“My future is vulnerable, and my future is up to me.”

These are the two basic assumptions of modern life, says Matt McCullough. And these assumptions are making us anxious and miserable. McCullough wants us to know the peace of the Lord instead. He’s the author of the new book Remember Heaven: Meditations on the World to Come for Life in the Meantime, published by Crossway and The Gospel Coalition. McCullough writes, “‘The future is up to you’ is just another way of saying, ‘You’re on your own.’” But as we recite in the Heidelberg Catechism, the hope of the Christian is that we belong to Jesus.

McCullough earned his PhD from Vanderbilt University, and he’s the pastor of Edgefield Church in Nashville. He previously published the book Remember Death: The Surprising Path to Living Hope with Crossway and TGC. I know few authors who can approach McCullough’s ability to write with pastoral sensitivity, biblical insight, and cultural awareness.

McCullough joined me on Gospelbound to discuss why we’re not thinking more about heaven, good and bad motivations for heaven, and more. We can even look forward to judgment day, he told me.

“I don’t think often, or have not through my Christian life thought often, of Judgment Day as something to hope for. It is a terrifying thought to be exposed completely before the one who sees all. And that is Judgment Day,” McCullough said. “But for a Christian, it’s also the day on which we will see what God sees when he sees us in Christ. So for now, I have that promise, and then I’ll experience it. For now, I can look at Jesus’s righteousness and know that through faith, I am righteous in him. I can even trust that God the Father already looks on his Son and sees me buried in him.”