When I dream of home

September 27, 2006

Joel Akin

Genesis 3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden

 Blood, sweat and tears were the inheritance of man for their sin. Each of us carries the legacy of the sin and the longing for a home. Ever since I was a child I wanted a space of my own. Whether I was hunkering under the covers or hiding in the closet or building a snow fort I wanted a place I could call my own. Whereas others in my family sought out others I sought a place of solitude. I wanted that place more than anything in the world and it wasn’t easy to explain.

Part of that is because of the link I have with my parents. For Adam and Eve their link was to God. He was their Father and He was the one they looked to for advice. But when they fell into Sin he had to provide them with clothing because they did not understand. He had to tell them they would learn how to grow things by the sweat of their brow. They were cast out of their Fathers house because they had broken the one rule He had written and warned them specifically about. They went out and they struggled. They bore two sons and one turned out to be a murderer. They gave up paradise for a slice of ground but in a way it wasn’t theirs. They were leased or leashed to Satan and to Sin and to Time and to Death. There were landlords over them who each wanted a piece of the pie. And they paid in blood and in suffering and in loneliness. I can only imagine what they had to go through.

But the one thing they wanted was a home. Their children wanted a home. Those children wanted homes and soon everyone wanted a place they could call their own. Struggles for land broke out. The Bible is filled with bitter rivalries of men who struggled and women who mourned for land that was lost. Lots wife refused to give up Sodom. Jesus’ parents were forced to flee their home for Egypt. Even today Israel is wracked by men and women and children who kill each other over territory. It is in our hearts that certain land has stronger meaning to us. People push across borders and like a dry wind of locusts devour the land. They search out purpose in other lands because theirs has dried up. Heat has taken them into parched territory. Limits place on paper become kindling for future generations to fight each other. Wars begin and men and women die by the millions because of land or ideology. It seems the two follow each other like bitter fruits picked up by ants and flies but spurned by one or the other. Who is there that has wisdom? Who is their that has knowledge?

Who doesn’t wish to expand their territory? Who doesn’t wish to have a bigger home or more land or more money to buy a bigger building or expand into a bigger business? The quest for more is the question of time. Why do these things happen to us? Are we not wise enough? Take the men who toss stones and their neighbors because their neighbors exist? If our neighbor is the Bumpkiss of life do they steal another’s home simply because no one is there to kick them out? Do we as neighbors go to war with them because their concept of things is contrary to our own? What do we do?

I’ve asked this question for years. It is not an easy one to answer. In the 1940’s my mother and her family moved a great distance to a new home they had purchased. When they arrived they found squatters in their home. They tried to get them out but the people living there refused to move. The nearly dozen people were forced into a small apartment while the squatters lived free in their home. Finally after another child was due they called in the law to serve an eviction notice. The people left but before they left they took an axe and rage to the home leaving holes and stripping the home of its electrical wires.

If homes are the desire of the future then who are we to hinder the building of them? The question of homes is one that seems to be spoken of indirectly in scripture.

Revelation 21:1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

This scripture is a mystery. No more sea could speak of the Dead sea or it might speak of the oceans. If the oceans were to lose half of their water great amounts of land would be opened up and the land would be fertile.

But there is another question at work here. There seems to be a new earth and a new heaven coming. A new earth speaks not just of a ‘structure’ but perhaps one that is anointed to produce. Not with sweat of the brow as it does now but with a multiplication table of bounty. God is coming back for each and everyone of us who want to be part of his return. That return means he will come back for us to provide us a home.

Jesus spoke of this in John 14:2 when he said “In my fathers house are many mansions.... I go to prepare a place for you...”

A few years ago I had a dream. In this dream God spoke to me and said “I am going to find you a home where the sun shines upon you in the morning. Wait here until I return...” And I have wondered what did He mean?

I believe God has an answer for me. He sent the Holy Spirit to work with me on a plan while he went away to prepare a place. A place with God is a home in eternity. But if he went to eternity then why was I left on earth? The answer is to make a plan so that all men might have a home of their own. It wasn’t His desire for me to be forgotten. It wasn’t his desire for me to live in the wilderness under a tree or in a hole or under my covers at night. God had a desire that I find a home and yet it was also his desire to find me a home. There are two challenges that I had. First was to wait for Him to provide the way for me financially so that I could then find a home on earth. But He went out into the Universe to find me a perfect home. Now if that home is ‘out there’ in heaven then I need but wait until His return with the key to that home.

