What Does Heaven Actually Look Like? A Biblical Picture That Will Blow Your Mind
Introduction
Most of us carry a picture of heaven that looks something like this: white robes, fluffy clouds, a harp in hand, and an eternal church service stretching out into the fog.
It’s not exactly a vision that fills the heart with longing.
But what if that picture is almost entirely wrong? What if the heaven Jesus describes — the one the Apostle Paul couldn’t find words for, the one Jonathan Edwards spent his life contemplating — is so far beyond anything we’ve experienced on earth that our best earthly joys are, as Pastor Keith put it, little ant hills by comparison?
In week two of the Beyond series at New River Church in Franklin, Tennessee, Pastor Keith opens John 14, 1 Corinthians 15, and Revelation 21 to clear away the cultural myths about heaven and replace them with something far more staggering: the biblical truth of what God is actually preparing for those who love him.
There Is No Place Like Home — But This Isn’t It
Jesus opens John 14 with a disarming tenderness. He has been honest with his disciples about the hardships ahead. The world is messy. Pain is real. And he is about to leave them.
And into all of that, he says: “Let not your hearts be troubled.”
Not a dismissal. Not toxic positivity. A promise grounded in something concrete: “In my Father’s house are many rooms. I go to prepare a place for you.”
The image Jesus reaches for is home. Not a destination. Not a reward. A home — a place of belonging, rest, and fullness that has been personally prepared for you by the one who knows you best.
Pastor Keith draws out a simple but powerful observation: we all know what it feels like to come home. You can go on the greatest vacation of your life, experience the most stunning scenery, sleep in the finest hotel — and still feel something release when you walk back through your own front door. There is a rest that only home provides.
And yet even the best earthly home leaves something wanting. There is always a repair needed, a room not quite right, a season you wish were different. That low-grade dissatisfaction is not ingratitude. According to scripture, it is a signal — the echo of a deeper homesickness built into every human heart.
We are not home yet. Jesus is building it.
We Are Sojourners Passing Through
The Apostle Peter picks up this same thread in 1 Peter 2:11, writing to the churches scattered across Asia Minor: “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul.”
The word sojourner is important. It describes someone passing through — a guest in a place that is not their final destination. Peter is not telling believers to hate the world or disengage from life. He is saying: don’t give your heart fully to a place that isn’t your final home.
The temptation, Pastor Keith notes, is to let this temporal life become the end-all be-all. It is so easy to get consumed by the day-to-day — to pour all your hope, energy, and identity into things that are, by their very nature, passing away. The messiness, the disappointments, the rejection and heartbreak and addiction and sickness — we know, deep down, that this place is broken. We were made for something more.
The call of scripture is not to deny the goodness of this life. It is to hold it lightly, with open hands, while setting your heart on what is final.
What Heaven Is Not
Before exploring what scripture actually says about heaven, it is worth clearing away what it is not — because the cultural myths are thick.
We will not become angels with wings. That is not in the Bible.
We will not spend eternity playing harps on fluffy clouds — and even if harps are involved for those who enjoy them, the non-harpists among us can breathe easy.
And we will not become glassy-eyed beings who speak in monotone voices and stare off into the middle distance, as every Hollywood depiction of the afterlife seems to suggest.
These images are not just unhelpful — they are actively working against the hunger for heaven that Jesus wants to stir in us. It is hard to long for something that sounds, if we are being honest, deeply boring.
The biblical picture is something else entirely.
What Heaven Actually Is: Limitless Joy
The first and most foundational truth about heaven that scripture offers is this: our capacity for joy becomes limitless.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 about the resurrection of the body. What is perishable will be raised imperishable. What is sown in weakness will be raised in power. What is sown a natural body will be raised a spiritual body. Our bodies in this life are sewn into the brokenness of a fallen world — pain, limitation, decay. What is coming is limitless.
Jonathan Edwards — the great 18th century pastor and theologian — described it this way: we will be “enraptured with joys that are forever increasing and yet forever full.” Both at once. The joy will never plateau, and it will never feel incomplete.
Think of the most awe-inspiring moment you have ever experienced. The view from a mountain. The ocean at sunrise. The Austrian Alps. The Grand Canyon. That moment when creation hit you so hard it almost hurt — when your heart felt alive in a way your daily routine never touches.
According to scripture, that feeling is a shadow. A dim, distant echo of what is coming. And not only will the experience itself be incomparably greater — your capacity to receive it will be as well. The limitation is not just in what you were seeing. It is in the body and soul doing the seeing.
