Heaven in Your Eye Earth on Your Heart

Heaven in your eye and earth on your heart is basic to Puritan thought. It is the notion of heaven energizing life on earth, whilst we journey to the celestial city through God’s grace. Boston, Baxter and Bunyan were typical of the Puritans who were shepherds and soldier-pilgrims, energized on earth by their passion for heaven. They lived in times of angst like ours and faced critical questions about the Church, as we also do. Steve Donald takes the reader on a voyage of rediscovery, looking at heaven through the eyes of Boston, Baxter and Bunyan. His aim: to energize our lives with the vision of heaven that inspired these men in their earthly ministry. Here is a call to individual Christians to maintain their concern for holy living and to pastors and church leaders to stand up and be counted. ‘Let us fix our eyes on Jesus… who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame.’ (Hebrews 12:2) From the Preface by Philip Hacking

Publisher: Evangelical Press
Type: Paperback
ISBN: 9781783970407

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Steve Donald has spent over twenty-five years in pastoral ministry in urban parishes in Cheshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria. He is married to Gloria and has two daughters and one grandson. He spent three years working as teacher in secondary schools in Liverpool and Nottingham. Before ordination he worked for five years as a schools worker in Lancaster for a trust connected to Capernwray Bible School. Born in the North-East of England of mining background he now lives and works as a vicar in Carlisle.

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Dallas Willard in his book renovation of the heart sets out steps that we can take as humans to re-order the way we think about and live our lives so that we can get ready for glory. Heaven in your Eye, Earth on your Heart, aims to show us why this is so difficult, and then goes ahead to give practical advice on how to go about running the difficult race that is the Christian life. The book draws upon the teachings of the Puritans (the historical Puritans, not in the sense of 'joyless' that we now associate with the word Puritan), to show us that if we want to be of help to the world we actually need to set our eyes on heaven, not to the exclusion of the world of course, not to lock ourselves away, but to focus on what the ultimate end of the Christian life is. A runner starting a race fixes his eyes on the finish, but nowadays the modern church so rarely does this. This book shows us why it is so important to think about heaven, to talk about heaven, and to preach about heaven in our churches. Heaven is the prize, and although the journey is important the Puritans show us that 'we get Earth thrown in' if we fix our eye on heaven. We are called to be in the world but not of it, this book gives practical and personal guidance on how this can acheived. The author's personality comes through the book is very readable. D. Berkeley