Interview for Eternity

By Vickie Natale

What if it were all connected?  What if everything you are doing with your life is setting you up for what you will do for an eternity?  What would you qualify for?  If there were some incredible future job that you wanted, would you prepare for it?  Would you get educated for it?  What will your life's resume look like?  What if your eternity depends upon it?  It's never too late to start!

 

Interview for Eternity brings to light how God can take anyone from anywhere they are in life and bless them with the ability to live to their fullest potential both here and eternally.  Our history does not have to be our destiny.

 

Vickie's unshakable faith was created through intense battles with darkness.  She shares in practical and helpful ways how her experiences with the supernatural powers of the God of the Bible helped her overcome the plans of the enemy of our souls. 

 

Interview for Eternity is a unique way to understand, through Vickie's true-life story, experiences with angels, demons, dreams, visions, miracles, out-of-body occurrences, the power of prayer, what it means to walk in the Spirit of God, and to stay the course no matter how difficult.  It's a story of the Victory of the Cross for every challenge, empowering others to their greatest potential now and setting them up for success throughout eternity!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vickie Natale
• Release date: Oct 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393449300

Book preview

Introduction

Interview for Eternity

I feel that this life is simply an interview for eternity. Eternity won’t be a place of complacency. I believe that it will be quite active. There are written accounts of many people who have actually died briefly, gone to heaven and returned here again who have said after the fact that this life is just a shadow of the real thing—the real thing is heaven. Those who choose to be there will be there forever. We don’t get to make our decision for living our lives for God once we’re there (since the only reason we will be there is because we choose to be there). Many people think that this decision of whether or not we get into heaven is up to God, based upon what good works we did. The truth is that the work has already been done—Jesus accomplished every bit of the work necessary for us to enter heaven. That work was the cross. In His final words from the cross in John 19:30, He said, It is finished. The choice is ours to receive this truth.

In the New Testament of the Bible, the first four books are named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These are referred to as the Gospels. Written throughout these Gospels by the namesake of each gospel are the spoken words of Jesus. Many times, Jesus spoke to the people in what are referred to as parables. There are forty-six of these parables recorded throughout these four books. These parables, also referred to as kingdom parables, are the written words of Jesus when He spoke of a fictitious situation in order to relate a real-life solution. He used many of these parables to describe what the kingdom of God would be like.

In the gospel of Luke in chapter 19 in verse 11, as Jesus was approaching Jerusalem, he told them a story to correct the impression that the kingdom of God would begin right away. In this kingdom parable written in Luke 19:12–27, Jesus told the story of ten servants and what they had been entrusted with by their master while their master had been called away for a while to a distant empire. The servants had each been given a pound of silver to invest while their master was away. When their master returned, they reported back to him what they had done with their pound of silver. The first two had reports of increasing the master’s wealth by investing what he had entrusted them with. As a result, their reward was equivalent to becoming governor over the number of cities that their investment had multiplied by.

In other words, if they had made a tenfold return (received ten pounds of silver back) on the investment, they were commissioned to become governors over ten cities. If they had made a fivefold return on the investment, they were commissioned to become governor over five cities, and so on. It’s my belief that this kingdom parable describes Jesus as the master and us as the servants. Jesus is temporarily away (after His resurrection and before He returns again). He has given us gifts or assignments or both in this life and how we choose to invest these gifts and the return we receive on them somehow determines our future kingdom assignment(s).

A similar kingdom parable is recorded in the gospel of Matthew 25 in verses 14–30.

I believe that not only do we get to decide where we ultimately end up for an eternity, but also we get to start here and now showing God what we’re capable of handling for an eternity. What eternal assignment will you be given? What will you be entrusted with forever? We will want to make sure that what we’re doing as our assignment for eternity is the ultimate choice or ultimate assignment or job. It all starts with how we handle the assignment and ultimate purpose that He gave us to start with while we’re here. And while there very well may be advancement opportunities once we’re in heaven, I certainly don’t want to be playing with blocks for, say, seven thousand years before my promotion to the next level (I know that time as we know it does not exist in eternity—just using this as an example).

We live our lives here as an interview not only for where we want to spend our time for eternity but also for what we will be assigned to do. In God’s awesome sovereignty, He gives us a choice. I believe that our lives create our resumes for our ultimate eternal jobs. This book lays out what my resume looks like so far, what my past looked like, what I changed, and how that’s shaping me for my future assignment. It’s my hope that it gives you purpose for your life and hope for your future.

Several Bible Scriptures are referenced in this book since they’re so poignantly applicable to my journey. I love reading the Bible to learn about God’s character and His answers to my most difficult challenges. Nearly all the Scriptures that are referenced are from my favorite version, the New Living Translation. This version of the Bible has spoken so clearly to me and answered so many of my questions along my journey.

So, what does God’s Word, the Bible, say about our assignments or our purposes here?

You are worthy O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created everything, and it is for your pleasure that they exist and were created.

Revelation 4:11

Our sole purpose for existence is to please God. His Word says that we were created for His pleasure. So how do we please God? Is it by our deeds or motives? Not according to what’s said in Isaiah 64:6: When we proudly display our righteous deeds, we find that they are but filthy rags. And in the Book of Romans, the apostle Paul’s definition says that those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. So, letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God (Romans 8:5–8).

