As marvelous and wonderful as Oz was, all Dorothy kept saying to everyone was, “I want to go home!”
E.T. was intent on “phone home” so he could leave this strange place called Earth (though he made some friends here) and return to where he belonged.
On the other end of that scale, there is that place called Narnia where the Pevensie children saw incredible wonders and met Aslan and knew a life that they couldn’t have known otherwise. Even when they returned to their home in England, there was a yearning for something more, something better, something that met their longing like nothing of this mundane reality could.
We all have memories of our childhood home, and while for some, these memories are tinged, even marred by some darkness, most of us smile when we think of that place and have fond memories of.
Think about home and what it means: it’s a place of familiarity, of comfort, of loving and caring, a refuge of safety and security. For most of us, it’s the place where father and mother built a life of love together and brought forth children, raised them, taught them, loved them.
In fact, in Hebrew the first and second letter of the alphabet (aleph and beyt) when put together can mean “the leader/father/strength of “the house/dwelling”
GOD created a home for our First Parents (Adam and Eve) in the Garden of Eden. Before GOD ever formed man from the dust of the earth He took more than 5 days to build that home, to make it suitable, comfortable, enjoyable for them. It was a paradise home - - until….
Well, you know the story. The whole thing got perverted when Satan tempted them, Eve and Adam fell, and everything became not “very good” (GEN 1:31). And it’s been pretty much a downhill slide since until today, when anyone who is discerning enough perceives that the principle perpetuity of perdition is nearing paramount proportions (how’s that for alliteration?)!
This world is not a place of familiarity, of comfort, of loving and caring, a refuge of safety and security.
Every day that I’m out and about and see this world, its stark unfamiliarity is striking. I often say, “This is not the America I grew up in!”. Murder is common place these days and hardly anyone bats an eye at it any more. Same goes for adultery and divorce. Children killing/raping children. What passes for entertainment is either flagrantly occultic, New Age, perverse and, or goes against every Law GOD ever made.
And as we know, “life often copies art, and art copies life”.
Since Roe v. Wade was struck down by the Supreme Court more and more States are passing laws that allow women to murder their babies right up to full term: in other words, one minute before or after the baby leaves the womb can determine whether that baby lives or dies!? An innocent child is legally murdered! Just because it’s legal, it doesn’t make it right! Slavery was once legal (and it’s made a comeback too, legal or not!); so was Jewish genocide in Nazi Germany.
And this doesn’t shock anyone any more… It used to be the safest place in the world: inside a mother’s womb (Check out my testimony and the almost aborted baby that I was!). Now, no place is safe. We have a sense that life is beyond our personal control: that globalist entities are now dictating how life on Earth will be lived, without any say so from us.
And the more you know about what’s happening behind the scenes, the more unsafe and endangered you feel. This is not a place to call home.
Thanks to the “Me Generation” altruistic, unconditional caring and loving is quickly becoming a thing of the past. A person is loved based on society’s perceived value of them, and if they have no value, they are aborted, or shoved into a senior citizens home where they are forgotten and left to live out the remainder of their days apart from family. And expect the devaluation of life to become greater as these days proceed!
Is all this making you feel insecure and uncomfortable?
We understand, things are not the way they should be. And like the Pevensie children, we have a deep down gut feeling that if there really isn’t a Narnia ‘out there’ somewhere, well there ought to be! And there's something we can't shake, knowing there is a "home" to belong to, just out of sight, far beyond the reach of our own hands.
I think that to a large degree this is where the appeal of science fiction and fantasy comes in. In these genres, there are worlds and places of fantastical qualities that leave us spellbound, and we look upon our own mundane lives with disdain and wish we could visit Oz, or Narnia, or Middle Earth, or Pandora – what have you…
There is a deep-rooted longing for something ‘other than’ what we are experiencing in the here-and-now world which I refer to as ‘Planet Rebyl’ (this fallen world of sin).
As a Christian, do you find it somewhat odd when a fellow believer talks about heaven, or when you read about this place in Scripture, and that deep seated aching inside of you gets homesick… for a home you’ve never been to?
