“But our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20).

We were created for heaven. The earth is not our home. We were created for so much more than the handful of decades we live on planet earth.

God created us for his glory. God created us with a purpose. We were never meant to merely survive our time here on planet earth. We were created to thrive as we join God in Kingdom ministry.

Soren Kierkegaard tells the following story to illustrate how many have lost their way:

A duck was flying with his flock in the springtime northward across Europe. During the flight he came down in a Danish barnyard where there were tame ducks. He enjoyed some of their corn. He stayed, for an hour, then for a day, then for a week, then for a month, and finally, because he relished the good fare and the safety of the barnyard, he stayed all summer.

But one autumn day when the flock of wild ducks were winging their way southward again, they passed over the barnyard, and their mate heard their cries. He was stirred with a strange thrill of joy and delight, and with a great flapping of wings he rose in the air to join his old comrades in their flight. But he found that his good fare had made him so soft and heavy that he could rise no higher than the eaves of the barn. So he dropped back again to the barnyard, and said to himself, “Oh well, my life is safe here and the food is good.”

Every spring and autumn when he heard the wild ducks calling, his eyes would gleam for a moment and he would begin to flap his wings. But finally the day came when the wild ducks flew over him and uttered their cry, but he paid not the slightest attention to them.

May we never be domesticated. Remember who you are. Christ died and rose again. Our citizenship is in heaven.

“You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3).

As many of you already recognize this is Commandment #1 of the Ten Commandments.

Seems simple enough. Right?

Why would we want any other gods? After all, we know that God is the “LORD our God, who brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). God is the one who saves us, rescues us, delivers us, and guides us. So, why would we ever want any other gods?

You know, when we think about “other gods” we often think idols or something like that. We know very few people who have idols in their homes. No one we know prays to an idol, let alone worship an idol.

And this is exactly what the devil wants us to believe. Since we don’t have figurines or idols in our homes, the devil wants us to believe that we are not idolaters. The devil wants us to believe that we have no other gods.

Here’s the thing. What God is talking about in the first commandment has little to do with figurines and has much to do with what/who calls the shots when it comes to how we live our lives, how we spend our time, how we invest our finances, and how we make decisions. While most of us may not have figurines or idols in our homes, we certainly have value systems that want to shape how we make decisions about time, money, values, sex, etc.

That’s what God calls “other gods.” Anyone or anything other that God himself who impacts our decision making regarding time, money, sex, values, etc. is “other gods.”

And when it comes to “other gods,” the devil really doesn’t care what we replace the centrality and the sufficiency of God with – as long as we replace God with something else.

So, let’s think about this again – “You shall have no other gods before me.”

God and God alone gets to dictate what is right, what is good, and how we should live.

May that be so with us.

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

The Greek language had two words for our word “life”: bios and zoe.

• bios – means life in the sense that something is alive vs something that which is dead. It means breathing, existing. This is where we get the word “biology” the study of living things.
• zoe – means life as it was meant to be lived. Zoe life refers to the life that we all dream of living, a life that is truly life.

The word in our text is zoe. Jesus says that he came so that we can live the life that we were created to live. That life is found in Jesus, and Jesus alone. A person can be breathing and going through the motions of life and yet have no life in them. We’ve all experienced that at one point or another in our lives. We live without purpose, passion, or direction. We merely exist. Such living is dreadful.

That’s not what Jesus died on the cross for us. Jesus wants his followers to live…to truly live.

So, here is the million dollar question: How do you know you are living zoe life?

You are living the zoe life if you can answer these in the affirmative:

• Am I more encouraged these days?
• Am I more at peace these days?

You are moving away from zoe life if you can these questions in the affirmative:

• Am I growing more discouraged these days?
• Am I growing more irritated these days?

These are not exhaustive, but how we answer these questions will give us a clue as to whether we are living the life Christ meant for us to live.

So, which life are you living?