A Place To Belong

This is an essay I wrote a while back for school. It is simple and short but I love the ideas expressed in it. They do battle against discontment and an aimless wondering about God's will for your life.

Everyone on earth wants a place to belong, a place they enjoy, a place where they fit in, where they are needed, wanted and loved.

I have thought much about fitting in and being in the place where I belong

and I am quite sure I belong exactly where I am. God has placed me right here

and that is the most perfect place for me. He knows where I will grow best and

where my talents will be best used. I and every other Christian can trust that if

we are obeying God and living according to His will we are exactly where we

belong even if we are uncomfortable and feel out of place. This makes decisions

like should I work here or should I work there or do we belong in this church or

that church a lot simpler. If you are obeying God, where you are is where you

belong.

Of course there is a sense in which no Christian really belongs in “the

world.” We, having been redeemed by God through His Son Jesus Christ, do not

belong at all. We are other wordly, strangers and pilgrims to the children of

wrath and to this world. We once were children of wrath ourselves and belonged

in this world but now our citizenship is in heaven. We fit in better with the people

of God who are strangers to us in this world than we do with friends who are

lost. This is what the Spirit of God does. Our real country is the Kingdom of God

and we should not feel comfortable living as the world does and loving as the

world does. We should want to live in obedience to God, not in disobedience like

the world, and we should live like the citizens of God’s kingdom that we are

where He placed us in this world.

Laura