I suppose it’s the Spirit of GOD that indwells us, that gives us some kind of sense of what heaven is like – in conjunction to what Scripture tells us of this place.
And have you ever considered that even we Christians have no real idea of what living in a sin-free world is going to be like? We’ve been born into an environment of sin and have never known anything but.
Imagine if you and your community were established and raised in a sewer system, and that people were born, lived and died in that environment. If that dank, stinking world is all you ever knew, you’d have no idea what fresh air was like.
But take one person out of that sewer system and let them breath the fresh air above. Then take them to a mountain top and let them experience new heights of freshness!
That’s a very small idea of what it will be like for us, once we leave this space/time domain that has the curse of sin laid upon it and enter through ‘heaven’s portals’ and come face to Face with the LORD.
In that Forever Realm we shall know a place of familiarity, of comfort, of loving and caring, a refuge of safety and security.
We are familiar with the LORD of that place; we know Him, and He knows us. We are on a first name basis with the KING of Glory (REV 3:8,12)! Here we are pilgrims, strangers, aliens (HEB 11:13; 1 PET 2:11) – but there we are citizens of the Kingdom, and we are family (understand that you don’t even know 99.9% of your heavenly family - - yet! But you will!! Are we excited yet??).
Here we suffer “the slings and arrows of outrageous [mis]fortune”. We have bumps, bruises, scars of damage done to us in this dangerous, deceptive, deplorable, destructive domain dominated by the devil (just a bit more alliteration in case you didn’t get enough the first time around)!
We know that there are mishaps, accidents, diseases, disasters, strifes, anxieties and discords here in this world, and on any day of any week we could experience any of these. This has the potential to make us feel downright uncomfortable, worried, apprehensive – which is why we need to understand the sovereignty of GOD and by faith keep our eyes, and minds and hearts on the LORD Jesus and keep them there (ISA 26:3): it’s the only way we will make it through with peace ruling our hearts (COL 3:14-16)!
But once we are in heaven, all such dangers and apprehensions will be a thing of the past! We’ll be home! Safe and sound, and all of those injuries (mental, emotional, spiritual as well as physical) won’t even so much as be a bad memory!
Any good home is a loving home, where we are accepted and welcome. This is exactly what our Abba Father has provided for us through the LORD JESUS CHRIST!
By the sacrificial LAMB of GOD, the LORD has made us “accepted in the beloved” (EPH 1:3-6, esp. vs. 6). Our worthiness as citizens of heaven has been established solely by the grace of GOD, unearned, undeserved, unwarranted. We will enjoy eternally that citizenship and all of the glorious, spiritual riches heaven can hold, all at the expense of the LORD Jesus Christ and the precious, precious price He paid: His own life!
Remember G.OD’S R.ICHES A.TTRIBUTED at C.HRIST’S E.XPENSE!
GOD created (and those of us who know Him, recreated) us for the purpose of bringing glory to His Name (JOHN 15:8), and for His own pleasure (REV 4:11). It pleases GOD to bestow upon us His creatures, pleasures and delights that far exceed the cheap, paltry, plastic imitation pleasures that Satan wags in front of lost souls, feeding them pig slop when GOD would have them feast on princely sustenance!
And on that day, when the trumpet sounds, and we saints of the church will be miraculously transported from this fallen world to the wondrous family that is there already, we shall have such a reunion as our imaginations could never conceive of!
We will be with our Abba Father, our LORD Jesus, and our Holy Spirit Comforter, along with all the saints, all the angels, in that dazzling domain that puts any fantasy or sci-fi story to utter shame! We then can rest from all our struggles and heartaches, lay down at our LORD’s nail-scarred feet and rest (PSA 23:2-3; REV 1:17). We’ll finally be HOME, FOREVER!! HALLELUJAH!!
And as members of the church of the LORD Jesus Christ, we are also the bride of Christ: May this truth exhort us all to be that “chaste bride” that is growing in sanctification which the LORD is worthy of!
Not according to our own power, but simply yielding to the power of the Holy Spirit Who Alone is The Sanctifier of the Saint’s Fire!
Check out this song by Chris Tomlin!
