Do you decorate your tent?
“For we know that if the
earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal
house in heaven, not built by human hands.” All that we have on this earth is a
temporary dwelling. We are living in a tent. We are not meant to remain here
forever, only until this world is renewed. So if the earth right now is not a
home, but a tent, why do we decorate our
tent? Do you install mahogany furniture and granite counter tops in a tent?
Do you dress your tent with decoration and ornament? Do you have a room in your
tent that you don’t use? This world in not out home. We shouldn't spend our time buying things for this world.
Think about the American
Dream. Isn't it simply an attempt to
make a tent into a home? Instead of storing up treasure after treasure in
this world, we should store up our treasure in heaven. Your wealth here is
temporary. Which would you rather do: use
your money to feed the guy outside your tent that is starving or use it to
install a new air conditioning system in your tent?
Are we home yet?
Meanwhile we groan, longing
to be clothed instead with our heavenly home, because we know that when we are
clothed in Christ, we will no longer be naked. For while we are in this tent,
we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be naked here without
Christ’s glory. We are waiting for this temporary world to be swallowed up by
the Kingdom of God (Which is already here), where we will reign as kings and priests forever. God has
fashioned for us this purpose, and He has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing
what is to come. Are you homesick? Open
up your life to the Holy Spirit. God has given us the spirit to guide us
home, to comfort us, to help us, and to help others find the way. We should be
absolutely reliant on the spirit, not on our stuff. Is your life dependent on the Spirit? If the Holy Spirit left you,
would anything change?
Therefore, because of the
Spirit—God’s power in us—we are always confident. We know that as long as we
are at home in this body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not
by sight. In a sense, believing is
seeing, not the other way around. I would prefer to be away from this body
and home with the Lord. But I know that God is not done with me here and He has
put me here for a purpose. I am
invincible in this body until God is done with me. So we make it our goal
to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. In the end—which
is really the beginning—we must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so
that each of us may receive what is due us for the good thing done in the body,
whether good or bad. Perhaps the most
sobering thought we can remember is that we will have to give an account of
everything we did with our lives. The
Father will ask us “Child, what did you do with all that I gave you?” Let
me make this clear, what you do or don’t do matters. You are saved by Christ by
no doing of yourself, but your sanctification does not end there. We are to
become like the ones we will be at the end of this world: rulers of this earth once
again, returning to our original purpose (ruling over the earth for the Glory
of the Lord). Are you become the king or queen that the Father would trust to rule
his creation?
Camping Activities
So if we are out here, what
do we do in the meantime? Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we
try to persuade others. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also
plain to your conscience. Do good deeds, so that others might see your life and
praise God. If we are “out of our minds, as some would claim, then we are crazy
for Christ. For Christ’s love compels
us, because we are convinced that “one died for all, and therefore all died.”
He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but
for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no
one from a worldly view. You have never met an ordinary person; each individual
is an eternal being.
If Christianity is true, then
the individual is not only more important than a state, or nation, or
civilization, but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the
life of a state or a civilization, compared with his, is only a moment. –C. S.
Lewis-
Though some regard Christ in the
worldly view, we do not. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, He is a new
creation: the old has gone and the new has come! All this is from God, who
reconciled us through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. We get to take part in God’s renewal of
this world. With the Spirit, we can bring peace, healing, justice, grace,
forgiveness, power, praise, and God’s glory here to this world. We are
therefore Christ’s ambassadors; God is making His appeal to the world through
us! God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, that that we might take part
in the righteousness of God.
In its simplest form: John 3:16.
So let’s live and love as Christ did.
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