Eastgate Church Sermons - Rocky Mount Eastgate Church Sermons

Do you feel out of control today? Are you immobilized by some fear, perhaps of some confrontation or some difficult step? Do you wish you were strong enough to face it? What if you had the might to control time and matter? That’s the joy of today’s message. We can know God who is mighty in the ultimate kind of way. In the book of Zephaniah, the prophet told the people of God that they could know God is mighty by recognizing His powerful deeds. We too can know that God is mighty by recognizing His powerful deeds.

As the great philosophers The Beatles once sang, “All you need is love, love, love is all you need.” We come into this world with an intrinsic need to be loved. Maybe for you today this truth is a tragic reality. We need love but feel unloved. But God’s love is perfect. When others leave, He stays, through your quirks and mistakes and messes. God is love and His motivation and action is always love. In the book of 1 John, the apostle encouraged believers to know that God is love and to respond with loving one another. We can know that God is love and respond in love.

What must we do to prepare for what comes after death? How can we prepare for the ultimate journey? It's a journey that most of us don’t want to think about, but it’s a journey that everyone must take. Trips take a lot of preparation, some more than others. But how much more must we prepare for the trip that everyone will face one day… the trip to our eternal home! In the gospel of John chapter 6, Jesus told His hearers what they must do to be prepared for eternity.

A new you - that’s what many promise to help you accomplish in this life. “You can live your best life now” the latest self-help books and gurus promise. That’s why we make “bucket lists.” We think, “If only I can experience all that this life offers, I will be happy and fulfilled.” We think, “I better live for myself now because we only get one life.” But the best is yet to come. For the new heaven and new earth and new body that God has planned for His redeemed people will be the very, very, best life you can live! In the last two chapters of the book of Revelation, the Lord revealed to the apostle John what the eternal home of His redeemed people with Christ would be like.

A lot of Christians get nervous about this topic of heavenly rewards. They are confused about the importance of living a life of faithful obedience to God in this life. They mistakenly claim, “My good works mean nothing to God.” It’s true that we are saved by grace apart from works. We can’t earn salvation. We can’t work and earn eternal life and heaven. We can only receive the free gift of salvation by faith. That’s true. But in the apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he told them to take care to live faithfully for Christ for it would determine their heavenly reward. We can take care to live faithfully for Christ knowing that it determines our heavenly reward.

Through the years, when someone loses a loved one, one of the most asked questions I get when I’m helping a family prepare for a funeral and helping them process their grief and pray with them, is this very question: “Will We Know One Another In Heaven?” Underneath this question are several others, like: “Will I still be me in heaven? Will I still have all my memories and personality? Will I look like me?” And, “Will I recognize my friends and loved ones who gone to heaven before me? Will I recognize other biblical saints? Will I know Jesus?” In the book of Revelation, the apostle John recorded his vision of believers in heaven knowing one another. We can be confident that believers in heaven will know one another.