Sermon Transcript
Thank you, Darryl. His parents are William and Melissa, and he has a younger brother, Ashwin, and a wonderful family. And in the second service, we’re going to have another one of our outstanding students who is going to be singing as well, and the choir will be back up here as well, the kids choir, for the second service. Well, we’re continuing our series in the book of Philippians, so we’re going to be looking at Philippians chapter 3 today, the tail end of this chapter.
Some of you don’t know my kids, and when my kids were little— they’re, well, they’re all relatively close in age. They were close in age then, they’re still close in age now. That hasn’t changed. We, we got our kids from foster care, and they came to us relatively quickly. We got our oldest son Tate when he was 18 months of age.
4 months later, we got our daughter Raya, who was 18 months. Of age at that time. And then 5 months later, 6 months later, we got a call about a little baby who was 3 days old, CJ. So we had ages 2, 2, and infant in like a 9-month span. It was just crazy.
And so anytime we would go traveling, each of the kids had their own little suitcase and they had their own little bag that they would pack within, their little Batman bag or their little Minnie Mouse bag. And they were always so cute walking through the airport, and people would always enjoy watching them because they all had their stuff. And you watch these little kids kind of fluffing it through and going through security, and they always enjoyed that. There was a trip that I remember taking whenever they were little, and I’m guessing that Tate and Raya were probably 4 years old at the time. Maybe CJ was 2, or they might have been 5 and 3, something like that.
And I went to go visit my grandmothers in the Midwest. My one grandmother, who recently passed, was living in southern Illinois. And then I had my dad’s grandmother, who died a few years ago. She was living in Iowa. So we would fly into St. Louis and we would drive up to Iowa, then drive down to southern Illinois, and then come back to St. Louis and then fly back.
And I was living in Texas at the time. And the kids were little and Shannon wasn’t with me on this particular trip. So it was me and the 3 little kids. And I was meeting my mom and family there. And so I got them to the airport and we did all the things.
We had a great trip. We were gone for several days. Came back to St. Louis, but we encountered some traffic on the way back to St. Louis to the airport to fly back to Texas, and we missed our flight. I’d never missed a flight before or since. I’m usually very prompt about those sort of things.
But we encountered some traffic, and I— so I went up to the ticket counter and arranged with them how to get back to Texas, and it was gonna take several stops along the way if we wanted to get back home. And with little kids, you kinda wonder what this is going to be like, but our kids are all really good travelers. They always have been. So they had their little backpacks and their little suitcases and we get rerouted to a couple different places. I can’t remember honestly all the different places that we went, but all we were interested in is getting back to Texas.
And our last stop before we got back to Waco, Texas was to be DFW, Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. But we had to get back to there. And so the ticket agents were putting us on all these different flights and we had to fly standby each time. So you never know what you’re going to have. So this is a whole day affair and all we’re trying to do is get home.
And the kids did great. We did our best to get off the plane and we’d run to the next gate hoping that there was a spot for us. And of course, if one or two of us got on, that wasn’t going to be good enough. I wasn’t going to leave the kids behind because I’m a good dad, right? That’s what I do.
So we make our way from one place to the other, and then eventually we make it back to Dallas. And I think it was maybe like 9 o’clock at night, and we just have one more flight. And I knew if we could just get back to Dallas at about 9 o’clock, then we could hit about a 10 o’clock flight, and we could just rest easy, get on that plane, and then get back to Waco where we could sleep in our own bed, which is all I really wanted to do at that time and all that the kids really wanted to do. They were getting antsy. I was getting antsy.
We were tired of running around. So we get back to Dallas and we land and we run to the next gate just to see if we’ve made it back in time. And once we’ve realized that we made it back in time and we’re just gonna have one more flight and it’s smooth sailing from here on out, I just let the kids just have some fun there. There weren’t a whole lot of people there at that hour. But people watching our kids must have thought that I was the most detached dad in the world because I was just sitting back and just watching them run up and down.
I was letting them do things that I normally wouldn’t let them do in that kind of a setting because you’re respectful or supposed to be respectful of other parties that are there. But I was— you know what, they’d been clammed up and cooped up the whole time. I was just gonna let them play. And I remember just again thinking, I just want to get home.
When is a time in your life when you’re most interested in getting home? Maybe it’s whenever you’re stuck in traffic or you’ve taken a long car trip, or maybe you’ve been traveling for a while and you’re tired of living out of a suitcase. Or maybe you’re in inclement weather. You’re having to be outside in cold weather or in wet weather or something like that, and you just want to go home. Maybe it’s when you’re at the DMV all day, or maybe it’s when you’re in unpleasant circumstances.
