Have you ever been somewhere you felt totally out of place? I mean, since high school..we all had our moments there!  But just a job, an event, a group….anything that made you feel alone and different?

Me too!  When Robert and I lived in Denver, CO for two years, everyone wanted to hear us talk…because of our accents…and inevitably we heard “you must be from Texas!”  As in, you don’t belong here because you don’t talk like us.  And also in Denver, I attended a training class to help tutor Native Americans at the Denver Indian Center to help them pass their GED’s.  About an hour in, it was made VERY evident that I was the only non-Native there, and that I would not be welcome to comment or question…I was being tolerated!

When we moved to Moultrie, GA, in 1999, I discovered a new way of saying “you’re a stranger, and not welcome here”.  It was “you ain’t from here, are you?”  Now there were several variations on that…different words accented, sometime a sneer added, sometimes eyebrows raised.  I got SO tired of hearing it and SO exasperated that I finally would say to the rudest, “no, and proud of it!”  Honestly.  To me then and now, it is one of the snobbiest, most condescending statements around.  It is also a statement of exclusion, that creates frustration and rejection in the one who it is spoken to.

UNLESS.  Unless you are a born again Christian, who believes in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For those believers, “ain’t from here” is a beautiful, wonderful statement of fact about their lives!  Because the MINUTE you surrender your heart and life to Jesus, you AREN’T from here anymore!  The Bible says it this way, “For our citizenship is in heaven…” (Philippians 3:20) and “they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:16).  In other words, we become citizens of a new Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven.  We have new priorities, wants, and dreams.  We have a new King of our hearts, and we are driven by wanting to please Him and do His will.  Our lives are totally changed, and we are no longer participants in the ways of the unsaved world.

The only problem with this?  We have forsaken our true citizenship.  We have given in on so many fronts.  We talk like the world a lot.  We live like the world A LOT.  We give in to peer pressure or social media pressure or Hollywood culture pressure, and we begin to look and act a lot like the world we supposedly left.  And our witness of the saving grace and salvation of Jesus is muddied, smeared and totally confusing.  Why have we done this?  Because of this verse: “If the world hates you, you know it hated me before it hated you.  If you were of the world, the world would love its own…but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this THE WORLD HATES YOU.” (John 15:18-19).  And we cave in at the first sign of hate or rejection.

What’s the solution?  I believe we have to remind ourselves daily, hourly, and every minute that we are NOT of this world.  We have to continually immerse ourselves in the Truth..the Word of God…and fellowship with His people who have the same goals, dreams, and desire to walk in His way.  And maybe, just maybe, we will get to the place where we can truly and honestly say, without any rudeness, when accused of being weird and not from here, “No, and I am proud of it!  And I can tell you how to live the same way!”  May this be our goal from now on.