Going Home

A couple of folks at GBC have family members go home this week

You know the way Jesus said it in John 14 about going home?  

"Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.“  John 14:1-3 (NASB) 

People like going home.  It gives them a sense of belonging and a feeling of safety and a place where joy lives and relationships thrive.  Home.  

We are often of the thinking that we are living and moving toward dying.  Howard Hendricks said it well, “We are not in the land of the living headed for the land of the dying. We are in the land of the dying headed for the land of the living.”  That’s right Prof!

When we encounter death we have to have the eternal perspective.  Death is part of the life we are living.  It will be part of our lives as well unless the Lord return before our day.  And if He should bypass that step in our future we are still on our way to the land of the living and going home.  

In talking with His friend, Martha, Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying.”  John 11:25 (NLT)   This was something He thought was important to point out to her at the death of her brother Lazarus.  By way of illustration, Jesus raised Lazarus who believed in Him and Lazarus was indeed alive after dying.  The hold death had on people was beginning to slip.  And when Jesus died and rose to life again He broke the hold for good.  

For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies. Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled: “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power.  But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:53-57 (NLT) 

An experience awaits us all.  An experience of leaving one place that is full of what we think is the biggest part of reality to enter into the place that is the biggest part of reality and there we will be, as those who have gone before us, truly home.