Driving Through Heaven: The Complete Guide to Knowing God and Living in His Kingdom on Earth

GARDNER

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS BOOK

(INTRODUCTION)

This is a handbook for living according to God’s biblical design for life. It is designed to deepen your relationship with God, empower you to serve him better, and help you experience more of the Abundant Life that Jesus promised. Driving Through Heaven is a primer—not an exhaustive treatment. It is the basic training that Jesus provided his disciples, and will teach you nearly all of God’s New Testament principles and skills. You can also use it to train other disciples.

Read only what you need or read it cover-to-cover. Refer back to it, as needed. The book is divided into parts that explain God’s design for living in the five dimensions he gave us: spiritual, intellectual (our thinking), emotional, relational, and physical (body-health, and material and financial stewardship). Each dimension has its own part in the book, and the parts are arranged in order from imperative (spiritual life) to least important (physical life). Each part builds on the ones before, and consists of mostly short chapters that allow you to learn a little every day, if you prefer.

When I teach this material in live formats, people frequently ask, This makes so much sense; why didn’t someone teach me this before? Somehow, churches forgot how to teach most New Testament principles and skills. Most churches provide only an overview. For example, we are told to love, but not offered training courses on how to do it: how to demonstrate care and respect, how to communicate effectively, how to set boundaries, the steps of forgiveness, how to resolve conflict, etc. This book fills in the details and teaches you how to apply scripture to life.

Next to the bible, Driving Through Heaven is designed to be a single handbook to help you live as a Christ follower. Scores of excellent Christian books and resources provide in-depth study on most of these topics. This book provides the foundational principles and skills we need to better understand and use the more in-depth teaching.

Are You Living Half a Life?

Is your life less than what you would like it to be? Most people are missing God’s best. George Barna, one of America’s top researchers on the state of the U.S. church, reported in his book, Maximum Faith¹, that only one percent of American adults are experiencing the most fulfilling life God offers. One percent!

What if you could be twice as happy as you are right now? How about ten times happier? What if you could have ten times more love? Feel ten times more whole and fulfilled? Have total peace? Doesn’t God want every person to have heaven’s happiness? Of course he does!

The good news is that you can have that life. Jesus said, I have come to seek and save those who are clueless about real life² that they may have life and have it more abundantly.³ I want to teach you what God taught me concerning his Abundant Life. I want to see your life transformed by God until you experience the maximum of God’s love, joy, and peace.

Why I Wrote this Book

Today, after living with God since age 24 in 1977, he is for me a real dad, brother, friend, and mentor. Throughout my life, God has taught me his basic biblical principles and skills for living. Using them, he has blessed me with an increasing abundance of his love, joy, peace, and rest. God has trained me to teach his principles and skills to others through 20 years as a full- and part-time pastor; 17 years as a Christian social worker, psychotherapist, and addictions counselor; and, since 2005, as a Christian life skills coach and disciplemaker. These days, I help people solve whatever problems they have, and train individuals, couples, pastors, and churches how to use God’s biblical principles and skills and Jesus’ disciplemaking method.

I’ve written the book I wish I could have had during much of my growth as a Christ follower, and I want you and others to have it as well. Having worked one-on-one with thousands of individuals, couples, and families, it is my observation that those who sincerely desire to experience the life God planned will receive that gift. My God-given passion and mission is showing people heaven’s riches and teaching them how to apply God’s biblical principles and skills.

My reasons for writing this book are to be able to:

Teach my children how to have the Abundant Life.

Provide a basic resource for small-group disciplemaking training in local churches.

Give my life coaching clients a means to learn quickly the basics, so they may save hours and money from having to learn them in coaching sessions.

Share the God’s biblical concepts with as many people as possible.

Free Online Bonuses

At the book website, www.DrivingthroughHeaven.com, find these free resources:

Quizzes to help you recognize if you are sabotaging your thinking or undermining healthy communication with others.

Video introductions and summaries for each of the book parts by the author, plus a video guide to hearing God’s voice.

Printable worksheets and exercises to help you apply what you learn.

Bonus chapters.

New Testament Proof that God’s Kingdom Exists on Earth.

My Short-Term Life Plan. Change your life in 12 months by creating a personal one-year growth plan using the process for applying the basic principles described in this book.

For Pastors and Churches. Resources for using this book to enhance your disciple-making ministries, including how to create a disciplemaking ministry at your church.

