifer's Instagram, or you can also get there through the Show Notes at 413podcast.com/309. That's 413podcast.com/309. And, of course, right there a transcript is waiting just for you.

Well, our friends, this one's a wrap, sadly. Remember, you can tune into eternity even now because you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. I can.

Jennifer Rothschild: I can.

Jennifer and K.C.: And you can.

Jennifer Rothschild: I imagined her having this conversation sitting at that desk, surrounded by her husband's woodwork, listening to the beautiful music. She's so peaceful.

4:13 Podcast: [BONUS] Can I Know Heaven Is Real? With Lee Strobel

Lee Strobel: It caused me to really think, what do I believe happens after I close my eyes for the last time in this world? I mean, I'm a Christian, I believe the Bible, I believe what it teaches about the afterlife. But I'm also a journalist, I'm trained in law, I tend to really seek out evidence and facts and logic and so forth. So I thought, what does the evidence show, what does the evidence of Scripture show? But what does the evidence outside the Bible show about whether we live on after our experience in this world?

Jennifer Rothschild: Heaven, for billions of people around the world and for me personally is an awe-inspiring place, but we only fully understand it once we're there. Well, today we get a taste from author Lee Strobel as he makes a case for heaven. He'll explore the evidence for an afterlife as he addresses people's biggest fear: death. You're going to get three reasons that you can believe heaven is real. So giddy-up, let's go. Well, let's go to the introduction, not to heaven right yet. Let's do the introduction first.

K.C. Wright: Let's do it. Welcome, welcome to a bonus episode of the 4:13 Podcast, where practical encouragement and biblical wisdom set you up to live the "I Can" life, because you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. Now, your host, a woman who is so excited about this guest and this topic that I'm trying to literally keep her in her chair. Calm down.

Jennifer Rothschild: Calm down.

K.C. Wright: Would you please make welcome Jennifer Rothschild.

Jennifer Rothschild: Calm down. This is a calmed-down Jennifer. Welcome. We are super glad you're here. I'm Jennifer, here to help you be and do more than you feel capable of as you live this "I Can" life. And K.C.'s right. Oh, my goodness, you are in the right place right now, my friend. K.C. and I are happy you're here because we are talking heaven. And it is one of my favorite topics, I got to be honest, because the Bible says the Kingdom of Heaven is now. So it is real for them, but it is real for now, and so we're going to talk about it with Lee Strobel, which also is the reason I'm excited, because I love his work.

K.C. Wright: Same.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right?

K.C. Wright: Amazing.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's going to be a really good day. So whatever you're doing, thanks for letting us do it with you, because it's better when we're together. And quick thank you for all of you who have been leaving reviews. It makes such a difference. So thanks for doing that.

There's a movie coming out called "The Case for Heaven" --

K.C. Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- based on Lee's book.

K.C. Wright: I've seen the preview. I'm excited.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's going to be so good. And it's in theaters right now or, depending when you're listening, right around now. But I got to tell you my favorite story about heaven, K.C.

K.C. Wright: Okay.

Jennifer Rothschild: This came from the lips of my oldest son when he was just six years old. Okay. So y'all know -- unless you're new to us, you may not know that I'm blind. I lost my sight as a teenager. So when I had our first child, my husband and I had our first child, Clayton, it took him a couple of years to figure out that his mommy couldn't see. And once he got old enough to really understand it, he began to pray that God would heal my eyes. And this was a real sincere prayer for him. Like, if it was before lunch, before his ham sandwich, or if it was at bedtime, "Dear God, please heal Mommy's eyes." All right? So it was super important to the little man.

All right. You need to know that because one day he and I were playing a game, and we were -- he had picked out a different game that we hadn't played before. And, you know, it's hard to find games that I can play that are tactile enough and not too complex. So anyway, he thought he found this new game. Well, it took just a few minutes before, like, little marbles were rolling and little men were flying. And I've told y'all this story before. If you're a 4:13er, you know, this story. And so I got real frustrated. And I said, "Clayton, you're going to have to pick a different game, because this one's not working. Let's pick one that will work." Well, he's super quiet as he's cleaning up the game. And he folds up the gameboard after he has dutifully put every piece back in their little slots. And then he puts the lid on the game and he said something. And you know how you know when somebody's like -- even though they're really quiet, you can tell their little mind -- he was thinking about a lot of stuff.

