Forgetting Forever
Since today is both the first day of the month and a Wednesday, I’m combining Wednesday’s Word and Grace & Knowledge and into a single, much longer post. And today, and for every Wednesday throughout the month of July, I want to write about the topic of Forever.
By that, I mean eternity.
I won’t be focusing on what heaven will be like or what we’ll be doing once we get there, but rather, how living in light of eternity radically changes our everyday lives.
Embedded in the promise of future eternal grace is the guarantee of “right here, right now” grace for what you’re facing today. And when you begin to understand your story from the unique perspective and promises of Forever, you begin to live with unshakeable hope and confidence today as you wait for the promise of Forever.
The opposite, however, is also true. When you forget Forever and live as if today is all you have, then your life and faith will be anything but unshakeable!
Forgetting Forever
In my many years as a biblical counselor, a recurring pattern appeared. As I listened to their stories of disappointment, anger, confusion, and grief, I realized, “I need to give eternity back to this person.”
It became increasingly evident that most of the people I counseled were struggling with the situations, locations, and relationships of everyday life because there was a critical element in their story that they either never knew or had completely forgotten.
I was counseling eternity amnesiacs. (And I must admit, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I, too, was more like my counselees than unlike them!)
What is an eternity amnesiac? It’s someone who lives with unrealistic expectations, unfulfilled dreams, unmet goals, and a functional hopelessness that results when we tell ourselves that this life, right here, right now, is all there is to life.
Even though we say we believe in the promise of eternity, in very significant ways in our street-level Christianity, we don’t always live in a way that is consistent with what we confess to believe. We know this conceptually, but in practice, we so frequently fail to embrace this life-changing theology: our stories don’t end with the world we’re living in right now.
What would seem like the last chapter—human mortality and drawing our last breath on this earth—isn’t the last chapter in the story. The Bible invites you to celebrate, and requires you to face, the exciting and inescapable reality of life after death.
This present life today is not all there is. In fact, it is just a speck, a tiny dot on your Forever timeline. There is a Forever on the other side of this life. Eternity is not a mystical creation of overly spiritual people. Forever is a reality. It is the product of God’s plan and design. And once you believe in Forever and live with Forever in view, not only will you understand things you have never understood before, but you will live in a radically different way than you did before.
But in the 10,000 mundane moments of everyday life, in the chaos, confusion, and busyness of today, we have lost sight of and forgotten about Forever. The results can be discouraging, if not devastating.
What happens when we forget about Forever? Well, here’s just a short list:
- Our marriages struggle because we load the burden of our happiness onto the shoulders of a far-from-perfect spouse
- We put way too much pressure on our children to be successful and live as trophies to our identity
- We have a hard time getting along with family and friends, constantly surprised and disappointed when friends and brothers and sisters hurt us
- We spend more than we earn and find ourselves in crippling financial debt
- We stand in front of full closets and say we have nothing to wear
- We look into fully stocked refrigerators and say we have nothing to eat
- We struggle with envy
- Trials and suffering paralyze us more than they should
- We overmedicate, overeat, and numb ourselves with entertainment and sexual pleasure
Losing Forever
A 2025 global poll revealed that the majority of people still believe in an afterlife of some form, even among the religiously unaffiliated. The problem is, eternity doesn’t practically mean anything to most people. It’s not formative in the way they go about their everyday lives.
As a culture, we “believe” in eternity the way we “believe” in God. Most people say they do, but you wouldn’t know it from observing the way they live. We have abandoned a self-conscious allegiance to the reality of eternity, which structures how we think about and approach the here and now.
The thought of Forever simply isn’t a thought many people carry around, at least not in a way that makes much difference. The functional philosophy of the modern person is simply devoid of eternity. Forever isn’t a topic written about much in our newspapers and magazines. It isn’t a topic of interest in our popular entertainment media. You will never hear a social media influencer, news anchor, journalist, or podcaster remind us, “I know things often look bleak and chaotic, but remember that this is not all there is. We are all heading for eternity, where all that is broken will be finally and forever fixed!”
It isn’t a serious topic of interest in the university or in the halls of government. Imagine if every school required an introductory Forever 101 class on eternity for all incoming students. The finest institutions of higher education in the United States—Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, for example—were all founded by people who held firmly to a biblical worldview that has eternity as its final hope.
In a few days, America will be celebrating its 250th birthday. Consider the words that one of its founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, penned for his own epitaph:
The Body
Of
Benjamin Franklin,
Printer,
(Like the cover of an old book,
Its contents torn out,
And stript of its lettering and gilding,)
Lies here, food for worms.
But the work shall not be lost,
For it will, as he believed, appear once more,
In a new and more elegant edition,
Revised and corrected
By
The Author.1
Yet today, eternity is no longer a category that our culture takes seriously when we think of what life is all about. The shift has been subtle and slow, but nonetheless seismic in its impact. This life-altering change didn’t begin a few years ago; it has been percolating for generations. The movement away from a biblical view of life, coupled with the materialism of our modern scientific culture, has affected the way we think about who we are and what is important.
