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Say the word "heaven" and immediately images of streets of gold and pearly gates come into people's minds. Our society has formed a mental image of "heaven" as this pristine and perfect palace city where everything is quiet and reverent and cavernous. To the average mind, St. Peter sits at the gate and either lets you in or turns you away and there are many jokes that begin with the line "so and so dies and goes to heaven and meets St. Peter there..." Talk about heaven and there are some people who actually think of a bunch of angels with harps floating around on clouds bored out of their mind.

I remember when I was in Bible College, that we decided to play a practical joke on the guy in the suite next to me. The dorm setup was two rooms shared one bath and vanity area with doors entering opposite one another. The rooms were set up where there was a wall that divided a rear study area from the front sleeping area. It was there that the door opened into the bathroom. At the front of the room by the bed was the door to the outside hall, in which the lights were kept burning 24/7. This one guy had made the mistake of mentioning to us that he had been thinking a lot lately about what it felt like to die and go to heaven and people seeing lights etc... , so about 4 in the morning, we decided to have a little fun. The idea came when one guy was cleaning up his room and found an old harpsichord which is a smaller, easier to play, harp. I snuck through the guys room and quietly unlocked his front door before sneaking out. Two other guys snuck into the back part of his room behind the study wall with the harpsichord and a broom. We all synchronized our watches. And while my friend, who to protect the innocent we'll call "Rich," was sound asleep at about 4 in the morning, all at once the guy with the broom began to sweep it up and down smoothly on the wall making a constant "swiiiiiiiiiiiiish" sound. At the same time, the guy with the harpsichord began to strum a chord over and over and sing "welcome to heaven; welcome to heaven..." At the same time I had snuck back into the hall and I through open the door to the outside hall which caused light to suddenly shine on the bed where "Rich" was sleeping. That accomplished two things: one it made him wake up and realize that music was playing and angels were singing and strange noises were happening, and it also made him face the light coming from the hall and not realize that the voices were actually coming from within his own room. Rich sat straight up in the bed and stared crazily at the light from the hall while the guy with the broom suddenly boomed out in a loud voice "WELCOME TO HEAVEN, RICH." "YES THAT'S RIGHT, YOU HAVE DIED AND GONE TO HEAVEN NOW IS THE TIME TO ENTER INTO YOUR REWARD." What made all of this funny is that you could tell by the look on his face that he was really "spazzing out" and was totally disoriented. Then all of a sudden, he realized it was a joke and got up in a huff and slammed the door to the hall still not realizing that the voices had actually come from inside his room. We realized that he did not realize this by the sound of his scream when the two guys grabbed him in the dark as he went to the restroom! We laughed so hard that we had tears dripping off of our noses! And the next week, I glanced at the bathroom door to Rich's room and he had purchased two different locks for it! I don't know what he expects to see when he gets to heaven, but for a few moments, at 4 am in that college dorm, we had him believing that he had been there!

Maybe you are not as confused as my dorm mate was, but possibly you only believe what you have heard about what heaven is like. Just like the devil does not really have a pitchfork and red horns and a tail, so has our society misconstrued what heaven will really be like. The book of Revelation details heaven as it is right now in excellent detail in chapters 4 and 5. And I don't want to mess up anyone's brain too bad, but heaven does not have streets of gold or gates of pearl or angels floating on clouds. Heaven does not have St. Peter waiting at the gate to decide whether or not you get in. In fact, if you make it, you will get there the same time that St. Pete does at the Rapture of the church. None of the saints are in heaven yet just as there is NOBODY that has died yet there. Those who died right with God are awaiting the Rapture of the church when they get their glorified bodies. Their spirit and mind (soul) are in a place of rest, but they are not physically in heaven yet because if they were already in heaven the moment that they died, then why would their need to be a resurrection of the church?

Don't get me wrong, there is a city with streets of gold and gates of pearl and walls of jasper that we will live in forever, but all of those things are in the city of New Jerusalem which Revelation 21:2 says comes OUT of the new heaven after the earth and the heaven that currently are now have passed away. And that New Jerusalem which does have streets of gold and gates of pearl descends out of the sky to the New Earth which is where it will be inhabited for the rest of eternity. St. Peter waiting at the gate is a figment of man's imagination as is angels floating on clouds and all of that. If you go in the Rapture of the church, then you will first go to the heaven that is now and then when the heaven and the earth pass away and there is a new heaven and a new earth, then you will go from the old heaven to the new earth on which there will be the New Jerusalem and then you will have your streets of gold and walls of jasper. But currently heaven does not have clouds or streets of gold or any of that.