E.T. was intent on “phone home” so he could leave this strange place called Earth (though he made some friends here) and return to where he belonged.
On the other end of that scale, there is that place called Narnia where the Pevensie children saw incredible wonders and met Aslan and knew a life that they couldn’t have known otherwise. Even when they returned to their home in England, there was a yearning for something more, something better, something that met their longing like nothing of this mundane reality could.
We all have memories of our childhood home, and while for some, these memories are tinged, even marred by some darkness, most of us smile when we think of that place and have fond memories of.
Think about home and what it means: it’s a place of familiarity, of comfort, of loving and caring, a refuge of safety and security. For most of us, it’s the place where father and mother built a life of love together and brought forth children, raised them, taught them, loved them.
In fact, in Hebrew the first and second letter of the alphabet (aleph and beyt) when put together can mean “the leader/father/strength of “the house/dwelling”
GOD created a home for our First Parents (Adam and Eve) in the Garden of Eden. Before GOD ever formed man from the dust of the earth He took more than 5 days to build that home, to make it suitable, comfortable, enjoyable for them. It was a paradise home - - until….
Well, you know the story. The whole thing got perverted when Satan tempted them, Eve and Adam fell, and everything became not “very good” (GEN 1:31). And it’s been pretty much a downhill slide since until today, when anyone who is discerning enough perceives that the principle perpetuity of perdition is nearing paramount proportions (how’s that for alliteration?)!
This world is not a place of familiarity, of comfort, of loving and caring, a refuge of safety and security.
Every day that I’m out and about and see this world, its stark unfamiliarity is striking. I often say, “This is not the America I grew up in!”. Murder is common place these days and hardly anyone bats an eye at it any more. Same goes for adultery and divorce. Children killing/raping children. What passes for entertainment is either flagrantly occultic, New Age, perverse and, or goes against every Law GOD ever made.
And as we know, “life often copies art, and art copies life”.
Since Roe v. Wade was struck down by the Supreme Court more and more States are passing laws that allow women to murder their babies right up to full term: in other words, one minute before or after the baby leaves the womb can determine whether that baby lives or dies!? An innocent child is legally murdered! Just because it’s legal, it doesn’t make it right! Slavery was once legal (and it’s made a comeback too, legal or not!); so was Jewish genocide in Nazi Germany.
And this doesn’t shock anyone any more… It used to be the safest place in the world: inside a mother’s womb (Check out my testimony and the almost aborted baby that I was!). Now, no place is safe. We have a sense that life is beyond our personal control: that globalist entities are now dictating how life on Earth will be lived, without any say so from us.
And the more you know about what’s happening behind the scenes, the more unsafe and endangered you feel. This is not a place to call home.
Thanks to the “Me Generation” altruistic, unconditional caring and loving is quickly becoming a thing of the past. A person is loved based on society’s perceived value of them, and if they have no value, they are aborted, or shoved into a senior citizens home where they are forgotten and left to live out the remainder of their days apart from family. And expect the devaluation of life to become greater as these days proceed!
Is all this making you feel insecure and uncomfortable?
We understand, things are not the way they should be. And like the Pevensie children, we have a deep down gut feeling that if there really isn’t a Narnia ‘out there’ somewhere, well there ought to be! And there's something we can't shake, knowing there is a "home" to belong to, just out of sight, far beyond the reach of our own hands.
I think that to a large degree this is where the appeal of science fiction and fantasy comes in. In these genres, there are worlds and places of fantastical qualities that leave us spellbound, and we look upon our own mundane lives with disdain and wish we could visit Oz, or Narnia, or Middle Earth, or Pandora – what have you…
There is a deep-rooted longing for something ‘other than’ what we are experiencing in the here-and-now world which I refer to as ‘Planet Rebyl’ (this fallen world of sin).
As a Christian, do you find it somewhat odd when a fellow believer talks about heaven, or when you read about this place in Scripture, and that deep seated aching inside of you gets homesick… for a home you’ve never been to?
I suppose it’s the Spirit of GOD that indwells us, that gives us some kind of sense of what heaven is like – in conjunction to what Scripture tells us of this place.