What God is preparing is limitless. The body that will experience it is unlimited. Set your heart on that.
Unending Discovery of an Infinite God
Here is what makes heaven categorically different from the best this world can offer: everything here eventually runs out.
Pastor Keith pauses to offer a stunning illustration. The largest star in the observable universe — UY Scuti — is more than 2,000 times the size of our sun. If it were placed where our sun is, it would extend all the way to Saturn. Traveling around it at 600 miles per hour would take 1,200 years.
And yet it is finite. It has a beginning and an end. It is measurable, even if barely comprehensible.
We are going to spend eternity with the One who has no beginning and no end. Whose character is, in Paul’s words, “unsearchable.” Whose love, grace, wisdom, mercy, and power stand as never-ending infinite universes that will forever capture our affection and delight.
Heaven will not be an arrival at a static destination. It will be an endless unfolding. Wave upon wave of discovery, of depth, of knowing and being known by the God who is inexhaustible. Every great theologian who has tried to describe this has eventually run out of language — because the reality exceeds what language can hold.
As Pastor Keith simply puts it: Jesus is not concerned about running out of ways to keep up with our ever-increasing capacity to enjoy him.
A Front Row Seat to God’s Story
There is one more dimension of heaven worth dwelling on — one that tends to catch people off guard.
In what scripture describes as the intermediate heaven (the time between death and the final resurrection), those who have gone before us are not passive or asleep. They are present, aware, and in some sense watching.
Randy Alcorn, in his book Heaven — which Pastor Keith recommends for anyone wanting to go deeper — describes it this way: because God is continuously at work on the earth, those in heaven have a great deal to praise him for, including watching as God draws people on earth to himself.
Imagine the loved ones who have gone before you — a grandparent, a friend, someone you have grieved — getting a front row view of God’s redemptive story continuing to unfold. Watching as the people they prayed for come home. Watching as the broken world is slowly, surely being made new.
It is, Pastor Keith suggests, something like binge-watching the greatest story ever told — except you are not just watching. You are part of it. You can see how every thread connects, how every sorrow was not wasted, how every act of faithfulness mattered.
Treasures That Last
All of this leads to a question that is more than theological. It is practical and urgent.
Jesus puts it plainly in Matthew 6: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”
The invitation is not to be miserable in this life or to reject its gifts. It is to be oriented differently — to build, give, love, and live with an eye toward what endures. Every act of faithfulness, every investment in the lives of others, every moment of obedience and trust — these are not lost. They are being stored somewhere that cannot rust, decay, or be taken away.
Pastor Keith offers a final, clarifying thought from Randy Alcorn: what the church needs is a generation of heavenly-minded people who see human beings and the earth itself not simply as they are, but as God intends for them to be. People who can look at a broken world with eyes of hope — not from guilt, not from obligation, but from the fullness of knowing where all of this is going.
That is the freedom that comes from setting your heart on heaven. Not detachment from the world, but a deeper, truer love for it — grounded in the One who is making all things new.
Are You Ready for What’s Coming?
If you are walking through something hard right now — pain, heartbreak, loss, a season that feels like it will never end — this is for you.
The promise from the heart of the Father is that you have not begun to imagine what you will be granted. The coolest, most alive, most awe-filled moment of your life is a small preview. The capacity you will have to experience joy, beauty, love, and the presence of God will be without limit.
Let your heart go there. Trust him. Do not settle.
And if you have never given your life to Jesus — never asked him to cover you, to wash away the weight of sin and shame and failure — the door is open right now. You can hand all of it over. In exchange, you receive his perfection, his kindness, his embrace, and the promise of a home he has been personally preparing for you.
Continue the Beyond Series at New River Franklin
This series continues each Sunday as Pastor Keith unpacks what the Bible says about heaven, hell, judgment, and what eternity means for how we live today.
We meet Sundays at 9:00 AM and 10:45 AM at 1153 Lewisburg Pike, Franklin, TN 37064.
Plan a visit at newriverfranklin.com
Reflection Questions
- When you picture heaven, what image comes to mind? How does it compare to the biblical picture described in this message?
- Is there any area of your life where you have been pouring hope into something temporary that was never meant to carry it?
- Jonathan Edwards wrote that in heaven we will be “enraptured with joys that are forever increasing and yet forever full.” What does that stir in you?
- What would it look like this week to “lay up treasures in heaven” in a practical, everyday way?
