Pioneers

Only half of all Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace. Perhaps it’s bred into them by their pioneering ancestors who first moved to the New World to seek adventure and freedom, but Americans are by and large a mobile people. When God told him to venture out into the unknown, Abraham too left the place of his birth to find a new life in the land God promised him. “By faith,” the author of Hebrews says, “He went out, not knowing where he was going… For he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Hebrews 11:8–10).

Likewise today, we live as if in the foyer, waiting to enter the place God has promised. “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:2, 3). As the old gospel song says, “This world is not my home.” That’s why Jesus instructed His followers to “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:20, 21).

We don’t know the day or the hour that we’ll be taken to our home in the clouds. Live like you’re ready!

Key Bible Texts

For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. (1 Thessalonians 5:2 KJV)