In Matthew chapter six Jesus taught his disciples to pray Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Heaven is the realm of God. The prayer starts Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. God affects everything around him – there’s a distinct atmosphere and culture because of all God is.
You can’t have God without a realm called heaven, and you can’t have heaven without God. Sometimes God’s kingdom is called the kingdom of God, and at other times we read the kingdom of heaven. They both refer to the realm over which the rule of God extends. This is what God says we can have where we live!
However, there are pressing global problems – they break our heart and they break God’s heart. So God asks us . . . would you like heaven on earth?
Why would God ask us? Why would he tie something so incredibly wonderful for planet earth and for all mankind to the want of human beings to pray for it? The answer is simply because human beings have been given the mandate for the earth by God – he has given us dominion. He now moves upon the earth within the bounds of mankind’s authority here.
Would you like heaven on earth? The atmosphere of heaven, the culture of heaven and the kingdom reign of God. Remember, when you ask for this, you are asking for God to be present, because you can’t have heaven without God.
Adam and Eve had heaven on earth. The garden was awash with the presence of God and they would fellowship with God in an intimate friendship . . . a relationship that empowered them to govern the earth and all that was in it - requiring a billion times more managerial skill, ability, power and knowledge than any human has since needed to possess – all flowing into them from the immediate presence of God that he continually encountered on the earth where he lived.
In Exodus chapter thirty three (7 – 11) we read about Moses erecting his tent outside the camp of Israel and how the presence of God would descend there. The account especially notes how Joshua, the servant of Moses, remained in the tent even after Moses had left. Why would Joshua want to be anywhere else – in that tent, heaven was on earth.
There were two important moments in Joshua’s life prior to this: the first was Israel’e victory over the Alamakites whilst Moses sat on a hillside with hands raised (Exodus 17) – Joshua knew his victory was because a man kept himself connected with heaven, kept himself in the presence, as the battle raged on.
The second important moment was when Moses took Joshua up Mount Sinai. There the cloud and the glory of
the Lord rested on the mountain for six days, on the seventh God started to speak with Moses – he then went
into the cloud and stayed there for 40 days without food or water! Joshua’s first experience of heaven on earth.
He was never going to be the same after that. So he would not leave the tent – the atmosphere of heaven was
there.
Joshua’s experience of the atmosphere of heaven in the tent changed everything. Look what followed. When Israel reached Kadesh Barnea, twelve spies were sent into Canaan. As spies, only Joshua and Caleb could see triumph and blessing whilst ten others saw impossibility and defeat. In the atmosphere of heaven, enemies look like grasshoppers.
Joshua also showed that he had tremendous perseverance. For forty years he journeyed in the wilderness
waiting for the fulfillment of what God had promised. In the atmosphere of heaven, great peace and unshakable
assurance come when trials multiply.
Then when it came time for Moses to die, Joshua became the leader of the nation. God said this is the man
who will lead the next generation into the Promised Land. The atmosphere of heaven will make our kids say,
‘I want everything of God that it’s ever possible to have.’
Further in Exodus thirty three (12 – 15) we see that Moses didn’t want to do anything or go anywhere on earth if heaven wasn’t there. This is God’s design for the Church, and this is God’s design for the nations. Then we read (17 – 19) that God placed Moses in a split in a rock face and then passed by him so that Moses saw all except for the face of God – God said, this is My glory passing by. 1. God passed by and Moses saw him.
2. The glory of God passed by = the full wonder of all his attributes. 3. All the goodness of God passed before him.
Heaven on earth is possible only because God is good – he is gracious and compassionate. This is the fundamental nature of God – he is good! And God’s realm, heaven, is a realm of that which is good.
The devil doesn’t want you to know that. He doesn’t want people hungering after the presence of God and rising up in their mandate to bring heaven to earth. So the devil wants you to think – ‘God is good, yes – but . . .’ Then we add a bunch of stuff out of our condemnation (our judgement / opinion of ourselves) and then another bunch of stuff out of accusation (the devils judgement / opinion of us).Next we remember a few things that some preacher said about the wrath and judgement of God. And we end up thinking we’re not worthy to have the presence of God. And in one sense, we’re right, but in truth we are because Jesus took all our unworthiness and gifted us his worthiness – as amazing as it sounds, we are worthy!
If we really really knew how good God is, and how worthy he has made us to be, we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but in the atmosphere of heaven – and we’d want to carry it around wherever we went – and we’d want to pass it on to others as often as we could. The atmosphere of heaven is full of mercy, full or grace, full of compassion, full of power, full of wonder, full of wisdom, full of glory.
