Don’t It Make You Wanna Go Home.

During the week of Christmas 1968 I was working in a cable trench somewhere in Southeast Asia. It was close to 100 degrees, and I was working with a Wisconsin cheese head named Mike. Mike said to me, “Beef, wouldn’t it feel good to lay in a snow bank for about an hour?” It sure would have felt good at that time. Mike and I reminisced about memories of winter and Christmas in the upper Midwest. It left us “longing to go home".

When I got home in the spring of 1969, I realized you never really come home. Things change while you’re gone; people die, trees get cut down, and other things change. Memories of home become distorted over time. The reality of coming home never measures up to our “finally coming home” expectations.

Today we as Christians talk very little about Heaven and the new world to come. Why? Because we have it very good here. God has blessed us but we have sold out for second best, the pattern of this world. Romans 12: 1-2: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.” We may say one thing and believe another; we live grabbing and clutching for everything the world has to offer, yet deep down we know it does not truly satisfy.

We will not truly feel at home until we go to Heaven. The old Negro spiritual was right, “The world is not my home, I’m just passing through.” In this world, we should not feel so comfortable with it that we fail to look forward to our Heavenly home and the new world to come.

The 60’s country music song writer Joe South penned these words, “All God’s children get weary when they roam, don’t it make you wanna go home.” In Hebrews 11, the chapter on the heroes of the faith, it says: “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” (Heb. 11:8-10) and “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. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 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.” (Heb.11:13-16)

Are you weary of roaming? Are you searching for a place of personal peace? Is there a “searching for home” shaped hole in your heart only God can fill? Are you weary? Come home to Jesus.

Come home, come home,You who are weary, come home;Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,Calling, O sinner, come home! (I think I heard this somewhere before.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AirBbS4R7Z0