My hunch is that, whether we like it or not, we’ve been conditioned into thinking that God’s blessing has something to do with being healthy, wealthy and wise.  Hmm – and yet God’s idea of blessing is something entirely different.  It begins with the blessing of righteousness.  Sounds odd I know – but there’s an abundance of blessing in this thing called  “righteousness”

Well last week we kicked off a discussion on the program about the promise Jesus made, an outrageous promise in fact, of an abundant life. Here it is, have a listen, John chapter 10 verse 10, Jesus said:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

And I guess the reason it’s so outrageous is that firstly Jesus is saying His purpose in coming to earth and stepping out of heaven into this physical dimension, taking on flesh, becoming a man, dying on the cross, rising again, all that, the reason He did all that was what? That we may have life and have it abundantly.

And it is for us because this promise is made in the context of a parable where Jesus is the Good Shepherd, the true shepherd and we are His flock. It’s a beautiful picture with a deep and rich meaning to the agrarian audience to which He said it back in the 1st century. An abundant life.

What does that mean though? I had a student ask me that once, when I was lecturing at a Bible college. I was rabbiting on about this abundant life thing as though the idea of an abundant life is completely obvious to everyone, and one of the students, a woman in her sixties, asked me. She said, “What is an abundant life?” You know something, I think that’s a really, really good question.

A little while ago we aired a teaching series called ‘Financially Secure Once And For All’. And of course our team here at Christianityworks turned it into a CD and it was featured in one of our newsletters that we send to our supporters. It was all about the fact that God means us not to find our security in money and wealth but in Him however much we may or may not have when in comes to financial wealth.

See my great concern is that in this world where the machinery of advertising tells us that the only way we can be happy is to buy this product that they’re pitching to us in this ad. My concern is that many Christians have fallen for that lie. So that’s what that series was all about, “Financially Secure Once And For All”. It wasn’t about how to get enough money to be secure, it wasn’t about how God would pour money out of heaven if we honoured Him, but on how to experience God’s security and safety irrespective of the size of our bank account.

Now our team sent an email out to our supporter’s base and I was interested in the response of one man. He came straight back with an incredibly sharp email declaring that he couldn’t support anyone who preaches this prosperity doctrine. You know the false idea that if you believe in God the right way and give lots of money to whoever it is preaching that day, if you do that you’ll be rich. God will make you healthy and wealthy and wise. Big house, big car, great job on “easy street”.

Friend, that is a false doctrine. That is a false belief and it’s a false understanding and we should have nothing to do with that because it puts our own wealth at the heart of things rather than God’s glory. And that’s not it, simply not what we’re called to do.

Anyhow the point of me telling you this story is that the moment I open my mouth about financial security the man who wrote me that sharp email immediately assumed I was talking about monetary blessing from God. But that was in fact the complete opposite of what I talked about in that series. What I was talking about was having God’s security irrespective of how much or how little money we might have.

And I wonder whether it isn’t the obvious thing to fall into, precisely the same wrong assumption when we speak of an abundant life, when we listen to Jesus’ promise that He came to give us an abundant life. That abundance means healthy, wealthy, wise, easy street, all good, hunky dory, tickety boo.

And so people look at their lives and think, “Well you know, I don’t fall into that category, I’m not healthy, wealthy and wise. I’m on “struggle street”, not on “easy street“. My life is definitely not all good therefore this promise is either false or it’s just not for me.” Do you see my point? We can be like the man who sent me that sharp email, we judge Jesus wrongly. We judge what He said from our worldly standpoint rather than from a Godly one.

Back in the early Church in the 1st century a controversy arose about what foods they could eat and what drinks they could drink. Remember early Christians mostly came out of Judaism with its legal demands about a whole range of things including food and drink. The Apostle Paul was addressing this controversy in a letter to the Roman Church and the crux of what he had to say to them was this, Romans chapter 14, verse 17. He said: 

For the Kingdom of God is not food nor drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Don’t you love that? The Kingdom of God, boys and girls, stop looking at it from a worldly point of view ’cause it’s not worldly. Because if you look at it from a worldly point of view you’re going to completely miss the point. God’s Kingdom isn’t about physical things, it’s not about food or drink or wealth or anything like that. It’s something that happens inside of you when you lay down your life for Jesus, you lay down your worldly desires, you lay down everything you want for this Jesus who laid down His life for us.

