Read or listen to Sam Storms' message.

Let us diligently work at our jobs and honor our employers, but let us do it with one foot raised.

Let's get married, have children, devote ourselves to our spouses, but do it with one foot raised.

Educate your children, Mom and Dad, but do it with one foot raised.

Weep at the gravesite of a child that has died in infancy, but do it with one foot raised.

Read a book or write a book with one foot raised.

Cheer for your favorite football team with one foot raised.

Plant a garden, plant a church, open a savings account, invest in a stock; but do it with a joy-filled hope and anticipation of the life that will be ours in heaven.

Storms: Calvin enjoyed such things as good food and good art, but he never trusted in them.

Storms: Fourth, setting our hearts on heaven enables us to respond well to the loss of money and property.

Storms: As much as Calvin wrote about death he never despised life. He did say much, though, about how Jesus talked of us hating our lives in John 12.

"We hate this life only to the extent that it inhibits or detracts from our coming to Jesus. … If we are overwhelmed with the love of the world…it is impossible for us to go to heaven."

Storms: Third, thinking often of heaven not only enables us to hold onto this life loosely. It also helps us respond to the death of others in an appropriate way and to prepare for our own.

Storms: Second, meditating on the beauty of heaven strengthens the soul to overcome worldliness.

Storms: First, contemplating the splendor of heaven empowers the believer to patiently endure unjust suffering.

Storms: For Calvin, the certainty of the future influences our approach to the present.

Let's talk about some of the practical benefits of meditating on the coming resurrection.

Storms: Calvin loved 1 Peter 1:4. We have an imperishable inheritance. One of the most difficult things about this life is that things decay and die. But the glory and splendor of our inheritance in the new heavens and the new earth will never decay and die.

Storms: Fourth, Calvin is a helpful guide because of the way he instructs us to meditate on heaven and the final resurrection.

Storms: Third, Calvin is a helpful guide because of his vision of Jesus Christ as that which makes heaven heavenly.

Storms: Second, Calvin is a helpful guide because of his physical afflictions. His bodily ailments read like a medical journal.

Storms: First, Calvin was a pilgrim on this earth. In Colossians 3:1 Paul exhorts us to seek the things that are above. Calvin said that in doing so we can "embrace our identity as sojourners in this world without being bound to it."

Storms: Do I live with one foot raised in expectation of seeing my Savior face to face? Calvin did, I'm convinced, and we can learn much from him in this area. I'll mention four reasons why.

Calvin once wrote to a woman who was experiencing physical illness. He said, "[Our physical afflictions should serve us as medicine to purge us from worldly affections and remove what is superfluous in us. And since they are to us the messengers of death, we ought to learn to have one foot raised to take our departure when it shall please God."

Sam Storms (and a bright stage light)

Storms: When John invited me to speak here, I began reading through Calvin's New Testament commentaries. I read through any passage about heaven, the resurrection, or its effect on us.

There was hardly any text on which he spoke with such eloquence and power as 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.

Sam Storms: Turn with me to 2 Corinthians 4.

Singing "Before the Throne" // love this one