(Texas 2009) the Holy Spirit Reveals God's Thoughts to Us — Zac Poonen

Praise the Lord. It's good to be together again this morning. Yesterday I mentioned how God sent his Holy Spirit to bring heaven down into our hearts and our homes and our churches. And you can imagine how disappointed God is when he doesn't find heaven in our home or our heart or our church.

The Holy Spirit Reveals the Thoughts of God

And there we can see what a work the devil has done. Another reason God has given us the Holy Spirit is so that we can understand his thoughts. I want to read in 1 Corinthians 2. It says here, Who among men knows the thoughts of a man?

1 Corinthians 2 .11. Except the spirit of the man which is in him. Our thoughts are the most private parts of our being. The most private area of our life is our thought life and we preserve it very carefully.

A husband doesn't know what his wife thinks even after 50 years of marriage and vice versa. We could have all types of thoughts in our mind. And one of the things I've discovered is it's our thought life that proves to us whether we fear God or not.

And if any of you want to know whether you fear God really, there's a lot of superficial counterfeit fear of God. But if you really want to know whether you fear God, like all Christians say they do, just examine how careful you are with your thoughts.

Because that's the one area of your life which only God can see and hear. Nobody else can see and hear. Everything else that we do, we could be doing because we want a good testimony before men. We want the approval of men.

All human beings like to appear good before men, even ungodly atheists. So the fact that we have a good testimony in the church or as Christians proves zero about whether we fear God or not. We could be just like other men who seek approval in their own circle.

Businessmen seek approval among businessmen, and politicians seek approval among politicians, and Christians seek approval among Christians. It doesn't prove the fear of God at all. But if a man is very careful in his thoughts not to be impure, not to be unloving, not to be judgmental, selfish, proud, in his thoughts, that's a pretty good indication that that man fears God.

Because he's not getting any credit from men for that. The only credit he gets is from God. And the areas of our life which nobody can see and nobody can ever find out, where we seek to be upright and pure and honest and humble and unselfish, are the areas that prove whether we fear God or not.

And there's very little of the fear of God among Christians. And it's because of the lack of this, there's so little wisdom. The fear of God is the ABC of wisdom, the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge, we have such an abundance of knowledge, Bible knowledge today, in the world that 2 ,000 years of Christian history, we have not had so much knowledge of the Bible.

Abundance of commentaries, books on the Bible, and with the internet you can get information on almost anything in the Bible. And if Bible knowledge could produce holy people, we should be having the holiest people in the history of Christianity today.

But it's not true. I think we've got one of the most carnal groups of Christians in the world today that ever lived. Because of the lack of the fear of God. So, the secret of the Lord, the Bible says in Psalm 25, is that those who fear him, Psalm 25, 14, that means there are certain secrets that God has in his mind, which he doesn't tell everybody.

Forgiveness of sins is not a secret. It's an open truth. Baptism in the Holy Spirit, that's not a secret. It's an open truth. I mean, there are a lot of counterfeit, but the genuine baptism in the Holy Spirit is not a secret.

But there are other things that God reveals only to some. And the secret of the Lord is with those who fear him. And if you want to know God's thoughts, the way to it is to develop the fear of God. David once said, I think it's in Psalm 34, Come, my children, I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

Every true servant of God is one who should be able to teach other people the fear of God. And if you don't have the fear of God, maybe you didn't have a good teacher. And if you didn't have a good teacher, in my younger days, I never learned the fear of God in the church I went to.

It was a good assembly. It taught me a lot about the Bible, but it never taught me the fear of God. So I had to learn it myself. So if you don't have a good teacher who teaches you the fear of God, you can learn it yourself.

Receiving God's Thoughts Through the Holy Spirit

Now in 1 Corinthians 2, it says in verse 11, Who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? And even so, verse 11, the thoughts of God, no one knows except the spirit of God.

Now we don't like to let anybody know all of our thoughts. We filter and decide how much of our thoughts we're going to share with others for various reasons. But God is so good, He wants us to know all His thoughts.

And when you're filled with the Holy Spirit, you'll begin to understand the thoughts of God if you open up your whole being to Him. And it says here in verse 12, We have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God.

Now I want you to look back at verse 9. Now things which I have not seen, nor you have heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him. Now most people think of that as things we're going to discover in heaven.