For me, it’s when I’m camping. I’m convinced that the whole purpose of camping is to make a person long for home.
I’ve taken my kids camping a few times and gone camping on some father-son trips with some other dads. And day 1 is always great, right? You’re putting up the tent, you’re excited about it. Day 2 or day 3, you’re starting to smell odors coming from your tent that you can’t quite identify. Everything is wet or muddy.
Dirt and ants are starting to track in. You’re starting to itch. You’re tired of eating over an open fire. The ice in your ice chest is all melted. Things are floating in there, your food, so you have to kind of dry it off before you do anything with it.
You want your own shower. You want your own bed, and you’re just hoping, hoping somebody says, you know what, we could all just go on home. And you’re hoping somebody makes that suggestion, and you’re just counting it down. And Paul says in the book of Philippians, and really throughout a lot of his writings, that that’s an apt illustration of what it’s like for us here living here on the earth. The Bible describes the sense of living in a place temporarily like we are here in this world.
We know that in light of eternity, we’re just here for a moment. And it describes the impermanence of the here and now as if we’re living in tents. And we just take these tents around with us from one place to the other, and we’re just sort of passing through this life. And as we do so, we ask all these questions about life because there are certain things to us that seem like this isn’t the way that home should feel. Something’s not quite right.
Something doesn’t feel right to me. There shouldn’t be violence and war. There shouldn’t be people flying planes into buildings. There shouldn’t be terrorist attacks in places like Paris or the day before in Beirut. There shouldn’t be kids who are separated from their biological parents.
There shouldn’t be an estimated 153 million kids worldwide who grow up without one or both of their parents. There shouldn’t be here in the United States more than 100,000 kids awaiting adoption but not getting adopted. There shouldn’t be incurable diseases, right? There shouldn’t be things like Alzheimer’s and cancer. There shouldn’t be people whose lives are struck down because of accident or disease or hunger.
There shouldn’t be families torn apart by conflict. Husbands and wives shouldn’t leave one another. People shouldn’t go to bed in tears or wake up with dread or anxiety. We just, we all feel that. Right?
And we say home shouldn’t feel this way. And at some level we all understand. On some level we all see the evidence around us that something is wrong. And so Paul is writing here to an audience that is trying to tell them, and he’s trying to tell us, the reason why it doesn’t feel like home is because you’re not home. You’re away from home.
He tells us in chapter 3, verse 20, and this is really the key verse today and of this whole passage. He says our citizenship is where? It’s in heaven. It’s not here. Our citizenship, if you’re a believer in Christ, if you’re a Christ follower, it’s in heaven.
That’s not future tense. That’s present tense. It’s a finished fact. And our citizenship is in heaven and we eagerly await. We eagerly await the return of a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
We can’t wait for that moment. And so Paul says, while you’re here, you’re going to be living as strangers, but never forget that you’re a citizen of someplace else and you’re just here passing through. My dad volunteers his time with a number of agencies, and one of which is he works with a group of people who are interested in becoming US citizens. My dad lives in Houston, in Texas, and I think we have a picture of the citizen class that— yeah, there he is. He’s over here on the right, and this is a recent citizenship class that they had in Houston.
And he helps prepare people to go through the process of becoming US citizens, and he was telling me a little bit about the process, which sounds very, very detailed. Some of you have gone through this process. You’re from other cultures, you’re from other places, and you know the hard work that requires— that is required to become a US citizen. These are individuals who have to fill out this really long form that’s got some complicated words in there, some things that if English is not your native language, you likely need somebody to explain it to you. So that’s one of my dad’s jobs, is he helps explain the form, he helps people to fill it out, he prepares them for the interview with the immigration officer.
You have to have lived here for a while, you have to have a green card, but he prepares them for this conversation with the immigration officer where they have to have an interview with him or her. They have to be able to carry on a conversation in English. You have to be able to take a written test. You have to take a reading test.
You have to be able to answer 10 questions and get 6 out of 10 right that are based on US history or civics. Many questions that you or I may not necessarily know, we’d need to review that. These are people who, once they become US citizens, they never forget it. It’s something that because they’ve put in such time and such work. Well, here’s the deal.
