“Make It A Goal To Please The LORD!”

“Make It A Goal To Please The LORD!”(II Cor.5:1-10).
Some of us are not living in the village where our placentas were buried. Almost – if not – all of us have been to somewhere other than our place of birth. Whoever goes to a place for the first time does not know beforehand exactly how that place is; talk less of knowing what will happen to you there.
In recent times a lot of young Africans risk their lives journeying to the other side of the hills where they see the grass greener. The cry has always been that the environment here is not enabling. What bitter irony! The first steps which you take as a toddler, the first academic certificate that you have, which is in your rucksack was obtained from this unenabling environment. And that certificate is what forms the basis of any other certificate or achievements you will have in that greener pasture.
Anyway, you are not the first to take that risky and arduous journey to an unknown place which you consider to be better than where you are. Abraham of old made such a risky journey to an unknown place. But he was confident that the Unmade Maker who created the world could not have asked him to go to where it was not good.
We call that Faith! Venturing into the unknown with the confidence that there is an unseen guide leading and guarding you to the land of promise.
Even the generation which Moses led out of Egypt did not know exactly where they were going to. Moses himself did not know, but he and the rest had faith that it was a land overflowing with milk and honey.
Dear friend, we are pilgrims here and we hope to return to where we belong even though we have never been there before. This place, these bodies that clothes our souls and these clothes that clothes the bodies that clothes our souls and other possessions that give us security will pass away, but “we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven…”
No matter the way life treats us at the moment, God has “given us thev Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” While we are here in the body “we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight.”
So should we just eat and drink because all is vanity? Should we just live like people in the land of the Lotus Eaters eating the lotus plant which charms us to forget about home? Or to live in Serenium and be enchanted by the sweet music of the Sirens until death arrives?
By no means! Let us make it our goal to please the Lord, whether in this body or away from it. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in this body, whether good or bad.”
Core message: While in this human body, make it your goal to please the Lord; knowing that on judgment day your reward will be commensurate to how you lived and what you did, whether good or bad.
Weekend prayer: Dear LORD, may my thoughts, words and deeds be pleasing in your sight. Amen!
Have a blessed weekend! Peace be with you!
Rev Babila Fochang.