Step Onto Liquid: Hall of Fame
Pt. 3: Hebrews 11

Pirates are people who live for this life, and more specifically, they live for today. They pillage, plunder, rifle, and loot. They kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot. After the pilfering, they fritter away their acquired treasures on food, drink, and pleasurable company as they drink up me hearties, yo ho.

Today we have many people who do not live for today like pirates did, but they still live for this life. They toil long hours to earn big paychecks. Then they put their money into the market so they can reap big dividends, retire before 50, and spend their sunset years playing golf and cruising around on a yacht.

Christians are not supposed to live this way. We are supposed to be laying up treasure in heaven, and we need to realize that as one pirate said, "Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate." In Hebrews 11, we read about people that did not live for this life, but for eternity.

Abraham obeyed God when he was told to leave his home in Ur for a foreign land. Verse 10 says, "For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God." Abraham never saw the fulfillment of all of God's promises. In fact, the only property he ever owned in the land of promise was a grave. But Abraham considered himself a stranger and an exile upon the earth. He and his wife had their gaze fixed on the future and heaven. "Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city." (Heb. 11:16)

We should be following the example of Abraham. Sometimes I have found this hard to apply to my life. I am still young, I don't have too many possessions, and I don't have a job. However, as I thought about living for eternity, I found that it was very applicable to young people.

I am about to head off to college, where I will be studying and planning for a career. Career planning should be different for Christians than for the world. Money should not be a big factor at all. This is not to say that money or wise stewardship is bad, but we need to realize that this life will soon be over. And when we leave, we take nothing with us.

As we look to the future we should all remember another promise of God: Jesus is coming back. We should live in anticipation of his return, and this expectancy should stir up our hearts for evangelism.

Abraham and Sarah had every opporunity to look back and even return to the life they had known, but they did not. Likewise, we need not look back and become entangled in the world. We need not become separatists who live in seclusion from the world, but we must maintain eternal perspective as we live, breathe, work, eat, love, and die in this world.

Life is but a vapor, and we will not live forever on this earth. Therefore, let us not be pirates who accumulate earthly treasures that will perish, but let us be strangers and exiles heaping up treasure in heaven that will never fade away.