“I like to think of Heaven this way.”
“I’ve always imagined Heaven to be a place where . . . .”
“To me, Heaven is like . . . .”
Have you noticed how people want to take biblical terms, empty them of biblical content, and fill them with their own meaning? Take Heaven, for instance. Everyone wants to go to the place the Bible calls Heaven, but many reject the qualifications for Heaven declared in the Bible and show no interest in participating in the activities of Heaven that are described in the Bible.
People also tend to repackage the truth about the nature of God and spirituality. They imagine God as they want Him to be (“Well, my God isn’t like that!”), despite what God has revealed about Himself in the Bible. Many also want to relate to God, not by means of the biblical spiritual disciplines, but through their own self-determined spirituality. But God has established His Word—the Bible—as the final authority and infallible guide for true and eternal spirituality.
One reason we should accept the authority and guidance of the Bible is because it is God’s self-revelation to us. God is “the King of the ages, immortal, invisible” (1 Timothy 1:17). And unless our invisible Creator revealed Himself to us, we would know nothing about Him. How could we? Anything we might say about Him would be pure speculation. Someone could claim that God has a body of green flesh, three heads, and stands one hundred feet tall. How would he prove that claim, or anyone else prove otherwise? The only completely trustworthy source of information about the nature of God, knowing God, and how to relate to God in our spirituality is the self-revelation of God we call the Bible.
This is why God tells us throughout the Bible to search it for guidance in all things, especially our spirituality. But shouldn’t we look to the real-life spiritual experiences of people as equal in authority to the Bible? As helpful as they might be to us, the prophet Isaiah answers, “To the teaching and to the testimony [that is, the Word of God]! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn” (Isaiah 8:20).
As a guide for our spirituality, “The law of the Lord is perfect . . . sure . . . right . . . pure . . . clean . . . true, and righteous altogether” (Psalm 19:7-9). The Bible’s counsel for our spiritual life is not just a collection of ancient wisdom; rather as Jesus put it, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63). So Scripture guides our spiritual life by more than mere “principles,” but by a real, supernatural power, “For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrew 4:12). All this is because, “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16).
Who but God can tell us about God and guide us in our experience with God? He does so in the Bible. Rely on it.