Week 7 Day 2
Pray:
Ask God to reorient you to Himself. Confess any known sin. Thank Him for His forgiveness. Be still and reflect on Jesus and His sacrifice for you. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart and mind to God’s Word. Pray for others in your life that they, too, would know and love God today.
Read:
Hebrews 11:13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country — a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
Reflect:
You do not have to travel to a different country to experience a different culture. You can live in the same city you were born in and still be a stranger there. On the other hand, you can travel to a different country, where the language is not the same, the food and smells are different. Yet you can feel like you are home, like the people there are your people. How can this be? It is because Christians are citizens of the same country. They serve a common King and live with a common purpose. They speak the same heart language: the gospel. When Christians encounter other Christians even though they have nothing external in common—no common language, no common culture—they find they are brothers and sisters. They find that they are both strangers and aliens on earth. To admit that you are a stranger and alien on earth does not imply that you do not love your country or the earth. The opposite is true: those who have been made citizens of heaven through the gospel make the best citizens of their temporary countries. They do not have to desperately get everything from this life because this life is not everything to them. If you fail to see yourself as a stranger here on earth, you are not seeing yourself correctly. If you have “settled in” and made yourself completely at home, you are “settling” for far less than you are an heir to. You are an heir to a “far country.” This is not your home. Because of your eternal citizenship, you do not have to despair that your temporary home does not fully satisfy. “Meanwhile,” Paul wrote, we “groan” longing for our heavenly home. Even in the best of times here, our hearts long for more. Not more money, or more friends, or more pleasure, or more of anything this country offers, though we are often fooled into believing those things are what will satisfy. We long for more of what we were made for: the fullness of God’s presence. Close the gap today on seeing more clearly where your citizenship truly lies. Reflect on what has not satisfied you. Reflect on what has.
Pray:
(Personalize this prayer today; make it specific to the circumstances that face you.)
Ask God to lead you through His Spirit as you go through your day. Ask Him to bring to mind the truth of the gospel and its implications for what you will encounter today. Tell Him “Yes” to His will and ask Him for His power and protection to live this “yes.” Ask God to create and reveal opportunities to proclaim the good news today.