Now some people don’t understand why this sounds so religious. I think its not meant to be religious but a matter of faith in a father not just to me but to all mankind. We are spreading out quickly and most people think it can’t continue. We’ll fill the land and spill over into the seas and we’ll be like locusts devouring things. But God has a way of opening doors when we need it most. I personally believe that God is having me prepare Earth House with all of its ideas so that mankind can have homes on earth that they love. But there is a God who created me with wishes and desires and hopes that go far beyond earth. There is a mansion waiting for me in His house. And as I’ve said to others so I’ll say to you. If heaven is his throne imagine how big Gods house must be. Not just the heavens we know about but perhaps universes beyond end. As for me and my house I will serve the Lord.

Now there are wars and there are wars. War is fought over ideology and its fought over land. Wars will come to men if they don’t get their lives straightened out. Wars will come to America unless she tends to the porosity in her dams and hedges. America is a fenced in land but water pours through a fence because the fence is not meant to keep out the flood. And so all of us who call ourselves America have to pray that God will hedge us about on the right and the left. We are in the most danger we’ve been in since the beginning of history. If we are not careful in our walk there are those who will outtalk wisdom and carry her into the sea. Not only does this drive men from their Eden but it takes them from their wisdom.

Everyone of us has to awake to responsibility if we hope to remain in our homes. I live with my parents and I long to have my own home. Yet I know that unless God open doors and make a way that my efforts are in vain. Recent news says the average American has never been so broke. Their savings are at Zero. Their homes are owned by the banks. The weather is getting crazy. The dry Sirrocco wind is blowing across the land and the locusts are looking at one of the few dry and green places left. And if we do not stop them they will strip us down to our nakedness and we will find that once it happens its hard to put the geni back into the bottle or the curse back into the chest.

Time may have been on our side but Time erodes away at the edges of fertility and hope. Time takes our dreams and casts them onto the rocks and time erodes the rocks into a foundation of sand. God never intended for us to turn Him out of the schools and out of the businesses and out of the streets and out of the marketplace. If we allow in the Bear and the Bull they will replace Wisdom and Hope and Joy and Peace. And our land will run under the authority of the Beast. Now you laugh but I do not want to submit to either Bull or Bear. The Bull is the divider and the Bear is the territory. They strip us down and wear us out but I am in prayer that their power is negated. I am in prayer that people will have homes and I am in prayer that millions of Americans and others around the world will not lose their homes.

Yet I know that there are things that have to happen. And one is God is returning soon with news of a home for me. Now I can say that God could find me a home on earth where the sun shines upon me in the morning. I know God could do that without ‘leaving’. But I dream. And I think strange thoughts. What if God really did travel throughout the Universe looking for a home for me on a planet far, far away. Would I want it? I hope I would. I guess I say that because we, like children, tend to cover ourselves with dark covers. In the closet amidst the clothes, under the blanket, hidden away in our snow forts and leaf hideaways. These are the places a child longs for. A place to call his own. A secret place. But if God wanted us to mature just a little what would He say? That He had made us a home so beautiful and so perfect and so wonderful that He Himself, God of all things, wanted to find a home that had my name on it. A little white stone perhaps. A place I could say belongs to me?

And so I would arrive there and I would look and stand upon the ledge of the home. And I would open the door that didn’t need a lock and I would open and enter in. And It wouldn’t be dark and dank and moldy. The door would open to wonder. And when I saw that house and wrote my name in the ledger as the first visitor and the owner I would laugh and maybe cry. For it was my home. The home I’ve been praying for. The home I could not afford on earth. And the greatest of men such as Solomon in all his glory could not afford. A home so vast and so wondrous that I would peer at it and from it into realms of beauty and loveliness beyond mortal eyes could comprehend.

Yes, there still will probably be my home or homes on earth. Even the New Earth that is coming will have its place. And Earth will still be my berth place. But sometimes there is a story. That this world was a ship. A berth place. A place where we were carried from Time to Death. And God said “Don’t get used to this berth. Because there is coming a new land. And in this new land is your new home which shall be for all time.

People of America. You were the proud. You provided Liberty to the tossed and the oppressed. God says “You were raised up to be captain of the ship earth. You were given authority and power. You brought in the weak and the powerless and the oppressed. But Time is coming to an end. And Power and Authority are granted to you by me. Now is the day of accounting. For the land of America was the berth place that helped to guide, a lighthouse for the weak, until the ship should arrive at port. That hour has come. The day of judgment has come. The hour of arrival is at hand. Listen for the sound of the horn. Listen for the sound of the host welcoming your arrival. For the Lord of Hosts is awaiting you my people to your new home.”