Whenever I'm asked to officiate a wedding, I take it as the highest honor. It's like being invited into someone's home for a special family meal or dinner. But in each and every ceremony, I try to work the following into my sermon, though it may appear off-putting at first:

My greatest hope for you is not to have the best that this world has to offer. Not the highest image or prestige among your peers, nor an abundance of resources that cover your every need, nor a home that serves as your very own palace, nor little baby boys nor little baby girls that fill your quiver full. While all of those may be wonderful and good in many respects, their sum total, minus the cross, will still leave you lacking, with some sense of significant loss.

A great church father put it this way some 1600 years ago:

“What is the object of my love?” I asked the earth, and it replied, “It is not I.” I questioned everything within it, and they all gave the same answer.

I turned to the sea, to the depths, and to every living creature that crawls. They responded, “We are not your God. Look beyond us.”

I asked the breezes that blow and the whole expanse of air and sky, and they too answered, “We are not the One you seek.”

I looked to the heavens—sun, moon, and stars— and they said, “Nor are we the God you’re searching for.”

So I said to everything around me, “Tell me of my God—you are not Him, but tell me something about Him.”

And with one great voice they all cried out: “He made us. We are not God. He made us.”

Saint Augustine continued this stream of thought elsewhere, “You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”

What then, is the greatest hope for anyone on earth? Not to receive the best things that this world has to offer, but the best that God has to offer, a living relationship with Jesus His Son.

When a person becomes a Christian,

It isn’t just that we have a visa to be in God’s kingdom—we’ve permanently ripped-up our world’s passport and traded it for an entirely new citizenship, with a new culture, new goals, a new vision, and a new perspective. (Rubin Grant quoting Sara Beth Schneider)

Do not get me wrong—living in a free and prospering country can make life much easier. In no way am I minimizing the real hardships many of you are facing under oppressive regimes around the globe. What I am saying is this: if you plant your flag on a piece of ground in any nation as your ultimate trust, you will end up sorely disappointed.

C. S. Lewis stated it this way,

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.

If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise or be unthankful for these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage.”

All these extra-Biblical quotes I’m sharing are fine and helpful and all, but what does God have to say about this? In Hebrews 11:13-16 we read:

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and exiles on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Today’s conversations around immigration and citizenship are both real and important. But according to Philippians 3:20, only one citizenship can truly define us:

“For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Let every follower of Christ, wherever they live, be reminded.

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