It’s about righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And today briefly I want to look at the first of those, righteousness, because that’s the heart of an abundant life. Righteousness is a word that’s bandied around lots and lots and lots in Christian circles but what does it actually mean?

Well righteousness means a right standing with God. It means the state that we should be in, a condition in which we are acceptable to a Holy perfect God. We’ve all sinned, we’ve all rebelled, we’ve all fallen short of the glory of God. That means there is an enmity and hostility between us and God.

But the moment we accept Jesus, the forgiveness we have through His sacrifice on that cross, well there’s peace because the debt for our sin which is death has been paid by Jesus and now through our faith in Him and what He’s done God sees us as righteousness. Just as a criminal who’s paid his debt in prison. Once he’s released he’s now right with the law so we are right with God, not because we paid the price but because Jesus did and our trust is in Him.

That’s why elsewhere in this letter to the Romans that Paul writes:

Therefore since we are justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we now stand.

See we’re back where we should be, we are justified, we are made right with God through our faith in Jesus and so we have peace with God through Him. The war’s over. Running away from God is over. Being afraid is over. And then does Jesus say, “okay, well look just now keep on doing all the things you were doing that’s wrong? That’s fine. Keep sinning, I don’t mind.”

No. Just as He said to the woman caught in adultery whom the crowds had condemned and wanted to stone to death in Romans chapter 8, verse 11. Jesus said:

 Neither do I condemn you. Go your way and from now on do not sin again.

So we’re forgiven, we’re back in a relationship with God and then God calls us to go and live our lives and stop doing the stuff that caused the problem in the first place. Do you get it? God wants us to turn back to Him not just by saying stuff but by letting Him change our lives, by living them for Him. That’s righteousness right there. It’s something that God gives us as His free gift through Jesus, a right standing with Him and then something that we’re called to live out in our lives.

That’s what Jesus came to give us, an abundant life. A life that begins with God’s righteousness given freely to us and that then continues in that righteousness and there’s the blessing. You see because sin has consequences. Sin is the thief that comes to steal and kill and destroy, but Jesus came that we might have life, real life, in all its abundance. Righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

I don’t think there’s a single person on this planet, who doesn’t want to have peace in their lives.  A cessation of conflict and wrangling and fighting.  Of course conflict comes in many different forms – the worst, is a conflict with God.  Turns out that one of the things Jesus wants to bless us with, is peace.

We’re looking this week at Jesus’ outrageous promise of an abundant life. Have a listen, John chapter 10 verse 10:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.

And as we unpack that promise, it’s worth unpacking isn’t it? What I’m keen to do is that we don’t misinterpret it. Because it isn’t something we can roll around in, like a pig in mud, imagining somehow that Jesus promised here to put us on “easy street”.

The easiest thing in the world is for us to assume that Jesus wants to bless us just financially or in some other physical way. And of course sometimes He does, but the blessings of the Kingdom of God are far greater, far richer than anything this world has to offer and anyone, anyone who’s ever chased after wealth and fame and fortune will tell you that those things never ever satisfy the deep yearning inside.

Am I right? Jesus didn’t come to give us things the way the world does. He came to give us the blessing of the Kingdom of God in our lives, righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. That’s the real deal, that’s what He died on that cross to give us, that’s what He rose again to bring us. An abundance of life, a rich life, literally, a super abundant life, life in vivid technicolour. And today, today we’re going to take a look at the blessing of peace.

Righteousness, we looked at that yesterday, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Those three in a nutshell are what the Kingdom of God brings into our lives. They are the fountain of blessing. And that little troika is put together by the Apostle Paul in dealing with the controversy over religious rules to do with food and drink that was raging back in the 1st century Church. And in responding to that in his letter to the Romans he’s saying, “Guys, guys, you’ve got a hold of the wrong end of the stick, don’t you get it?” Romans chapter 14, verse 17:

The Kingdom of God isn’t about food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

See that’s the context, because in exactly the same way as some people were taking a human worldly perspective on God’s Kingdom over religious rules back then, you and I we can easily take a worldly view of this promise that Jesus made of an abundant life through our consumer oriented 21st century mindset.