More free stuff is at the author’s website, www.GardnerCoaching.com:

The author’s blog on Christian living, life in God’s church family, and making disciples of Jesus using his method.

Free articles and downloadable resources.

Sign-up for Mark’s free blog posts on Abundant Living, and to learn when new resources will be available.

My Use of Scripture

I have attempted to cite the scriptural basis for every belief I mention. When I quote directly from the Holy Bible, New International Version, I use quotation marks, and I omit that punctuation when I am paraphrasing or translating from the original languages.

This work is not intended to be a systematic theology (a description of what I believe about everything). My intent is to explain clearly and simply how to apply most of the basic New Testament principles and skills to live according to God’s design.

Driving Through Heaven focuses on the individual Christian life, with emphasis on how to love and do relationships with God and others. Therefore, the one area of New Testament principles and skills I cover only lightly is that related to life as God’s family—the Church: how God designed it to serve him. My website offers information on this area, and I am working on a small e-book on this subject.

I use masculine pronouns for God because that is how I experience God, and to ease reading for most people. In the creation story, we see that God is neither male nor female (or perhaps is both, somehow), and I know that people experience God in a variety of ways. If use of male pronouns for God is difficult for you, I beg your forgiveness for making the reading tedious for you.

Join Me on the Drive to Discover Abundant Living

I shall never tell you that learning to live the Abundant Life is easy. It requires effort and work and is a life-long process; it entails much practice—a lot of practice. Be patient. Anyone can learn to live according to God’s design. He is ready to help you. Within a few months, most people come to understand the basics. As a result, life will become gradually better.

Becoming proficient at living God’s principles and skills usually takes a few years. Once we learn the basics, God will teach more advanced principles and skills. Most chapters include recommendations for more study. Learning never ends, because God and his blessings are infinite in scope and depth. Life with God keeps getting better. You can even grow to look forward to birthdays.

Following Christ does not mean we are immune from difficulties and pain, or that he guarantees we will become rich and famous. However, the better we live God’s way, the quicker we recover and heal from difficult experiences; bad events have less negative effect, and we find ourselves receiving more of the fruit of God’s Spirit in spite of whatever occurs. Moreover, we discover that happiness comes from experiences other than wealth and fame.

Based on my life and the lives of the hundreds of people whose transformation I have witnessed, I believe this truth: regardless of your circumstances, you can know God well, have conversations with him, change and grow to become the person he designed you to be, and experience his Abundant Life on earth. I shall tell you how to have this life, and God’s Holy Spirit will help you with every stage of your journey with him. Allow me to drive you through heaven by reading this book.

Where the Title Comes From

If we could drive around heaven for a day to see how they live up there, we would have the opportunity to learn how God’s children live in paradise. Then, when we returned, we could live that way on earth and experience, here, most of the same blessings they have there. Although we cannot reach heaven’s mainland except through death, God revealed in the bible how to live a heavenly life on earth. He intends for us to receive every spiritual blessing of heaven while on earth,⁴ and for life to become forever easier, in spite of earthly adversity.

The title is both a metaphor for discovering how to live God’s way for eternity, and a reminder that we presently live in the kingdom that Jesus brought to earth. He wants us to experience much of heaven in our present lives. We really can dwell in heaven’s earthly kingdom and learn to live as we will for eternity.

George Barna, Maximum Faith: Live Like Jesus (Ventura, CA: Metaformation, Inc., 2011), 25.

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Luke 19:10

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John 10:10

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Ephesians 1:3

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PART 1

YOU CAN LIVE IN HEAVEN ON EARTH

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. ... And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus."

Ephesians 1:3, 2:6

"Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household...."

Ephesians 2:19

CHAPTER 1

IF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN HAS COME, WHY DO MOST PEOPLE MISS GOD’S BLESSINGS?

God wants us to live in heaven while on earth. He wants us to receive most of the blessings we imagine we’ll have in heaven after we die. Since God is supreme ruler, the high king, then Heaven is the name of God’s kingdom—his country. Jesus brought God’s kingdom to earth, claiming our planet for God. Therefore, his kingdom surrounds us, even if it is only, in part, the heaven of which we dream.