Paul is saying you’ve become citizens of the world. And yet whenever you become a follower of Christ, your citizenship is in heaven. And unlike these people who worked really, really hard, unlike some of you who’ve worked really, really hard to become a US citizen, you didn’t have to do anything to become a citizen of heaven except put your hope and your trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. And yet so many of us forget about our citizenship because we’re here on the earth. And Paul says, I don’t ever want you to forget about it.
Our citizenship is in heaven. And while you’re here, your perspective as a citizen should be different than as a citizen of the world. So I want to talk about that today. We’re gonna look at chapter 3.
We’re gonna start in verse 12. Pastor Dave preached last week out of verses 12 to 16, but I just want to backtrack a little bit ahead of my original text, which was gonna start at verse 17. I wanna go back a little bit because Paul here describes for us as citizens of heaven, if that describes you, if that describes me as a follower of Christ, there are certain characteristics, certain things that help us to understand how we should live here on the earth while we get ready for our heavenly reward. And in verse 12, Paul says, not that I have already attained, obtained all this. What is he talking about?
All of his accomplishments, his goal, of knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection. And he’s accomplished a lot of things and he has all these achievements and his pedigree. And Paul’s saying, listen, I haven’t achieved my ultimate goal of knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection. I haven’t achieved that yet. And I haven’t already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. What is Paul saying there? He’s saying, as a citizen of heaven, one thing that I do is I forget what is behind and I strain for what lies ahead. And he uses the imagery here of a runner racing. And if you’ve ever watched a race, you know that if a runner turns even just for a moment and looks behind them, that they have the potential to lose the race in that one moment.
And Paul is saying, the one thing I never do is look back. The one thing I never do as a citizen of heaven is look back. I don’t look back at my past achievements. I don’t look at my past accomplishments. I’m only focused on what is ahead.
Because if I turn my head even for a moment to get distracted while being here on the earth, I will lose my focus. I will lose my purpose. I will lose my mission. And the Bible is filled with warnings about the dangers of looking back, of turning back. You know the story of Lot, the book of Genesis, where God says he’s going to destroy the city, so start running and don’t look back.
And as they start running, Lot’s wife turns and she looks back. There’s something she loved about the city, and she was destroyed in that moment. The book of Luke, there are accounts of people coming up to Jesus who have all these different desires to follow him, and yet they have other things that they want to do first. And Jesus says, listen, whoever puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God. Do not look back.
And the Judaizers, the people that Paul talks about earlier in this chapter, people who were wanting to go back to the laws of Moses to be able to add to. So it’s not just salvation by grace, but it’s salvation by what you do, salvation by effort. And they’re wanting to go back. They’re living in the past tense and they’re saying, Paul, if you do this and this and this, you can be perfect. And Paul is saying, I’ve done all those things.
I’ve done it. And yet I’m still in progress here. I have not yet reached my goal of knowing Christ. That doesn’t make me any more perfect by doing a list of things. I’m not going back to the law.
And the message for you and I is that our eyes should be fixed straight ahead as a runner racing towards the goal. And the goal is our heavenly reward. The goal is being reunited with Christ, and yet some of us get so comfortable here and we get distracted. And Paul is saying, don’t get distracted. Forget what is behind, strain for what is ahead.
And then he tells us in verse 17, he says, join together in following my example, brothers and sisters. And just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. Verse 18, for as I’ve often told you before, And now I’ll tell you again, even with tears, many, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction. Their god is their stomach.
Their glory is in their shame, and their mind is set on earthly things. He’s saying, not only do I want you to forget what is behind and strain for what is ahead, but I also want you to follow only those who live with an eternal perspective. You see, there are 2 kinds of people in this world. 2 kinds of people in this room: those who live with a heavenly perspective, a future perspective, those who live with an earthly perspective or a worldly perspective. And Paul is saying we all follow somebody.
We all model our lives after somebody. We all pattern our lives after somebody. And the word he uses there for the model that we have shown you is the word that you would use for pattern. Follow my pattern. If you saw my wife and I at family fun night, she was working on a costume because it was international night.
She said, hey, you’re gonna be a taco. Okay, I’ll be a taco. And she wanted to be hot sauce because, well, she’s hot sauce, and so that’s who she is. And so she made her costume, and the night before family fun night, she spent a couple hours on the floor because, gosh, she didn’t have anything else to do, if you know her at all. No, of course she had a ton of things to do, but she still did this.
And she was looking back and forth at this pattern of how to make a Tabasco sauce label. And in fact, she was posting on Facebook, she had written it wrong, and it said that she wanted to be tobacco for family fun night. And I thought, well, that’ll be fun, right? Of course, pastor’s wife dressed as tobacco, but she meant Tabasco. And she was following a pattern.
