Open Heaven Church

What does divine justice look like? What does the hope of heaven mean for the oppressed or victims of injustice? Heaven established on Earth means justice on Earth. At his second and final coming, Jesus will end all evil. But at His first coming, He came not to bring judgement but to bear it so that we could be forgiven and accepted. Jesus is already present in the world to change lives, but final justice is waiting for us at the end of time. We are called to balance patience with hope.

Open Heaven is part of a larger network of Churches called Pioneer. Pioneer is a relational network of churches that exists to inspire, connect and equip churches as they seek to take the gospel of Jesus into new spaces and places.

How does faith shape your thinking and feeling? Where have you stepped out in faith recently? The Christian life compels us to live by faith and not by sight—faith for today, faith for miracles, provision, growth, discipleship, and Christlikeness. Faith for friends and family, colleagues, and coursemates to come to know Jesus.

Have you ever got your hopes up about something? How did you respond to experiencing an outcome you weren’t hoping for? The Gospel of Mark ends abruptly. Appearing suddenly, Jesus announces the joyful news that the kingdom is near. Christ is risen! And yet, the kingdom is still to come in all its fullness - when every knee bows before King Jesus. It’s both exhilarating and something of a puzzle.

Hebrews says, ‘now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see’. We will not obey God because of willpower or because doctrine tells us. We do it by faith and in the confidence of who He is. And when we are filled with faith, it will spread beyond us into the lives of those around us.

Have you witnessed someone ‘strong’ fall apart? Did it change your perspective on what it means to be strong? Jesus’ disciples never expected the cross. They could never have foreseen Jesus dying in such a way. And yet God was on the move. The mysterious strands of His saving plan revealed through the centuries were coming together in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  

Faith invites us to look beyond what we can see and experience. It keeps us from limiting God to our understanding. How do we maintain a healthy closeness to God alongside a healthy embracing of mystery?

Do you feel in charge of your life? Who or what do you follow? How do you protect yourself against unhelpful influences and idols? God rules all things through King Jesus. In our society, inclined to be suspicious of power, this goes entirely against the grain. How often we’ve seen power misused and abused; voices silenced or sidelined. However, Jesus is a king like no other.  

What does it mean for us to proclaim to live out the Kingdom of Heaven? How does this get outworked practically as individuals and as a church? The basis of the Kingdom of Heaven is community - we all do what we do and go where we go as part of our own lives, but we then come back to the community to share, rejoice and recommission. As we then advance the Kingdom of Heaven, we do so in humility. Not arriving in a place or situation as a benefactor, but simply coming alongside people in everyday ways. Share food together, open up your homes, reach out to the hurting and broken in our local communities.

Do you love the way your faith and science enhance each other? Or do you struggle to deal with the tension between the two?

For God so loved the world. Through the everyday decisions we make we can choose to love the world as well. We are connected to creation, we share a common home. If the gospel is good news for God's earth, how can we care for the planet?

How can we understand our creativity as a display of the Kingdom of God, whether that's in arts or in the way we express and negotiate our normal lives?

What is 'Kingdom'? How does God's Kingdom differ from the kingdom of the world? How do we live out the call to be 'in the world but not of it'? The Kingdom of God is where God rules. From the glory of the Heaven above, through the beauty of creation, and down to human society, God's Kingdom is found because He rules. His rule is marked by salvation, miracles, healing, social justice, and cultural renewal.

What was the last thing you were conflicted over, whether right or wrong? Who did you go to for advice? Do you feel like they helped? Although we don't have physical statues of gold, idolatry isn't absent from our culture. Idolatry can be defined as the things we look to for hope, meaning, fulfilment, confidence, safety, and the security that only God can provide. Faith in God is counter-cultural. We’re saying 'no' to putting our trust, hope, and security in anything other than God.

What assumptions do you make about others? Do you know if they are a true reflection of that person? Identity matters. Our sense of identity profoundly impacts our capacity to flourish. The Bible starts from a different place in tackling who we indeed are by asking: who is God? Answering this question unlocks our complete identity and humanity: who we are concerning God Himself.  

When was the last time your hope let you down? How did that feel, in the moment and where you are now? Did it stop you from trusting again the next time hope was raised? We don’t understand why some of our prayers go the way we expect and others don’t, or why sometimes it seems like the kingdom breaks out on earth and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s hard! That’s mystery. While getting what we desire can be an excellent thing, we must not allow the pursuit of fulfilment to become a temptation to sin. Waiting is an opportunity to tr

Whose authority do you trust? Has that trust come from words, actions or both? Do you feel empowered by those in power around you? In subduing the sea and wind, Jesus demonstrated His power to the disciples and revealed Himself as God's saving and sovereign presence amongst them. The forces of nature submit to Him, just as they did to the God of Israel when the Israelites crossed the Red Sea in the exodus from Egypt.

What is hope? How is it different from expectation? In John Piper's sermon called 'What Is Hope?', he explains that biblical hope does not mean, ‘cross your fingers’, but rather ‘expect great things from God'. Biblical hope not only desires something good for the future; it expects it to happen. It not only expects it to happen; it is confident that it will happen.  

The British theologian David Wenham proposed "The revolution is here!" as a contemporary equivalent for Jesus' announcement of the "Kingdom of God". Not conforming to expectations, Jesus was as disruptive as He was dramatic. Through Jesus, God was indeed doing a new thing. This was news, and it was very good.  

What do you place your confidence in? Who are you allowing to shape your hope for the future? When did you truly put your faith in something or someone? Jesus is the first cause of our faith. He blazed the trail of faith, showing us what it means to trust our heavenly Father with our whole lives. Faith is precisely what sets us apart from the world. Faith lifts our eyes heavenward and onto the Kingdom of God, it sees what’s possible, not what’s impossible, it's the source of Hope and the fuel for advancement.