And I point out this discrepancy in our common knowledge of scripture not just trying to "rock your boat" of tradition but instead to shed some light upon our text which most of us have heard all of our lives and yet never really thought about what we were hearing or reciting. Let's read it again exactly how Jesus taught us to pray:

"Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven." How many times have we said those words without really realizing the fullness of what we are praying. Mainly, perhaps, because most of us do not have an accurate view of what goes on in heaven right now anyway. If heaven did have streets of gold then that would mean that it would be the will of God for us to pave our parking lot with gold! If heaven did have gates of pearl, like so many people errantly think then it would also be the will of God for us to have a gate made of pearl at each of our drive ways. I don't know how your income is lately, but if all of that were so, I would literally not be able to afford to obey what I was praying and the commandment of Jesus to pray that way would be quite unrealistic.

But surely Jesus would never command us to do something that we did not have the power or the ability to perform! In other words, if He commanded us to pray for God's will to be done on earth in our lives as it is in heaven, then it must be possible for it to be so. It must be possible for our lives on earth to reflect how things are done in heaven. God does not make empty promises or unrealistic demands. I've heard the excuse many times "well, I just can't live like the Bible says to." First of all, you can, or God would have never placed it in writing. Every one of us under the sound of my voice has the ability to obey God's Word perfectly. Now if I was preaching the opposite, then I would be getting a lot of amens. If I had said "all of us have the ability to disobey God's Word" you would certainly nod your head. But think about that for a moment: if you have the choice to disobey, then you certainly have the choice to obey. You would not truly have the freedom of choice unless you could choose either way, so your ability to disobey God's Word proves that you have the ability to obey all of God's Word in your life! God has not made unrealistic demands in His Word but has given us guidelines that bring life and healing and hope and joy into our lives when followed. Don't tell me that you can't quit doing something that is destructive or that you can't keep the victory or that you just can't obey such and such. Really, it's your choice and you may not WANT TO obey, but you certainly have the ability! Simply put, if God said that we should pray for His Will to be done on earth just as it is in heaven, then it must be possible for our lives to be lived in such a way to match the perfectness of heaven. With the help of God, we can have it in our lives just "as it is in heaven."

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Now that we've talked about how heaven is not, let's talk about how heaven is right now and see how that it correlates with what God wants to do in our lives. When Jesus said this statement in 29 A.D., He was standing upon the old earth and talking about the old heaven which both are still in existence today. We have not yet reached the end of time with the New Heaven and the New Earth with the New Jerusalem and streets of gold, so the heaven that is today which is described in Revelation 4 and 5 is the heaven in which our lives are to emulate.

What are the characteristics of heaven that we must have in our lives in order to have the earth "as it is in heaven?" Well, as I studied the scriptures about heaven, the first thing that jumped out at me is that:

1. In heaven, Jesus is the center of everything and is everything!

John begins his writings of the book of Revelation with a visit from Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ tells John in chapter 1:

"Alpha" is the first letter of the Greek Alphabet, and "Omega" is the last. Jesus was saying that I am everything that words can describe and any adjective that is great that you can come up with, just know that I am A to Z! Sometimes it's easier to have faith and trust in God when you know someone who has been through exactly what you face and made it. You can draw great strength if you are diagnosed with say cancer by hearing the testimony of someone who was healed of cancer by God! Their testimony can help you believe that God is the "cancer healer." But there will be times in your life when you will find yourself in a tough spot that you have never heard of anyone facing before. In those times we need to be like Daniel. Nobody had ever been thrown in a den of lions before because they would not bow to an idol or man, but nevertheless Daniel told the king: "I will not stop praying or serving God, my God is able to shut the mouth of the lions." And God did. Daniel had a revelation of God that we need to get today, Jesus is not just what you have read about in the scriptures, but He is anything else that you need for Him to be! He is A to Z, and whatever you need to spell out for Him to be, He can do that if you will trust Him and not allow your faith to waver! My God is not limited by just what you have heard that He has done for others!

Jesus also told John that He was the beginning and the ending, the one which is and which was and which is to come and that He was "THE Almighty." I looked it up in the original language and that word "the" is in the Greek. Jesus was saying that He is THE in other words THE ONLY ALMIGHTY! For someone to be "Almighty" then they have to be the most powerful, so it's almost redundant for someone to say "the Almighty." But John had a revelation of Jesus Christ that we need to get today and that is that Jesus Christ is not some member of a triune God or just one person of the Godhead, but He is the Almighty! There has never been another before Him and there will not be another after Him, He is the one, true, living God! You can call Him many things such as Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Counsellor, Healer, Deliverer or any other title that you can make up with the letters from A to Z, but there is only one God who is in heaven and His name is Jesus Christ! He's more than just the Son, He is the Almighty! That's why that verse is in red letters in your Bible!

Let me show you why understanding that simple truth is so important. Revelation 4:2 says that in heaven there is "a throne." In other words, there is only one throne and "one that sat upon it." The Lamb that was slain came "from the midst of the throne." When you get to Revelation chapter 21, John sees the same vision of heaven and listen to what it says:

"He that sat upon the throne" told John to write the words that are true and faithful: "I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end." Those are the exact description of Jesus Christ in Revelation chapter 1! There is only one throne in heaven and Jesus Christ sits upon it! He alone is King! He alone is God! He alone rules the heavens! And Revelation chapters 4 and 5 describe a heaven where Jesus sits upon this one throne at the center of everything. All of the angels are around the throne. All of the altars and such that are there are situated around the throne. Jesus Christ is the center and focus of heaven.

What's the point preacher? Because in our text, Jesus Christ commands us to pray for the will of God on earth "as it is in heaven!" Our lives upon earth will never be "as it is in heaven" until we acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the one true God of the universe and until we make Him the center of everything in our world! You cannot believe in a trinity and yet exalt Jesus Christ as the "Almighty One!" Some people believe more truth about the devil than they do about Jesus. The scriptures clearly gives many titles for the devil including "the Father of lies," "the Son of Perdition," "the Spirit of the Antichrist," "the lying spirit," "Satan," "Beelzebub," "angel of light, "and the "Son of the Morning" just to name a few, but everyone believes that there is only one devil and that his name is Lucifer. Yet just because Jesus is referred to as "Jehovah" and the Son of God and the Almighty Father (Isaiah 9:6) and the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17) they want to make some trinity or even elevate Mary to the place of a God and have four. I'm here to tell you that there is only one God, His name is Jesus, and although He is called many titles and takes many roles literally everything from A to Z, and has revealed Himself to us in many ways, for Him to be center of everything in our life on earth, we must realize that He is the focus and that truly "in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:9). If you don't believe that, then your life is not "as it is in heaven!"

But your revelation of Jesus Christ must go just beyond who He is, it must also be where He fits in your life. For your life to be "as it is in heaven" then He must be the complete center of everything that you live for. There are a lot of good people who live with Jesus as a sideshow and the house and Spirit of God just an infrequent occurrence in a life that is focused on something else. In their spiritual walk, they think that their goodness allows them to push Jesus aside in priority and basically shove Him in a corner somewhere, but oh, in heaven, Jesus is not in a corner just to be noticed in a time of need or in time of trouble, but He is the center of every day and every night. He is the focus and reason that heaven exists. He is first priority of every living thing there. For us to obey the command of Jesus in our text and for our life on earth to be "as it is in heaven" we must put Jesus and the things of God as top shelf priority in our life over every desire and dream and diversion. Only when we get Him out of the corner of our life, will we truly become "as it is in heaven."

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This leads us neatly to our next point. According to Revelation chapters 4 and 5, not only do all the angels focus the throne of Jesus Christ who is in the center of everything, but

2. In heaven, everyone exuberantly worships Jesus.

The six winged Seraphims flutter around the thrones with two of the wings and the other sets cover their feet and their faces as they cry day and night "Holy, Holy, Holy" to the one on the throne! The 24 elders who are the angelic leaders of worship, all fall down and worship the Lamb who sits upon the throne. The millions of host of angels who all surround the King of Kings all cry out in non-tiring and unceasing praise to the Savior of the world. The myth of heaven being a quiet, reverential place has been created by dry ritualistic religions of man and not of God. In fact, I can only find 30 minutes of silence in heaven and that only when the redeemed church arrives. It won't last long because heaven will then thunder with the sound of millions of happy saints singing a song the angels know nothing about: the song of the redeemed! Heaven is not a place of religious motions and learned rituals, but a place of true, heartfelt, exuberant, loud worship!

You will never do God's will on earth until you learn to worship Him freely! Use whatever excuse that you want to not worship God: "I'm too spiritually mature for all of that excitement stuff" to "it's just not my personality to act that way, I'm very shy" but those excuses all come down to really being only one thing: "pride." The person who does not worship God freely is a person who thinks more of their reputation and their own self than God! It's just pride. If you really make Jesus Christ the center of everything in your life and get the revelation that He is everything from A to Z and that He is the great God of Glory that came and shed His blood for your salvation even though you were undeserving, then you cannot help but be emotional in your worship. A truly thankful heart is an emotional and responsive heart! And if your life is to be as it is in heaven, then you must worship God. It's in order to shout praises and cry out to Him. It's in order to fall before the presence of God in adoration. It's in order to wave our hands and move around as we feel His presence. If you say that to praise God like that is excessive and extreme, then know that heaven is going to seem excessive and extreme! Because you cannot get into the presence of God Almighty without being moved and responding! Every dead person that Jesus Christ, the Almighty, got into close proximity with, got up including Himself! You cannot be close to God and be dead! If you are alive in the Spirit then there is going to be some response and some movement when the Spirit of God comes in! Our services better be noisy affairs where people can worship God outwardly and freely, because only be being that way has earth become "as it is in heaven!"

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There is another point to the worship in heaven. Not only do the angels cry out in praise and adoration, but the scriptures say that:

3. In heaven, everyone beholds the face of God.

We learn this from Matthew 18:10:

I discovered something interesting this week which really brings out the importance of this verse. The term "behold the face" was a figure of speech which referred to a person having free access to a king or royalty. It referred to a select few of the king's favorites that were granted the ability to come before him night and day. We find the term used in Esther when the seven closest friends of the Persian King Ahaserus were named:

They "saw the king's face." In other words they had a special privilege to be able to go into His presence any time they desired and needed to.

For our lives on earth to be "as it is in heaven" we must get the revelation that we can "behold His face." In other words, we can come into His presence anytime and anywhere. We do not serve a God who is distant or removed from us. He does not withhold any good thing from His children, the scriptures say. In fact, by realizing that Jesus Christ is the Almighty who sits upon the throne of heaven, we can really grasp the meaning of the verses in Hebrews that say:

We can come boldly before throne of God in time of need. For our lives on earth to be "as it is in heaven" we need to get the revelation that we can enter into the presence of God anywhere and any time! We can find direction and solace from Him in a trial at work and we can receive strength from Him at home. We can pray for the sick over the telephone and they be healed. You do not have to earn your way into the king's presence, but God wants you to live "as it is in heaven" with free access into His presence and storeroom of spiritual treasures! That means we must not live our lives not giving Him a second thought but must continually stay in fellowship with Him! We must not just think of God on the weekends, but make Him the focus of our thoughts throughout the day!

And the angels in heaven praise God because they realize they are in the presence of the Almighty! If we have such free and easy access into God's presence, then we must learn to praise God every day that we live! Let everything that hath breath praise ye the Lord! Not everything that is in the church house. Not everything that is having a good day. Not everything that has an outgoing personality, but everything that is breathing: Praise Ye The Lord! You ought to praise Him when you get up and praise Him before you go to bed at night. There ought to always be a praise on your lips! It's hard to sin if you are praising God! It's hard to get mad at somebody if you are praising God! It's hard to backslide if you spend your days praising and lifting up the presence of the Almighty! If you seek Him, you will find Him! If you will get into His presence, then you get whatever you need for your life! And it's not hard to get into His presence, you get there by praise and then you praise because you are there! You've got free access to the "face of God!" You must access it for your life to be "as it is in heaven!"