She was looking at the pattern again and again and again to make sure that she had it right. And that’s the idea that Paul is saying here. I want you to watch what we’re doing. And I want you to follow the pattern that we’re setting for you because Paul is saying, listen, he’s already— this sounds very, very arrogant. Hey, follow my example, follow my lead, do what I’m doing.
But he’s already said he hasn’t already arrived at his goal. He’s still in process here, but he’s saying, I am being intentional about focusing ahead the way that the Lord would have us to. And so I want you to follow only those like myself, maybe like Timothy or Epaphroditus, who we heard about earlier in chapter 2. Live, follow those who live with an eternal perspective because there are people among us who do not live that way. There are people of this world who make it seem like this world is all that there is and that there’s nothing beyond this.
And they’re not understanding that our citizenship is somewhere else.
In fact, Paul goes on to describe them as enemies of the cross of Christ. And I’ll be honest with you, I spent a lot of time I’ve spent a lot of time the last couple weeks trying to figure out exactly, specifically who these enemies are because he doesn’t identify them by name. It could be earlier in the chapter, he could be talking about the Judaizers. Verse 2, he calls them dogs, mutilators of the flesh, people who put confidence in their own accomplishments. He could be talking about them.
He could be talking about people who don’t add to the gospel but they take away from it and feel like, hey, it doesn’t matter how we live. They’re libertarians. They’re libertines. Perhaps they were the enemies of the cross of Christ. And what I keep coming back to in every commentary I’ve seen, and I’ve just prayed about it and I’ve wrestled with it, is that ultimately we can only go based on his description of who these enemies of the cross are.
But these are not pagans or outsiders. I’ve arrived at the conclusion that he’s not talking about people from the outside. He’s talking about people who talk like followers, but they walk as enemies of the cross. And I keep looking for a third option here. I keep looking for— okay, well, you have those who are citizens of heaven and you have those who walk as enemies of the cross.
What’s this third option? Because most of us would say, well, I don’t think about heaven all the time, but I’m not an enemy of the cross.
And I keep looking for that third option and it’s not there. So we have to go based on Paul’s description. An enemy of the cross It’s somebody who again may talk like a follower, but they walk— their pattern is completely different. They love the things here of this earth. And by their lifestyle, by our lifestyle, we demonstrate where our loyalties truly lie.
And he’s saying they’re living, you are living as an enemy of the cross in such a way that we are taking the greatest display of God’s love, the cross, And we’re living as if it’s no big deal. We take it for granted. And we would say, well, that doesn’t mean that I’m an enemy. If I was to say, how many of you are an enemy of the cross this morning, an enemy of Jesus Christ? Nobody raises their hand.
Nobody admits to that. And yet Paul says there are many who live this way. They talk one way, but they live a completely different way. And we’re just looking at the fruit of that person’s life. And by your life, you’re living as an enemy of the cross.
And then he goes on to describe them here. He says their god is their stomach. What does that mean? Well, it just— he’s not talking about the food that they eat. He’s saying that all they’re concerned about are their appetites.
What feels good to them. Pleasure of this life. All they’re interested in is stuff here in this world. Whatever they can experience. If it feels good, they’re going to do it.
They’re going to experience it. And nobody can stop them from that. That’s their god.
He’s saying they glory in their shame, meaning that they boast about, they brag about things that they should be ashamed of.
Their mind is set on earthly things, not on heavenly things. They never think about eternity. They never think about their actions in light of the fact that we’re just here for a moment and we’re going to spend eternity someplace and that our actions have consequences. Enemies of the cross don’t think about such things. And this brought Paul to tears.
It’s tragic. We use that word tragic a lot to describe certain things that very often are not very tragic. I remember watching a couple football games yesterday. I went to the University of Baylor and they had their football game against OU. And you hear people posting on Facebook or on TV talking about how tragic it is that they— listen, that’s not tragic.
Okay, people talk about Starbucks using these red cups or something like that and how tragic that is that Starbucks doesn’t support Christmas. Although again, I still haven’t totally figured out that whole argument. Listen, those things aren’t tragic. What’s tragic is somebody who lives here on the earth thinking that this is all that there is and they’re missing it. Somebody who’s running a race and thinks that they’re going to cross the finish line and achieve their goal because they prayed a prayer at one time.
