What if your deepest longing wasn't for a better life on earth, but for your true home with Christ? In today's Crosswalk Devotional, we reflect on John 14:2, where Jesus promises to prepare a place for those who belong to Him. While this world offers temporary joys and inevitable hardships, our ultimate hope is found in the eternal home Christ has prepared for us.

The more we fix our hearts on heaven, the less we become consumed by the fleeting treasures of this world. An eternal perspective reshapes our priorities, strengthens our faith through suffering, and reminds us that our greatest joy is not found in earthly comforts but in the promise of being forever with Jesus.

Highlights:

• Discover how John 14:2 reminds believers that Jesus is preparing an eternal home for His followers.
• Learn why longing for heaven strengthens our hope during seasons of suffering and uncertainty.
• Be encouraged to treasure Christ above the temporary comforts and distractions of this world.
• Understand how an eternal perspective transforms your priorities and daily decisions.
• Reflect on Jesus' call to store up treasures in heaven rather than earthly possessions.
• Find renewed joy by remembering that your true home is with Christ forever.

Join the Conversation

How often do you think about heaven and the promise of being with Jesus? What is one way you can live today with a greater focus on eternity rather than temporary circumstances? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Continue the conversation with the Crosswalk community here: https://forums.crosswalk.com/

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Full Transcript Below:

Longing for Heaven

By Cindi McMenamin

Bible Reading:

“In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2 ESV). 

In the fourteenth chapter of John, Jesus told His followers He was leaving them to prepare a place for them and that He would return and take them with Him so that they would always be with Him. He called this place that He was preparing a mansion with many rooms, and, in my understanding of Scripture, Jesus might’ve downplayed it a little about what truly awaits us in this place He’s preparing for us. 

I wonder if we really think about His promise to return, and if what awaits us in heaven is really impacting our lives and our longings. 

I once heard an author and speaker say that our frustration—at heartache, pain and suffering, struggling to attain perfect love, and even striving for a more fulfilling relationship with God—is to be expected because “this life on earth is not the way it was supposed to be. Our former address was Paradise.” 

When my husband, Hugh, visited the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea several years ago, he observed something peculiar and wonderful about the Iteri people. These tribesmen, in a church established years earlier by American missionaries, were a people obsessed with heaven. When my husband—an American man who was schooled in the knowledge of the Scriptures—came to speak at the little Iteri church, the natives bombarded him with questions, but not about doctrines or dispensations, interpretations, or translations.  They wanted to know more about heaven. 

Lon, the American missionary to the Iteri people, attempted to explain to my husband the people’s particular obsession with eternity. Because the Iteri people dealt with so much suffering, saw so many of their loved ones die, and had such a high mortality rate there in the jungle, the life to come was all they really cared about.  

When I heard that, I thought about how it must touch our Creator’s heart to know that, somewhere in this world, some of His loved ones truly long to be home. 

Intersecting Faith & Life:

When my husband recounted the Iteri’s questions to me, my heart grieved over my own contentment with this earth, to the detriment of my longing for heaven. Why isn’t heaven all I think about? Why do I not long more to be in the presence of my Savior, to be away from the pain and the temporary and the often meaninglessness of this world, and to be complete and whole, and by His side as I was created to be? In what ways have I grown too comfortable in this world and forgotten that my real home is in heaven? What cheap substitutes for heaven have I settled for? 

In Colossians 3:1-2, we are instructed, as followers of Christ, to seek the things above—in heaven—where Christ is, and to set our minds on things above, not on things that are on earth.  And in Matthew 6:19-20, Jesus said, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” Those are commands and exhortations to be eternally minded, to be preoccupied with heaven, and to set our hearts and our desires there for the health of our souls, for proper order of our values, and for our inexplicable joy. 

Oh, to have a longing to be with the Maker of my soul… to long for Him as much as He longs for me. It’s clear to me today that my longing for Heaven is directly proportionate to my longing for Christ.  

Lord, give me a longing for the day I will be in perfect communion with You – no distractions, no other loves to steal my heart away, just You and me. For eternity.  

Further Reading:
Revelation 21:1-4

For more on gaining a heart for heaven, see my book, The New Loneliness Devotional: 50 Days to a Closer Connection with God.