K.C. Wright: Right.

Jennifer Rothschild: So finally when he put the lid on the game, he said, "Mom, I was thinking. I don't think God is going to heal you here on earth." Well, because he'd been praying so much that God would heal my eyes, I thought that was just spectacular. And I was like, "So why, Clayton? Why would you think that? Why do you think God would not heal me here on earth?" And he said this. He said, "Because if God healed you on earth, you might love earth more, and heaven is best."

K.C. Wright: Oh, wow.

Jennifer Rothschild: Isn't that beautiful? And I remember that day just sitting on that shag blue carpet next to that profound little boy, who didn't even realize how profound what he said was --

K.C. Wright: Oh, my.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- and I thought, Lord, let me live with that mindset. Yes, earth is great. And Jesus came to give us life here and life more abundantly, absolutely, and let's enjoy it to the fullest. But the Kingdom of Heaven is now --

K.C. Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- and the reality of heaven then can inform today.

K.C. Wright: Come on. Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: And then someday our faith will be sight and we'll be there. And -- heaven is best. So if there's a situation in your life where your longings haven't been met yet, maybe the healing hasn't come yet, maybe God's reserving it for heaven. Because heaven is best and he wants you to love -- have your treasure where your heart is instead of loving earth more. I don't know where you are today, but I do know this. This conversation that I had with Lee Strobel is warm and inspiring, but it's also just so intellectually honest. I think you're going to love it. So I think if we can't get to heaven yet, we at least need to get to Lee Strobel. Right, K.C.? So let's introduce the man.

K.C. Wright: Atheist turned Christian, Lee Strobel, the former award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, is a New York Times bestselling author of more than 40 books. And they have sold -- this is crazy -- 14 million copies in total.

Jennifer Rothschild: Can you even believe it?

K.C. Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: He's got a powerful message.

K.C. Wright: Yes. I heard that Kathie Lee Gifford gave "The Case for Christ" to Evel Knievel and he got born again from above --

Jennifer Rothschild: Hallelujah.

K.C. Wright: -- from reading that book.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, because God is using Lee.

K.C. Wright: Yeah, yeah. Lee currently serves as founding director of the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University. In 2017, Lee's spiritual journey was depicted in an award-winning motion picture, "The Case for Christ." Which is amazing and you should watch it right now.

Jennifer Rothschild: Mm-hmm.

K.C. Wright: Which followed in theaters around the world. And it's an incredible movie.

Lee and wife, Leslie, have been married for 48 years. Are you ready for this? Settle in. You are going to absolutely love this conversation. This is one for the history books here at the 4:13 Podcast. Here's Jennifer and Lee talking about the film "The Case for Heaven."

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, Lee, it is truly an honor to have you on the 4:13. I have looked forward to this because I love your work, and I especially love what you've done --

Lee Strobel: Well, thank you.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- with this new topic. I really have loved it.

Lee Strobel: I appreciate that.

Jennifer Rothschild: And it's interesting to me because you do not shy away from anything that is complicated and sometimes what seems like it's even not provable. You know, those are your topics. So I'm curious, what made you choose to topic this itty-bitty little subject like death and the afterlife?

Lee Strobel: Well, it's because ten years ago I almost died. My wife found me unconscious on the bedroom floor, she called an ambulance. I woke up in the emergency room. The doctor looked down at me and said, "You're one step away from a coma, two steps away from dying," and then I went unconscious again. So I had an unusual medical condition called hyponatremia, which is a severe drop in my blood sodium level. And I lingered there between life and death for quite a while until they were able to save my life. And I found it to be a very clarifying experience. It wasn't all bad. In other words, the good side of it is it caused me to really think, what do I believe happens after I close my eyes for the last time in this world? I mean, I'm a Christian, I believe the Bible, I believe what it teaches about the afterlife. But I'm also a journalist, I'm trained in law, I tend to really seek out evidence and facts and logic and so forth. So I thought, what does the evidence show? What does the evidence of Scripture show, but what does the evidence outside the Bible show about whether we live on after our experience in this world? And that's what launched me on writing "The Case for Heaven."