Or because they got baptized, or because they’re religious or moral and do more good things than bad things, or because they had parents who were followers of Christ, and so therefore they must have been born into this. And this brought Paul to tears, that somebody would take the love of God and so thumb their nose at it. Yet how often do you and I do that? We just take it for granted. And Paul is saying, when you do that, you live as an enemy of the cross.
If you’re a follower of Christ, brothers and sisters, your citizenship is in heaven. So follow only those who live with an eternal perspective and realize that this world is not all there is. He then goes on, verse 20. He says, our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 21, who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control Will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
One thing that a citizen of heaven does is they eagerly await the return of Christ. They eagerly await this.
When you’re away from loved ones for, for a period of time, you count down the days and the hours that you, you’re gonna be with this person or these people. Why? Because that’s what you do when you love somebody.
You can’t wait to see their face. You can’t wait to be with them. And that’s how it is to be for us with God. And yet we make such a home for us here on the earth that we just sort of settle in and we fall in love with just being here. That the idea of actually being with Christ for many of us doesn’t appeal to us at all.
I’d rather be here. I don’t want to be up in heaven playing a harp. I don’t want to be in heaven floating on a cloud. And this is a complete misunderstanding of what heaven is, of course. Because what happens in heaven?
He tells us in verse 21. First of all, he transforms— God transforms our lowly body. He transforms us. No disease. No sickness.
New bodies. Free from sin. Isn’t that great news? Never getting tired. He transforms us.
This is not some experience that’s just a little bit like earth and maybe a little bit better. Earth can’t compete with that. He also says that God will bring all things in submission to himself. He will subject all things to himself. And he will rule and reign over all, even his enemies, who will subject themselves to him at the name of Jesus.
Every knee bows, every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord. And there is unending joy in heaven that is beyond anything that this world could offer, and yet I kind of like it here.
And we have to remember our citizenship is in heaven. We don’t belong here. If you’re a follower of Christ, you don’t belong here. You’re just here for a moment. If you think about the span of eternity, we’re just here for a moment.
So why do we make the certain choices that we do to invest in the here and now when in the light of eternity, what do those things really matter? Honestly, you and I don’t think about heaven all that often. I don’t know if you’ve even thought about it maybe in the last week or so, or you think about the return of Christ. You maybe haven’t thought about it in the last week or so. Paul was consumed with this.
To live is Christ, to die is gain. He couldn’t wait. All of his life was a preparation for that moment. Yet, you and I would rather be here.
A citizen of heaven eagerly awaits the return of Christ. Then he gives us one more characteristic and essential for living as a citizen of heaven. Chapter 4, verse 1. It’s interesting that they divided and put this in verse 1. It really is the conclusion of chapter 3.
But it says, therefore. So in light of all that he’s just said, therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm. Stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends. He’s saying, I want you to stand firm in the faith. That term stand firm is a military term which means to stand your post.
You may have seen pictures of the police or the army in Paris recently of them standing their post, standing their ground, on the alert, ready for attack, ready for whatever’s next. And Paul is saying, Philippians, I know all that you’ve been through. Chapter 1, he talks about the suffering that they’ve gone through, the persecution that some of them have experienced. Chapter 2, he talks in Philippians about the selfish ambition and the vain conceit with which many of them live. They’re not of the same mind.
They’re fighting against each other. They’re grumbling. They’re complaining. They’re dealing with internal strife, as we’ll see next week. There’s some things within the church itself, some people that are creating these factions.
There are people who are losing their joy. They’re losing their sense of purpose. They’re dealing with enemies of the cross. There are people who are worried and anxious, as we’ll see in a couple verses in chapter 4. And Paul is saying, in light of all that stuff, Church, stand firm in light of whatever you’re going through right now.
And we could all share stories. We could pass around the mic and we could share stories of whatever trial you’re going through right now, whatever circumstance that you’re just feeling beat down by. And Paul would say, stand firm in light of eternity. Stand firm in your faith. Don’t waver.
Don’t turn your head. Recognize that there will be moments here that just make you groan and they make you inwardly long for home. And you need to know that this world is not all that there is. Stand firm. It’s interesting, you talk to counselors or therapists sometimes and they always want to go back to the past.
Tell me about what happened in the past. Tell me about your relationship with your father, your mother. Tell me about the past. And they always want to look back. And Paul’s saying, don’t look back, look ahead.
Are there certain things I do because of my past? Absolutely. But Paul is saying there’s more that I do because of what lies ahead. There’s more that I do because of what’s in my future.
