93. PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS
--page 748--
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for He hath prepared for them a city (Heb.11:13,16).
1. We remain pilgrims and strangers on this Earth, because Heaven is our Home and the Heavenly City is our destination.
2. Better to die on the mountain than to live in the valley.
3. Never let your roots grow too deep--stay mobile, fluent, and fluctuating.
4. We never stay anywhere for very long--only long enough to sow the seed and reap the harvest and then be on our way to reap other fields.
5. We're mobile messengers, reaching the World with a message!
6. The empires that didn't survive were the ones who couldn't move and were sitting ducks for the enemy! The ones who are still with us are the ones who keep moving!--The Jews and the Gypsies and the Christians!
7. Moving is like dying, and it's also like living a thousand lives!
8. God was not ashamed to be called their God, He was proud of them because they were willing to move, stopping when He said stop and going when He said go!
9. You must move continually. You are pilgrims and strangers.
10. Mobility has been the secret of our success!
11. The worst place in the World for a Christian is a too comfortable place!
12. We pilgrims and strangers pay the price of having to move often, but at least He gives us nice places to be pilgrims and strangers in! He casts our lines in pleasant places!
13. How like death moving is! It's the ending of one life and the beginning of another.
14. A movement is no longer a movement if it stops moving!
15. Don't sew your sleeping bag to your mattress.
16. Don't let your roots grow down so deep that it will tear your heart out when you have to pull up stakes.
17. We're not static!--We don't have to stay anywhere except in the love and will of God.
18. We're not really exiles from home, we're on our way Home, we just haven't gotten there yet!
19. I am a stranger here, within a foreign land.
My Home is far away, upon a golden strand.
Ambassador to be of realms beyond the sea,
I'm here on business for my King!
20. Moving is almost like dying!--It's a death to an old life, but then it's a rebirth into a new life!
21. If your roots are down so strong that you think you're going to stay forever, then you must be out of the will of God somehow.
22. The smaller Home attracts less attention, opposition and persecution from the System, and can operate much more underground, inconspicuously and quietly. When things do get hot, the smaller Home can move at a moment's notice and go almost anywhere.
23. God's Children have always been on the move, never settling down more than temporarily.
24. Let's keep moving for the Lord, spreading the Good News as we go, and moving so fast the System will seldom be able to catch up with us!
25. It is not worth our life, our freedom and our ministry to be so loaded down that we cannot make an instantaneous immediate move!
26. That's why God is proud of you, because you're not satisfied here and you seek a city which hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God! Therefore God is not ashamed to be called your God, for He hath prepared for you a city!
27. If a man owns land, the land owns him.
28. Never let the roots grow down so deep that you can't be uprooted again.
29. Keep your witness mobile! Always be prepared to fold up and move--keep moving! Keep your show on the road!
30. That land is henceforth my temporary country which most needs the Gospel.
31. After we've fled from every country that we can flee from and every continent and every ocean, we're going to flee plumb out of this World! Heaven, here I come!
32. From the earliest times, God's men have always been on the move for the Lord.
33. By faith, His righteousness and your obedience, you can journey back into a Garden of Eden, a Heaven on Earth amongst the beauties of God's Creation, by traveling and camping for the Lord!
34. God's children know this World is not their home, they're just a passin' through, trying to get a job done for Jesus on the way!
35. You make it hard for the authorities to protect you when you stay in one place too long.
36. Never stay too long and too much in one place.
37. There is only one thing you can always take you with that never changes--and that's the Lord. Every one of the great men the Lord ever had, had to be a pilgrim and a stranger, got kicked about and moved about and persecuted from one city to the other and kept on preaching the Gospel wherever he went.
38. We are vagabonds and pilgrims and strangers and gypsies, but those people have lasted the longest, when many other secure nations and empires have been completely wiped out.
39. The Rechabites (Gypsies) remain with us to this day because they vowed never to settle down, never to grow roots, never to live in houses but always to be mobile. (Jer.35:7)
(See also No. B, 61, 122, 150, 160B, 316B, 318, 322, 386, 783, 807, 812, 870, 917, 953-2, 1004, 1020, 1065, 1104, 1198, 1391, 1529, 1533, 1534.)
40. 1CH.29:15 For we are strangers before Thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the Earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.
41. PSA.39:12 Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not Thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with Thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.
42. JER.35:7 Neither shall ye build house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any: but all your days ye shall dwell in tents: that ye may live many days in the land where ye be strangers.
43. EZE.11:16 Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord God; Although I have cast them far off among the heathen, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come.
44. MAT.8:20 And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head.
45. HEB.11:8 By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a pace which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whether he went.
46. HEB.11:13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the Earth.
47. HEB.13:14 For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.
48. 1PE.2:11 Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.
49. 2PE.3:13 Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for New Heavens and a New Earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family