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"India 2012 update 2"

We must all strive to praise God for his holiness.
For when we praise God for his love, we are praising him because he loves us. When we praise God for his mercy, we are praising him that it reaches us. When we praise God for his grace, we are praising him because it covered a multitude of our own sins. When we praise him for being our King, we are praising him for bringing us into a kingdom. When we praise him for being our father, we are praising him because we are no longer orphans. In everything but God holiness we are praising him because what he is makes us better, but when we can praise him for his holiness we know that it is really him we are praising. Not what he has, or what he could give.

I heard a question asked the other day, “What do you want more than anything?”
The more I thought about the question the more everything but home quickly fled my thoughts. I thought about traveling, about the place I know live, about friend I now have and friends now gone. But they all quickly faded away to the thought of going home.
I am a southern boy, I was raised in Alabama and if the cowboy boots and open doors didn’t give it away the tattoo of a yellowhammer, Alabama’s state bird, drawn across my chest would. But Alabama isn’t home. It hasn’t been for some time now. Home is where your mind drifts when you feel homesick in your own bed in your own house. Like the old cliche, home is where the heart is. And as a Christian home can be no other place than heaven. Home is a city where, as Revelations puts it, there is no sun…for the Son will be their light. And God will dwell with men, an they shall be His people and He shall be their God.
When Peter decided to sit down and pen a letter to the churches in the 1st century he addresses it to the elect in exile. His letter would be read to people who had gotten out of their own beds, walked out of their houses through their cities to their churches. Looking at it from a worldly perspective these people were not in exile, but home. But Peter saw something that many could not. Their place of exile was not the place they slept or the city they lived in, but the world they had been placed on. He was in essence telling these people, “to those who belong to the world you have longed for.”
In our lives many of us have desires for needs are not met, and adventures not had. And much of that can be solved from truly living a biblical Christian life. Much of it is a desire for a city never seen and a Father who mortal eyes can not behold. C. S. Lewis once said, “If I have desires that this world can not fulfill I must then assume that I was made another.”

Paul said he longed for Heaven above all, but would gladly suffer earth for a little while longer if it meant that God could use him to bring more people home. This must be our prayer. And if we can’t honestly say it what if we all prayed together, “Jesus I don’t want Heaven more than a wife/husband, more than a nice house, job, family, salary, team or life. Oh, but Jesus I want to want it.”

I dare you to pray that, and if you do…I promise that a nice spouse, a nice house, a nice job or family will be worth nothing that glorious day when you stand before Jesus. When you look Him in the eyes for the very first time. I want to know that I gave all. I want to k ow that I lived a life of no reserves, no retreats and no regrets. And I want you to staff before Him and know the same.

Home is a city with a King. Home is Heaven, home is to be where there is no need of a sun, because we walk hand in hand with the Son.

If it’s not Grace it’s not the Gospel.

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The Hobbit by Bart van Ackooij