Citizens of a new eternal country

Accepting Jesus as our Savior and then expecting a one way ticket to heaven no matter how we live our life is definitely not what the Bible says about Christian life. It's like an immigrant to a new country. Just getting the entry permit and being allowed to enter the country does not make one a citizen. One has to learn a new language, a new way of life, change of previous attitudes, and adapt to new ways of thinking. One has to get a better education to get a better job. If one does not adapt to one's adopted country and decides not to follow the laws of the land, they're definitely going to land themselves in jail or even risk deportation. A person must spend time communing with God and learning the laws of this new way of life on a daily basis by reading the Word of God. We must allow the Lord to transform us daily and to correct and edit out the garbage we may have accumulated in our old life. We cannot say we are citizens of this eternal kingdom and be unwilling to part with the ways of the flesh and this world. If we are to experience true victory and the peace and joy promised by the Lord we must have an attitude of "Lord not my will, but Thine. If there are ways in me that need change, change me Lord. I trust You to know the best for me. I give myself into the Potter's Hand."

The kind of people God is looking for

God is looking for people who will obey Him despite being called troublemakers like Paul, people who have the courage to change their names to "Father of a multitude" despite being childless like Abraham, people unafraid to build an ark without a single cloud in sight like Noah, people who would rather be put in a furnace than bow before false gods like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, people unashamed to collect empty vessels from neighbors who knew their desperate condition like Elijah's widow at the word of the prophet, people who declared the truth of God's Word in the face of a hostile multitude who would stone them to death like Stephen, people who never stopped praying to the true God in spite of a political curfew against it like Daniel thus risking being cast into a den of lions. He is looking for people who will put Him above all fear of death, starvation, persecution, ridicule, isolation, people who "count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ."