Our hope in Christ for what's coming is the mainspring and mainstay of our joy right now. Think often about heaven! Everything your heart truly longs for is promised there.

Here, we are exhausted and worn down. But there? There is the land of rest where sweat will never again streak down a worker's face, where bone-deep weariness is banished forever. To those who are utterly spent, the very word "rest" is full of heaven.

We live on a battlefield. Tempted from within, attacked from without, we know so little peace. But in heaven we will finally taste victory. The banner will wave high in triumph. The sword will slide back into its sheath for the last time. And we will hear our Captain's voice: "Well done, good and faithful servant."

We have stood at grave after grave, said goodbye after goodbye. But we are traveling to the land of the immortal where graves are unknown things. Here, sin is our constant grief. There, we will be perfectly holy. Nothing unclean can slip through those gates. No poison hemlock grows in heaven's fields.

Oh, isn't this pure joy? You are not in banishment forever! You will not wander this wilderness for eternity! Soon, very soon, you will inherit Canaan!

But let no one say we are so busy dreaming about tomorrow that we forget today. No! Let the future sanctify the present to its highest uses. Through the Spirit of God, the hope of heaven becomes the most potent force for producing virtue here and now. It is a fountain of joyful effort. It is the cornerstone of cheerful holiness.

The person who carries this hope attacks their work with vigor, because the joy of the Lord is their strength. They fight temptation with fire in their bones, because the hope of the next world repels the enemy's burning arrows. They can labor without earthly reward, because their eyes are fixed on the reward that's coming.