Follow God Even When You Don’t Know What is Ahead

As you may know my wife is originally from Germany.  We met years ago when I was stationed in her home town and we met at a Bible study.  She had never been to America but we believed that God was leading her to come and be my wife and live in a foreign land that she had no idea of what it was like. At the time about the only concept she had was from her father who loved to watch Bonanza where they lived on a ranch.  I still picture very vividly our ride from the airport to my parents’ house in N. Tonawanda.  On the way she kept repeating over and over again a phrase in German that in English means, “This cannot be!” as she observed row after row of wooden houses seeing them in person for the first time in her life.  However, forty-three years later we still believe that God led her to this country.  She followed God not knowing what is ahead.  On the one hand she has adapted well to this country but in many ways, this is not her home.  She still has a longing for her homeland.

In Genesis 12 we read the following: Now the Lord said to Abram. Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse and in you the families of the earth shall be blessed. So, Abraham went as the Lord had told him…

So, we begin with this truth: “God’s people are not citizens of earth trying to get to heaven but citizens of heaven trying to get through this world. 

J.B. Philips said this of the early Christians: “to these men this world was only a part, and because of the cumulative result of human sin a highly infected and infectious part, of God’s vast created universe, seen and unseen.  They trained themselves therefore and attempted to train others, not to be taken in by this world, not to give their hearts to it, nor to conform to its values, but to remember constantly that they were only temporary residence and that their rights of citizenship were in the unseen world of reality… as we read that they have to say we may perhaps find ourselves saying a little wistfully perhaps these men were right.”  (Preface, Letters to Young Churches).

We need to feel like traveling on, now we feel like settling down. We have a flock of world-lings who are not about to give up their idols.

A preacher once said that his grandfather used to take him on short trips when he was a boy.  One day when Grandfather asked him to go along, the boy asked, “Where are you going?”  Grandfather went on without him and when the boy asked later, “Why did you not take me?”  he was told, “because you asked, “Where are going? If you had really wanted to go with me, it wouldn’t have mattered where I was going. 

When we begin our pilgrimage, we are not only called upon to get out of the world, but we may have to separate from some Christians on our pilgrimage.  I Peter 2:9-12 reminds us a great truth that we not only are not to focus on this world as our home because we have been called out and called to a greater purpose:

 But we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation; a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people, once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.  Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

In this passage you and I are given several descriptive of how we are different and made for a different world.

1. We are a chosen race

2. We are a royal priesthood – a priest represents people to God so our counseling should be bathed in prayer

3. We are a holy nation – we belong to a different kingdom

4. We are a people who are His possession – we belong to God and serve his purpose not our own

5. We have a totally different mission – we are to proclaim first by our living and then by our words the excellent personhood of Christ – letting people know that we have been called out of darkness into his marvelous light.

6. We are people not deserving but a people who have received his mercy.

7. We are therefore to abstain from the things of this world, anything that dims the light of God’s Spirit in us.

   
   

So, you and I are in a foreign country. When I was in the Army all those years ago, and arrived in the land of Germany, I had to attend Green Bean School, a two-week program intended to acclimate us to this country.  I remember having it repeated over and over again that I needed to remember the country that I truly represented, that of the US. Our True country in Heaven, the Kingdom of God, may we represent His kingdom well. 

©2026 David W. Drake, President, Renewed Hope, Inc.