Pilgrims & Aliens

Faith is required to live as one of God's people in this world. It is not at all optional. We must keep trusting what God has promised. This has always been the case. In the spotlight on faith in this chapter, we are given numerous Old Testament examples of people who trusted God by faith. And they all have one thing in common: they died still believing, having not fully received all the promises of God.

God does not give us all that we trust Him for in this moment. There is more to come. Faith keeps pushing us to trust God for that future. In Christ, we have all the promises of God fulfilled. And certainly by trusting Him, we have a peace, a contentment, a satisfaction that makes sense of life. But there is still that sense of promise driving our faith. And even Christians die waiting by faith for what Jesus promises.

A life of faith must always be trusting God for more to come. It is essential to the life of a Christian. When we stop doing that, we lose the vitality of our commitment to Christ. We have to acknowledge that we always need to trust God. We can taste of His goodness. We can see our confident hope in the distance. But we have to keep looking to the promises of God until the day we die.

There is an attitude that keeps us living in faithful expectation. It is a pilgrim passion. We know that we are on a journey through life to a greater place. We allow God to lead us there. We acknowledge that this world is not our final destination. We are only traveling to the best place... forever with our Lord. Bunyan captured it clearly when Christian is set with a vision to travel to the Celestial City. His whole life's story is summed up in the faith that it took to take him there.

We must acknowledge our refugee status and long for our real home. If we are not exiles on this earth, then faith makes no sense at all. If we truly are pilgrims and aliens, then faith is the roadmap we trust as we full Christ to His upward call.