by Rev. Carl Haak
Where is your citizenship?Anyone feeling increasingly out of place here on earth . . this world cannot satisfy, it's not our HOME
We sense the difference, the witness of separation, confident in God's Spirit, and His spiritual language affirming the believer's Victory in the Power of Jesus.
In eager expectation of the coming of Jesus Christ, the day of glory IS close. Expectation to be with Him Soon, encourages the reality of the Truth in us, while we sense in the process, being an alien on the earth.
We just don't fit in, . . knowing our Risen Lord affirms where our citizenship is.
The ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven, has sent the Holy Spirit in the believer, faith lived out fully in God's Power of keeping . .
Ascension Day, increasingly (in this greater darkness surrounding us causes our lights to stir increasingly, the coming of Jesus.
He IS gathering the faithful made ready for the rapture, and Reunion!! .
Lord Jesus, now ascended up into heaven forty days after Your resurrection, HE IS our Advocate with the Father, merciful and compassionate, our High Priest.
He is Authority and Ruler over all things among His church!!
He subjects everything to Himself. He rules with purpose in all HIS WAYS . . HE IS GOD, and owns the eternal kingdom, and pledges that we too will go to be with Him.
Because He is in heaven, all those who know Him, who belong to Him shall also be with Him.
Through the ascension of Jesus NOW IN HEAVEN, God declares our citizenship rests IN HIM in Heaven!!
Paul writes: "For our conversation is in heaven;
from whence also we look for the Saviour,
the Lord Jesus Christ:
Who shall change our vile body,
that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body,
according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto himself." . . . Phil. 3:20 and 21 .
Because of His ascension, we KNOW we are now translated from this world of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son.
Feeling like pilgrims and strangers here right now?.
The Head of the body, is the Vine of the branches, ascended on high . . Therefore, we have in Him secured heavenly citizenship. The world is not our home.
"conversation" about our Lord Jesus, builds faith strong to believe IN Jesus, Who is in Heaven, where our citzenship really is.
Speaking the language devoted to Him, we are governed by the laws of Grace, banded together in the cause of Christ and His Heavenly country . .
Our citizenship is in heaven. What a wonder!
Of ourselves we would naturally seek the things here . . .
Heaven, wrapped in light and peace and joy and perfection of our God declares Jesus is there,
the Father 'sees' the saved IN JESUS, and in that land, glorious and fair, consists perfect fellowship with God.
Oh, experience richness beyond compare in love and mercy and grace. Its language is golden, its laws proceed from God's throne and are true and righteous altogether.
Soon, the rapture of Jesus Christ and all of the saints, in Heaven, from glory to glory will be our residence in spirit, soul and body. The Word changes not . . . fixed and eternal.
Our citizenship is in heaven, we hold the title to it.
We have been given an inheritance, a mansion in glory.
Paul writes in Colossians 1:13, We are delivered from the power of darkness
and translated into the kingdom of His dear Son through Jesus Christ, the Savior,
who was given unto those chosen of the Father, sent into the world to take us OUT OF the world,
to perform a transaction,
to release us from the bondage of this world
and to give us an inheritance in the heavens.
Believers, in union with Jesus Christ in the most intimate sense, trust the wonderful love of the Holy Spirit abiding . .
Jesus is in heaven. He ascended there. He has the perfect right to be there. We have the right also of heaven.
In Him we live and move and breathe. Heaven is ours through the ascension of Jesus Christ.
In Jesus Christ we ARE strangers in this world, God's light upon our path while we view this present world as a desert landscape.
We Worship the King in His beauty. We have been told of heaven's lofty peaks and its wonderful, gracious meadows, and we yearn for Jesus, and the fulfillment of that land.
Trusting in Jesus to lead us onward while we're here . . He walks with us,
Escapism?. . No . . we watch with great expectation, our ascended Lord Jesus Christ ready to descend to appear in the air and call His church HOME
While we're here, the world comes at us and says, Make a name for yourself among men. Climb to the top.
Lead us, Lord in the more Perfect Way . . "For the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord . . . "
Agreeing with Paul . . . "The love of Christ constrains us,. His will we desire to do, . . "
The world says to us: Come, join in establishing man's utopia, . . we respond to the army of the cross, to the legions of heaven.
Be it known unto you, O world, that we will not serve your gods; we will not worship the images that you have set up.
For what will it profit us if we gain the whole world and lose our souls"?
We have eternal life, life at God's right hand, in Jesus .
As citizens of heaven. We are under heaven's government. We pray, "Thy will be done." We see heaven's honors, heaven's riches, heaven's pleasures.
in Jesus Christ and in His name we are inscribed in the book of eternal life, in the blood of the Lamb of God, so we live in hope.
That is something that the world hates. They idolize temporal 'fixes' quick to disolve that comes up empty.
Blessed Hope is the expectation of the coming of Jesus Christ, when He shall change our vile body like unto His most glorious body.
Heavenly Hope is confident. It is a yearning, a desire.
We hope and desire for Christ and His coming when we shall receive our glorified bodies, when we shall put off these present pilgrims' garments constantly needing fixing.
We are very frail; lowly, and we cry;and we have sorrow; and we hurt. .
When He comes we will be perfected, transformed. We will be given a body which is able to live in heaven.
We will be given that which is suited for eternal life, where no sin, no dishonor, no corruption enters in.
We shall be shrouded in victory! And it is sure. It is sure because Jesus holds the victory.
His resurrection and His ascension holds all power belonging to the Son. He subdues all things unto Him.
What a glorius HOPE
Belonging to the ascended Lord Jesus Christ, we cry out, Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.