Part Two, 'Setting our Sights on Heaven', Day 1
The second part of Wolfe’s Setting our Sights on Heaven looks at the reasons why Christians
find it hard to remain focussed on their future with God. Over nine chapters
Wolfe examines why we struggle: from doubts to cultural constructs of heaven,
from wisdom on living in this life to the shortness of it. All the way through
shepherding the reader lovingly, pointing us forward, moving our eyes upward.
There was so much in these final chapters that I really didn’t know what to
cover in the final couple of blog posts, so I thought that for a bit of a
change I would re-read a section each night and blog on that.
Here is my first for the week.
Chapter 6, ‘Face
Forward’
In this chapter Wolfe looks at our ‘orientation’, “…your
fundamental orientation can either be looking backward or forward. It cannot be
both.” (p. 94) He states that we all have pasts (whether good or bad),
We all carry with us
memories like these, whether bitter or sweet, but some people, unfortunately,
are obsessed with them. The past dominates their thinking. It consumes their
energies. It determines their mood. It defines who they are. They are stuck
trying to recreate the past, or to erase it, or to avenge it, or to deaden
their hearts so that they no longer feel anything about it. They may even find
themselves torn, feeling drawn to the past one day and then haunted by it the
next. (p. 94)
His pastoral concern comes to the forefront in this chapter.
He treads delicately, he is sympathetic, but he will not give any ground away.
Wolfe uses the apostle Paul as our example in this. Wolfe unpacks what Paul
means by “forgetting what lies behind” in Philippians 3; that it is not a
failure to recall (because Paul has just described those very things and
recalls his and other Christian’s sins throughout his writings in the New
Testament), but it is that his orientation in life is not going backwards, but
“straining forward”, pressing on “toward the goal for the prize of the upward
call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13-14).
Our future orientation firmly rests on Christ’s death and
resurrection in the past, we do not forget them! We have been forgiven,
completely, just as Paul was. Wolfe makes this clear. It is in our knowledge of
our forgiven state that we can look forward with confidence and hope.
We need to remember. Pain and sorrow, as horrible as they are, point us
forward to a time when there will be no more sin and no more death.
(As a side note, my one difficulty with this chapter was the
exclusive use of the Westminster Confession for one whole point on God allowing
Christian’s to remain in sin for a season (pp.102-3). I certainly would have
appreciated some biblical input here!)