Today’s Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:1-10
2 Corinthians 5:8 — Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
God promises that He will welcome us home. Have you ever been in a place where you were made to feel unwelcome? That is an unpleasant experience, especially if the place you went to was one where you believed you belonged. Jesus went to His hometown and spoke in the synagogue, but the people tried to throw Him off a cliff to His death (Luke 4:14-30).
Jesus “was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him” (John 1:10-11). Jesus, the Son of God, the Creator, the promised Messiah, came into this world, came to the people who longed for their Messiah, and was treated with indifference and rejection. Jesus knows how it feels to be unwelcome and left out.
This is why Jesus is such a good friend to sinners. Although He never sinned, Jesus reached out to the unwelcome, the unwanted, and the unloved. There was room for them at His table of mercy and grace, and there would be a place prepared for them in His Father’s house if they would only believe and be born again. Even as He died, Jesus welcomed a repentant thief to be with Him in paradise.
Paul tells us that when we leave this life and all of its burdens, we will be welcomed to our eternal home in heaven. There, we will be clothed in spiritual bodies designed for life in heaven forever. We can live with confidence now that when we pass from this body in this life, we will be gladly received by the Lord.
Read those words again: “at home with the Lord.” There are many precious saints of God who have already gone home to Jesus and have had their welcoming party. Someday, we will join them and be at home with the Lord. In the meanwhile, the Lord is at home in us. How welcome do we make Him feel? Let us not be like those who did not know or receive Him. Let us rejoice and be glad that Jesus our Immanuel is with us today!
…04/19/2024
Devotional
“We can live with confidence now that when we pass from this body in this life, we will be gladly received by the Lord.”
There is no one in this world who will welcome me, forgive me, and accept me as much as the Lord. When I am push backed into a corner, when no one acknowledges me, the fact that I can go to the Lord may be a privilege. It is a blessing to be a child of the God…”So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Galatians 2:20
이세상의 어느 누구도 주님만큼 나를 반겨주고 다 용서하고 받아줄 사람은 없다 내가…