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, I'm super attached to the concept of heaven. I'm a believer in Christ also, but I also, Lee, happen to be blind.

Lee Strobel: Oh.

Jennifer Rothschild: And it's been interesting to me how blindness has given me this greater attachment toward the idea of heaven, but also to the reality of it, because that's where so much of my hope on the bad days comes from.

Lee Strobel: Sure.

Jennifer Rothschild: But I think it's interesting that you mentioned the left brain of you is looking for the evidence. Okay?

Lee Strobel: Right.

Jennifer Rothschild: So you talk about that you did find evidence outside the Bible --

Lee Strobel: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- for the afterlife. So I'm curious, how'd you get that evidence?

Lee Strobel: Yeah. I mean, I traveled around the country and interviewed expert scholars on various topics, neuroscientists on the existence of the soul. But the most fascinating thing to me was the question of near-death experiences. Can they tell us anything really about the afterlife? And I was very skeptical about that. I thought, yeah, sure, these people die and they claim that they met Jesus and he's 5 foot 10 and he has blue eyes. I don't know, you know. There have been fraudulent cases of people who made claims like that.

Jennifer Rothschild: Sure.

Lee Strobel: So I wanted to really research can near-death experiences tell us anything about the afterlife? And I found that there are about 900 scholarly articles about near-death experiences that have been published over the last 50 years in scientific and medical journals. This is a very well-researched area. In fact, "The Lancet," which is the famous medical journal in England, carried an analysis of near-death experiences and said that none of the alternative explanations for these can fully account for what takes place. So I began as a skeptic to say, well, wait a minute. I'm only going to look at those cases where I have corroboration, in other words, where people see things or hear things or experience things during this out-of-body experience that they could not have seen or heard or experienced if this wasn't authentic.

And, you know, Jennifer, what you just told me about your blindness -- which I was not aware of -- there was one study done of 21 blind people, most of them blind since birth, who had near-death experiences. And during those near-death experiences, they were able to see, many of them for the first time. And so you have a woman -- I'm thinking her name is Vicky -- she was blind virtually since birth. She was in a car accident and clinically dead, she had no measurable brainwaves, she had no heartbeat, and yet she said later, "I was conscious the whole time and I was able to see. I was able to watch these people trying to resuscitate my body. And then I saw birds and I saw trees for the first time."

Jennifer Rothschild: Wow.

Lee Strobel: And then what's interesting is in every one of these cases, when they were revived, their eyesight disappeared again.

Jennifer Rothschild: Wow.

Lee Strobel: And one researcher said this is medically impossible, it's just medically impossible, and yet it's well-documented in the scientific literature. So those are the kind of cases I look at and say, Wait a minute. This is telling us something, that we do continue to exist in some way after at least our clinical death. These people are not irreversibly dead -- they're coming back, you know -- but they're clinically dead, no heartbeat, no brainwaves, and so forth.

So my favorite case of this is a woman named Maria, who died in the hospital. And she said later that, "Yeah, I know I was declared dead, but I was conscious the whole time." And she said, "My spirit separated from my body, I was watching the resuscitation efforts on my body, and my spirit floated out of the ceiling and out of the hospital." And she said, "When I was revived, my spirit rejoined my physical body." And then she said to the people in the hospital, "By the way, there's a man's tennis shoe on the roof of the hospital. It's left footed, it's dark blue, it's a man's shoe. It's got a little wear over the little toe and the shoelaces tucked under the heel." And so they go up to the roof of the hospital and they find it exactly as she said.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, my gosh.

Lee Strobel: Yeah. So something is going on here. And what's really fascinating to me is I interviewed, for the book and for the movie, John Burke. John Burke is the pastor of a wonderful church, a large church in Austin, Texas, but he's also a near-death experience researcher, and he's researched 1,000 cases of near-death experiences over the last 30 years. And his conclusion -- he's actually written a book about this called "Imagine Heaven." But his conclusion -- which he documents this stuff. His conclusion is that when you look at what actually takes place during a near-death experience -- not how people interpret it, but what actually happens -- it is consistent with Christian theology. So that is a breakthrough bit of research that he did in that area.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Lee Strobel: So to me, this indicates that -- the Apostle Paul said to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. So we know biblically that when we die, our spirit, our soul, our consciousness separates from our physical body and we are either in the presence of the Lord or away from him during this interim period, this intermediate state. And then when history is consummated, when Jesus returns at the end of history and we are reunited with our now resurrected bodies, we go through final judgment and then we spend eternity in either a very physical heaven or a very physical hell. And so what these near-death experiences tell me is that the evidence outside the Bible supports this description of what the Bible has.