I mean when you hear the promise of an abundant life what’s the first thing that springs to mind? Enough money to get by, being able to have a few of those luxuries, paying off the credit card, “easy street”; I mean it’s the natural reaction right?

But this isn’t what Jesus was saying. As I said last week on the program this promise of an abundant life comes set in the context of a parable of a shepherd and his sheep. And a shepherd and his sheep lived difficult and dangerous lives out there in search for pasture where thieves often came and wild animals came to ravage the flock. Where, sometimes the shepherd had to lay down his life for his sheep. There’s nothing easy street about that little lot is there?

But if we stopped and thought about this whole abundant life thing for just a little while and thought, “If I want an abundant life what would be up there? Right up the top of the list. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 on my list of what it means to have a rich and abundant life.”

I think we’d come up with exactly the same list as Paul, righteousness, a right standing with God, finally the enmity between us and God is gone. Finally the threat of judgement is gone. Finally, where we’re meant to be back in a relationship with God and right standing with Him; so righteousness.

Secondly, peace. Is there anyone among us that doesn’t want peace on every side in our life? The absence of strife. And thirdly, joy; a deep delight that springs out of our relationship with God. A joy that transcends the ups and downs of life. A deep joy that’s there 24/7.

So today we’re going to talk about peace and again remember we’re not talking a worldly view of peace here, we’re talking of a Godly view of peace and that’s exactly what Jesus instructed His disciples to do when He gave them His peace.

See Jesus was about to be crucified, the disciples knew that, they were in fear for their own lives as well. It was a scary, scary time. They’d been following this amazing Jesus around for three and a half years. His miracles and His teaching and now, all of a sudden, the dark clouds of death hung over their future and Jesus says to them, He says, John chapter 14, verse 27:

Peace I leave you, my peace I give you. I don’t give it to you as the world gives, don’t let your hearts be troubled, do not let them be afraid.

You see this? Peace not from the world’s perspective, not the way the world gives it to you, Jesus is saying take my peace, my deep inner peace. The security, the safety, that comes from being one of my disciples. The sort of peace that sheep have when they’re safe in the protection of the one true shepherd, the shepherd who’s prepared to lay down his life for his sheep.

And the clear thing that Jesus is saying to them is this, “Look my peace isn’t the same as the peace the world offers you. That’s why your hearts shouldn’t be troubled. That’s why you needn’t be afraid.” And as I’ve said previously that promise of an abundant life in John chapter 10, verse 10 comes set in a story of difficult, dangerous existence of a shepherd and his sheep. It comes set not wrapped in cotton wool but in the reality of life and it’s for that reason, the cold hard reality of life that you and I need peace.

Without that how can we have an abundant life? How can we? As I look back on my decade and a half of now walking with Jesus, through thick and thin, up and down, dark and light, through some great places and some places that look very much like that valley of the shadow of death that Psalm 23 talks about, His peace is one of the things that I value most about my relationship with Him. A peace that lasts through every situation because it’s His peace, it’s His way, not the world’s peace, the world’s way.

Paul the Apostle in Philippians chapter 4 writes about a peace that surpasses all understanding. That guards our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. I so relate to that because so often this peace from Jesus in a worldly sense it doesn’t make sense. It completely defies logic and surpasses all understanding because I should be afraid in this situation. I should be panicking. I should be running around like a chicken with my head cut off, but instead I have a deep inner peace. Psalm 23 verse 4:

Even though I walk through the darkest valley I will fear no evil for You are with me, Your rod and Your staff they comfort me.

That’s the peace that Jesus brings. Friend, it is better, better than any bauble, any trinket that this world has to offer. This deep inner peace that Jesus brings. A peace delivered into our very beings by the Holy Spirit Himself and it’s a peace that only comes when first we have a right standing with God through Jesus.

