Is Home Really Where the Heart Is?

Is Home Really Where the Heart Is?
By Rev. Robert P. Elkins
All Scripture verse taken from the NIV Bible unless otherwise noted
John 3:3 “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again”.

What is in the human nature that is such a powerful force to draw us to the place we call home? We see storm ravaged areas, places where hurricanes blow in almost on a yearly basis and cause such destruction and havoc that it is unconceivable to think anyone would want to live there. In a 14-month period, from the start of the hurricane season of 2004 until the end of 2005 the state of Florida was hit with no less than 8 hurricanes and each seemed to grow in intensity and destructive force. Why would anyone want to live there if on a yearly basis you know in an instant your home and everything you own could be blown to the four corners of the earth never to be seen again?

Look at the people of California, every year they face the fear of earthquakes, mudslides and forest fires that consume everything in their path. Homes, businesses, entire communities left as nothing but charred ash and yet the people keep rebuilding in the same exact location knowing it can happen again with-in a matter of years. In the hills of California as soon as the brush grows in the potential is there for another fire. And then there are the mudslides. Why in the world would anyone want to build a home in a location where half a mountain is going to turn into a huge moving mass that carries everything in its path to the floor of the valley below with nothing on the face of the earth able to stop it just because it rained a little to much?

The middle of our nation, tornado alley. Ominous black funnels of swirling winds that shred homes and everything else in their path like cabbage going through a food processor. Winds that throw things for miles and miles away from where they first started. Cars have been known to be sucked up into a tornado and deposited miles away in a crumbled heap. And yet every so often one side of a street will be destroyed and the other side is untouched. Isn’t God amazing?
Look at the area in which I live, the northeast of this country. Freezing cold temperatures, ice and snow that makes travel dangerous, staying warm really hard and should you be trapped outside for any length of time death can and on occasion occur. The only good thing I can say about the snow we experience, it will melt at some time. No matter how deep it gets and where I live that can be mighty deep, give it enough time and it will melt. Maybe not until almost the end of May but it does eventually melt.

Pouring rain, punishing winds, scorching heat, freezing cold uncontrollable flooding, earthquakes, title waves, blinding sandstorms, avalanches and drought. Whatever the weather, whatever the terrain, whatever the elevation level of danger, it doesn’t matter. If this is where man wants to live then they are going to call it home no matter what! About the only place on the face of the earth that man doesn’t live on a regular basis is at the South Pole and that’s because in the summer it goes up to about 20 below zero and in the winter it plunges to 90 below with 100mph winds. But there are men and women looking at it down there too, why I can’t tell you, but they are. If you want to put in a garden down there the only thing you can grow is snow cones!

And then there is another thing that draws us to the places we call home. We want to be where we were raised or grew up. We want to be where our family roots are, where dad and mom are. We want to be where our friends are, where employment is or where the opportunity for recreation is. With the advent of our transportation means and the way we are able to communicate with each other we ignore the disadvantages of climate or geographical and move to locations that we would have never dreamed of in years past. And sadly with the advent of transportation and communication advances the draws of closeness to family are not nearly as strong as they were once.

Do you realize that it is quite possible that in his entire life our sweet Lord Jesus never traveled more than one hundred miles from his place of birth? When you have time see if you have an atlas or any maps in your Bible, look at them and then check the scale of miles on them. You’ll see that if it lists the places where Jesus went he really didn’t travel all that far in his short time on this planet. He is responsible for changing the entire world and the way things in history are recorded, all record of time is recorded as it either happened before his birth or after, BC or AD. Everything is constructed around a man that changed the world he never saw as a human. Granted Jesus created the world but as a human, as a theophany, as the visual appearance of God in human form Jesus never saw more than a few miles of his homeland. I’d venture to say that for some of us we travel more in a day than Jesus traveled in his short years on this earth. Jesus may have made many trips moving back and forth between towns and villages but in no single trip did he travel more than one hundred miles away from where he was born. Travel of that distance was impossible on land at that time. I know for myself; while working in corrections on a daily basis I traveled almost one hundred miles round trip each day. My daily commute was forty-eight miles each way. And when I worked at Sing Sing correctional facility in the New York City area and my family remained here in the western end of New York state I drove over four hundred miles just to get there and then I’d stay until my days off and then drive home again. I did that for five years and racked up several hundred thousand miles on my car. That would be the equivalent of walking around the world a few times.