It's a verse quoted saying, you know, there are wonderful things God's prepared in heaven for us, which you and I have not seen, you have not heard, and have not entered into man's heart. But that's not what's written here.

It says here in verse 10, But God has revealed them to us through the spirit. Now this is a quotation from Isaiah 64 in verse 4. In the Old Testament, it is written that God would reveal this to those who wait for Him.

And they had to wait 700 years from the time Isaiah wrote that, before God revealed it. But today we don't have to wait. It says here in verse 9, If you love Him, He will reveal these things which are hidden from all the people of the world to us.

To understand the thoughts of God. What does God think about 101 areas in our life? What does He think about Christian work going on today? What does He think about everything, about things in the world?

I want to know. Because a lot that we hear from preachers is not necessarily what God thinks. And certainly what we hear on the news is not what God thinks. But to know what God thinks about every situation is the most wonderful thing of all.

And that's why He's given us the Holy Spirit. So, I want to know, what does God want to do with my life? I want to know, what does God want Christians to do in this day and age? Where you live, what does God want you to do?

You can know through the Holy Spirit. That's why it's so important to be filled with the Holy Spirit. To be immersed or baptized in the Holy Spirit. And I'm not talking about a Pentecostal experience.

I remember when I was a young man, I read about this. And I was in a church that didn't preach baptism in the Holy Spirit. And they said, you've got to go to the Pentecostals to learn it. So, I was only 23.

I didn't know much about the Bible. I went to a Pentecostal church. And what I saw there didn't attract me, to tell you honestly. So, I came back to my room, disappointed. And I said, Lord, I don't want what I saw there.

I'm not interested. I want the baptism in the Holy Spirit that Peter, James, and John got on the day of Pentecost. The real one. I don't want any cheap counterfeit. I don't want to boast that I've joined the club, the Speaking in Tongues Club.

That's not what I'm interested in. I'm interested in receiving the power that made mighty rivers of living water flow out through simple, ordinary fishermen like Peter, James, and John. Who could influence the world, even though they were such unknown people.

I said that to God, when? 46 years ago. I said, that's what I want. And I'm willing to pay any price for it. So, I've never in my life been a part of a member of a Pentecostal or charismatic church. But God baptized me in the Holy Spirit, gave me the gifts of the Holy Spirit, including speaking in tongues and prophesying.

But I would never join a church which mixed the real with the counterfeit. It's very difficult to find a church where it was only the real. There was so much of counterfeit in the gifts of the Spirit, and that's why I stayed away from a lot of churches.

And I went to the Bible to see, what has God given us the Holy Spirit for? And I discovered that it was to bring heaven into my life. That if I opened up my being to the Holy Spirit, I could have a heavenly life.

My home could become a heavenly home. I could build a heavenly church without strife or competition. And I could understand the thoughts of God, what God wants me to do with my life. See, that's very important to me because I believe that, like all of us, we're going to stand before the Lord in the final day.

God's Purpose for Each Believer's Life

And as I review my life, I believe that God places us, each of us, on earth with a specific purpose. One of the great truths that changed my life was when I realized that God loved me as He loved Jesus.

And so, Jesus Himself said that in John 17, 23. And so, I discovered one thing, that if He loved me as He loved Jesus, then He would have had a specific plan for every part of my life, like He had for Jesus.

And at the end of Jesus' life, He could say, Jesus could say, I've finished the work you gave me to do. And I wanted to be able to say at the end of my life, I have finished the work God gave me to do.

I didn't want to say that I wasted so many years pursuing things which would have no value in eternity. And in God's plan for Jesus' life, there was no room for failure. But in my life, God allowed for failure.

In all of our lives, He makes an allowance for years of failure. And we can still fulfill God's plan for our life. Paul could say at the end of his life, I have finished my course. I finished the plan God had for me, even though Paul spent 30 years pursuing the wrong path, persecuting Christians.

God made allowance for that period of failure. And that's a very encouraging thing, that the years of your ignorance, you don't have to be discouraged about. God's made allowance for it. But He brings you to an awareness of the truth now, so that you don't waste any more of your life.

You need to understand the thoughts of God, to open yourself to the genuine Holy Spirit. And I want to tell you in Jesus' name, there's a lot of counterfeit today in this realm. The Holy Spirit, the ministry of the Holy Spirit is being counterfeited by psychology.