That’s why Paul and his list of three things that the Kingdom of God is about kicks off with righteousness first, then peace because peace flows out of our relationship with God when we have a right standing with Him through Jesus. And then, once we have this relationship with God and the peace that comes out of that, the next thing, the icing on the cake almost, is joy. The Joy of the Lord which is our strength.

I spent a good chunk of my life looking for happiness, but I never found what I was looking for.  The problem with happiness is that it’s linked to our circumstances – you can’t be happy if something difficult is going on.  It turned out, that I wasn’t looking for happiness at all.  What I longed for, was joy.  It’s just that back then, I didn’t realise that, because I didn’t know what joy was.

I ask people this question, “what do you want out of life?” And 99% of them will answer, “I just want to be happy”. Why not? After all who wants to be sad all the time? Who wants to live out their lives in a darkness when the light of happiness beckons just around the corner? But you know happiness isn’t always what life dishes up is it? As much as we want to be happy all the time it just doesn’t seem to work out that way. In fact happiness, many times in our lives, can be an elusive quality.

And the reason is, pretty much, happiness depends on our circumstances, the things going on around us. I mean we’re not happy when we’re sick are we? We’re not happy when someone’s giving us a hard time. We’re not happy when we’re struggling financially or when someone we love is suffering or whatever it is. There are lots of circumstances where happiness simply can’t co exist with what’s going on in our lives. Would you agree?

So as much as it’s something just about everyone aspires to it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. Happiness is linked to our circumstances and when we say that we want to be happy what we’re really saying is that we want all of our circumstances to be favourable all of the time. ‘Easy street’, that’s happiness. Well my friend life just isn’t like that is it?

And so when we come back to looking at this promise that Jesus made about an abundant life it’s easy to imagine that it’s a sham. It’s an unrealistic promise. The sort the politicians make before an election only to renege once you’ve voted them in. I’m not saying all politician’s promises are like that but you know what I’m saying. In my country at least many of the promises made during an election will never eventuate.

And so happiness is a bit like the mirage in the desert, it can be illusory. Jesus said:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.

Now surely if I’m going to have an abundant life like Jesus promised here, surely I’d have to be happy, right? Well in unpacking and understanding this promise so far this week we’ve been looking at how the Apostle Paul summed up what the Kingdom of God is all about in our lives. People back then when Jesus and later the disciples were going around talking about God’s Kingdom, people imagined it was something physical, that there was this Roman Empire that was THE kingdom, they’d taken over the whole known world.

But there’d been other kingdoms before that. So they were kind of expecting Jesus to come riding in on His shiny white steed with His sword held high, leading a mighty army to boot the Romans out of Israel. That pretty much was what the Kingdom of God meant to them. But Jesus had quite a different take. In fact a completely different take, Luke chapter 17 beginning at verse 20:

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God was coming and He answered, ‘the Kingdom of God isn’t coming with things that can be observed. Nor will they say look, here it is or there it is. For in fact the Kingdom of God is among you.

So when it comes to Jesus coming to this earth in order that we can have life and have it abundantly it makes sense to me not to look at it from a human perspective but from the perspective of God’s Kingdom. Which is why we’ve been unpacking Paul’s nutshell of what the Kingdom is all about in our lives; Romans chapter 14, verse 17:

The Kingdom of God isn’t about food and drink but about righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

And so far this week on the program we’ve looked at the first two of those. Righteousness, a right standing with God that we live out in relationship with Him and secondly peace, the sort of peace that Jesus brings, a peace that surpasses all understanding.

And as I said yesterday if we stopped and thought about this whole abundant life thing for just a little while and thought, “If I want an abundant life what would be right up there, right at the top of my list, numbers 1, 2 and 3?” I think we’d come up with the same list. Righteousness, a right standing with God; finally the enmity between us and God is gone; finally the threat of judgement is gone; finally we’re where we’re meant to be, back in relationship and right standing with God.

Secondly, peace. Is there anyone on this planet who doesn’t want to have peace in every part of their lives? The absence of strife. And thirdly joy. A deep delight that springs out of a relationship with God. A joy that transcends the ups and downs of life. A deep joy that’s there 24/7.