As I said before, until the advent of modern travel, the vast majority of people never traveled more than one hundred or so miles from their place of birth. Think of travel before the airplane or the automobile. When travel was primarily done by horse and buggy people didn’t go very far. It really wasn’t all that far back in our past. My father was born before the first flight of a plane and my grandfather was born before the first car was invented. My wife can attest to the fact that she remembers talking to her grandparents and they told her that a trip to Batavia and back by horse and wagon took the entire day to make. And that’s only 30 miles round trip from where their house was to the city and back. We live in the same house they were in and we think nothing of going to Batavia sometimes more than once a day, for something as simple as a doctor’s appointment and then later for a trip to the grocery store. That of course is changing what with the rising gasoline prices. In talking to my own grandmother who was born in Ireland but moved to New York City as an infant, when she met and married my grandfather and moved to Buffalo N.Y. she was terrified of the move. For one it was a huge distance for her home, all the way across the state, and she was afraid of the Indians! When my grandmother moved west from the coast to Buffalo they were still fighting the Indian wars in this country. Can you imagine being afraid of something like that in Buffalo today? And now reflect back to the huge sacrifice the founders of this great nation made by coming here. They crossed an ocean to come to a place they had only heard of and even in that what they had heard was about only a small part of the country. Like my grandparents, they came to a land they didn’t know, left all that they did know, family, friends, and places that were well known to them. And they did this just so that they could worship God without fear of reprisal and live in peace.

So to this point we’ve looked at home from two different perspectives, from a geographical basis, home is where we were raised, where we are familiar with regardless of climate or condition. Or home is where our family ties are derived from; we want to be close to dad and mom, close to grandpa and grandma. But is this where man first developed his draw, his compulsion to be home? How far back do we have to go before we see what true homesickness is? Now it’s time to look at this subject from a Biblical perspective.

“I tell you the truth, no man can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again”. I think hidden in this verse we see a true glimpse of what “home” we are really seeking to find. In the spirit of man we aren’t looking for a home of location we are familiar with. We aren’t looking for a home that is filled with familiar faces and friends. What man’s spirit really is seeking is “home” as to be in proper relationship with our God. Our spirit wants to be in close proximity to our God. This is what we are looking for in our desire to be “home”. There is no one here on this earth, at least no one that I know of, that has seen heaven or has actually seen the kingdom of God. There may be some that has had a near death experience, there may be some that has seen a slight glimpse of what heaven is like, but have any of them ever seen heaven, really seen it? I don’t think any of us have really been “given the tour”. I don’t think any of us here really knows what heaven is like.

I think it’s a safe bet to say if we were to speak to one hundred different people we would get one hundred different stories of what heaven is going to be like. I think each of us has a preconceived notion of what heaven is going to be like; be it streets of gold and no more labor. Or just closeness to our God in worship and adoration of who and what He is. The book of Revelation tells us of the streets of gold and pearl gates, we read of precious stones used for building materials like common bricks and it sounds beautiful. When we read the Revelation conception of heaven we see or can envision beauty beyond comprehension. Just a little side note, in reading what the Bible says about the construction of heaven and materials used. There is one material that we as man find to be the most coveted and yet God doesn’t even use it. Diamonds! Man will do just about anything to get their hands on diamonds and God doesn’t even use them. God used them in the breastplate of the priest’s robes for temple duty, and they were found in the Garden of Eden as rocks that covered the ground. But they aren’t listed as anything God wanted in his heavenly kingdom. Interesting little fact don’t you think? But if we go beyond the streets of gold and the pearl gates, then what do people think heaven is going to be like?

For some heaven is envisioned as a place of rest and beauty, beauty beyond compare. There are some that see heaven as a tropical island, warm sun and sand and a beautiful beach. Heaven can be a wooded forest, cool breezes and the colors of autumn. Maybe heaven is a place where animals lay side by side with each other and there is no fear of other animals or even man. How about heaven as a palace where there’s fruit on the tables and artwork on the walls, it never rains and there is beautiful sunlight all of the time except when you go to bed. There may even be a few that see heaven as NASCAR on the television and the Buffalo Bills actually winning the Super Bowl… every Sunday. I think you have an idea of what I’m trying to say by now don’t you? Talk to one hundred people and you get one hundred ideas of what heaven is like.

I used to wonder about the god of the radical Islamic belief. What do they tell these people heaven is going to be like to get them to strap a bomb on their body and run into a place filled with other humans and then touch that thing off blowing up yourself and everyone around them? You have to sell one powerful image of heaven to get that kind of commitment from someone. So I got a copy of the Quran and read it for myself. And take my word for it, I’m not making this up, what I tell you is the truth. What we call chapters in the Bible, they call sura’s and in the 37th sura it tells the reader that in heaven they will get to lay on a couch and eat fruit fed to them by women and that they can have intimacy with these women when they want it and anything else they want as well. Now I know how they get the men to blow themselves up in little pieces but I still don’t understand what they have to offer the woman to become walking bombs, it doesn’t sound like that cool a deal for them. But the harsh reality of it all is that unless you become born again in Jesus Christ no one is going to see the kingdom of God. Wearing a bomb isn’t going to get us in the kingdom, but knowing Jesus as Lord will. Blowing ourselves up along with innocent men, women and children won’t get us into the kingdom but knowing Jesus as Lord will. And we have to tell everyone including the Muslim of this King and his kingdom.