Rather, Hebrews 11:6 says, It is by faith that we please God, and that it is impossible to please him without it. And guess what the simple part is? As we trust Him with each part of our lives, we’re acting in faith, and He’s the one who writes the script and empowers and perfects us along the way. He is the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2 NASB). I personally want the author and perfecter of my faith to take everything that He wrote about me and speak it into existence since I believe that it’s only then that my life has true significance.

Before I became a Christian, a believer in the One and Only True God (see how to become a Christian at the end of this book), I had such a warped sense of purpose. My own self-image at that time would go as far as to think that I would be doing God a favor to be on His side so that He could use me. I was living a truly sin-filled life of worldly egocentricity. I was the center of my universe, and I used to think that allowing God in was going to benefit God, not me. Oh, Lord, what a warped mind I had! Thank You for Your mercy!

Even after I became a Christian, I lived quite a mediocre existence in my faith, a life filled with compromise. The Bible refers to this as being lukewarm (Revelation 3:16) and unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind (James 1:6). My Christianity basically became my catastrophic insurance policy, with the hope that I would escape the fires of hell, but not much more beyond that. However, should I’ve died during those early years as a Christian," I believe that I would have barely entered heaven, and if so, I would have smelled like the fires of hell since I lived with such extreme compromise.

For the longest time, I took no real interest in what it meant to store up rewards in heaven that will last for an eternity (Matthew 6:19) while I existed here on earth. When we’re living lives of compromise, lives for self, we have little interest in heaven or eternity or pleasing God. When I slowly began to take up an interest of what my future would be like in eternity, I began to realize that there really is a lot more ahead in our eternal future than we can even comprehend.

I want to make sure that what I’m saying above about using our gifts doesn’t lead someone to believe that you have to work your way into heaven. Again, Jesus finished the work on the cross. At the end of this book I describe salvation a bit more. For now, I just want to say that we’re accepted into heaven when we acknowledge that we have fallen short of His glory (we sinned) and we repent of those sins and receive His death on the cross in place of our own deaths, believe that He resurrected from death to life and is truly alive. It’s by faith alone that we’re saved. Being saved puts us in a relationship with God. And we can stop right there, but that would be at a point of the beginning of a relationship. Pleasing God is another aspect of our relationship with Him. When I first became a believer, I didn’t understand that pleasing God was as simple as placing our trust in Him. Placing our trust in Him requires us to have faith that what God says He will do, He will do.

So, if pleasing God requires faith, what does faith look like? What examples do we have of what excellent faith looks like? God is so good that He has left us multiple accounts in His Scripture of how many of the great ones that went before us did it. A few examples: Noah built an ark (Genesis 6) before there was such a thing as rain. (In Genesis 2:5–6: The Lord had not yet sent rain to water the earth…Instead, springs came up from the ground and watered all the land. And in Genesis 2:10: A river flowed from the land of Eden, watering the garden.) God told Noah that He was going to bring a flood that would cover the earth by making it rain for forty days and nights (Genesis 7). Noah had faith that what God was telling him would happen, and even though he had not seen rain, he believed God and built the ark to prepare.

Abraham went to where God was calling him without knowing where it was he was going. He was even called the friend of God (James 2:23). And he believed Him about a child to be born to him even though he and his wife, Sarah, were well beyond the child bearing years. (Abraham was a hundred years old.) And then when God gave them the promised child, Isaac, Abraham, by faith following God’s request, offered him up as a sacrifice to God. Abraham’s faith was blessed by God sparing Isaac’s life by providing a ram to sacrifice in his place (Genesis 17–22). Many believe that Isaac was not actually a child when this happened; rather, he was a young adult. Much time is noted that passes between the birth of Isaac (beginning of Genesis 21) and the time that Abraham’s faith is tested (end of Genesis 21 and beginning of Genesis 22). No doubt, this very act of faith on the part of Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice imparted a confident faith to his son, Isaac, and in turn imparted a confident faith to his son Jacob too, and carried right on through to Jacob’s son Joseph and so on.

While these are examples of a few of the more trusting ones in Scripture, there are other examples in Scripture of people that doubted God along the way, had fears, failures, and so on. Some of these who hesitated to trust God or simply doubted are in the Book of Judges in the Bible. For example, Barak, who was not confident enough after being commissioned by God through the prophet Deborah to lead an army against his enemies, told Deborah that the only way that he would do it was if she came with him. Gideon was another warrior who needed assurance before going out on his assignment as he was called out by God as a mighty warrior while hiding in fear from his enemies. I’m glad that there are examples of these types of mighty heroes shown for us in Scripture too.

And for the times that I need to have my faith strengthened from wanting to quit from frustration, failure, doubt, and fear, I’m encouraged to find examples of God’s chosen people facing major challenges in Scripture. One of those examples that comes to mind is when Moses felt like quitting and cried out to God. Moses was challenged in his faith when the Israelites were complaining to him after he had been successful at convincing Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to allow them to be set free from Pharaoh’s bondage. It also helped tremendously that God had performed miraculous signs and administered ten plagues upon the Egyptians on Moses’s behalf. Moses then departed Egypt with the million