We do not have to wait for death to live in God’s kingdom and experience life there. As the Ephesians quotation that opened Part 1 states, God has already given us every spiritual blessing found in heaven. Deep in God’s heart, his greatest longing and desire is that we choose to have a relationship with him in which we enjoy the fullness of his blessings—the Abundant Life he promised through his Son, Jesus Christ.¹

ONLINE BONUS: NEW TESTAMENT PROOF THAT GOD’S KINGDOM IS HERE

Here is your first free online bonus, a list of scriptures supporting the truth that Jesus brought his kingdom to earth. Find this bonus and others at the book’s website: www.DrivingThroughHeaven.com. Look for the Bonuses tab.

The Abundant Life

The life God offers us on earth is the same life that he enjoys, full of "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."² The bible describes this list as the fruit of his Spirit—the harvest we reap from living according to God’s design. Each fruit of his Abundant Life is a gift from God, but we must choose to receive them and share them with God and others.

Love is God’s way of living. He is love.³ We receive love from God, family, and friends. We move close to God and others in order to love them. God also expects us to love ourselves through self-care and being healthy in all five dimensions.⁴ I shall share God’s definition of love in Chapter 8, God is Love, and we will look at the skills for loving in Part 5, Relationships in Heaven. Loving God and others produces the following fruit, and is a prerequisite for all of them.

Joy comes from delighting in God and his delighting in us, from the pleasure we receive from being with his family, and from enjoying creation. In Part 4, God’s Gift of Emotions, I shall teach in more detail how to have joy and peace.

Peace is inner serenity, and arises when we trust God. The more we trust him, the more peace we have. Unfortunately, it is impossible to have lasting peace with every other human on earth, because there are many people who are demanding, angry, or violent. I’ll teach you how to have more peace in Chapter 11, Fewer Doubts, More Trust.

Patience is waiting on the Lord to act in our lives or provide direction; it is allowing God and others to be who they are; and it is recognizing God’s and others’ patience with us. Patience is a component of loving.⁵ We learn patience through changing our thinking to more fully acknowledge the reality of life, which I shall explain in Part 3, Thinking Like God.

Kindness is another element of loving. It is acting in the best interest of others, and begins with humility. God also expects us to be patient and kind with ourselves.

Goodness is the quality of everything being right in life. When God created the world, he saw it was very good,⁶ meaning it turned out the way he intended. When we live life as God intended—what the bible calls righteousness—we experience goodness.

Faithfulness is loyalty to God, to our biological family, to our friends, and to God’s family; and recognizing and experiencing their loyalty to us. However, complete faithfulness is not always possible. When others act in unhealthy ways, it is difficult or impossible to remain true to them and continue to maintain our wellbeing. In these cases, we may only be able to remain loyal in limited ways, such as asking God to help them.

Gentleness is the soft, easy manner with which we express kindness toward others and ourselves. When others are gentle with us, we feel love, joy, and peace.

Self-Control in all areas of life is living rationally and proactively according to God’s biblical principles, and preventing our emotions from controlling behavior and decisions. It is choosing the above fruit, over other alternatives. Part 4, God’s Gift of Emotions will teach you the valuable place emotions have in aiding our self-awareness and having healthy relationships, and it will help you have more healthy self-control, which I specifically teach in Chapter 34, Self-Control.

Rest for our souls is a promise Jesus made to us that the apostle Paul omits from his list of God’s fruit in his letter to the Galatians. Jesus said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." We receive this rest when we join our spirits with his, and learn from him his way of living, which he described as being easy and light.⁷

In Galatians, Paul concludes his list of God’s fruit by saying, Who can argue against these experiences?⁸ If you had an abundance of these attributes, wouldn’t you be truly happy?

Five Reasons Most People Miss God’s Best

If an Abundant Life is God’s desire, why do few people have the earthly blessings he offers? Here are five reasons why most people fail to have God’s best:

Almost all people know little about God, including many who declare that they know much about him. Most misunderstand how much he loves them, believing it is far less than reality. Many ignore God through most of each day; he is not a priority. Most people are ignorant that God has already given us most of heaven’s gifts.

Even if people know that Jesus tells them how wonderful earthly life can be, most people doubt the blessings he promises are available in this life; they hope for God’s blessings, and are surprised when they appear.

For these reasons, or because growth and change are difficult, most people resign themselves to their present condition as the best that is available, never realizing that life can be better. The world’s way of thinking overpowers God’s truths in their hearts. As many folks say to me, I think we have to wait for the next life for things to be better. We do not.

