Living in a Foreign Land

The follower of Jesus Christ is being guided through the dangerous wilderness of this world.  I wonder if we, as the Church, have missed this point.  Our sermons, lessons, and books deal with how we can have our best life now and how to live a life of purpose, but we seldom hear that we strangers in a strange land.  It seems to me that our teachings are designed help us blend into the world rather than empowering us to stand out.

An alien in a foreign land stands out because they are different.  They speak a different language (or at least with an accent), they dress differently, celebrate different holidays, and have different values.  Christians are to live like foreigners in a strange land.  Our goal isn't to learn the language and the customs of this world, but to adopt the customs of the Kingdom of Heaven. The apostle Peter wrote:

Dear friends, I warn you as "temporary residents and foreigners" to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world. (1 Peter 2:11-12; NLT)

How does the apostle Peter want us to live?  As "temporary residents" and "foreigners"! We are displaced.  We are not at home!

I want you to catch this: when we live no differently than the world we are not part of God's Kingdom!  God isn’t interested in people who will merely confess Him and believe in Him.  The Bible tells us that everyone will bow a knee confess Jesus as Lord.  What God wants is a people who will live by faith.  People who will be motivated by a different set of desires.  People who live by a different set of standards.  People who love people no one else will love.  People who will not abandon the customs of their home country, but will teach those customs to others.  By living differently we proclaim to the world that there is a better way to live!

In his book The Barbarian Way, Erwin McManus wrote:

From the moment we become citizens of the kingdom of God, we become aliens and strangers in a world that chooses to live absent of God.  From the first step taken to follow Jesus, we are out of step with the rest of the world.  Once your life is in sync with the story of God, you become out of sync with any story that attempts to ignore or eliminate God.  You are a stranger to them, an alien among them, a nomadic wanderer who, while refusing to be rooted in this life, seems to somehow enjoy this life most. (p. 93)

Are you walking out of step with the world?  My great concern is that we are not.  I know that many of us have an issue with the morality of the world, but our hopes and dreams are wrapped up in the very same things the world hopes and dreams for.  Our dreams and desires center around success, money, happiness, and love.  The list could go on, but the point is that while we are morally different from the world we are not spiritually different from them.  That my friends was one of the problems Jesus had with the Pharisees.  They looked good on the outside, but on the inside they were filled with dead men’s bones.  White washed tombs.  We need to quite fooling ourselves that to be different from the world is just about having the right moral standard.  Being different from the world primarily has to do with our desires, dreams, attitudes, and thoughts. It is about the direction of our lives and what we are willing to give our lives away to.

I am coming to believe that one of the ways we truly begin to live differently than the rest of the world is to begin to desire the New Creation God has promised His children.  A temporary resident doesn’t put down roots in the land he is living.  Instead he hopes and dreams for his home and thinks of the day when he will finally go home.  How can we think about settling for the things of this world when God is offering us so much more? How can we think about being like the citizens of the world when God is calling us to be citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven?  Since this world is not our home let us live like citizens of Heaven.

Inadequate Messengers

God uses human instruments to bring to men the message of his truth and love; but it is he alone who wakes the hearts of men to new life.  As he alone created the heart, so he alone can re-create it.

William Barclay, DSB: The Letters to the Corinthians, p. 31

Followers of Jesus are called to be be ambassadors and missionaries to the world.  We cannot escape from that responsibility, it is woven into the fabric of what it means to be a Christian.  It is a huge and important calling to be sure and most of the time we feel inadequate for the task.  After all we lack the resources and the talents that we think are necessary in carrying God's message of love and truth to the world.

First I want to pause for a moment and say that is true.  The mere presence of sin my life makes me inadequate, not to mention the lack of knowledge we have about the way the world works, the Bible, and the circumstances of other people's lives.  So let us hang out here and confess that we are inadequate for the job at hand.

Now there are two pieces that I want to add to this.  There is the piece that being a citizen of God's Kingdom begins with being "poor in Spirit." Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount with; "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3; ESV).  Part of being a follower of Jesus is having the realization that we don't have what it takes and that we must depend on God to provide us with everything that we need; whether that is our daily bread, patience to deal with difficult people, or the words to share with those who are searching for truth.  

The second piece is the importance of being true to who God created us to be. The apostle Paul reminds us of this truth when he wrote:

3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 6 Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; 7 if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; 8 the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness (Romans 12:3-8, ESV). 

This isn't just about having a certain talent set, but about figuring out how to use those talents God has blessed us with for His Kingdom.  It is through using our unique set of talents for God's Kingdom which enables us to find our purpose in life.

With that being said we need to remember that the only person that we have any control over is ourself.  While God has given us the responsibility to take His message of love and truth to the world He has not given us responsibility to change the hearts of other people.  That responsibility lies with God Himself, and therefore we do not need to worry about how people will respond we just need to focus on the best and most effective ways to use our gifts and talents for God's Kingdom.  What a sense of relief that reality should give us.

Daily Thought: Living As Citizens of Heaven

"Our citizenship papers are in heaven.  We should be speaking the language of heaven and we should be observing the ways and customs that heaven has designed for its citizens." ~ Bruce Oberst, Letters from Peter, p. 57