Hebrews 11:16
But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
This past month our squad was in Haiti where almost all of us got sick with a virus called Chikungunya. This resulted in fevers, rashes, severe joint and body aches, and a lot of down time.
I was sick for about a week and it was the first time on the race that I truly desired to go home. But where is home? Traveling the world for the past 10 months, it's easy for me to say that everywhere I have been is not my home. I like places and would even like to go back to a few, but they are just simply not my home. Through this, God has revealed to me that going back to the United States is not truly my home either. I live in one world while representing another.
Philippians 3:20
But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
I began to ponder the life of Jesus the man. Too often we only think about the deity of Jesus and forget that He became an actual human that was totally dependent on the leading of the Holy Spirit. I really started to wonder what Jesus would think about and do all day. Jesus knew that He was from heaven and He thought and acted like it.
When you look at the life of Jesus and even the lives of the prophets, you'll find something in common with them all. They all had this cultivated mindset of desiring God's Presence above everything else in life. They all knew that this was not their home and that they were created for something far greater than the here and now. They were all homesick.
When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray His response was, "…..Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10)." Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks and by His life it shows me that Jesus thought about The Kingdom and was about His Fathers business all the time.
Paul latched on to this mindset and set the tone for the expansion of God's Kingdom. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21 ). Paul lived this verse and didn't regret it one bit. His motto in life was: as long as there is air in these lungs I'm going to give God glory and when I die then that's when I get what I really want, to be in heaven with Jesus.
So many people would instantly throw this mindset aside and discredit it saying that those were the Bible times and this is now. The truth is that we still live in Biblical times as Revelation has still yet to occur fully. God inhabits the praise of His people and He is looking to and fro on the earth looking for someone in which He can move through. A person who desires His Presence above anything else in life. A person who is homesick.
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20 ). What if all of God's children really lived like this and believed God when He said, "Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints" (Psalms 116:15).
When we develop a heavenly mindset it keeps us from being polluted by this world. If we are truly desiring an expansion of God's Kingdom we have to follow in these footsteps. Living from heaven to earth, in the world but not of it, dead to sin and alive to Christ, and on earth as it is in heaven. Truly living as though the unforeseen world around us is superior to the reality we live in.
Jesus lived on earth as it is in heaven and He feasted on this reality. But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about (John 4:32)." The disciples didn't have a clue what Jesus was talking about when He said this. Their flesh was opposed to the reality of The Kingdom. But as we know, they would soon receive The Kingdom Mindset.
As believers we are citizens of heaven, not this earth. We are to be actively living out the truth of this mindset and in order to live this out, we are to bring the qualities of heaven here to earth.
I will be coming back to Texas at the end of next month and I pray that the continued growth of this revelation will not stop. It is a process to cultivate this mindset and its what will lead to a life lived from heaven to earth.
1 Corinthians 2:16 "'For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?' But we have the mind of Christ."
-Robert
Andy Byrd: "We become an unstoppable force when we make full hearted agreement with the culture of heaven and believe God's word."
