Heaven's Lessons: Ten Things I Learned About God When I Died

By Steve Sjogren

“If you’d asked me who God is on December 9, the year of my accident, I would have been able to give you a fairly cohesive but theoretical answer. A day later all of that changed.”

A simple surgery went horribly wrong. Steve Sjogren died on the operating table. He encountered a heavenly world where he felt infinite peace. And then he had to come back—back to a physical reality filled with pain and disability and an endless line of tests.

The drama of dying suddenly paled in comparison to the trauma of living. Sjogren could not face this new existence with his same old comfortable understanding of God.

“I had minimized God,” Sjogren says. “Somehow, over time, he had become fairly predictable—like he could be outlined, fully grasped, and contained in a neat set of mere ideas. Now I saw that he apparently wasn’t all that impressed with my cool little notebooks.”

One day in heaven followed by hundreds in agony forged a deeper and stronger faith than Sjogren could have crafted on his own. In Heaven’s Lessons, Sjogren shares his experiences and the life-changing ways they have affected his perspective on success, suffering, and the mysteries of God.

Watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l4jugXqiBU

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Feb 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781400204328

Steve Sjogren

Steve Sjogren has lived and ministered in Los Angeles, Oslo, Norway, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Tampa as he and his wife, Janie, helped launch new churches aimed at those who are spiritual but not religious. Their church in Cincinnati, Vineyard Community Church, grew from thirty to more than 6,000 weekly attendees mainly through free, creative acts of serving the community, such as giving away bottles of water at stop lights and offering car washes for one dollar--where a dollar was given to each driver for the privilege of washing their car--to show God's love in a practical way. Steve and his wife now live in the Los Angeles area where they head the Kindness Outreach movement and Kindness.com, a site for outreach leaders around the world.

Book preview

CONTENTS

1. WE LIVE IN A SPIRITUAL WORLD

2. GOD IS BIG

3. SUCCESS WORKS BACKWARDS

4. GOD ESPECIALLY ENJOYS IRREGULAR PEOPLE

5. DON’T FEAR DEATH

6. QUIT QUITTING

7. GOD HEALS GRADUALLY

8. GET OVER IT!

9. FACE YOUR FEAR

10. BE THANKFUL

CONCLUSION: "I DARE YOU TO DARE Me . . ."

NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

1

WE LIVE IN A

SPIRITUAL WORLD

When I opened my eyes, the people around my bed didn’t look familiar. They didn’t look like any people I had ever seen before. They were transparent. No words were spoken, but I knew in an instant what they were up to. They were present to support me, to urge me on—to not give up my desperate fight for life.

A few days before, I had gone into the hospital for a planned, forty-five-minute simple surgery. I no longer use simple and surgery in the same sentence—anytime medical staff put you under with anesthesia, it isn’t simple. I did not go home that night as scheduled. In fact, it feels as though I have been in the recovery room for more than twelve years since that procedure.

The plan was routine enough. Surgeons were to locate and remove my gallbladder—a procedure tens of thousands go through each year in the United States alone. In my case things went haywire during the first few minutes of the surgery.

Leading up to surgery, I had been having painful attacks centered in my midsection that caused me to double over in pain. I’m the sort of person who is quick to go to the doctor when I’m in pain, so after two of those attacks, I went in to see my family physician. His initial take was that my gallbladder was inflamed, so he referred me to a great surgeon at a nearby, medium-sized, suburban hospital. A week later I was in the office of a highly recommended but youngish local surgeon. I instantly liked this guy. He was into a lot of things that I, too, liked– target shooting and tropical fish. He was also a voracious nonfiction reader. I felt a connection with him.

After looking me over, he sent me in for a series of preliminary tests to guarantee that my gallbladder was indeed the problem. I had a CT scan, an MRI, and an ultrasound, but none of those showed the presence of gallstones—or a gallbladder. Later, when I spoke with the surgeon, he expressed his surprise that none of the tests revealed my gallbladder but commented that since everybody has a gallbladder, mine must be diseased and had apparently shrunk significantly. That’s why it wasn’t showing up on the tests. It was even more in need of surgery.

I mentioned to him that I travel extensively, often out of the country. He said that might be a problem, since the surgical standards of other countries leave a lot to be desired. Was I willing to risk emergency surgery on the fly outside the country? he asked. The answer was obvious—clearly I needed surgery sooner rather than later. That was around Thanksgiving, heading into Christmas, a rather slow time for me workwise, thus a good time to face a surgery. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it now, but in a way, I almost looked forward to the surgery. It seemed like a bit of a vacation from the torrid schedule I had been keeping around that time. A week of downtime sounded as good as going to Florida for a week.

I later learned that about one person in every thirty thousand or so is born without a gallbladder. Doctors soon discovered I am one of those rare people.

In other words, on the day of the surgery, they were trying to remove a nonexistent gallbladder.

As with any laparoscopic surgery, the surgeons made three small, shallow, lateral incisions along my right side to insert equipment inside me. A final small incision was made just below my belly button, where the cutting instrument was to enter. The problem, for whatever reason—it was never determined how it happened—was that this final cut went far too deep, as in inches too deep. The razor-sharp blade hit the front of my descending aorta and then continued through to the back side of it. The aorta at that point is about the diameter of one’s thumb. It is the largest artery and carries oxygenated blood from the heart south, where it branches into smaller arteries that continue on to the legs. As I gushed blood internally, my blood pressure plummeted to 30 over 10. Normal is around 120 over 80. How low is that? Brain damage and all sorts of neurological problems predictably occur at that pressure if it remains there for any length of time. In the words of one doctor, That’s the blood pressure of a sponge, not a human. I was at that level for an hour and fifteen minutes.