Now you know something, I spent the first 36 years of my life looking for happiness. I left no stone unturned in my quest for happiness. Maybe I’ll find it in wealth, maybe it’s the big house, maybe it’s the big expensive car, maybe it’s getting married, maybe it’s having children, maybe it’s status, career, fame, recognition. Winning at everything I set my hand to. It was all about winning for me back then.

Believe you me I looked under every rock, I was persistent and other than some fleeting experiences of happiness I never found it. I left no stone unturned. I tried everything but happiness wasn’t something that came to live in my life. I just could never find that. Why? Because unbeknown to me I wasn’t so much yearning for happiness, I was yearning for something deeper, something much more lasting and abiding.

What I was after was joy. And joy’s different to happiness in that it doesn’t rely on our circumstances. It doesn’t come from out there. The joy of the Lord comes from within. It’s a well inside us that bubbles up no matter what’s going on, on the outside.

Can I tell you? On my darkest days in life I have experienced the joy of the Lord. You can’t do that with happiness. To be happy things out there have to be on the up and up but I’ve experienced great joy right smack bang in the middle of great pain. How? Why? Because it’s a joy that comes from God and that well never runs dry.

Let’s listen again to what Paul wrote of the Kingdom of God was all about. Romans chapter 14, verse 17:

For the Kingdom of God is not about food and drink but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Do you see? Righteousness, peace, joy, they come when we’re immersed in the Holy Spirit. They come from Him not from us and Jesus described how this Spirit of God works through us. John chapter 7 beginning at verse 37:

Jesus was standing there, He cried out, ‘let anyone who’s thirsty come to me and let anyone who believes in me drink. As the Scripture has said, ‘out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’. Now He said this about the Spirit which believers in Him were to receive. For as yet there was no Spirit because Jesus was not yet glorified.

The joy of the Lord which comes from the Spirit of God within us is like that. It bubbles up and then it flows out of the centre of who we are, out of our hearts, out of our bellies like rivers. Not a tiny little stream, not even one modest or large river but rivers of living water. A Nile and a Ganges, and a Mississippi and a Rhine, and an Amazon; rivers of living water.

The Holy Spirit with His righteousness and peace and joy flows up out of us like a flood tide of blessing from rivers of living water into the lives of other people when we yield our lives, when we turn them back and live them for God. That’s what the Kingdom of God is and do you know what this overflow sounds like to me? It sounds like life in all its abundance and that’s exactly what Jesus promised.

Sometimes as we’re travelling through things in life that we’d rather not be travelling through, we can get to imagining that any promise of God’s blessing, of an abundant life – must be a promise for some time way off in the future.  Certainly not for here and now!  But what if I told you that He means it absolutely – for here and now.

Okay, so Jesus promised us an abundant life.  And so often we’re head down, pedalling so hard, that we lose sight of the big picture.  If there is a heaven and a hell – and an eternity to go along with them – then the reality of heaven and hell is infinitely bigger than the reality of here and now.  What about life then and there?

Great to be with you again today on the program towards the end of yet another week. They tick by pretty quickly don’t they? You wake up and it’s Monday morning, the whole week ahead and before we know it, it’s Friday again heading into another weekend. Seems to me that the weeks are slipping by evermore quickly. You blink and they’re gone and before you know it another year’s gone. We’re into the New Year and we’ll pretty much blink and this one will be gone too.

It’s like a video of a merry-go-round that someone speeds up. Before you know it, the little merry-go-round is spinning around and around and around a million miles an hour and one day, often with little or no warning ‘bang’, this little merry-go-round, my life, your life, will stop dead, literally.

Life on this earth will come to an end. I was listening to an interview on the radio the other day of a woman who woke up next to her husband because the radio alarm was going off in the morning and he hadn’t turned it off. Well there was a reason for that. He died of a heart attack in the bed next to her during the night.

Makes you squirm because in a lot of cultures, particularly western cultures we’re not so good at talking about death and coping with death even though death is very much part of life here on this earth.

