Today, we dive into Revelation 21, exploring the profound hope of a new heaven and a new earth. I know, I know - it sounds like an absolutely feral favorite book to choose, but that's just the kind of kid I was. I share a bit about my journey with my husband’s health challenges, which have made these verses about God wiping every tear from our eyes resonate deeply for me. We discuss the tension between hard truths and the ridiculous grace offered through Christ, emphasizing that our faith is a lifelong journey, not just a momentary experience. As we navigate this complex relationship with death, sin, and God's promise of renewal, I invite you to sit in that messy middle with us, reflecting on where you stand in your own faith journey.

Takeaways:

• The idea of a new heaven and earth in Revelation gives us hope and renewal in our spiritual journey.
• Facing hardships like illness can deepen our faith, revealing the importance of both truth and grace.
• Life isn't about a single salvation moment; it's a lifelong journey of growing closer to God.
• We should embrace the tension between hard truths and grace, as both are essential in our faith.
• True faith invites us to seek deeper understanding of scripture, not just surface-level comfort.
• Death and suffering are real, but they push us toward a richer relationship with God and his promises.

Want a more grounded, sustainable walk with Jesus but feel like your life and brain are too loud? The free Noise Journal helps you spot what’s really draining you and make a simple plan to clear it in one hour. Download it here!

Let's spend some time together in scripture.

Welcome to today's bite sized Bible cast.

Today we are in what has been my favorite book since I was able to read, which is Revelation.

And I know that's a super weird favorite book to have, but I was a fourth grader reading Revelation during church when I should have been paying attention.

But anyways, we are in Revelation 21 starting in verse one and we're gonna go through verse.

The numbers are really small on this version.

I think this is seven or eight.

Yeah, we'll.

We'll see how it goes.

But in all seriousness, let's.

Let's dig in here.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven.

And the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more.

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, see, the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them and they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more.

Mourning and crying and pain will be no more.

For the first things have passed away.

And the one who was seated on the throne said, see, I am making all things new.

Also he said, write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.

Then he said to me, it is done.

I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.

To the thirsty, I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children.

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the sexually immoral, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

Now the youversion verse of the day today was just the verse that talks about he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more.

Mourning and crying and pain will be no more for the first things that pass passed away.

And as I like to do, I was like, okay, well let's see what the surrounding verses say because that verse right there is very appealing to me right now to be a little bit vulnerable with you.

I've shared quite a bit about my journey with my husband.

My husband has brain cancer.

He's stable right now.

We're in the monitoring phase.

He also had a completely separate kind of cancer that popped up like a month or two into our marriage, his family just, like, gets cancer.

Like, it's a cold.

It's kind of insane.

And make a lot of dark jokes about it, because how else are you supposed to cope, right?

And who.

This might take me a second to get through, but we got a letter from his doctor this past week.

We had asked for, like, hey, can we get some documentation on what the prognosis is?

And she took the assignment very seriously and gave us a letter that basically said, hey, so the cancer is going to come back and it's probably going to kill you this time.

And, like, what are you supposed to do with that?

You know, like, that's kind of where we had been at.

That's kind of what we had assumed was the case.

But seeing it written out on paper like that was really.

I don't even have the word for it.

Like, jarring is not strong enough.

Like, brutal is.

It was a lot on top of an already very difficult week.

We've been dealing with some legal stuff.

We've been dealing with some other personal stuff.

It just.

It came at a bad time, and it really kind of rocked our world.

Even though it wasn't necessarily new information, but seeing it written out in an official document from a doctor makes it feel a lot more real.

Like, when we met, he was in the middle of chemo.

He had finished radiation, like, a couple months prior and was, like, not even halfway done with chemo.

So it's not like any of this is new information.

But so death is kind of just a constant shadow in our lives.

And the cloud got a little darker recently.

And so instead of just taking this verse as it was presented as a single verse, as some comfort, just something to.

Okay, well, the words of God say that, like, death is going to be no more.

Okay, let's actually look at what the entire chapter says.

I think technically we read half the chapter, but you know what I mean?

I think this passage is well balanced for us in our modern view of Christianity, of Christ's teachings, of scripture, all of that, because we have this hope at the very beginning, all things will be made new.

Death is going to die, essentially, like, we are going to be restored to what God initially intended when he created us.

But then there's also that counterbalance, right, of.

Okay, but that's not just going to be the universal experience.

Following Jesus is not about raising your hand and going to the front and saying a couple words when you're nine in Sunday school, and then you're good for the rest of your life.

