This November 2026 DMWs Website Update is a Bible Study on Colossians 3:1-4 NLT: ‘Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory.’
I have an abiding interest in anything having to do with heaven, as is obvious from my first book published in 2025 ‘Bringing Heaven to Earth and The Intermediate Heaven.’ I am currently working on a second book that will focus totally on The Intermediate Heaven that will correct several things that I have learned that are different than I was aware of in the first book.
When you think about the fact that we are only on this earth for 70 to 90 years and then we go home to heaven where we will be for eternity. We humans have no concept of eternity, me included. I can’t even imagine living 200 years let alone 10,000 years. We tend to get caught up in this life and think about nothing else. This Scripture is Paul reminding us that we should think about heaven and not earth because based on our total life an increasing minority of it is spent on earth. And an increasing majority of it is spent in heaven.
We are told in this month’s Scripture, Colossians 3:1-4, to set our sights on ‘the realities of heaven’ and to ‘think about the things of heaven, and what might that include? I have thought a great deal about this and here are at least a few of what I think are some ‘realities of heaven’ and ‘the things of heaven’:
· We will be in heaven with all the members of the Holy Trinity.
· When we arrive in heaven, we may be met by Jesus leading a group of our family and friends to welcome us to heaven.
· The City of New Jerusalem, described in Revelation 21 & 22, will be where we live in heaven.
· Where is the heaven we go to when we die today? Well since the universe we are living in now will someday die a heat death because of the law of decay, also called the second law of thermodynamics, heaven must be outside any universe and in God’s special place where there is no decay. (read Why the Universe is the Way It Is by Hugh Ross to gain more understanding)
· Our family and friends who are followers of Jesus will be with us in heaven and they will all appear to be about 33 years old. And no one will have any imperfection in heaven that they may have had on earth such as being deaf or blind or anything else.
· What will worshipping God be like with millions of people and angels worshipping God in one huge group.
· What will the Tree of Life be like and what will its monthly fruit taste like.
· What will we eat in heaven? Where will our food come from? What will feasts with Jesus be like? Will we have grocery stores in heaven?
· How will we communicate with each other in heaven? Will we use telepathy? Will we somehow understand languages different than our own?
· Will we make new friends easily in heaven? Of course we will!
· What will we do for recreation in heaven? Will we play sports? Are there recreation centers in heaven? With golf courses, tennis courts, pickleball courts, and fields to play many different sports?
· Will there be opportunities to continue our education in heaven?
· Will we have Bible Study opportunities with the actual authors of the Bible including Paul, Peter, John, Luke, Matthew, etc?
· Will we have our favorite pets with us in heaven? Yes, we will!
· How will we travel in heaven? The City of New Jerusalem on it’s base is about 1400 miles square. We might have to travel over 1000 miles to visit a friend, so how we travel is important.
· Will we have the opportunity to go hiking in heaven outside the walls of the City?
· Will we see and be around all sorts of animals including previously dangerous ones that are no longer dangerous in heaven?
· What will our bodies be like? Will we be strong and have great eyesight? Yes, I think we will.
· Will we get to meet some historically important people who may be in heaven? I have asked God to meet with William Wilberforce who was known for his work in getting England out of the Slave Trade. And recently I have wanted to meet with Charlie Kirk when I get to heaven.
· Think about what jobs there might be in heaven that might interest you. There are many jobs we have on earth that don’t exist in heaven such as medical, legal, oil and gas industry, insurance and banking, and many more. But I think there might be jobs for musicians having to do with concerts and orchestras, and I think there will be many teacher’s jobs for many years to educate the children that come to heaven due to abortions, premature death because of disease or accidents, and miscarriages. I think heaven has many schools and colleges that will need lots of teachers. Even well after the end of the age when kids stop coming to heaven there will still be a need for colleges and universities to allow adults to further their education. And if heaven has recreation centers there will be those jobs available. I suspect there will be grocery stores in heaven as well as farms and libraries and they will all need workers. The base of the City of New Jerusalem is about 2,000,000 square miles. If each library and grocery store services 150 square miles that would require over 13,000 grocery stores and libraries. And the City of New Jerusalem is also about 1400 miles high and who knows how many more grocery stores and libraries and jobs that would require.