A lot of Christian preaching in evangelical circles today, charismatic circles, Pentecostal circles, in the big megachurches of the United States, is psychology. Makes everybody feel good. Never tells them to die to themselves every day, to give up the love of money.

You won't hear such things in megachurches. Jesus preached such stuff. He said, you cannot serve God in mammon. To me, it's like Elijah standing up on Mount Carmel and saying, you cannot serve Jehovah in Baal.

But there were 450 false prophets who said, you can. And it's like that today. There are here and there a few Elijahs who stand up and say, you cannot serve God in mammon. And for every one Elijah, there'll be 450 other false prophets in Christendom who've got all their doctrines right, except their doctrine on money and holiness, who will say, yes, you can.

Make people feel good. And I believe many of those people are on their way to hell without knowing it. It's possible that some of you may be listening to such stuff, and you're being deceived. And I can't save you from going to hell, but I can tell you the truth.

That if you don't deny yourself every day and take up the cross, you cannot follow Jesus. It is impossible. And Jesus said in John 10, 27, 28, My sheep hear My voice and follow Me, and I give them eternal life.

He gives eternal life to those who follow Him. And in Jesus' way of thinking, there is no difference between believing in Him and following Him. Christendom today has made a difference. But in Jesus' thinking, there is no difference.

If you believe Him, then you follow Him. And He said, My sheep hear My voice and follow Me, and I give them eternal life. They shall never perish. I believe there is eternal security for those who follow Jesus, who hear His voice and obey Him.

God's Thoughts Are Higher Than Human Thoughts

So, when it comes to understanding the thoughts of God and the Holy Spirit reveals to us, I want you to turn to Isaiah 55. In Isaiah 55, the Lord says in verse 8, My thoughts are not your thoughts. If we don't recognize that, that our human way of thinking is not God's way of thinking.

Psychology is a human way of thinking. And God says, That is not My way of thinking. And your ways are not My ways. And if you want to know how much difference there is between God's way of thinking and man's way of thinking, it says in verse 9, As high as the heavens are above the earth.

I mean, the heavens are way beyond billions of light years away. That's the difference between God's way of thinking and man's way of thinking. God's way of working and man's way of working. We may not understand why God does things in a certain way.

In God's way of thinking, when a man like Uzzah tries to steady an ark which is about to fall, he kills him. In man's way of thinking, he'd say, Well, the man was sincerely trying to stop the ark from falling.

Why should he kill him? Be merciful to him. There are many things like this which, if we use our human way of thinking, we'll just not understand God at all. We think God is very hard. And at the same time, here we find Jesus using a woman who was divorced five times and was now sleeping with a man who was not even her husband, using her to bring a revival in Samaria.

I mean, if you went to Samaria, that'd be the last person you'd ever think of to use to bring a revival there. Can you understand God's ways? On one hand, killing Uzzah. On the other hand, using a woman like that to bring revival.

There is no way we can explain all this with human logic. We have to come to God and say, Lord, I don't understand your ways. I want to be open to the Holy Spirit. I want to know what you want to accomplish on earth at this time.

Malachi's Call to Offer God Our Best

I want to turn to Malachi chapter 1. In Malachi chapter 1, it says, you know, Malachi was the last prophet that God sent to Israel. Israel had backslidden tremendously. The whole history of Israel is one of up and down and up and down and up and down, backsliding, and God would send a prophet, raise them up, and come up for a while and go down again.

It's the history of most Christians, an up and down experience. It's a mark of an old covenant life. And finally, God sent the tribes of Judah and Benjamin to Babylon, and we thought they'd learned a lesson.

They came back. For a while, they had. They built a temple and a wall, and it was sort of a revival in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. People wept and did many things. But about 100 years later or 150 years later, things were back to square one.

They were backslidden, and God sent one last prophet, Malachi. And he said, okay, I'm finished with Israel. No more. This is going to be the last prophet. And so, see what he says. He says in Malachi in chapter 1, you despise my name, the last part of verse 6.

And you say, how have we despised your name? Because you're presenting, you're not presenting your best to me. You present on the altar that which is defiled. Verse 8, you present the blind and the lame and the sick.

Isn't that evil? See, they were still going through the ritual of offering their sacrifices. They knew, according to the Old Testament law, that they had to make certain sacrifices. They had to offer lambs and bullocks, et cetera, at certain times.

