Aliens and Strangers on Earth

We Are Aliens

When I was born, I was a chubby toe-head of a baby. To be frank I was undeniably adorable. I’m surprised no one sold me to Disney. My parents were frequent watchers of the Sci-Fi network, and one day they were watching a show where the main characters discovered extraterrestrials. There were these alien that looked just like me; they were alien babies! And so naturally, they called me the alien baby. This sounds weird but if you only knew my family. Frankly, I love this title. Later, when we visited Area 51, we joked that my alien people were going to come and get me. The reason I embraced it was because I knew even in high school, when my parents told me this story, that I was not of this earth. This sounds weird, but even the Bible calls us aliens.

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. (1 Pet 2:11-12)

The Bible refers to us as aliens, strangers, and sojourners. I always thought a sojourner was a wrestler, but it is someone who lives somewhere temporarily. If the Lord calls us sojourners we are clearly not of this world, and our stay here and everything of this world is very temporary.

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, therefore the world hates you. (John 15:19)

I am frequently reminded that the world does not love when the McDonald’s ice cream machine is down, and the workers refuse to drive to another McDonald’s to bring me a McFlurry. We all have all felt like the world is against us, and frankly it is. But the Lord is for us! The world does not love us because we are not of this world. The Lord loves us because we are of the Lord! So then why are we here?

To Be an Alien to the World, Not the Lord

In order to be an alien to the world, not the Lord, we must grow in life. His life. We must grow in life so that the things of this world become alien to us. However, growing in the world is death. Growing in the world is watching Spanish telenovelas all night while eating cheesecake without a fork. Spanish telenovelas only distract us from growing in life! But Satan’s mission is to distract us!

In order to grow in the Lord we must remember three things.

1. We must eat life!

We must eat the word! If we eat life, we will receive life and will become life but if we eat death, we will not only die but will become death (Rom 8:6). Eat of the tree of life. The food you eat becomes a part of you. Just like the cheesecake and cheetohs I just ate has become a part of me. The food is becoming me. Scary. But thank the Lord we can eat of Him to get rid of the junk, and replace it with Himself. Before man could eat of the tree of life, the Bible tells us that Satan the Devil, through the serpent, distracted man. We must not let the world (a.k.a Satan) distract us! His life is the Word! When His Word is in us, He is in us. The Lord even uses His Word to speak to us, in us. I’ve had the experience where I have been contemplating an issue, and the Lord has put a verse in my mind. That is His life moving through us!

2. We must exercise our spirit!

The way to eat the word is by exercising our spirit to take in the word. Our spirit is our organ to receive God. So every day, all the time, we must exercise this organ to take the word. The experience of life is just to exercise our spirit to eat the word that we may receive life. After being received by us, this life will live out all kinds of divine, spiritual, and heavenly things in an unlimited way. God lives in our spirit and when we exercise our spirit Christ lives out of us! A simple way to exercise your spirit is to call on His name! 1 Corinthians 12:3 “No one can say, ”Jesus is Lord!”, except by the Holy Spirit.” When you say “Lord Jesus!”, you are exercising your spirit! By calling on the Lord, you are rejecting the things of this world, and focusing your heart on the Lord.

3. We must love the Lord!

We have to tell the Lord we love Him each and everyday several times a day! We should wake up in the morning, and greet the Lord with love. The Lord wants to have an intimate relationship with us, and how is that possible if we do not express our love for Him. Everyday after class I come home exhausted to Effie, my puppy, and I greet her with a thousand ‘I love you’s, and a million ‘te quiero’s. I embrace her like I haven’t seen her in twenty years, and she probably has no idea what I’m saying, especially when I sing a song about her I made up in Spanish. But the Lord loves to hear our voice! The Lord would love to hear a song made up in Spanish confessing my love for Him, unlike mi perrita bonita. We should love the Lord as desperately and feverishly as we love our dogs. We must scratch behind His ears, and give Him Doritos and cookies event though we aren’t supposed to. We must send our love to Him above all other things, and this will make us a true alien, because people of this world send their love to many things. Loving someone opens your heart up to them, and our hearts need to be fully open to the Lord. Loving the Lord gives Him access to grow in our hearts.

My Experience this Semester

Spring semester 2015, I consecrated television to the Lord, and I thought this was really silly at the time. Why does the Lord care about this? All the ‘silly things’ matter to Him. If we can’t come to Him about the silly things, how can we come to Him about the serious things. He cares about it all. I was a classic binge watcher and TV was my comfort with a side of brownies. I was so hip and cool, and I knew everything about all the shows that ever existed. But TV got in the way. It got in the way of my enjoyment of the Lord, and my growth in Life. Colossians 3:2 says, “Set your mind on the things which are above, not on the things which are on the earth.” My mind was set on TV which is set firmly on this earth. The enemy makes the world seem attractive, and as if watching TV for 24 hours straight is normal and just quirky. But it is not good for me. I began to realize how my TV watching habits impacted my enjoyment. If I stayed up late watching TV I would skip the Sunday meeting. Or if I went to a Bible study in the middle of a ‘binge’ then I could not focus on God. It consumed me. I did not want something so silly to consume, and it impact my relationship with the Lord. This alien was being tempted by something of this world; it happened to E.T. too. I put TV before Him. I put something of the world before Him. So I gave it to Him. And slowly I began to lose interest in watching TV.

Now, a year later, my lust for late night Netflix binges with cheetah dusted fingers has ceased. I feel much more drawn to getting up early to go to a meeting, or to meet with some of the sisters. You know the Lord has grown in you about TV when you are yelling at Lorelai Gilmore to fellowship with the sisters about marrying Luke. Don’t get me wrong I still watch TV, I’m not a complete weirdo, but I feel very ‘meh’ about it. I would much rather be with the saints, which was not the case a year ago. The Lord has grown in me! Praise the Lord! God needs to grow in us. When God grows in us, we grow in His growth. If God does not have a way to grow in us, we can never grow. We need to give Him that access and we need to consecrate and give things of issue to Him. We need to give Him anything that needs to be worked out. Give Him anything you hold above Him.

And Jehovah your God will clear away these nations from before you little by little; you will not be able to consume them immediately, lest the beasts of the field multiply against you. (Deut 7:22)

He will clear away the world from inside you little by little, day by day. It will take time but that is the Lord’s grace. If I got over TV in a day, the next day I would be on to pro wrestling and just another worldly thing would take its place. He needs to take its place. He is within us, living within us and He just wants to gain more of us. As aliens walking among humans we must contact Him about anything of the world that gets in the way of an intimate relationship with Him.

The more we grow in Him, the less of an alien we become to Him, and more of an alien to the world. And the more the things of the world will feel alien. Now, when people talk about TV and Netflix I feel like an alien, and it is very hard to relate. That may not sound that great, but I do not miss it at all. I am so much more satisfied in feeling like an alien with the Lord, than feeling like a human without the Lord. I cannot wait for the Lord to grow in me more, and make other things of the world alien to me.

By: Kolean Gudalj