God's Incredible Pledge

 Christians believe we are children of two worlds.  We are of the physical, flesh and blood, mortal world of the cosmos and we are of the spiritual world in which God is covering His people with "a house, not made with hands, eternal in the heaven" (2 Cor. 5:5).  We believe the mortal is a gift from God into which He pours His very life so that even as we dwell today in the world before us, we also dwell in the life of God who at some future moment will work in such a way "that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life" (2 Cor. 5:4).           

I, for one, find this to be exhilarating.  We live in an "earthly tent," experiencing the sense of temporary, moral, broken, and human, a life that can be taken away from any of us at any time.  Yet, we live in this "earthly tent" filled with "the Spirit as a pledge," the Spirit who fills our life with "good courage" (see 2 Cor. 5:1, 5).

Are you living in a spirit of "good cheer?"  Every Monday when I check in for a weekly physical exam just after a radiation treatment, Dr. Moorhouse asks me, "How is your spirit?"  Each week I have truthfully responded, "It's good."  It is good because God is holding me within the embrace of His grace through the abiding presence of His Holy Spirit.

In this "earthly tent" world "we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor. 5:7).  Some times it hurts to live in the world.  Man's inhumanity to man is at epic proportions.  Wars and rumors of war, countless hostilities both physical and political, and suffering of countless kinds are a part of the story of daily living in the world.

Sometimes we might want to run away from it all, but this wouldn't be wise.  Instead, may God help us to live, whether here or in the heaven of which Paul speaks, with a zealous "ambition" (2 Cor. 5:9).  Heaven holds much intrigue for me, I'll be honest; but so does living in a temporal world embraced by grace, energized by God's power, and filled with the Spirit, who is given to us as a "pledge."

Lets leave the future to the God whom we trust with all our heart.  In the mean time, lets pursue life walking by faith, with a passionate ambition to be pleasing to God.