“I tell you the truth, no man can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again”. I haven’t been able to figure out if heaven and the Garden of Eden are one and the same place. But I think not. It seems as if the kingdom of God is a place of constant worship and the garden is a place of peace, a perfect garden like a really nice back yard on a beautiful home. But that is my own thoughts on that matter and I can’t prove it to anyone. 2nd Timothy says; “Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels”. And to get into an argument over whether one is a garden but not heaven or heaven isn’t the garden isn’t worth spending the time on.

One of the things I should say about the Garden of Eden and it may be something you have never really spent any time thinking about. But the truth of the matter is that man may not have seen heaven but he has seen the garden. Think about that for a moment. Man has walked in the Garden of Eden, he has set foot on the soil of the garden when it was a paradise before the fall of man and sin came into the world. There was a time when man walked in the garden, that time was of course was before Adam and Eve were put out to fend for themselves. And we’ve been trying to get back inside ever since. If we’ve inherited our sin nature from Adam we have also inherited our drive to return to the garden as well. I think that although we’ve never seen the garden, through our connection to Adam we have a desire to be where he was before sin entered man and cost us paradise. Again this is hypothetical on my part and there isn’t anything in the Bible to base this presumption on. If you look at the history of man, we have always held a desire to return to the place of the origin of our ancestors. How often have you heard people say that they would like to visit the place where their grandparents or great grandparents came from? Man has this built in drive to know where he originated from and many times we don’t have any idea as to why we want it. And if we truly can trace our heritage back to Adam and Eve then we are simply seeking to see where they started.

There was a time when man and God did actually have verbal fellowship with each other on a regular basis. If you look in the book of Genesis we read that there was a time when man and God had open and audible communications with each other. And I think it’s this place, this home if you will; that we are trying to reach out to again. Call it heaven; call it anything you want but man still wants to have that close intimate relationship with his God and to be in fellowship with him. Look at cultures and civilizations that had no knowledge of Jesus Christ and Father God. Even without knowing Jesus or Father God these civilizations developed a form of worship to a deity that they didn’t know existed. Even without formal knowledge as we know it, man had always had a desire to be with his God. It’s locked in our spirit and that is in the spirit of every single person on the face of the earth. And yes that includes those who don’t want to acknowledge the existence of God or a Higher Deity than themselves. And how are we to develop this relationship with God? Jesus tells us in his statement. “I tell you the truth, no man can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again”. Jesus tells us that in order to come into the presence of God we must be born again. Jesus is telling us that like it or not, agree with it or not. It doesn’t matter, to enter into the presence of God we must be born again. I personally like the phrase “Born from above” since the only way we can acknowledge Jesus as Lord is by inspiration of the Spirit who comes down from heaven, but no matter how you say it the meaning is the same. We will go into a little more detail in a moment. We have to believe in Jesus Christ, we have to be born of the Spirit, and there is no short cut we can take, there is no slipping in the back door. There’s one way and one way only, and it’s the path through Jesus Christ and his introduction of us to his Father.

If we were to go on reading beyond the end of our verse we would see that Jesus and Nicodemus are having a conversation and Nicodemus realizes that we can’t become a child again and re-enter our mothers womb. He realizes that it would be impossible for us to become a small child again and be born of the flesh after the fashion of the first birth. But our Lord goes on to explain to Nicodemus that he’s not talking about a physical rebirth, but a spiritual rebirth. A Jesus goes on to explain that he is talking about a spiritual rebirth or a new spiritual awakening we call “regeneration”.

This regeneration, this transformation if you will, what we call “born again” may be better understood if we use the term I just used a few moments ago. “Born from above”. When we say born again it does have the connotation or implication of a physical rebirth. And to the unbeliever that may sound as confusing to them as it did to Nicodemus so long ago. When we say born again it does sound like we are talking of a second birth through the flesh. But “born from above”… ah, now that we can visualize in the mind's eye as a rebirth or regeneration coming down from above. Coming down from the heavens, coming down from the heavens and carried along by and through the Holy Spirit to give us a new spiritual life like we’ve never known or experienced before. When we say, “born from above” we can in the mind’s eye visualize a spiritual re-connection to our God that was severed when sin entered the world through the actions of man. And I believe this second birth, this born from above, or born again experience can then be understood as to have nothing to do with the physical rebirth but as a totally spiritual experience of rebirth. It’s the Holy Spirit that gives this understanding; it’s by His leading that we then understand the experience, as we should. It’s by the leading of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God that we come to the understanding that this experience has nothing to do with the union of man and woman in the flesh, that it’s not the result of mans physical union or that it’s origin comes from man’s desire.

