Your 24/7 Companion – Day 20

To stay in a tent is nice, but will you do it forever? It is definitely not the ideal situation, taking into account that the elements do not always do their part to make it a pleasant stay.

Paul uses this image to describe our lives in a broken and upside down world, where we are exposed to elements like sickness, sorrow, hunger, disappointments, age and death, but also to awaken a hopeful expectation within us: Therefore we do not loose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. (2 Corinthians 4:16)

For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made by hands, eternal in heavens. (2 Corinthians 5:1)

Daily, we are painfully aware of how our tent house wears away, but this should stir an expectation of an eternal house within us. This house is one that can never wear away because it is a spiritual house, eternal, in the heavens. The daily suffering and breaking down of our bodies should never discourage us because we have the promise that “He who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus …” (2 Corinthians 4:14). Rather start living your life to the fullest and focus on the finish line already in sight and on the prize of a new (whole and healthy) house awaiting you. It is possible when your 24/7 Companion walks alongside you every step of the way.

In contrast to the outward man, our inner man is being renewed daily. You see, our heart, our spirit and our “inside man” became alive when our 24/7 Companion – the Holy Spirit – came to live in us. By our relationship with him and his inspiration in us when we read, meditate and do what the word says, our inner man is being changed to never age, in a wonderful and mysterious way. No wonder then that Paul recommends, “Therefore we make it our aim … to be well pleasing to Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:9)