But they would pick out from their flock some diseased lamb that was about to die and say, oh, well, before it dies, we might as well offer it as a sacrifice. And some bullock that was blind and lame, they'd pick that up and say, let's offer this as a sacrifice.

They were offering to God that which cost them nothing. And the Lord said, you know, the priests were supposed to examine. The priests were in league with these guys, maybe taking bribes from them. And the Lord says in verse 10, I wish there were even one of you priests who would shut the gates and say, I'm not going to receive that sacrifice.

I'm not going to kindle a fire on the altar with that type of third-rate sacrifice. He said, I wish there were one priest who would stand up against all this. But there wasn't one. I think the Lord looks at a lot of Christendom today.

He said, I wish there were a few preachers who would stand up and expose all this nonsense that goes on in the name of the Holy Spirit. Psychology has replaced the Holy Spirit. Music has replaced the Holy Spirit.

Money has replaced the Holy Spirit. There's such an emphasis on money today in Christendom, which you never read in the Acts of the Apostles. So much emphasis is given to music. I'm not against it. But it's become a substitute for the Holy Spirit's power.

These are the things, and very few recognize it. They think the moving of the emotions is the moving of the Holy Spirit. It's one of the greatest deceptions of the devil. You can be moved emotionally at a rock music concert, and it's got nothing to do with the Holy Spirit at all.

We need to discern what is of God and what is not. So Malachi says, you offer that which is evil. I don't know whether you know the difference between Cain's offering and Abel's offering, if you turn back to Genesis 4.

I'm sure all of you have read Genesis 4. And many of you have probably been brainwashed by evangelical teaching that it was because Abel offered blood that God accepted him. And because Cain didn't offer blood, he was not accepted.

And then your preachers have told you that if you offer the blood of Jesus, you'll be accepted. It doesn't matter how you live. The important thing is to offer the blood of Jesus. Okay, let's check if that's what the Bible says.

Not in my version, in your version. In your Bible, I want you to follow with me and see what it says there. And see whether what you have heard from all these evangelical preachers is true or not. The first thing I want to tell you is Cain and Abel were not offering a sin offering.

The law concerning sin offerings came years later, in the time of Moses. But even in that time of Moses, if you read the book of Leviticus, there were tank offerings, which required no blood. Grain offerings, which required no blood.

When a man brought 10 of his crops to God, there was no blood in it. But if a man was a keeper of the sheep, he'd bring 10 of the sheep. Both were tank offerings. One had blood and one didn't have blood.

Both were acceptable. Cain was a tiller of the ground. He brought a tank offering naturally from the ground. Abel, Genesis 4 -2, was a keeper of the sheep. So he brought a tank offering from the sheep.

That was only natural. It was a tank offering and it did not require blood. And it says here, he doesn't say the Lord accepted Abel because of his offering, like we have heard for so many years. You know, I believed that for about 16 years of my Christian life, because I heard it from reputed teachers, till I had the guts to believe that reputed teachers could be wrong and started reading the Bible more carefully.

And I saw in Genesis 4, verse 4, that the Lord had regard for Abel first and therefore accepted his offering. Isn't that how it is in your version? Read it. The last part of verse 4. The Lord had regard or accepted Abel and therefore had regard for his offering.

So it was not because of his offering that Abel was accepted. His offering was accepted because Abel was accepted. There's a lot of difference between the two. It's like Jesus once said, when you come and bring an offering to God and you know that your brother's got something against you, God won't accept your offering.

Even if it's blood. Even if it's the blood of Jesus. Leave your offering there. Go and be reconciled with your brother. Set matters right with him. Then come back and God will accept your offering. So in that situation, why does God reject a man's offering, even if he comes to the blood of Jesus?

Can you imagine a man coming to the blood of Jesus and being rejected? Sure. Jesus said that in Matthew 5. You've got something against your brother. Go and settle that and then come. Otherwise God won't accept your offering.

God says, my ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts. And Cain. Verse 5. The Lord had no regard for Cain or for his offering. It wasn't the offering that was rejected. It was the man.

And when the man's rejected, the offering is rejected. Then we need to ask ourselves, why did God accept Abel and his offering? It was because of the heart behind the offering. You know, two people can sing to God a song.