And have you ever considered that even we Christians have no real idea of what living in a sin-free world is going to be like? We’ve been born into an environment of sin and have never known anything but.
Imagine if you and your community were established and raised in a sewer system, and that people were born, lived and died in that environment. If that dank, stinking world is all you ever knew, you’d have no idea what fresh air was like.
But take one person out of that sewer system and let them breath the fresh air above. Then take them to a mountain top and let them experience new heights of freshness!
That’s a very small idea of what it will be like for us, once we leave this space/time domain that has the curse of sin laid upon it and enter through ‘heaven’s portals’ and come face to Face with the LORD.
In that Forever Realm we shall know a place of familiarity, of comfort, of loving and caring, a refuge of safety and security.
We are familiar with the LORD of that place; we know Him, and He knows us. We are on a first name basis with the KING of Glory (REV 3:8,12)! Here we are pilgrims, strangers, aliens (HEB 11:13; 1 PET 2:11) – but there we are citizens of the Kingdom, and we are family (understand that you don’t even know 99.9% of your heavenly family - - yet! But you will!! Are we excited yet??).
Here we suffer “the slings and arrows of outrageous [mis]fortune”. We have bumps, bruises, scars of damage done to us in this dangerous, deceptive, deplorable, destructive domain dominated by the devil (just a bit more alliteration in case you didn’t get enough the first time around)!
We know that there are mishaps, accidents, diseases, disasters, strifes, anxieties and discords here in this world, and on any day of any week we could experience any of these. This has the potential to make us feel downright uncomfortable, worried, apprehensive – which is why we need to understand the sovereignty of GOD and by faith keep our eyes, and minds and hearts on the LORD Jesus and keep them there (ISA 26:3): it’s the only way we will make it through with peace ruling our hearts (COL 3:14-16)!
But once we are in heaven, all such dangers and apprehensions will be a thing of the past! We’ll be home! Safe and sound, and all of those injuries (mental, emotional, spiritual as well as physical) won’t even so much as be a bad memory!
Any good home is a loving home, where we are accepted and welcome. This is exactly what our Abba Father has provided for us through the LORD JESUS CHRIST!
By the sacrificial LAMB of GOD, the LORD has made us “accepted in the beloved” (EPH 1:3-6, esp. vs. 6). Our worthiness as citizens of heaven has been established solely by the grace of GOD, unearned, undeserved, unwarranted. We will enjoy eternally that citizenship and all of the glorious, spiritual riches heaven can hold, all at the expense of the LORD Jesus Christ and the precious, precious price He paid: His own life!
Remember G.OD’S R.ICHES A.TTRIBUTED at C.HRIST’S E.XPENSE!
GOD created (and those of us who know Him, recreated) us for the purpose of bringing glory to His Name (JOHN 15:8), and for His own pleasure (REV 4:11). It pleases GOD to bestow upon us His creatures, pleasures and delights that far exceed the cheap, paltry, plastic imitation pleasures that Satan wags in front of lost souls, feeding them pig slop when GOD would have them feast on princely sustenance!
And on that day, when the trumpet sounds, and we saints of the church will be miraculously transported from this fallen world to the wondrous family that is there already, we shall have such a reunion as our imaginations could never conceive of!
We will be with our Abba Father, our LORD Jesus, and our Holy Spirit Comforter, along with all the saints, all the angels, in that dazzling domain that puts any fantasy or sci-fi story to utter shame! We then can rest from all our struggles and heartaches, lay down at our LORD’s nail-scarred feet and rest (PSA 23:2-3; REV 1:17). We’ll finally be HOME, FOREVER!! HALLELUJAH!!
And as members of the church of the LORD Jesus Christ, we are also the bride of Christ: May this truth exhort us all to be that “chaste bride” that is growing in sanctification which the LORD is worthy of!
Not according to our own power, but simply yielding to the power of the Holy Spirit Who Alone is The Sanctifier of the Saint’s Fire!
Check out this song by Chris Tomlin!
For more on this, check out: Second Star to the Right - - and Straight on til Morning
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