Jennifer Rothschild: Which is such an affirmation to the truth of Scripture. And it's such hope. It's such hope to the human heart. You know, even if they have not yet chosen Christ, it's still hope that there is something greater. And I think we've all been even more sensitized lately because of the pandemic.

Lee Strobel: No question.

Jennifer Rothschild: We've been so aware that we're fragile, you know. It's made more people curious, like what in the world comes next?

Lee Strobel: Absolutely.

Jennifer Rothschild: So I'm curious, did that affect or influence the way that you've dealt with this evidence?

Lee Strobel: You know, it was in God's timing that I did this project as the pandemic was unfolding. My older brother died at the beginning of the pandemic. And many of us -- 29% of Americans know someone who died during the pandemic. And my wife and I were having lunch at a restaurant in Houston, and we got in a conversation with the server, who was like an 18-year-old young woman. And all of a sudden, she started to cry. And we said, "What's wrong?" She said, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I almost didn't come into work today. We just lost a family member to Covid." And I thought, here's a young woman -- she's probably 18 years old, probably never thought about death. Why should she? She's got her whole life ahead of her. And yet you could see the anxiety, the apprehension in her eyes.

And so I think, Jennifer, you are absolutely right, I think this is a time in history when so many of us have felt fragile, have felt exposed, have felt like we could end up closing our eyes for the last time in this world, so how do we know what really takes place after that? And you used the one word that I hope people walk away from from reading the book or seeing the movie, and that's the word hope.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Lee Strobel: I hope both believers and nonbelievers walk away with hope.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. Well, it is, it's such a source of hope, the reality of heaven. So I'm going to finish up, Lee, with two questions. Okay? And they're really simple to ask --

Lee Strobel: Okay.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- but quite more complicated for you to answer. So we're going to just try it. Okay? So here's the first of the last two questions. All right?

Lee Strobel: Okay.

Jennifer Rothschild: What happens when we die?

Lee Strobel: Yeah. Well, when we die, at that moment of clinical death, physical death, our spirit, our soul, our consciousness continues to live on. It separates from our body. We know that because Jesus told the person being crucified next to him on the cross, "Today you'll be with me in paradise." Apostle Paul said to be absent from the body is to be present from the Lord. So our consciousness, our spirit, lives on. Now, this is contrary to what some atheists say, who say we don't have a soul, we don't have a spirit, we don't really have a consciousness. It's an illusion. We don't really even have free will, we're just a bunch of neurons firing in our brains. I think that's belied by the evidence that I talk about in the book.

And then we continue during that intermediate state to live on. If we're a follower of Jesus, we're in his presence during that time. If we're not, we are separated from him. But it's an intermediate step, it's not our final destination. That comes when the curtain of history is finally pulled shut, when Jesus returns, when we're reunited with our resurrected body and when we go through final judgment. And then our eternal destination is sealed forever. We're either in the presence of the Lord or we're separated from him in a place called hell.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. So I just have to ask. Even though I said I had two more questions, I'm going to throw this in. Have you read "The Great Divorce" by C. S. Lewis?

Lee Strobel: Yes, years ago, yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. Because what you're describing -- I find how it's just such an informed, imaginative picture of what you're describing. And I would also highly recommend that to our listeners, too, because I think it just informs your imagination more.

Okay. But here is our very last question.

Lee Strobel: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: Why can we believe that heaven is real? Why can we believe that?

Lee Strobel: I think for three reasons. Number one, we do have a soul that can survive our physical death. Yes, our body is declared clinically dead, or it's declared dead, but we're not just a body. And in my book and in the film, we make the case that we are a hyphenated creature. That is, we're a body, but we're also a soul or a spirit. The Bible assumes that. I mean -- you know, there's a couple hundred references to our soul in Scripture, but it never sits down and defines here's what a soul is. And the reason is we all intuitively know that we're not just a physical body, we have a consciousness, a soul. So that's number one.