God accepts one and he doesn't accept the other. And yet, they may be singing the same song. It's very important to know whether what I offer to God is accepted or not. I've taught people in our church that if you don't reconcile with God, if you're not reconciled to a brother or sister and you put an offering in the offering box, God won't accept it.

We used to have a verse in front of our offering box saying, are you reconciled with your brother and sister? Think of that before you put in an offering here. We were actually stopping people from putting offerings in because we were more interested in their soul than their money.

And I said, listen, if you put an offering into that box there without being reconciled to a brother, you might as well put your offering into the toilet and flush it out. It's just the same thing. It won't accomplish anything.

God won't accept it. God's not going to go looking in the toilet for your offering and He won't look in that box either because He sees your heart. Why did God accept Abel's offering and didn't accept Cain's?

I want you to notice here. You've read this many times but you probably haven't noticed it. Now I'll read it to you slowly and you'll notice it immediately. Verse 4, Abel brought the very best, the firstlings of his flock.

Cain brought, verse 5, an offering. You see a difference? One brought the very best. The other brought an offering. I believe that all of us sitting here could be divided into the Cain category and the Abel category.

We all bring an offering and the very fact that you come here is an offering to God. Are you sure it's Abel's offering? Are you living in that category? Would God categorize you with Abel or with Cain?

Now remember, Cain's not an atheist. He wasn't worshiping Baal. He brought his offering to Jehovah, to the true God. He wasn't an idol worshiper and you're not. He believed in the true God and so do you.

But you may not be bringing the best of your life and your time and your energy and your mind. I've often had to say to people in our church, I say that brilliant mind which God gave you, you have used to make money in business.

You've used to study your profession and advance and get a high degree. How much have you used that brilliant mind to study the Word of God and make it clear to a whole lot of people who don't know the Word?

Are you bringing your best to God? I know you give a little portion of your time and a little portion of your mind to God, but your mind is mainly set on your business and advancing in the world and making money and getting on and becoming somebody.

And because you want to go to heaven when you die, you give a little portion to God. You really believe you're in Abel's category? You're a million miles away from that, brother, sister. And if you've never heard any preacher tell you that before, you're hearing it today.

God's looking for those who will give Him their best. This word worship is one of the most misunderstood words in Christendom. What does worship really mean? I looked for years to find out what worship meant.

True Worship as Total Surrender

Everybody talks about praise and worship, praise and worship, praise and worship. Most churches don't have praise and worship. This church has got good praise and worship. I said, okay, let me find out what the Bible says.

And all you've got to do is take a concordance, especially in the New Testament. There are only about, I think, less than 50 times the word worship comes in the New Testament. Very easy to look through it.

Very easy to look through all the verses if you're serious about knowing God's thoughts. And I'll tell you something. There's only one book in the world that will tell you God's thoughts. Only one. Today people are arguing about, shall I use the King James Version or some other version?

I say, brother, you use any version you like. Every version will tell you that you can't love God and money. And every version will tell you that if you don't take up the cross, you can't follow Jesus.

And every verse will tell you that Cain didn't give his best and Abel gave his best. That's why God accepted it. And the devil's got you sidetracked onto analyzing some verse here and there in the Greek and Hebrew here and there.

Measuring on minors. That's exactly what the devil wants you to do. Spend your life measuring on minors and waste your life. Yeah. It's good to see. What does worship mean? So I took a concordance and decided to study what the New Testament said about worship.

And it opened my eyes and I discovered that nothing of what churches call praise and worship was worship at all. What they were doing was good. It was thanksgiving and praise that they were doing. But they didn't call it by the right name.

Thanksgiving and praise is very good. There are four steps in our relationship with God. The first is prayer. Next is thanksgiving, praise and worship. Prayer. All of them are needed. Everyone. Jesus prayed.

Jesus prayed. Jesus thanked. Jesus worshiped. And so must we. But if you don't know the distinction between these, you can miss out something completely because you call something else worship. For example, if you don't know the difference between prayer and thanksgiving, you can pray and pray and pray and pray and never thank God.

Prayer is asking God for something. Thanksgiving is thanking Him for what He's done for us. It's very simple. Praise, it's a little higher, is admiring, praising God for who He is. Totally irrespective of what He's done for us.

