Heaven is Where Dreams Come True   1 Peter 1:3, 4, 6-9, 13, 21

Something that all people have in common is troubles in life. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had blessings, children, home, and opportunity. I ate well this weekend. And Lord I don’t mean to complain. But if this is the blessing filled life, then I’m sure glad that the Lord isn’t mad at me. The secret of life is keeping hope alive. I meet two kinds of people. I meet people who have the hard times yet seem filled with hope and promise and I meet people who have hard times and become hard people.

 One of the seven basic stories of Christian faith is a story to keep hope alive. I can’t predict what you or I will face this week. People have shared enough with me just in recent days to know that some of you face fire and flood. It may be health, or the job, or violence or school decisions. And what if the week tears something away from you that you cherish and cannot get back again. Our hearts cry aloud with the question, Is there a future hope that brings meaning to what happens now and restores what was lost?

 Let your heart rejoice, because today we explore the Christian hope. Why can the Christian have hope and what will it mean to you? Let us pray that God touches your heart in moments ahead so you leave with hope like a great beacon drawing you forward.

 Peter is probably writing to Christians from Rome and since he calls it Babylon, it doesn’t sound like he had a great day. This was the time of persecutions and hope is distant and diluted with fear and sorrow. In every society there are cycles, times when a sacrificial lamb is needed and the Christians in Rome were convenient to blame. Their behavior was just enough different, especially at festival times and many were ethnically Jewish. My son called Thursday night. Tim was coming for Easter, but now he doesn’t want to go through the new security level. He said, ‘Ron, they didn’t treat me nice last time cause I’m a South Asian and I want to wait until the threat level goes down.’ How these months have tarnished anew the dream of what we all wish our nation can be! America, America, God shed his grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood  From sea to shining sea!
 I trust a passage like this one from Peter on hope. I don’t want to hear from someone who born on third base and thought they hit a triple. I want to hear about hope from someone who lost something. Peter’s writing as he decides daily whether to claim his rights or avoid problems or be a faithful witness to Christ.

 So Peter tells us that we have a current testing, a certain inheritance, and a living hope.

 We have a current testing. If you watch TV evangelists, you will notice some differences, certain scriptures that don’t play well on TV. So I sent in one response and I got a prosperity blessing pack in the mail. Sister Tammy told me that I was meant to blessed and prosperous and she wanted me to place the blessing pack somewhere on my body and sleep with it for the night and then send it back to her and she would pray. Well, you know that I have an open mind, but I just could not sleep with the pack. I could not find a Bible verse that referred to it. But Peter also tells me that many of us will not at first be blessed and prosperous, we may be bothered and tested. Now the Lord does bless and will bless. But conflicts do exist in homes, in societies, between nations, and even in our own hearts. You know one of my worst critics? Me.

 God does not cause these testings, but God uses these moments to work on our faith and character. If you want to be a person who is respected and caring and delightful to be around, God has to adjust your character. Right now, you’re not that great. Because we’re your friends, we hate to mention it except behind your back. Fortunately for you, God is working on the problem and you probably feel it happening, Character building is never subtle. Are you wearing any gold today, and we look at ourselves and we are – how do think your ring and necklace were shaped, separated from the earth and given beauty and design? Peter says it was heat and pressure.

 A lot of people smell good on Sunday. And perfume is one of the most expensive little items you can buy. And how is it made? It starts with a terrific flower like these from the wedding yesterday. And then the perfumer strips all the petals from a flower and many flowers so that Chanel and Calvin Klein come to life..

 But we can’t abide the current testing if we don’t have a certain hope. What if you went through your trials and let God shape you and you got to the end of life and that’s all there is? Jackie Kennedy ate right and exercised and apparently did not enjoy either activity. She was quoted after she got brain cancer, ‘I did everything right, and this is what comes of it?’

 That is why heaven is so important for Christian faith. It is God’s promise that good dreams last forever. I was rollerblading until I hit a manhole cover in Central Park. At first, I wanted to try again this summer, but you know, if I just wait another 40 years I can try that in heaven. Sometimes we are 50, 60, 80 years old before we even discover our gifts. If you have no certain hope, why even try to develop a new skill? Some of you have told me that you’re too old to use a computer. What if they’re in heaven too? I’m looking for the day when we’re both standing in heaven and you say, Dr. Ron, I wished I’d listened to you and gotten farther on my internet skills before I got here.

 Peter says that this inheritance is imperishable, undefiled, unfading and kept in heaven for you. This is a great experience. Paul says that he is so interested in heaven that he’s willing to be martyred any time. Paul was an explorer and traveler. I don’t think he would have said that if heaven was robes, harps, and a church service that lasted for eternity. Heaven is where the mislaid dreams of life come true. All you were built to be will be revealed in heaven. Peter cannot find other words to promise you more clearly that if you trust God, there will not be one dream forgotten or one prayer unanswered in all your life. Friends, its time to dream again. For too many of us, the current testing has pushed us off course and we’ve lost sight of the certain inheritance.

 Because of heaven, we have this living hope. It pulses in our hearts and we hold it day by day tenderly and tenaciously as we are hit with current testing. Probably the most common prayer of all people are phrases from the Lord’s prayer, give us this day our daily bread and deliver us from evil. You can only pray this prayer if you know living hope.

 My dear friends, we are weaving our lives like tapestries. At least by the teenage years, the first snarls have come in the thread and perhaps a thorn was never removed from the wool and gets mixed in too. By our middle years, there are a few areas where thread was removed and reworked. Some people are doing this successfully and their tapestry has beauty even though it shows the stains of life.

 And we all have friends or family members who are pulling the threads violently with bitterness because they feel victimized by the current testing and their hope is not greater than the test. There is nothing more beautiful than you who are older and have let hope triumph over testing. Your character has become a crown that catches our eyes and inspires us to try too.

 Radio evangelist Charles E. Fuller announced that he would speak on "Heaven." During that week he received a letter from an old man who was very ill. "Next Sunday you are to talk about "Heaven." I am interested in that land because I have held a clear title to a bit of property there for 55 years. "For more than a half-century I have been sending materials for its construction. Dreams are being built there that I cannot finish at this location. Yours sincerely.

Let us rekindle hope today. Use this 3^rd story of the Christian faith. Its never too late to reverse bitterness, recall the lost dreams and know a living hope. Peter says in verse 13, Set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring. Amen.