At Home with God

May 20, 1995

John 14:23

As you probably have heard me say before, when I was a little boy my parents were song evangelists. We literally lived out of suitcases, on the road at least 36 weeks a year. Our "home" was simply the address of an aunt and uncle in Lansing, Michigan.

I guess I didn't think of traveling all the time as strange because it was the only life I knew. I think I felt sorry for other kids who didn't get to see new things all the time. But at the same time I looked with great longing at houses, homes, permanent places to live. How I looked forward to coming back to Lansing to be with aunts and uncles and cousins by the dozens! How I valued that aunt and uncle's home!

Still I think I learned something very early in my life that applies to this scripture lesson today. It is good— best perhaps— to have a sense of place and permanence. But being "at home" finally is a people matter. When we did not have any permanent house whatsoever when I was with father and mother I was "at home." Their security was my security. Their peace was my peace. Occasionally, their discontent was mine, too— for while they were people of integrity they weren't perfect.

That first lesson, then, was where the people you love and trust are— _there_ is home, at least in the sense of security for the child.

Later, when circumstances made it necessary for my parents to leave the itinerant ministry, our first-ever house of our own was a bungalow at 610 South Magnolia in Lansing— you know— two blocks over from Hayford Street. I had a room that was mine, and I slept in the same bed every night, and could have my own closet and my own pictures on the wall. It was far from heaven. But there I had my family, and I had a sense of permanence as well.

I know it is a stretch of imagination to apply this homely and personal understanding of what it means to be "at home" with God, but the facts somehow seem similar:

The reality is that we are not yet at home. [The choir has sung "I Feel Like Traveling On" because "This world is not my home, I'm just a-passing through..."] The promise of Jesus early on in this great passage is that in the place where he lives are many dwelling places, and that he has gone to prepare a place for us so we can be where he is permanently. The passage from Revelation is not so much descriptive, to my literary understanding, as suggestive of a glorious reality that transcends everything we know now.

But the reality also is that God Almighty, YHWH— the Father, Son and Holy Spirit want to be "at home" with us while we travel towards home. This kind of being at home with God isn't the final word on glory or fulfillment or permanence. We are not yet what we are going to be. But if in fact God is wi-i-i-i-ith us!! as the choir sang last Sunday night and Tom Waltermire has been TRYING to sing all week— if God is with us on the road, and we are at home in him— then we need to make sure this has happened in a personal way in each of our lives.

"IF YOU LOVE ME," said Jesus, "YOU WILL OBEY ME, AND THE FATHER WILL LOVE YOU, AND WE WILL COME TO YOU AND TAKE UP PERMANENT RESIDENCE IN YOU."

God not only WITH us— God not only WATCHING OUT for us— God not only SAVING US FROM SIN— BUT GOD AT HOME IN US WHILE WE ARE ON THE WAY! A WORKING DESCRIPTION OF WHAT WE CALL "HOLINESS!" How do we go about making God at home in us??

Love is the key.

Love is not a feeling, but a centering, an act of will and covenant.

In the case of humans there is a submission to covenant.

In the case of divine-human relationship God is always right.

He accommodates our weakness but cannot compromise dishonesty or selfishness so he must be obeyed, but obeyed because of trust/love.

The everlasting "YEA" is the doorway to everything of significance in the kingdom of God. You know whether or not you have come to the place in your walk with God where you have deliberately said "yes!!!!YES!!! Y E S!!!!!" to God for time and for eternity!

That is the place where God moves in to make Himself at home.