Number two, near-death experiences tell us with confidence that at the time of death, our spirit, our soul, our consciousness does continue to live on. Now, near-death experiences can't tell us for how long, but I think they're confirming of what the Bible tells us.

And then third and most important reason we can trust what the Bible tells us is that we have strong historical evidence that Jesus not only claimed to be the Son of God, but he backed up that claim by returning from the dead. Consequently, he is an authority on the afterlife. He not only is an eyewitness to the afterlife, because he was dead himself, but he created the afterlife. He is God himself and so we can trust what he tells us about the afterlife. And what does he tell us? Well, the Bible uses a lot of figurative language because -- the Bible says, "No eye has seen, no ear is heard, no mind has even conceived of what God has in store for those who love him." We can't really understand how beautiful and wonderful and secure and grace filled it will be.

But Jesus uses metaphors. And I'll end with one of my favorites when he's talking to his disciples. And he uses a metaphor of home, that heaven is like home.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Lee Strobel: And I don't know if you've ever traveled internationally, maybe to a third world country where things are -- conditions are difficult. But I've been to India, I've lived on, you know, a sleeping bag on the ground and eating foods that were strange to me. And you do that for a period of time and you begin to develop a homesickness. You begin to long for home. And when you finally return home from this trip and you walk into the door of your home, it is such a place of wonder and warmth and security and grace that you're just overwhelmed by it, and you crawl into your own bed and it feels so good. And Jesus is saying to his disciples and to us, that's the metaphor I want you to hang on to. Heaven is like a home. It's like a real home. This is not in our world. This is not our home. We're just passing through this world. Heaven is like home on steroids. And so we will experience those qualities of grace and joy and wonder and appreciation, and I believe adventure and creativity, as we spend eternity in the presence of God.

Jennifer Rothschild: Heaven is home. So let's go. I'm ready. Whenever the Lord is ready, I am ready, because we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. So if you're in the valley right now, you are not alone. Your Shepherd is with you. His rod and his staff, they will comfort you. He has prepared a place for you, and you're going to dwell there forever, forever and ever.

K.C. Wright: It is home. Jesus said, "Hey, if it wasn't so, I wouldn't have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." He's building a mansion for you. And, you know, I wonder, when Lazarus died and his sisters begged Jesus to do something, Jesus called, "Lazarus, come forth." And I bet Lazarus said, "Really? Do I have to?"

Jennifer Rothschild: Seriously.

K.C. Wright: "I mean, now?"

Jennifer Rothschild: Right. Because heaven is real.

K.C. Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Seriously, y'all, it is as real as the air that you are breathing right now. So get to the movie. It's in theaters right now. It's called "The Case for Heaven."

K.C. Wright: Yeah. "The Case for Heaven" is releasing in theaters nationwide April 4th, 5th, and 6th, 2022. Take all your peoples.

Jennifer Rothschild: All your people.

K.C. Wright: Heaven is our hope. And because heaven is real, you can trust that everything else God promised is real, too. That includes his power. So remember, you can today, in this moment right now, do all things through Christ who gives you strength. I can.

Jennifer Rothschild: I can.

Jennifer and K.C.: And you can.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes, you can.

K.C. Wright: (Singing) Let's go to the movies.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oooo, that's good.

K.C. Wright: (Singing) Let's go see the stars. Let's go to the movies, Annie. Okay, sorry.

Jennifer Rothschild: No, it's so good. I need popcorn. I need popcorn. This is good.

K.C. Wright: Yeah. Yeah, we need Skinny Pop, we need --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. I need my La Croix because I don't drink Coke anymore.

K.C. Wright: Oh, I'm so proud of you. I'm a big fan of that. Ellie and I actually went to the movies not too long ago and we watched Sing 2.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, yeah.

K.C. Wright: I hadn't been to the movies for a long time, and I walked out looking like one round circle. The junk food that we ate during that movie, I'm still repenting for it. But when I checked in, I had won all these things because a part of the movie club. And I got a kid's meal and a popcorn and some candy and a fruit snack and a -- oh, it was bad.

Jennifer Rothschild: And then you got indigestion.

K.C. Wright: I just rolled out, rolled out of the movie.