Scripture does not support Jesus teachings do not support that.

Following Christ isn't a completely transformational experience that goes on for your entire life.

I grew up a lot of times going to a Christian Reformed church.

My grandparents were Dutch, and so when we would visit them, we would go to a Christian Reformed church and they practiced infant baptism.

And the idea was shared that, hey, this like, this baby's good to go now and this baby is, is headed for heaven.

And there's, there's different traditions in different areas of the faith and different denominations and things.

And from my study of Scripture, I just do not see that it's supported that we just have one little experience and then we're set for life.

We can carry on just like we did before we met Jesus, because now we're saved, now we're good.

And this honestly, I think should be really sobering for us.

But at the same time, no, we don't get to have one little tiny experience and then essentially put our faith on the back burner for the rest of our lives.

We are invited into something so much deeper and so much richer.

And as someone who grew up in the church and was fully convinced for my entire life that I was going to good with Jesus, I'm pretty sure I like said the prayer when I was five and my mom gave me a little sapphire cross necklace.

And then my sister was jealous and so she immediately was like, well, I want to do that too, because I want a necklace.

I.

For my entire life I was just talking to my kids about this yesterday.

For my entire life I was like, I'm good to go with God.

And then it wasn't until I was about 22 or 23 that I realized I very much wasn't.

And I met Jesus for the first time.

And how my life has changed since then, how my just who I am as a person, the core essence of me, how that has changed, my tendencies have changed, my thought patterns have changed.

Life has thrown me some, some interesting curveballs.

We don't need to get into that here.

But even despite the stuff that I've been through, how deep and rich my relationship with Christ is now versus when I thought I was good with him is a completely different experience.

And the deeper I've gotten in my faith, the more I've come to realize that there's often this tension in genuine faith when we're genuinely, truly seeking God and not just kind of following what culture has taught us.

Christianity is supposed to look like there's this uncomfortable tension, but it's also this tension that provides so much richness.

And I keep using the word rich.

I. I didn't sleep super well last night, so my word choice is probably not quite up to par.

But there's just this tension, right?

We've got hard truth and also ridiculous grace.

I love that song from Torn Wells that talks about hard truth and ridiculous grace.

You.

You want to do what?

Feel my call on.

I've been instructed to keep talking by my little producer down here.

And I feel like as Christians we tend to kind of fall into one camp or the other.

We either focus on the hard truth and how, you know scripture.

It doesn't get to just align however we want it to align.

We can't just forget about the rules and the regulations and the weight of sin and what that means for us.

Or we kind of tend to fall into the ridiculous grace camp of like it's all covered by grace.

That's what the cross is for.

And when we fall into one of those two camps, we lose that tension.

And I. I get it.

I did that for many, many years.

There's almost this cognitive dissonance that we need to resolve because to us as humans, binaries make sense, black and white makes sense, truth and lie makes sense.

And it's uncomfortable for there to be that messy message middle, right?

And it's just.

That's just not what our faith is meant to be.

So I want to invite you to sit in that messy middle today.

Think about maybe where you fall.

Do you tend to lean more towards the almost legalistic side of things or the completely focused on liberty side of things?

Do you kind of tend to fall somewhere in the middle?

I would love to hear your thoughts about this in the comments, but I want to invite you to sit with God in that today and ask him to inform where you're at and where you need to go.

Even go so far as to ask him to give you a next step, tell you specifically what you should be focusing on right now and how you can embrace that tension of there being hard truth while they're also being ridiculous grace as we're looking forward to all things being made new while still wrestling with the realities of death and sin and pain and how our actions affect each other and how others affection actions affect us.

It's deeply uncomfortable, but it's meant to be.

This is not our final home and that can be both incredibly comforting and wildly disconcerting.

And that's okay.

And finally, I would love if you took a moment to follow subscribe on whatever podcast platform you are listening on and share this video or podcast with someone who needs to hear it.

I post these videos as podcast episodes.

My podcast is the True Grit Podcast with Rachel Grit, and that typically happens a couple times a week.

But also, we are over here living with neurodivergence and multiple custody schedules and multiple cancers that require monitoring and multiple chickens that are running around my backyard right now.

We've got a lot going on, and so over here we are all about seeking, finding, and living the abundant life that Jesus offers while working with the messy brains that he gave us.

And so if that sounds inviting to you, I would love for you to follow along.

Thank you for joining me and I will see you in the next one.

Bye.