It’s as if someone has entered the house of human culture and stolen a precious family heirloom—a Forever perspective—but most of us don’t know a robbery has taken place. We go on living as if nothing has happened, but it has, and in powerful and practical ways it affects us all. Without Forever in the center of our thinking, our picture of life is like a jigsaw puzzle missing a central piece. You will simply not have an accurate view of the picture without the piece of the puzzle entitled Forever.
Children watching Netflix cartoons have been robbed of Forever. Teens studying math, science, history, and literature won’t be encouraged to examine life through the lens of Forever. Businesspeople investing money don’t have eternity as the number one motivation for their portfolio. Brides and grooms embracing one another at the altar don’t get the importance of also embracing the sure and coming reality of Forever. The first thought of a young mother looking at her newborn isn’t to celebrate that Forever is hardwired inside her child.
This loss of an eternal perspective, the larceny of Forever, is happening not just in broader human culture, but in the church and in the everyday lives of believers all around the world. Eternity amnesia grips us all. We have bought into the “here and now is all you get” perspective that rules the day. We are Forever people who have quit believing in Forever. Again, I’m not talking about confessionally. No Christian will say they’ve stopped believing in heaven and eternity. But many of us don’t live as if we believe in it.
The Forever-ism that is hardwired inside you collides with the Now-ism that is everywhere around you in culture. What we all know is true (Forever) collides with what we end up living for every day (Now). What we were hardwired to be (Forever people) collides with how we live (people captured by the Now). What was designed to propel everything we do (the promise of Forever) collides with what motivates us (the desire for Now).
Now was designed to be an introduction to Forever, and Forever was designed to be the living hope of Now. But so many of us have forgotten about and lost sight of Forever and only live for the Now.
Regaining Forever
So where do we go from here? Well, in a word: remember. It sounds so simple, but for many of us, we have just forgotten or neglected to remember Forever. So, pray every day for the grace to remember that this life is not all that there is.
I will continue writing about Forever in the coming weeks, but I want to end today with a simple phrase you can remember. Maybe even write it down on a notecard and stick it to your refrigerator or tape it to your bathroom mirror. Here it is: this life is a preparation for a final destination.
Many of us treat today as the final destination. Whatever our confessional theology says about eternity, at the functional level, we live as if this is all there is. We live with a destination mentality instead of a preparation mentality.
This present world, with all its joys and sorrows, is not our final address. When we treat it as if it is, we try to get from this world what we can only experience in the next. We try to pack as much pleasure, happiness, and excitement into our present life as we can. We do this because the thought that this life is all there is carries an inescapable fear that life will somehow pass us by.
Here is what a destination mentality fails to understand: our complete, present, personal happiness is not what God is working on in the here and now. Why? Because the plan of his grace is to deliver us out of this world to one that is much, much better.
You see, God has designed that this would not be the final destination for his children. He knows that this is a terribly broken world that, in its present state, does not function the way that he intended. This world is not a safe place to look to for a sense of well-being. For that, we need to live with a preparation mentality, approaching each day knowing that this world is not intended to be our final destination, and that God is preparing another world for us.
Living with a preparation mentality also means living with the knowledge that God is using the disappointments and difficulties of this world to prepare us for the next. God uses the pressures of the present to craft us into the kind of individuals with whom he would choose to spend eternity.
You were made for Forever. That is your inescapable identity, and it is your guaranteed destination. Life only works as it was meant to work when you live with Forever in view.
Could it be that you are trying to achieve your best life Now while forgetting Forever? C.S. Lewis said it best in Mere Christianity: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
God bless,
Paul David Tripp
A Prayer for Today: God, help me to live each day in light of the reality that I was made for another world. Help me not to place my hopes and dreams in what will eventually pass away and become obsolete, but instead place all my hopes and dreams of my forever home with you. Lord, I know that I was made for another world, but I need your grace to remind me of that because I’m so forgetful. Help me, my gracious God, to focus on my eternal future and live each day with joy and anticipation. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.
Discussion Prompt for Children
1. What do you think our future forever home will be like? Why do you think it’s important for us to think about eternity and heaven?
2. If we live each day as if heaven were real and our forevers are guaranteed, in what ways do you think life might be different?
3. How can you and I remind each other about forever and living each day with an understanding of heaven is our forever home?
4. Why do you think everything in this world will eventually disappoint or discourage you?
Reflection Questions
1. How might your everyday life change if you were to live in light of forever? What seems to be shaking you right now because you have forgotten about your eternal future?
2. Do you think other people would see the way you live every day and say that you are living in light of eternity (think of family members, coworkers, close friends, etc.)? If not, why not? Do you live it and not just “believe” in it?
3. What “desires for now” are motivating you on a daily basis? In the context of prayer, in what ways can you help yourself remember that this life is not all that there is?
4. Why isn’t this world a safe place to look for your own well-being? How can having a preparation mentality instead of a destination mentality drastically affect you and those around?
1 Benjamin Franklin, handwritten manuscript (1728) housed at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.