No, it’s the definition of easiness, for Christ’s yoke is easy and His burden is light, and to the extent that our conversation is in heaven, to that extent we have true spiritual rest and repose of soul. It is what we leave behind in the world that makes the difficulty to get our spirits hauled up to heaven, and to be kept there. The difficulty is here, but the more our heart and the mind are there, we have really the more ease.

Homesickness is the distress caused by being away from home. When God brings people into His family, their home becomes heaven instead of earth, and they keep longing to get home. Instead of being a child of their time, beholden to the culture and values of this world, the believer can’t help showing by their tastes and mannerisms and colloquialisms that they belong somewhere else. Their thoughts turn frequently to their Father in heaven, their Elder Brother preparing their place there, and their Comforter preparing them for their place. As citizens of a better place, they walk and talk, eat, sleep and breathe heavenly. In the following updated extract, James Durham gives six characteristics of the lifestyle or “conversation” of those who are citizens of heaven.

I would like to show you how a Christian may be said to have (and should have) his “conversation” or “citizenship” in heaven.

Our Heart Is in Heaven

First, in respect of the inward holy frame and divine set of his heart. The Christian should be heavenly in that. Free from those distempering passions that the people of this world are subjected to (even enslaved to and harried with), the Christian should not have his affections dragging along on the earth, nor his delights or desires taken up with things that are earthly. Instead he should be mortified to and weaned from all those things.

Unlike those who are on all occasions tossed up and down with their moods and with every wind of temptation, the Christian should be so calm, composed and sober, settled and fixed in a heavenly frame of spirit that words of reproach would not much trouble him, nor crosses and afflictions much disquiet him. He should have such composure and sedateness of spirit that he would be much above the levity and unstayedness that worldly people are under the power of, and he should endeavour to be purged from those impure mixtures of self-interests that reign in the worldly.

Our Work Is in Heaven

Secondly, in respect of our work, as Christians we should and may have our “conversation” in heaven, when we are much in the exercise of those graces, and in the practice of those duties, that we will be occupied with in heaven.

We are to be much in love to God, taken up with delighting in Him.

We are to be much in communion with God, holily impatient when we don’t have Him, or have to live without His company.

We are to be much in the study and searching out of His perfections.

We are to be studying to have the heart fixed, as if it was a pillar in His house, and not to go out from Him.

We are to be much in admiring and adoring the free grace and love of God, and to be in a holy manner ravished with the contemplation of these.

We are to be much in the work of prayer, and much in the work of praise, saying, “Worthy is the Lamb to receive glory, honour, dominion, etc,” joining with the four beasts and four and twenty elders, saying, “Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty!”

We are to be much in prizing and valuing God, in setting out and commending Him.

We are to be in all duties willing and cheerful, doing God’s will cheerfully and with alacrity.

We are to be much in longing for the sabbath, to converse more closely with him, longing often for privacy and quiet opportunities to pour out our hearts before Him.

And we are to do all this with holy coveting to do it better, praying that his will may be done on earth, as it is done in heaven.

Our Distinctive Character Is from Heaven

Thirdly, believers may be said to have their “conversation” (and you are called to have yours) in heaven in respect of a heavenly walk, and as having a heavenly impression on all your lifestyle — to be walking as it were in heaven, and as if “Holiness to the Lord” were written on your foreheads.

This is a very comprehensive point, which includes things like the following.

(1) The heart is fixed in meditating on God and His law, on spiritual and heavenly things. There is a sublime and divine strain of mind, which does not debase itself to pursue vanities, but keeps in a close and constant pursuit after communion with God and conformity to Him.

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