Monday, April 25, 2011

Home Sweet Home - 1

This week we started a new sermon series at Live Oak called "Home". It is all about what that word means, how it influences us, how we make one, and how do we go back.

Our true home is with Jesus in heaven but we are not there yet. How do we deal with living in the tension between making a home for ourselves on earth, knowing that it is temporary and not our 'true' home?

Some of us have experienced this feeling when we are in between 'permanent' homes. Those times when we are either living out of a suitcase or living in a house or apartment that is only temporary. We don't hang curtains or pictures. We don't let the kids unpack all of their toys. We try to get by on 2 pans and 1 cooking pot.

It is not a lot of fun. In fact, living this way can be incredibly stressful.

While living in the tension between our earthly, temporary home and our heavenly, permanent one, we need to be flexible. We don't know how long we are going to be here and so we might as well hang those curtains and pictures and get the rooms nice and cozy. We just have to remember that this isn't 'it'. We can be comfortable without becoming apathetic.

I don't think God wants us to be stressed out and on edge but I do think he wants us to remember who we are and where we are going.

While thinking about this might not change a lot in the way you 'live' in your house, it should shift the way you think about your stuff and the way you live your life. Everything we have is temporary. God and heaven are eternal.

This week, think about that and pray about how God might be calling you to shift your focus and your attitude so that while you fully live your life here on earth, you are fully invested in what is eternal.

CS

1 John 2:15-17 (The Message)

Don't love the world's ways. Don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.

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