For some people, life has been so difficult they cannot imagine it being better, here. As one woman told me, I know I’m going to heaven, because I’ve lived through hell on earth.

The Church has generally failed in training its members to live in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Christ-followers want more of God’s love, joy, peace, and rest, but no one has taught them how to experience more of God’s fruit. Most pastors I personally know, want more of God and his life, because they yearn to teach that to their congregations. I wrote this book to teach you how to have God’s best.

The Keys to Abundant Living

In the bible, God reveals the keys to his kingdom and the life he promises.⁹ Throughout this book, I will share them with you. Here are the first four—four essential things we must do to live the Abundant Life:

Grow our relationship with God.

Change our thinking to be like his.

Relate with others as God does in his Trinity. God exists as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Together, we call the three persons of God, The Trinity, or The Holy Trinity. How these three interact with each other is the basis for all healthy relationships.

Live well in this physical world.

And here are three primary keys we must know:

God’s plan—his purpose and goals for creating every human.

His blueprint, or design for how he made us, which enables us to fulfill his plan. He provides us with much freedom for living within his blueprint; however, Abundant Living comes from doing life his way. The entitlement to make the rules belongs solely to God, because he made everything, including us. The more we understand his rules for Abundant Living, the more they make sense.

Based on God’s design are the principles and skills we must employ to experience Abundant Living—how we are to live. We must learn these basics in all five dimensions of human life:

Spiritual

Intellectual

Emotional

Relational

Physical

The good news is there are a limited number of principles and skills to learn, and no deadline on how soon we need to know them. We find all of God’s principles in the New Testament. This book will teach you all seven of the above keys to the kingdom. However, it takes a long time to become proficient. The more we use them, the more we become like Jesus, and the better life gets.

In the next chapter, I share my vision for life in heaven based on the bible’s description of it. The better we understand life in heaven, the more we can live that way here, and experience heaven’s benefits. In Chapter 3, we will look at God’s plan for humanity, his design of us in Chapter 4, and how we receive his blessings in Chapter 5. Then in Part 2, we will begin to examine the basic principles and skills for Abundant Living.

Questions for Meditation or Discussion

Why is it difficult to see God’s kingdom around us?

Can you think of reasons in addition to mine why people miss God’s blessings?

How many of the fruit of the Holy Spirit do you experience?

What is one belief or behavior you need to change to live more in his kingdom?

What is one skill you need to learn to live more of God’s Abundant Life?

For Further Study

In each chapter, I suggest books in print (as of 2015) that provide the best, most biblically accurate treatment of each subject, regardless of their publication date; some are recent and some are older.

See the Online Bonus: New Testament Proof that God’s Kingdom is Here. Find this bonus and others at the book’s website: www.DrivingThroughHeaven.com. Look for the Bonuses tab. Then, study those scriptural references to understand better God’s earthly kingdom.

Read George Eldon Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural Studies in the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1959; Reprint, 2000).

John 10:7-10

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Galatians 5:16-23

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1 John 4:8, 16b

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God commands us to love others in the same way we love ourselves (the Great Commandment—Matthew 22:39). As we will see later, we cannot love others better than we care for ourselves. Self-care and well-being must come first.

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1 Corinthians 13:4

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Genesis 1:31

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Matthew 11:28-30

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Galatians 5:23b

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Matthew 16:19

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CHAPTER 2

DAILY LIFE IN HEAVEN

What would we find if we could drive through heaven? Do you ever imagine life in heaven? I enjoy thinking about it, asking God for information, and learning how others understand that paradise. Is there a way to know what we will experience there? Sadly, the bible offers only limited descriptions of parts of heaven, as with the description of God’s throne room in Revelation 4-7.

However, the biblical descriptions of God’s kingdom also apply to heaven, because heaven and his kingdom are the same. For example, by using Jesus’ parables about the Kingdom of Heaven, his teachings and commands about living as his followers, and the bible’s many descriptions about living according to God’s design, we can create a picture of daily life in heaven that is close to the truth. Using these resources, let’s imagine a typical day in the afterlife, far in the future, as if we have been living there for a long time.