Well as you can see there are many things to think about regarding heaven, and that is as it should be, given how much of our lives will be spent there if we are followers of Jesus.
In the 19th Century, Boston Physician and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was quoted as saying: “some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.”
But this was seriously disagreed with by C. S. Lewis in his 1952 book Mere Christianity, where Lewis had a much more positive take:
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those that thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.
It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get the earth ‘thrown in’; aim at earth and you will get neither.”
Of course, I totally side with C. S. Lewis that those that are heavenly minded can get more done on this earth precisely because we are thinking about heaven and particularly when we work together with other likeminded Christians.
C. S Lewis’s quote above makes me wonder about how a small group of heavenly minded Christians would decide to tackle such a thorny problem like getting England out of the Slave Trade. I suppose in thinking about heaven they then noticed the huge contrast with the earth and all of its depravity, and they then must have decided to work together to see if they could bring a bit of heaven to earth, perhaps following Matthew 6:10.
I wonder how a group of us heavenly minded 21st century Christians today could do something similar. There is still so much depravity in our world today. But I think we have some examples that we can turn to such as Tim Tebow with his work to save children from sexual abuse, workplace abuse and other abuse. There is also Franklin Graham working to grow the kingdom of God and doing so very successfully. And more recently Charlie and Erica Kirk working to bring teen-agers and young adults to Christ and having great success. I suspect there are many others that are doing similar things that I am just not aware of
I think those of us who are heavenly minded should look around where we live, worship and work to find groups of other heavenly minded Christians that are in the process of taking on a part of our depraved culture and pitch in and join them.
What I usually do now is try to find an article where others write about Colossians 3:1-4, but I have not been able to find even one article that really addresses what I think Paul meant by setting your sights on the realities of heaven or us thinking about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. And I think I know why. I am the only Christian author, that I am aware of, besides John Burke the author of Imagine Heaven that believes that carefully selected Near Death Events are really and accurately portraying the heaven that we go to today when we die. Burke talks about this in both of his books Imagine Heaven and Imagine the God of Heaven. He has convinced me that his NDEs accurately portray heaven. And I believe that God uses NDEs to encourage us to believe that a bodily and an absolutely amazing eternal life with God and our family and friends that were followers of Jesus on the earth, does in fact await us. I have heard the ridiculous suggestion that Satan is behind the NDEs. But why would Satan want to make heaven sound so amazing, when he actually does the exact opposite (See question 5 below).
Questions/Comments:
1. Do you still believe that we can be too heavenly minded? I don’t!
2. One problem I try to avoid thinking about is how few members of my own family are following Jesus. I can’t do much about it except pray for them, be an example for them, and to remember that God has a different time-table with everyone, so there is still hope. Do you have a similar challenge?
3. I learned much of my current knowledge about heaven from John Burke’s book Imagine Heaven where he told of about 100 cases of where people had a Near Death Event where they temporarily went to heaven and then came back to earth and told about their experiences when they returned. Their stories were remarkably similar. I recommend you read his book.
4. Do you worry about what heaven will be like? Please don’t worry a bit about heaven. God prepared heaven to be an unbelievably great place that we can not even begin to imagine. In preparing heaven for his people that he loves God will have spared nothing to make it the best experience we could ever have for eternity.
5. Have you heard this Randy Alcorn quote in his book Heaven: “If Satan can convince us that Heaven is a place of boring, unearthly existence…we’ll set our minds on this life and not the next.”? Do you think that Satan has convinced many people that life in heaven will be a boring, unearthly existence? I think he has! And he could not be more wrong!
6. What do you think Colossians 3:4 means? The verse says, “And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory.” Google AI says, “When Christ returns, believers will be openly revealed with him and share in his glorified, eternal state—receiving perfected bodies and complete vindication.”
I can’t even imagine what that will be like.
7. Finally, I think Paul in Colossians 3:1-4 was asking the new followers of Jesus to start thinking of Heaven now that they realize that the earth is not their home and Heaven is. But do you think he expected them to think of Heaven exclusively? I don’t, but I do think he was asking them to think of Heaven often. As we should too.