A Lasting Relationship
We are now able to communicate from anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds, but creating trust in relationships that matter most to us is what psychologists keep trying to solve for us. Regardless how much we try to engineer our relationships, our deepest expectations will never be fully satisfied through them. Our cultures create the illusion that our highest joys are to be found in intimate human relationships. But our human relationships never last.
Suppose you are an astronaut training for a mission to a yet unknown planet uninhabited by a human being. The day of launch happens. You’re in flight and one of your teammates asks what you know about the planet you’re headed for. “I know nothing about it,” you reply.
How many churches, preachers, teachers and instructors are so bound up in the cultures in which we live that they fail to prepare us for our final destination? Hear what the psalmist says.
My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God. Psalm 84:2
The longing seems to go on and on concerning the place where God lives. But it goes further than this as the writer yearns for the presence of the living God. He goes even further and longs for the One who is the giver of life who is the power behind all of life.
In the 17th chapter of the book of John, Jesus prays for those whom He will be leading to heaven.
That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. John 17:21
He does not ask His Father to remove those from the world with which He has a lasting relationship. Christ Jesus knows the sufferings they will encounter in their human relationships, just as He has suffered. But in their relationships with Jesus Christ they may reveal to the world the relationship Christ has with His Father and the relationship His Father will have with them in heaven.
