Find Your True Home

by Max Lucado

The journey home is nice, but the journey is not the goal. I prepared part of this message on an airplane. As I looked around at fellow passengers, I saw content people. Thanks to books, pillows, and crossword puzzles, they passed the time quite nicely. But suppose this announcement were heard: “Ladies and gentlemen, this flight is your final destination. We will never land. Your home is this plane, so enjoy the journey.”

Passengers would become mutineers. We’d take over the cockpit and seek a landing strip. We wouldn’t settle for such an idea. The journey is not the destination. The vessel is not the goal. Those who are content with nothing more than joy in the journey are settling for too little satisfaction. Our hearts tell us there is more to this life than this life. We, like E.T., lift bent fingers to the sky. We may not know where to point, but we know not to call this airplane our home.

In God’s narrative, life on earth is but the beginning: the first letter of the first sentence in the first chapter of the great story God is writing with your life.

Do you feel as if your best years have passed you by? Hogwash. You will do your best work in heaven. Do you regret wasting seasons of life on foolish pursuits? So do I. But we can stop our laments. We have an eternity to make up for lost time. Are you puzzled by the challenges of your days? Then see yourself as an uncut jewel and God as a lapidary. He is polishing you for your place in his kingdom. Your biggest moments lie ahead, on the other side of the grave.

So “seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God” (Col. 3:1 NKJV). Scripture uses a starchy verb here. Zeteo (“seek”) is to “covet earnestly, strive after, to inquire, desire, even require.”

Seek heaven the way a sailor seeks the coast or a pilot seeks the landing strip or a missile seeks heat. Head for home the way a pigeon wings to the nest or the prodigal strode to his papa. “Think only about” it (3:2 NCV). “Keep your mind” on it (3:2 GWT). “Set your sights on the realities of heaven” (3:1 NLT). “Pursue the things over which Christ presides” (3:1 MSG). Obsess yourself with heaven!

From: God’s Story, Your Story Copyright (Zondervan, 2011) Max Lucado