Who’s ever been camping? Now, I’m not talking about the big, sweet R.V. type of camping. Let me run you through a scenario of events. So you and your family are dropped off with your tent in some remote area that has no bathroom facilities and left without your car. So you are adventuresome (well, some reading this probably are not, but bare with me) and you are going to make the best of this. So a few days pass and supplies are running low. No one's cell phones work, so you can not get ahold of the person to tell them to come back early. This whole "no bathroom" thing is getting to you and you would really like a hot shower. You and your family start to realize that living all together in one room makes you a little testy towards each other. You get ready for bed with a hungry tummy, only to hear thunderstorms in the distance. You try to get comfortable on the rough ground (oh yeah, your air mattresses popped) but start to feel something crawling in your sleeping bag. Scared, you go to turn on your flashlight, but nothing happens. The batteries must be dead. You feel around to check the tent's zip door to realize it has a rip in it. The creepy crawly things must know there is rain coming but you have no way of keeping them out. You notice not only your tummy rumbling, but you are starting to get pretty chilled by the cold night air. All of a sudden, the craziest downpour of rain comes and you start to feel a stream of water trickling down from the top of the tent. There are leaks! This goes on for days. I’m guessing you would be miserable and you would probably want nothing more than to go home?
Do you long for “home”? I’m not talking about your home here right now, I’m talking about your home in Heaven if you have accepted Christ as your Savior. Many of us are so comfortable where we are at, that we don’t give much thought to our home with God. Jesus says in John 14:2, “In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you”. As we just celebrated Easter, we know that Christ died for our sins on the cross and rose from the grave, making a way for us to spend eternity with Him. He paid the ultimate price so that we could have the best gift ever given. Are you excited about that? So many American’s are so materialistic, that we can not imagine life without the comforts we have in our home like were missing in camping story above. In Haiti those "missing" things in the story, are a part of many of their everyday lives. The Christians in Haiti long to be with their father in Heaven to live in their “mansion prepared for them”. So what would your life look like if you were daily looking forward to eternity with Christ? First of all, you would be seeking Him daily. Psalm 63:1, A Psalm of David says, “Oh God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water”. Proverbs 8:17 says, “I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me”. We should pray to Him like it says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “without ceasing”. We also need to be reading His word. Psalm 1:2 says, “But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night”. We also need to be thanking Him for the things He has given us and for who He is. Psalms 95:1-6 says, “O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods, in whose hand are the depths of the earth; The peaks of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for it was He who made it; And His hands formed the dry land. Come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker”. And finally, we should share this good news with others. In Matthew 28:19 it says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations..”. This could be telling your friend about what Jesus has done in your life and what He can do in theirs. It could be telling a relative you love, about the salvation that God wants to offer them. It could even mean you going to Haiti or another continent to tell someone through a translator and with a cup of water, that Jesus loves them and died for them on the cross. Share the good news!
As I drove through the rubble of the 7.0 magnitude earth quake that hit Haiti just over 3 years ago, leaving over a million plus homeless, I was brought to tears. It is absolutely devastating. BUT there is hope! Jesus came to save us, and if we accept this gift, we will have a better home than we can even fathom, waiting for us in Heaven! Just like the Haitians long for this promise, we too also should remember that the things of this world our temporary, including our homes. Do not trust in the comforts of this world (that could be taken from you in a blink of an eye) but stay focused on what God has in store for you and what He wants to do with your life here on earth. C.S. Lewis said, “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most in the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.”
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