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The Love of Home
By Ron McGatlin
I’ve always somewhat felt like I missed something when around people who had grown up and spent their lives in one place that was a true home to them. Some people actually were born and died in one house in one town in one place. Some others may have lived in different dwellings but always is the same town among the same people all their lives.
They had school friends that were friends all their lives. They played sports together and made many memories of fun times, romances, and eventually marriages and families all in the same area amongst the same people. No matter where they might travel, they always knew that they had a home town and life-long friends to come home to. Truly, for them the old saying of there is no place like home has strong meaning.
For me it seems the old saying of “wherever I hang my hat is my home” is truer as far as this life on earth is concerned. Perhaps some of you know what I am talking about when I say that my life became a journey of great change and transition.
When I became a born again Christian, suddenly my whole world changed; all of my friends and family changed toward me. There became a distance with my friends and family. I found a home in a church with real feelings of home and family. It was somewhat of a shock when I could no longer be at home there. The Holy Spirit had sovereignly came upon me, and I was baptized with the Holy Spirit while sitting on a creek bank alone one day. Though I told no one at the time, soon I was separated from my home at church.
This journey has continued as God has taken me to higher places and greater things in His presence. As each new layer of restored truth and life came to me I again and again lost close friendships with different sets of friends, family, and associates. The continuing decision was always there to either settle to keep closeness with friends and family or to go on with God into heavenly places and lose again close relationships with the current set of friends, family, and associates. It always has been a “no contest” for me. I’ve always desired more of God and growing in heavenly things above anything else in this life. God has greatly blessed me with His life and fresh revelation in layers of the restoration of the kingdom of God on earth.
I have come to realize that by far, I have gotten the best deal with God. At the same time I have come to so greatly value the real fellowship and oneness with others who are also making this journey into the heavenly life on earth now as well as the soon coming life in heaven.
My Earthly Homes Have Disappeared
The quaint places of home where I grew up have all become big cities with tall buildings and thousands of people rushing about and for the most part ignoring God and His great love and plans for them and His world.
The last general identity of home that I had was the nation of the United States of America. I no longer can truly feel the sense of being at home in the USA. It has become somewhat like a foreign land. The overall general acceptance of life in God and His ways has become so dull and ungodliness has become so ingrained in society that it cannot feel like home anymore.
My American homeland was a good land. A land where freedom reigned and babies were born to a home with a mother and a father. Abortion was basically unknown, and life was greatly valued. If a child was born out of wedlock that was an abnormal thing. People did not always do right, but they did know right from wrong and knew when they were doing wrong.
Patriotism was a very good thing, and men and women loved their country and were willing to fight to preserve their families and the way of life in freedom. Most people went to a church and almost everyone at least believed that they were Christians. Even the criminals and bad guys had some respect for the church and its leaders.
Business was often done with just an agreement and a handshake. Children could play outside all around the neighborhood without fear. Many homes were never locked. If a neighbor family got in trouble with sickness or whatever, all the neighbors pitched in to help them get back on their feet.
Policemen were your friends, and the military was greatly respected. Illegal drugs were nonexistent in most of the country except in some rough parts of big cities. Even in much of the nation you could not buy alcohol. Like many others across the country, Denton County in Texas where I did a lot of my growing up was a “dry county” where alcohol was not for sale.
A double feature western movie cost a quarter (25 cents) and was the wildest thing available. In the western movies the hero was a good guy and wore a big white hat while the bad guys were mean and always wore black hats. In other words you could always tell the difference between good and bad back then.
God truly blessed the nation. Many devout missionaries sacrificed their comfortable lives to go into all the world to tell the people about Christ Jesus the savior.
I could go on but you get the idea that for all its imperfections, the United States of America stood for what was right and always stood ready to help the oppressed and put down tyranny. Many people around the world wanted to come to the USA to live in freedom and to prosper.
This nation was my last semblance of a natural earthly home that no longer exists. I guess that I just do not feel fully at home in this world any more.
HOWEVER, AT THE SAME TIME I HAVE A GREATER SENSE OF HOME THAN EVER BEFORE IN MY LIFE.
Yes, I have discovered that heaven is my only real home. However, I do not have to die and go to heaven to experience it, as most of us have been trained to believe.
GOD’S PLAN IS NOW AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN TO BRING HEAVEN TO EARTH. Planet Earth is to be a colony of Heaven with all the benefits of the perfect rule of God on earth as it is in heaven. A land ruled by the love, righteousness, peace, and joy of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven.
I am at home in His presence wherever I am, especially gathered in our “living room” with others on this same journey that love God with all their hearts.
Like a nation’s embassy in a foreign land actually is a part of the nation that it represents, so it is that our homes can become an embassy of heaven. Eventually the whole nation can become a colony of heaven. Our homes can actually become an embassy of heaven and the beginnings of a colony of heaven on earth.
THIS IS THE REAL HOPE FOR THE USA AND THIS WORLD.
GOD’S LOVE HAS NEVER LEFT US, AND HIS MERCY ENDURES FOREVER.
Much more than longing to go to heaven, there is an all-consuming desire for the manifest presence of God to fill our hearts and lives in our gatherings and in our daily lives. This is heaven come to earth, experiencing the ecstasy of His presence within and among us. To walk in the presence of God by His Spirit until it becomes our life breath filling our every moment from heartbeat to heartbeat with life from heaven on earth.
LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! FILLING OUR LIVES WITH POWER AND WISDOM TO BECOME THE PURE SEED OF GOD TO CHANGE THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD.
This is that for which we have left our homes and homelands, laid aside life in the world systems of the past, and as Paul said, counted them as valueless in comparison with knowing Christ Jesus.
Whatever was great about our lives of the past is becoming of little or no value in comparison to what God has for us in His manifest presence now and forever.
But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowing of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ (Philippians 3:7-8).
God does not desire to restore our nations to what they were in the past. God desires a whole new world of new nations functioning as colonies of heaven on earth, bearing all the ways of heaven on earth, much as He designed for man in the Garden of Eden.
Literally the plan and work of God in Christ Jesus is the kingdom of heaven on earth fully ruling and operating in the manifest presence of God within and among His people on earth, literally the glory of God filling all the earth.
Now in this day God desires to establish your life and your place of abode into His sanctuary in the order of the Garden of Eden. Gather with those of like precious faith in your homes. Make your space a place where God and His people want to be, and pray for the kingdom of heaven to bring forth the New Jerusalem, Garden of Eden life experience. Let His Spirit and His love fill your hearts, and simply follow the leading of the Spirit of God. In this life and presence of God and with His people, we truly find our true home on earth, the living embassy of heaven on earth.
John 14:18-20: I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. 19 “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. 20 At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.
Christ in you the hope of glory.
Ron McGatlin
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mailto:basileia@earthlink.net -
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