Imagining Life in Heaven in the Distant Future

Even on earth, Christ’s followers are joined to God’s Holy Spirit,¹ so in heaven, we are unceasingly spiritually present with God, who is our father, brother (through Jesus), and friend. Wherever we go, he is there. When we see him in bodily form,² he is always smiling and happy, and so are we. He enjoys our presence and makes us feel that each one is the most important person in his life, because we are.³

We enjoy our heavenly family: Father, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and human sisters and brothers. We act as a family: we grow our relationships with them, work alongside them, and play and have fun with them. Everyone is on a first-name basis.⁴ We share homes with each other as large families,⁵ because we are family. We frequently gather in larger groups, and sometimes, together in one huge celebration.⁶

Every morning we share with God our delight to be with him in his heavenly realm. He guides us daily, directing our paths and activities to maximize our experience.⁷ We learn to relinquish our expectations of life and accept God’s gift of daily events.⁸ We feel more alive than at any time we remember, full of love, joy, and peace.⁹ Each day is the happiest we can recall.¹⁰

We learn from our Father and those who arrived before us. They coach us in heavenly culture and Abundant Living. God’s knowledge and skills are limitless, so we will continuously be learning new information and better and more enjoyable ways to live.

Still imagining our future life in heaven, God and our family provide all we need, especially the fruit of God’s Spirit. There is freedom from want,¹¹ disease and disorder,¹² pain and suffering,¹³ and strife and violence.¹⁴ Because everyone serves God, no one experiences meaningless effort.¹⁵ We never knew anything this wonderful on earth. Life is so wonderful, when we first arrived, we worried that this was only a dream from which we would awake. Then, one day, we discovered that we had forgotten that we feared it might end and came to know it as real. Today in heaven, we trust God completely.

We enjoy our homes and creation: landscapes and gardens; streams, ponds, lakes and oceans; towns and cityscapes; and the sky and stars.¹⁶ We enjoy God’s gifts to us and the gifts we share with each other: music, art, drama, architecture, literature, crafts and trades, gardening and landscaping, recreation and games, and teaching one another these things and more. Everything we loved about earth is present in the new earth and sky God created after the end of this earth’s universe. But so much more is available to explore and enjoy than we ever imagined in our first life on earth.

Heavenly Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit all work,¹⁷ and we work at whatever occupation God calls us to do or that we choose to do. Some tend gardens and landscaping, others cook for their household, some build things, and still more delight in serving by keeping everything clean.¹⁸ We can learn anything and have time to master everything. We rest frequently and whenever we need. There is no pressure to perform or produce. This is comparable to doing something fun and useful during a vacation.

We delight in peaceful, pleasant days, evenings, and nights. God loves to delight us with new experiences. Heaven is like a place where God produces an amazing fireworks show each evening, and each time he includes a new skyrocket more spectacular than anything we saw before. We are amazed at his creativity and desire to please us, his children. Our hearts overflow with joy.¹⁹ Sometimes we feel so good that we are unsure we can contain it. Occasionally, most persons must cry out in ecstasy and thankfulness to God and one another.

Each day is perfect, and better than the one before. No one can imagine how this day could have been better. After we have been in heaven for a billion days, we will still look forward with excitement and expectation to what God will do and provide tomorrow.²⁰ Eventually, we will no longer remember a time when we knew anything else.²¹

The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth

God wants us to live like that on earth, enjoying the same experiences, emotions, and relationships I have described. By using the same scriptural resources available for understanding heaven, we can understand how to live as God and his family live there and enjoy more and more of that life now. Of course, with earthly life’s imperfection, Satan’s presence, and human temptations to live selfishly, we cannot have the idyllic life we yearn for and that awaits us in the next life. Yet many Christ followers have proven that we can receive all the spiritual blessings of heaven while here, along with many of the relational and physical blessings.

Questions for Meditation or Discussion

What do you imagine heaven to be like? What is the basis for your vision?

What do you think of the author’s description?

How much of heaven’s blessings do you think God offers us on earth?

How many of his blessings are you experiencing? What can you do to receive more?

For Further Study

Read Randy Alcorn, Heaven. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2004.

Read Billy Graham, The Heaven Answer Book. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012.

John 14:15-20

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Revelation 22:4a

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Based on Matthew 10:29-31, 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a and Jesus’ demonstrations of love toward all, it seems that God loves each of us as his dear child, in whom he is well pleased.

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Jesus said that he calls his followers by name (John 10) and I can imagine speaking to