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My life (put) alongside God's word. Letting the future affect today section. “Home” is the place where you live or the place where your parents live and where you grew up. Your “homeland” is the country you have come from. If you are a “citizen” of a Country, then you have the right to permanently live there. “Citizenship” is the legal right to be a citizen of a particular country. Stateless people, a much more positive view I am aware that since the separation of Sudan and South Sudan in July 2011 some people have wrongly had their rights removed. They have been made stateless. They are not officially recognised as a citizen of any country. Yet all Christians can have a different view, a positive perspective, when we look upwards and ahead. Do not be continually disappointed, grumbling at your status in this world. That is too easy. Stop looking around. Stop looking back! Hear God’s word, “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body”, Philippians 3:20-21. For the Christian, so what? What does this mean for us in our daily lives? No government anywhere can take away our heavenly citizenship, because Jesus Christ has secured it for us. Hardships and hurts in this present life must encourage us to look forward to the much, much better life that is still to come. We share in Christ’s sufferings now. We will share in His glory then, Philippians 3:10-11. Like Paul, we are to “press on”, to keep going, “to move on as a group in a particular direction”. Our calling as Christians is to go “heavenward”, always making progress on the journey towards the region of our spiritual citizenship, Philippians 3:12, 14. We must direct our hearts and our lives to heaven, where God lives in all His fullness. In the present, a successful Christian life keeps the tremendous prospects of our future home at the top of the mind. Our Lord Jesus Christ is coming again, Philippians 3:20. To think God’s way about this we must see the second coming of Jesus Christ as God’s planned way to bring to fruition His own saving work. Alec Motyer wrote in his 'BST The Message of Philippians', “We belong to a far-off homeland and wait for the King of that land to come and fetch us. Our names are on the citizenship rolls there and our place is secure, but while we wait here we must live as if we were there”.