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The Bible doesn't tell us everything we'd like to know about our resurrected bodies, but it does assure us that we'll still have personalities and recognizable characteristics. And what it does describe stirs anticipation of a state perfect beyond anything we've experienced.  Some passages to whet your appetite for your future in Christ are 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, Philippians 3:21, 1 John 3:2, and Revelation 21:4.

2 Corinthians 5:1-8

1. In what ways is your present body (v. 1) as temporary a home as a camping tent? How will your transformed body compare to it?
   
   
2. How has your body made you grow weary, groan, and sigh (vv 2-3)?
   
   
3. How does Paul make clear (v. 4) that heavenly existence isn't, as was believed in Greek culture, a matter of souls without bodies?
   
   
4. What hopes do you have for your heavenly existence? What fears?
   
   
5. The Bible teaches that the body and the soul are not permanently separated. How will our "dying bodies" be "swallowed up by life"? (See 1 Corinthians 15:51-53).
   
   
6. How (vv. 6-8) does Paul turn the saying "seeing is believing" on its head? What factors (in v. 5) bolster our confidence? (See also Ecclesiastes 3:11 & 2 Corinthians 1:22.)
   
   

Ask God for a solid confidence in your future with him that outweighs any hurt of separation from loved ones and anxiety about the unknown.

2 Corinthians 5:1-8

1 For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. 2 We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. 3 For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. 4 While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it's not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. 5 God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit.

6 So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. 7 For we live by believing and not by seeing. 8 Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.

Adapted from Adapted from Relationships: A Mess Worth Making (New Growth Press, 2006) by permission. All rights reserved by Tim Lane and Paul Tripp and/or New Growth Press.

Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Give me a heightened awareness of the next life, Lord, so that I may strike a truer balance in this one.

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