Millennium Kingdom Thinking – Part 3

Being ourselves in the Millennium Kingdom
I grew up in the Church, my father was a preaching elder in the fellowship we attended throughout my youth.  I have to confess I didn’t hear many sermons or studies on heaven, which is unfortunate become I am convinced that the study of the place we will be spending eternity would have hopefully given me encouragement and direction in my life.

When I did think about heaven and what I would be doing,  the only reference I had was primarily what others had said about heaven and what I could imagine on my own.  Since not much was mentioned about heaven, I imagined I would be singing and worshiping Jesus Christ all the time.  Since I wasn’t interested as a youth in spending time singing, praying and worshiping God the thought of spending eternity doing that was something I wasn’t looking forward too.

When I thought about heaven it was always in regards to what I saw or imagine I would be forced to do, it was never about who I was and what my thoughts would be when I got there (assuming I did make it to heaven).

The question is, when I die and am in heaven with Jesus, will I be myself or will I take on a holy likeness of who I am, but without any of the personal qualities that make me, me?

Will my personality be entirely different than what it is now, or will I be who I am with all my personality traits but a holy version of myself?  When we talk about personality, we are describing the basic qualities we have by nature, by nurture and by our free will.  You could be analytical or very social and outgoing.  Your personality could be dominant, steady, influencing, or compliant.  Maybe your energetic or lazy, optimistic or negative, confident or shy.  In your resurrected body will you retain those characteristics or will you and every other believer in Jesus Christ have a common personality type?

Where a personality type is something that in this life is almost impossible to change, character traits are something that with effort can more easily be worked on and modified.  There is a link between our personality and our character traits.  The two are tied together where when you tug on one personality trait you are also tugging on a character quality that could be associated with it.  For a believer I relate character qualities with the fruit of the Spirit talked about in Gal 5.  This fruit describes the qualities of a believer that we are encouraged to emulate.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit in cooperation with our will that enables us to mature in each of these characteristics.  So when I am resurrected will I be myself with my personality and character traits that I had when I was alive on earth or will God immediately and completely infuse a new personality and character trait set?

Imagine if God replaced who we are in regards to our personalities with a common personality for all believers.  As a collection of saints we would all be the same, that is, we would each be worshiping Jesus Christ with all our hearts and our bodies.  Our eternal lives would be filled with love for each other.  Our conversations towards each other would all be the same.  Loving and kindness would pervade all of heaven.  We would all be the same.  A common personality type would make us similar to each other in expression and actions.

I am persuaded that in the Millennium Kingdom we will each retain the identity of both our personality and character.  We will continue to be ourselves throughout eternity.  Why? Because:

Having said that, there would be some things we would have in common with each other as believers. That would be our expression of love to the one who died and was resurrected on our behalf.  A common love and gratitude would be expressed by each of us for all eternity.  We would all be worshiping God with a common expressing of our hearts saying:

The one thing I know is that my soul, my spirit and my memories (without my sin nature) will be in in heaven when I die.  I will be given some type of body form till I receive my resurrected body.  I will be overwhelmed with the presence of God and the flow of love that will proceed from all directions and move in all directions throughout heaven.  My earthly body would not be able to contain the love of God.  That is why I will be given a resurrected body without which it would explode.  I once knew a person that experienced a tremendous in flowing of the love of God.  The waves of love overwhelmed him so much that it contracted all the muscles in his body through each wave of love.  It was so much for so long He had to ask God to release him, his body couldn’t take it.  He told me of the unspeakable love he had for God and others, how this in flowing of God’s love had given him such a love of everyone else.  So it will be with all those who trust in God for their salvation.  God will allow us to experience to the full measure His love in our unique personalities.

Heaven, like Earth will continue to change.  We as resurrected believers will be changing all the time.  We will continue to learn about ourselves, others and our Lord and Master Jesus Christ.  Learning and discovering is what will make our eternal life in Christ so exciting and challenging.  Our personality and character traits will continue to evolve, we will be changed, but the change will be a growth in our uniqueness as individual believers in Jesus Christ.