“Gee, what’s the matter with Berni today?” You might be thinking to yourself. He’s going all-morose on us. Well not really. Over these last few days we’ve been talking about the promise that Jesus made to give us an abundant life. John chapter 10, verse 10:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came (Said Jesus) that they may have life and have it abundantly.

And when you look at it that promise is a life and death promise isn’t it? The thief, the enemy, the devil comes only to steal and kill and destroy but Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. It’s a contrast between the abundant life that Jesus wants to give us and the death that the devil is hell bent on delivering it on our doorstep. Life and death.

We live our lives believing that we’ll go on forever; that we’ll never get sick, that we’ll never die. Of course the facts are that unless Jesus returns first, you and I are going to die, there’s no denying that. But denying it is absolutely what we do. We sweep death under the carpet as though it’s never going to happen to us, always knowing deep inside somewhere though that it will, but trying to ignore that, that inconvenient truth.

Life’s for living right? Who needs to think about dying? And so we squeeze as much out of life as we possibly can even if it isn’t all that satisfying in the vain hope that we’ll stave death off as long as we can.

I used to be petrified of dying, absolutely petrified. I just couldn’t fathom that I’d have to let go of this life here on this earth one day or at least it would let go of me. And the thought of what, if anything, lay on the other side of death was just horrid. Either there was nothing and I’d lose everything with that last breath or there was a God and indeed a heaven and a hell and I was in serious trouble in that department.

So I just put my head down and just concentrated on the here and now, living life, squeezing everything out of it that I could and no it wasn’t that satisfying. A decade and a half ago something happened to change that and it happened without me noticing it.

A decade and a half ago I gave my life to Jesus. I noticed that bit but without me realising it my fear of death evaporated over night. I first realised that when I was flying in a plane in New Zealand and it was incredibly bumpy rough flight and in the middle of that was a terrible landing and wait for it, Christchurch. I, all of a sudden realised I wasn’t gripping my seat anymore, I wasn’t afraid, I’d lost my fear of dying.

Have a listen to what the Apostle Paul writes on this subject. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 51:

‘Listen’ said Paul; ‘I’ll tell you a mystery. We will not all die but we will all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability and this mortal body puts on immortality then the same that is written will be fulfilled.

Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the Law but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore my beloved be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.’

There it is, eternal life. The one thing we all hope for delivered by Jesus through His death on the cross and His resurrection. What could be more abundant than that? I mean it’s great that we can have a rich and abundant life amidst all the trials of life here on earth, that’s fabulous and that’s what we’ve been chatting about these last few days on the program. Fantastic. But the abundance, the overflow goes beyond the grave forever and ever and ever and ever.

And that knowledge my friend of an eternal life is supposed to make a difference, a huge difference to how we live our lives here and now. Look at the last bit of that again:

Therefore my beloved be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.

In other words, look the knowledge of eternity is meant to impact our lives. It changes things, it gives us hope because at the end of this life there is something worth having. Something worth more than absolutely anything and everything that this world has to offer.

And that something is eternal life and yet we’re all so busy, head down, pedalling hard through life, that we’ve completely lost sight of the finishing line and that finishing line is something to look forward to. That finishing line is the best thing that can ever happen to us. Listen again to Paul, Philippians chapter 1 beginning at verse 21. He said:

For me to live living is Christ and dying is gain. If I’m to live in the flesh that means fruitful labour for me and I do not know which I prefer. I am so hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and to be with Christ for that is far better but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you.

Do you love that? Paul isn’t afraid of death, he’s not going, “Oh man, one day I’m going to die!” Paul is torn between this life and an eternity with Christ. Not just does he have eternal life foremost in his thinking but he’s literally torn between the two.

You know what I think the Lord is saying to you and me as we’re totally immersed in our respective heres and nows, He’s saying, “wake up! something much better is coming.” Again Paul, Colossians chapter 3, verse 1:

So if you have been raised with Christ seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above not on the things that are on this earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

He’s saying, wake up! Stop being so focused on the here and now, look off set your mind on the things that are above. Live your life focused on eternity with an eternal perspective because that is going to add a richness and an abundance and an anticipation that’s better than anything this world has to offer. Wake up!