John 1:12-13 says; “yet to those who received him, to those who believed in his mane, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husbands will but born of God”.

It was through the union of my parents that I received my first birth. With the blessing of God I was conceived and my physical being came to be. As a physical being I was born complete having all that I needed to sustain life. But my inner man, my spirit man knew that I wasn’t truly connected to “home”, as I should be. My physical man had made the connection with my physical surroundings and family and in the flesh I knew that I was home. It was my spiritual man, that little something deep down inside the inner me. It was that inner me that knew something was missing. It was that inner me, that spirit man; that longed for a connection of some type to a home that I didn’t know or hadn’t experienced because there was in my spirit a inner me that knew I lacked inner peace and contentment. In my spirit I knew that I wasn’t complete, I knew that I wasn’t “Home” yet. In my spirit I knew that there was a void of some type, that there was something missing, that there was a hole in my spirit and that that hole could only be plugged by a spiritual plug. And that plug is to be born from above in Christ Jesus. And in Jesus Christ alone!

And so although my physical man is content in its situation, content in it’s location and climate, my spirit man is not. While my physical man knows that I’m home, that I’m at ease in where I live and whom I live with. But my spirit man isn’t quite as comfortable, my spirit man that lives inside me knows that something is missing, that I’m not complete or whole until I accept Christ as my savior. Until I have a born again or born from above experience and have the connection to my God that my spirit thirsts and hungers for. My spirit knows when something is missing; it can sense it even when in my physical being I feel as if I have all that I need. When I feel the empty void in my spirit but know fulfillment in my physical being all of me is uneasy and incomplete. My two persons, my physical person and my spiritual person are not both in the same place at the same time. Consequently there is upheaval in my life and that condition is going to remain there until I have a “born from above” experience to bridge the gap between the two and the connection is made between my spirit and the Spirit of God. Until that connection is made I will never feel whole or complete. Have you ever wondered why you can see a celebrity or a person of wealth and they are always on drugs or alcohol or chasing something that is unobtainable as if they can’t find real contentment in their life? By worldly standards they have everything but their life is a constant up and down ride that has no peace in it. Their spirit man knows that there’s a void that isn’t filled, their spirit man knows that there is a gap between their spirit and the Spirit of God. And until that connection of the spirit is made, there can be no real peace. Likewise you can see someone that although by worldly standards don’t have all the little toys and do-dads of life but they are content in their situation and we sometimes question how or why they appear to be at such ease. It’s because their spirit is in connection with their God, and when that connection is made they are experiencing peace in both their physical and spiritual being. There’s no void, there’s no gap to be bridged, they are complete and they know it. My friend each one of us whether we want to acknowledge it or not feel the same thing. Each one of us has a physical man and a spiritual man within us and until the two are in connection with their God there is no real sense of completeness. Until the spiritual man is in communion with God there is going to be felt a feeling of emptiness and an unsettled condition about us.

This unsettled condition will remain in our lives until we come to the saving knowledge that Jesus Christ went to the cross for us while we were yet sinners. This unsettled condition will remain in our lives until we acknowledge that Jesus died for us and for our sins even though he was sin free. This unsettled condition will remain in our lives until we acknowledge that Jesus went to the cross in our place, that he suffered pain and death on the cross in our place; and that he has broken the power of death for us through the glory and might of the Father by his resurrection from the grave.

1st Peter 1:3 says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”.

There it is in black and white, okay so it’s in blue and white; you will just have to deal with it. God’s mercy applied to me a sinner. God’s mercy given to me a sinner, giving me new birth in my spirit through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the power of death and the grasp of the grave. At last our spirit has a home, at last our spirit has a place of comfort and peace and can feel contentment and completeness. As our physical man was at home in a location now our spiritual man is at home in our connection with our God. We could have searched forever and forever and not found peace or a place called home. But once we meet Jesus Christ, once we believe in his name, then and only then can we find rest and peace.

Do you remember what we saw in John 1:12? “Yet to all those who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become the children of God”. In the book of Acts when the jailer is terrified and he calls out “what must I do to be saved?” what was he told? “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ”.

My friend, there is nothing complicated about this, there is no great mystery to be solved. There are no hidden parts of a puzzle to be unearthed. If you feel in your spirit that you aren’t home yet, if you feel like there is something missing in your life, I invite you to come to know our Lord Jesus Christ. If you want to see the kingdom of God, if you want to be born again or born from above, come to the altar today and meet Jesus Christ. There is a home for all of us out there and it’s already been prepared for us by Jesus, he’s given us his word on it. It’s a home of rest, a home of peace, a home of comfort and contentment. If this is what you’ve been searching for then search no more. Today is the day to bridge the gap between God and us. Now is the hour, now is the time to change our lives forever, and my friend, forever is going to last a long, long time. Now is the time to come to the altar and meet our God.
Grace & peace