April 3 2018 – Click here to listen
I’ve returned to my new home in Port St. Lucie from Honey Lake Plantation and it sure feels good. After living some 27 years in the same house in Atlanta Georgia we left and for the past two decades have been moving around Florida to include Jacksonville, Islamorada, Honey Lake in Greenville, Sarasota and now Port St. Lucie. While it has been interesting I have longed for a permanent home for some time now.
No More moving!
We are settling in to Port St. Lucie Florida for the duration and Lord willing fully intend on living out the rest of life right here. Making this decision has given me peace. I’ve felt restless as I stayed on the move. Though I haven’t lived here but a couple of months I’ve found a new church that I love; I have a boat and I’m close to the ocean that I love; and have made many new friends. It already feels like a real home.
I don’t like feeling restless like the churning ocean. I prefer stability and knowing that the home I just bought will be the last one I ever buy. I want to get involved in the community and accomplish what I can for the Lord without moving every few years.
I met a pastor this past Sunday who has traveled to every country in the world preaching the Gospel. He is now in his 80’s and still going strong. His schedule would wear out a 30 year old, but he told me after 60 years of traveling the world, he is used to it. I asked him how he could stomach those long international flights and he told me that he has the ability to sleep almost the entire flight. He actually enjoys traveling the world constantly.
I traveled extensively as a businessman and in recent years for the ministry and have racked up a couple of million miles on various airlines. It’s a struggle to me and I don’t like air travel or airports, or hotels, at all anymore. I try to hold it down to essential travel only nowadays and prefer to work out of my home and by phone.
I believe one of the things that the world is most in need of is stability. The uncertainty of the world is chaotic and leaves a void. I believe God instilled in our spirits the desire for certainty. Threats of a stock market collapse, nuclear war, Democrats regaining Congress and the Whitehouse are unsettling and worrisome. We desire stability. It is one reason that we look towards heaven and long for our eternal home of refuge, safe and sound with Jesus with no tears, suffering, or sin; just peace.
Isn’t it interesting that the world was described as chaotic in Genesis prior to God giving it His light? God tells us in the Bible not to worry about Satan’s chaos, but most everyone does. Corruption, injustice, threats of terrorism, nuclear war, earthquakes, hurricanes, it seems everywhere we turn pending disaster is looming. It can rob us of our rest, but God tells us to rest in Him who never changes. God is not a moving target; He is the same today, as yesterday, as He will be 1000 years from now.
Interestingly we don’t have to wait until we see heaven to find rest because God is everywhere, and His love is enveloping us at this very moment. The same God that rules heaven is in the world. We just need to put our faith in Him and relax. We can rest at our temporary homes while our new home is being built in heaven.
Oops! I guess I was wrong. I do have one more move that I will make and that will be to heaven. Okay, that one I’ll go for.
Romans 8:39
. . . neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.