As I sat here pondering about hope and forever and in what context do you apply it, I was hit with an epiphany, forever is eternal. You know how when you were a youngster and you went to church, back then the preacher always seemed to preach hail fire and brimstone, I was always terrified of who I thought that God was. It was after becoming a teenager that I found out that the love that God has for his children was not fearful and that we could talk to this unforseen force that was really an hypothetical figment of the grown-ups imaginations, my friends and I thought it was a ploy to keep children in line. It was at the age of 15 that I found Him for myself; the realization that someone or something loved me so very much that they allowed their Son to die for me. Wow,that realization really hit home. I then purposed in my young mind that I had to find out more, I became thirsty for God, I have strayed at times but He was still there, waiting, with open arms, He never gave up on me, so it was at that point that forever did not seem so foreign or unobtainable.

Now I am that preacher that says that we will die in the lake of fire, I did remember how I felt back then, what seems like a lifetime ago, so in the hopes of loving a soul in to Christ, I preach hail fire and brimstone but I don’t force children to receive their salvation through fear but with the love of Christ instead. I believe that explaining what forever life is,the way that God intended will cause everyone to seek their idea of what forever is.