See, you and I have a disease. I shared a couple weeks ago whenever I talked about selfish ambition, I talked about the disease that we all share. You remember that? We all have an I problem. Not this eye, the letter I.
We all have an I problem. I have another chronic disease that we all experience that I just want to remind us about that I think Paul would agree with, and that’s we have eternity amnesia. Eternity amnesia. We forget that we were made for eternity.
We experience things here on the earth that just cause us despair and discouragement, and Paul is saying you need to be encouraged. There’s better days ahead.
Followers, our citizenship is in heaven. And so the bottom line of all of these verses, the summary of all of these verses together, is to live today in light of forever. Live today in light of forever. The choices that you make today have consequences in the future. So think about the things that you invest your time in right now as a parent.
As a retired person, as a single individual, as a person who works, or whatever your role is, as a student, whatever your role, and you think about all the choices that you make and everything that you do during a day, how much of what you do or don’t do makes any difference in eternity?
Paul would say, view everything you do through the perspective of forever.
Because doesn’t that change your perspective when you realize what I’m going through is just light and momentary? Boy, Shannon and I have gone through things in the last 4 or 5 years that we could just tell all kinds of stories. A lot of it’s just related to home life and things that we just continue to struggle with as parents and how God wants to just make us more like his Son all the time, make us more Christlike. And yet, as we wait, what that’s going to be like. We struggle here and we deal with things and we just have to remind ourselves.
I remind myself all the time, this is all light and momentary compared to what eternity is going to be like. So what are you doing that is making any kind of impact in terms of eternity? What choices are you making that have any bearing on eternity? That’s one question. The other question is this, where is your citizenship?
Your citizenship can be in only one of two places. It’s either in heaven, if you’ve placed your hope and your trust in Jesus Christ alone, or it’s in this world, in which case you’re living as an enemy of the cross.
And your destiny, as Paul says here, is destruction. He’s talking about hell. He’s not talking about at the end of your life. You won’t remember anything else. He’s talking about you, the fact that you live for eternity somewhere.
And if you reject Jesus, and if you reject having him in your life, and you for whatever reason say, I’m not gonna live for him, I don’t need that, then your destiny is not in heaven. It’s in hell, in eternal separation. I don’t like talking about hell. Sounds judgmental, sounds critical, and yet that’s what scripture teaches us again and again and again. Hell is a real place, and you and I were not made for hell.
God desires for you to become a citizen of heaven, all of us, and you simply do that by saying, Jesus, I believe that what you did for me on the cross is enough to save me. And I’m not trusting in myself, I’m not trusting in what I can do to become a citizen of heaven, I’m only trusting in your grace alone. And if that’s you today, you can make that choice today and your citizenship will be in heaven. By just simply confessing to the Lord that you want to follow him.
So in light of eternity, live today in light of forever. Be encouraged today. That this world is not all there is. Let’s pray.
Father, I want to confess to you that I don’t always remember that eternity lies ahead of us, and so therefore I make certain choices have certain desires here that reflect being at home here, when I know that you don’t want us to ever feel like we’re at home here because this world is not our home.
I pray that you would help those of us that deal with eternity amnesia to never forget that we were made for eternity. And I pray, God, oh Lord, I just ask that you would take every person here And remind us not only of eternity, but I pray that anyone who does not follow you, that they would put their hope and their trust for salvation and for eternity and for heaven in you today.
Holy Spirit, draw people to yourself.
Thank you, Father, for those of us who trust you. For salvation. We realize we’re going to heaven not because of something we’ve done, but because of the gift of your Son Jesus. May we never boast in anything except in the cross of Christ and in your grace.
May we eagerly await the return of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. May we set our eyes forward. Whatever trials that we deal with here on the earth, may we set them aside, realizing that they’re light and momentary. That as we live in these earthly tents, these impermanent dwellings that are just simply a preparation for what’s to come, may we stand firm in the faith. May we follow the pattern of those around us who live for eternity.
May we live today in light of forever. May your Son Jesus be glorified. It’s in his name that we pray. Amen. Amen.
Thank you for your time and attention today. I’m gonna be over on the side and available to pray with anybody that would love to pray. I do encourage you to come by and say hello to Rich and Sue and to pray with them and encourage them. They know— Rich and Sue, I was just thinking as you were sharing that you guys must know what it’s like to be aliens and strangers as you’ve lived in all these different places and you experienced just what it’s like to be in these different cultures. So thank you guys for being here today.
Come by and say hello to them. Let me know if I can pray for you in any way. God bless.