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This brings us to the clinching points of our message. Not only is Jesus the center of everything in heaven. Not only does worship ring out freely and loudly. Not only does everyone there "behold the face" of Jesus, but also

4. In heaven, everyone's will always submits to the will of God, and

5. Truth prevails, and

6. In heaven, no sin is allowed to stay.

Lucifer was the most talented and beautiful angel and yet when he chose to go against the will of God and sin was found in his heart, he was cast from his place of worship and position. I want you to understand that when the devil was created, he was created with Jesus Christ the center of his existence. He was created to worship the one who sat upon the throne and he had perfect access into the throne room of God anytime that he desired, yet he did not allow his will to be subject to God's will and so Jesus said that he was "cast down." All of this proves that we can have the first three points of this message right in our life, but if we do not allow our worship, and our access into the presence of God, to lead us to a place where we do not allow sin to stay in our lives, we can still lose out with God! No matter how spiritual and beautiful you think you are, if Lucifer could fall, so can you! But that very choice of being able to choose to sin also proves that you can choose not to sin! We MUST care about our everyday lives and whether or not it conforms to God's Will and God's Word. Too many people get the idea that "nobody can ever live everything that is in the Word of God" so they stop trying. All that attitude is saying is "I'm justifying my sin." You are simply making excuses for not obeying a part of God's Word. Nothing in His Word is too demanding or too hard. Everyone of us have the ability to obey it!

In our other text, Jesus said:

The word for "perfect" here in the original Greek means "complete; needing nothing to be finished." We must always allow God to work on us, because only through a lifetime of submitting to Him will we ever truly become good! But at the same time, we must also reach a place in our lives where we do not struggle with basic willful sin every day. Don't misunderstand what I am preaching today: I need an altar and you need an altar and we need to repent every day because it is easy to accidentally get a wrong spirit or accidentally make provision for the flesh. For that reason alone, we must be like the Apostle Paul and "die daily." But I'm talking about when you know something is in the Word of God and yet you willfully allow yourself to keep disobeying and keep willfully placing yourself into such a place of temptation where it is easy to keep disobeying and where you begin to justify what you are doing as "not being that big a deal" or "well, I'm new to this..." If you have knowledge of what the scripture says, then you are not too new to obey it!

Realize what Jesus was saying in this other scripture. God obeys all of His Word because He knows all of it and remembers it. He cannot lie, and His Word cannot fail. You are responsible for what you know. There is a basic understanding of scripture that a person must obey to achieve "initial salvation." But that initial salvation experience does you no good if you get the attitude that all you have to obey is the scriptures on baptism and receiving the Holy Ghost. Perhaps there is something in your life that is going against God's Word of which you are unaware. You cannot deal with that yet, and when it comes time to get it out of your life, God will make you aware of the scriptures either through the man of God in your life or through the gentle nudge of the Holy Ghost. But what you know about, you have the responsibility to obey. To ignore scripture is to go against God in your life and everything about your walk with God suffers! Too many people are like the king in the time of the prophet Jeremiah who sat in his winter house by the fire and took his penknife and tore out the parts of the Word of God that Jeremiah had written down for him that he did not like and threw them into the fire. Too many people feel the fires of conviction when they hear the Word of the Lord and yet cut out the scriptures and allow them to be consumed in those fires. When you do that, you will find that God's Word will then bring judgment into your life, just as it did in that evil king's reign.

What's the point preacher? The point is that for your life to be on earth "as it is in heaven," then you must not only learn to worship God but to submit your will to God's will and get willful sin out of your life, and let the truth of God's Word prevail in every area! In heaven, when sin was found, God cast it out. On earth, you can do the same thing by truly repenting of your sin by asking God to forgive you and desiring a change in your lifestyle. When you do so, God will cast the sin out of your life and then earth will be "as it is in heaven."

Jesus preached time and time again that He was the "kingdom of heaven come to you." The sick were healed because there is no sickness in heaven. Demons were cast out of possessed folks because there are no devil possessed in heaven. Jesus came to show people how much better life on earth is when it is "as it is in heaven!" Somebody needs to get that revelation here today. Your life will be much easier, happier, and greater when it "as it is in heaven." No matter what area of your life God is dealing with today, submit your will to God!