You know, God's almighty, He's holy, He's loving, He's pure. Even if He's done nothing for us, I still need to praise Him. Worship is beyond all that. And if you look at the words that we sing, all of them are good.

All the songs we sing are excellent and needed. But we need to identify what they are. That's a song of prayer. I'm asking God to do something for me. Of course we need to do that. That's a song of thanksgiving.

Thank you, Lord, for all this you've done for me. Very needed. That's a song of praise. It's got nothing to do with thanksgiving. It's praising God for who He is. Now where does worship come in? Worship is, whenever you read in the Bible about people worshiping, they always fell down with their face down before God.

It was the total surrender of everything. It was giving our very best, like Abel's offering, giving our very best to God, saying, God, you can have my whole life. You are everything to me. John did that in the Isle of Patmos when he was 95 years old.

Fell down flat before Jesus and said, Lord, it says he fell as a dead man. That's worship. Abraham would fall down like that. Job would fall down and worship. And very often these people who worship, they never said anything.

Worship is not necessarily with a lot of words. We can worship with words. Words like, for example, Psalm 73, verse 25. One of the finest words expressing worship. Whom have I in heaven but thee? There's nothing on earth I desire beside thee.

If you can say that honestly from the depth of your heart, you're a worshiper. If you can honestly say to the Lord Jesus, Lord, I want to tell you honestly, I desire nothing on earth but you. I don't want anything this world offers.

I don't want any position in the church. I don't want any acceptance by anybody. I don't want a ministry. I don't want anything but you. And I will keep that until the end of my life. The reason why we have such a lot of shallow worship today, a shallow service rather, is because people are not worshipers.

Jesus said in the last temptation, Matthew 4 .10, you shall worship the Lord your God and then serve him. You have to be a worshiper first before you serve the Lord. The most important requirement to be a servant of God is to be a worshiper.

And if you search your heart, you'll discover that you desire a lot of things outside of Jesus Christ. And that prevents you from being a worshiper. And you've got to eliminate them and eliminate them and eliminate them one by one.

And if there's one left, he's still not a worshiper. Imagine going through all that and leaving one little thing and missing out completely. That's what the Lord asked the rich young ruler. The rich young ruler had the opportunity to become a worshiper and therefore a tremendous servant of God.

And he went through many, many doors. You know, honor your father and mother. He'd gone through that. And don't murder, don't kill, don't commit adultery, don't bear false witness. He'd gone through all that and there was only one more door left.

You must love me more than you love your money. He turned back. And because he turned back, it was as good as he's not having fulfilled any of the commandments. He ended up in the same boat as the unconverted thief.

The unconverted thief hadn't kept the commandments. But this guy who had kept all the commandments was in the same boat because there was one last thing he was not willing to yield. And if there's some area in your life, some one last thing you don't yield to the Lord, there's not really much difference between you and somebody else who hasn't yielded a hundred things, who has not yielded a hundred things to the Lord.

You may think you're better. God doesn't think so. In a vessel, if you have one hole or a hundred holes, it's just the same. Both are useless. We don't understand that. But that's God's way. So worship is where you can honestly say to the Lord, Lord, I desire nothing and no one on earth but you.

It's the language of lovers. My world would collapse if you are not there. You can say that to Jesus. That's amazing. That's real love. And I want to link that with what I said, what we saw in 1 Corinthians 2.

I have not seen, neither has your heard, 1 Corinthians 2 .9, neither has entered into the heart of man the wonderful things which God has prepared for one category of people alone. You know that? He's prepared it for one category of people, those who love Him supremely.

They get things which a whole lot of others never get. They see things, they look into the heavens and see things that other people on earth never see. They hear things which people sitting next to them in the church never hear.

It's a wonderful thing to be able to hear God. It's reserved for those who love Him. And love means, Lord, I desire nothing but You and I desire no one but You. Everything else is extra. If I have it, well and good.

If I don't have it, that's perfectly okay. And when I get to heaven, whom am I in heaven but You? I'm not interested in mansions. I'm not waiting for God to wipe tears from my eyes. I'm not longing for heaven because I'll finally be rid of this weary world.

No. If you can say, Lord, the only person I desire in heaven is You, I don't care if heaven is a place of suffering if I have You. You're a real worshiper. If you can say to the Lord, Lord, I'm ready to be in hell for eternity if You're there.