This World Is Not Our Home
While Christians sing the old favorite spiritual, “This World Is Not My Home”[1],[2] I think the circumstances of our times demonstrates something much different. I don’t mean to be judgmental. I think I am in the same boat. It’s been so easy to be a Christian and a friend of the world for so very long that most of us can’t imagine any other sort of Christianity. As believers in the United States, we’ve never won every battle, but we’ve won enough of them to believe we would rise up and win again. For the first time in – well – generations, it feels like we may never win again. Government shut down our world. We could easily blame it on leftist leadership but, praise the Lord, we had an election coming up. We would show those corrupt politicians then. But we didn’t. For all practical purposes, we gained nothing at the ballot box.[3] We might even have lost ground.
And now those “corrupt” leftist leaders, still in power after the elections plan to lock us in again. This time we have no pro-American president to call out to. This time we have no election looming in the not-too-distant future to look forward to. This time we are stuck. We have some glimmer of hope in a more conservative Supreme Court and perhaps in the recount of the ballots, but honestly, we all believe we’re up a creek without a paddle.
And many of us are scared. Maybe all of us are scared. Our livelihoods, our homes, our comforts – our very way of life is now threatened.
It might even become illegal to go to church!
This World is Not My Home.
But we want it to be. We want our security back. We want our comfort back. We want our success-driven, prosperity thinking, easy living Christianity back.
· We have become too dependent on credit
· We have become too attached to our possessions
· We have become too trusting in government
· We have become too connected to property
· We have become too in love with life[4]
We have taken our faith too much for granted.
What if we lose it all?
So what!
Most of the world knows nothing of the sweet privileges Christians in America have known. In places like China, North Korea, the Middle East, and parts of Africa, just living is a challenge. Yet there are Christians thriving in their faith.[5]
Why?
How?
It’s because they accepted from their birth that this world is not their home. They’ve never expected a free pass just because they are saved. They did not call out to God to make them prosperous. They called out to Him to forgive them of their sins and to grant them a new citizenship.
Should we expect more?
Hebrews 11:8-10 (KJV)
By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
[1] This World Is Not My Home
This world is not my home I'm just passing through O Lord you know I have no friend like you 1. They're all expecting me and that's one thing I know O Lord you know I have no friend like you 2. Just up in Glory Land we'll live eternally O Lord you know I have no friend like you |
[2] Actually, I wonder if more progressive churches do sing this favorite?
[3] That’s just a figure of speech. I know almost none of us actually had a ballot box to go to.
[4] I refer you, dear reader, to Patrick Henry, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
[5] I said, in their faith, not economically.