Though I bled like a sieve, the doctors couldn’t see the blood, since it was pooling behind my central organs, by my spine. When the team finally did notice the injury, they went to work instantly, but it was too late—I had almost completely bled out. There wasn’t enough blood for my heart to continue to pump.

That’s when it happened. I coded for seven minutes—that is, my heart stopped.

It would have stayed that way if it hadn’t been for the valiant actions of my team of surgeons. They began to pump blood product into me as quickly as I could take it in.

Under duress, if there is not enough blood or circulation to go around, our bodies automatically shift into preservation mode to protect the brain and heart. All else is considered less important. Soon, due to my low blood pressure, other parts of my body began to be blood neglected, such as my liver, my colon, and my external extremities. My fingers, toes, and other, unmentionable parts began to turn blue. If something didn’t change quickly, I was in danger of losing some or all of these to necrosis. In fact, my liver and colon had already begun to become necrotic (later, parts of each had to be removed, to halt the spread of gangrene), and both of my lungs filled with liquid.

Extremely low blood pressure does untold spinal damage, and that, in turn, causes all sorts of neurological problems. The damage is not obvious up front but is discovered gradually, later on. After surgery, I knew I had lost muscle control over my legs to a large degree but had no idea until time had passed that there were other, more subtle problems. More recently I’ve discovered that I have lost depth perception (my insurance company can vouch for that with my several wrecks). Doctors not too long ago discovered that long-term abdominal problems I have had are the result of nerve damage to my stomach from the surgical accident years ago. This often causes difficulty with sleeping. It never occurred to me that low blood pressure could be linked to digestive issues.

At times I’ve wondered if the repercussions of this accident at every level—physical, emotional, spiritual—will follow me through to the end of life when I die . . . and stay dead this time.

I went through the wringer—almost more than a soul can bear, but I think God sent encouragement my way in the form of certain visitors. For a time I was afraid to talk much about what I’d seen. I thought some might think I had lost it. Who ever heard of such a thing! I stopped worrying when I ran across a character named John Cassian, an early church historian who recorded the experiences of many who’d had near-death experiences, or NDEs, during which they saw others who had preceded them in death. Considering Cassian’s favorable reputation in his day, apparently NDEs were considered fairly common occurrences nearly two thousand years ago.

When I opened my eyes in the ICU, these people were gathered around my bed in a circle, holding hands. I knew in an instant these mysterious-looking folks had passed away in the rooms around me at this hospital. Their eyes were partially closed, and their heads were bowed as if they were praying in agreement. Though I had never seen them before, I felt an instant and profound bond with each of them, as though I knew them well. In my heart I understood each of their life stories—what they had stood for, what they had accomplished in life, what they had devoted themselves to, where they were from, and the details of the trauma around their passing. The only parts that were withheld were the negatives. Maybe the greatest surprise was the love factor: a great emotion stirred in me toward each of them—almost equal to what I feel about my own children—a love bond beyond measure.

As I see it, the connection I felt for them must be the norm of heaven—the way we’ll all know and be known when we get there. We’ll know all about others with a mere, momentary glance—and we’ll be connected with them forever. They’ll be in our hearts, and we in theirs, at a depth that a lifetime of knowing one another on earth couldn’t even accomplish.

Reports like mine may be rare these days, but perhaps that’s only because many who’ve been through NDEs are fearful to report the details of what they’ve seen, or perhaps they lack a grid for understanding the spiritual world around them. But regardless of any speculations others may make about stories such as mine, reality doesn’t change. What I’d felt for much of my life was confirmed when I died that day: we really do live in a spiritual world.

A group who understands well our spiritual world is the monks of Mount Athos in northern Greece. The CBS show 60 Minutes did a story about them that showed how these men make a lifelong commitment to literally pray without ceasing as Scripture encourages.¹ They never leave the confines of their property, but stay to work and pray there all their days. Their operation is self-sustaining, so there are lots of chores to tend to, yet they pray all day, every day, while they work and throughout their waking hours. In the interview, as the cameras rolled, they went about their normal chores, like trimming fruit trees, all the while mumbling prayers under their breath.²

For them, to pray without ceasing is a literal act, not a metaphor. They simultaneously live in both the physical world and the even more real and lasting spiritual world.

Most Americans struggle with the idea of a spiritual realm. They tend to see it as something that is possible but still remains to be proved, so there is a measure of skepticism. The majority of the other billions of earth’s inhabitants see it differently. They believe, and live with sensitivity to, the spiritual dimension. To them it is just as real as the physical dimension.

The spiritual world is not confined to our waking moments—it touches our subconscious minds as well.

DREAM RELEASERS

Everyone dreams. Most of those dreams are nonsense, but some are meaningful. Just as God often spoke to people in the Bible through dreams, he continues to speak today through the dream realm. The missing link is someone to help us interpret the not-so-obvious dreams.

I’ve seldom been so aware of the spiritual nature of the world as when, after the accident, a few pastor friends and I attended the Burning Man