That Old House

About two weeks ago I was in my old neighborhood visiting with some friends and neighbors and got to see my old house. 

My kids wanted to go and play in the yard, but I had to explain to them that it wasn’t their house anymore and that it belonged to someone else. 

At the same time I started to notice things that were different – the Christmas decorations on the outside of the house were similar to the way we used to hang them, but different enough that it didn’t seem completely right.  Some of the landscaping that I personally had worked on had changed too.  Somehow all of us longed for this house to be the way it was when we were there.

But this was not our house anymore, God had called us to serve Him elsewhere.

I was reminded of the Israelites when they had just been taken out of Egypt - Exodus 14:12  “Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.”

The people of Israel looked back at their old house and not at the place they were going, and though it wasn’t their home anymore.

There is something about the place we used to be and the things we used to do that pull at us…sometimes these things can be positive. All too often they are the bad habits or sins from years past that pull on us to walk past the old house and glance at what looks like a comfortable place to be and ignore the fact that God has taken you away from that place for a reason, and this is to live a life that would be able to glorify Him.

“And such were some of you. But you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”
1 Corinthians 6:11