SCRIPTURE
Genesis 12:1 Now the Lord said to Abram, Go out from your country and from your family and from your father's house, into the land to which I will be your guide: 2 And I will make of you a great nation, blessing you and making your name great; and you will be a blessing: 3 To them who are good to you will I give blessing, and on him who does you wrong will I put my curse: and you will become a name of blessing to all the families of the earth.
4 So Abram went as the Lord had said to him, and Lot went with him: Abram was seventy-five years old when he went away from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his brother's son, and all their goods and the servants which they had got in Haran, and they went out to go to the land of Canaan.
6 And Abram went through the land till he came to Shechem, to the holy tree of Moreh. At that time, the Canaanites were still living in the land. 7 And the Lord came to Abram, and said, I will give all this land to your seed; then Abram made an altar there to the Lord who had let himself be seen by him. 8 And moving on from there to the mountain on the east of Beth-el, he put up his tent, having Beth-el on the west and Ai on the east: and there he made an altar and gave worship to the name of the Lord.
Hebrews 11:13-16 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.
OBSERVATION
God longs for us to be obedient to him especially when he doesn’t show us all the details of how he is going to accomplish something through us. That’s where faith comes in, if he told us all the details then it wouldn’t be faith.
When I was a kid I would get in the car with my parents and go for a Sunday drive to who knows where but I always knew that we would end up back at the house.
As a child of God we should be traveling light as we pass through this strange land . It is easy to get loaded down with a bunch of stuff and the bills to match. Our countries economic disaster caught a lot of people off guard, its a shame for Christians to live so strapped down that they don't have the resources to help out people in need. There is no way that you can give alms to the poor if you are one.
APPLICATION
I will keep on "longing for a better country—a heavenly one"
PRAYER
Help me Lord to keep my eyes on what you have in store for me in eternity and not on all the things that get us bogged down in this life.
Just a thot’: The Egyptians were always giving their stuff away to Abram and his descendents.
