An Exit and An Experience

“Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” - 2 Corinthians 5:6-8

Yesterday, we began talking about what happens in the meantime of life between when we say yes to following Jesus and when we spend eternity with Him in heaven. Let’s continue this conversation today by talking about the exit from life and the experience after life.

The second thing that happens in the meantime is that there is an exit from life. Talking about making an exit from life might sound scary, but it is important to remember that you are not your house. (We started talking about the house analogy from Paul yesterday. If you missed yesterday’s devotion, I strongly encourage you to go back and read it.)

You live in your house (your body), but you and your house are two different things. In fact, the moment your house collapses, you are no longer in the house. You don’t have to leave, because your house will collapse; your house is actually going to collapse when you leave and that leaving is called “death.”

Whether you are a Christian or not, there is a time you are going to move out of this house, but as a believer, you don’t immediately move into your new house. What I mean by that new house is what Paul called in verse one, “…a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.”

Once you die and you move out of this house, you go to heaven, and this old house stays behind, but you don’t yet move into your new house. That is where all of our loved ones are right now in this intermediate state, but the question is, “In the meantime, in between time, what happens to us? Where do we go?” That leads to the third stage of this entire beautiful process.

The third thing that happens in the meantime is that there is an experience after life. I hate to break the news to you, but even though the Bible has a lot more to say about our entrance into life than our exit from life, it doesn’t have a lot to say about our experience after life (before the return of Jesus and the resurrection.) There is frankly a lot we just don’t know and anything we might say would be speculation.

But let me tell you what we do know. What we do know is that we exit into an experience.

“Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (II Corinthians 5:6-8).

An absence from the body leads to a presence with the Lord. Personally, immediately, eternally we are entered into the presence of God himself. We see that over and over again in Scripture. So even though we don’t have a lot of details, we can be confident that there is an experience after our life on earth ends and we are in the presence of God.

Lord, thank you for the hope we have of eternity spent with you if we surrender our lives to you on earth. Continue to give me excitement for the day when I get to enter into heaven with you forever. In Jesus’ name, amen.