Every son needs to hear his father say, Son, this world is not your home. John 14, 1 to 3, let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you.
I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am there you may be also." John 14 1 to 3. Chapter 3, life in a foxhole. Every boy loves a foxhole. When I was a boy, my dad made me the proud owner of an army surplus folding shovel and a large marine kebar knife that he brought back from Iwo Jima. These two items brought to life the stories he told me about his experience in the foxholes on Iwo Jima.
My mother reminds me that I was always digging my own foxholes all over our backyard and on the beaches in Southern California with that shovel and knife. She says that one time she was concerned because I excavated under the foundation of our house a bit too far. Back then when I was six I knew all about foxholes because my dad told me he dug one on Iwo Jima. I had such an innocent boyish understanding of foxholes. My dad spent two weeks living in foxholes on Iwo Jima.
His experience taught me that foxhole sums up the privations and exposures of war. Lack of protection from enemies, the reality of death right next to you, lack of shelter from the element, the temporal nature of your position, lack of cleanliness and susceptibility to sickness, horrors of surprise in the night, mind-numbing sleeplessness, lack of rest from danger. There were nightly insecticide showers as planes sprayed DDT over the whole island to kill vermin like flies, mosquitoes, and maggots. In a foxhole, my dad was totally exposed to what fell from the sky. He was not in control of his environment.
It was an island of smoke, dust, and ash. The air he breathed was always heavy laden with acrid smoke from the explosives and burning metal, rubber, and foliage. There was so much bombing and shooting and driving that dust was always falling, blanketing everything and filling the air. Dust was stirred up from airplanes landing, moving trucks, advancing tanks, and explosions. The soldiers were covered with it and choking from it.
Foxholes were not the healthiest places. Dad was in a foxhole for 10 days until a flight sergeant ordered that the Army Air Corps pilots be put into tents because of excessive sickness. The Marines remain hunkered in the slim protection of their holes. There was a reason the Japanese called Iwo Jima Sulfur Island. The volcanic activity caused a stinking rotten egg smell.
Foxhole diggers found hot rocks and hot water springs below the surface as they dug. The code name for my dad's combat mission was Hot Rocks. Some of the foxholes were not only assaulted from above by showers of insect poison, dust and stench, but were hot, muggy, wet and stinking of sulfur from the very island below. There was the deafening 24-7 auditory reminder that the enemy had not yet been dislodged. 100 feet from my father's foxhole was a battery, a dozen, of 105 millimeter howitzer guns that fired all night and all day targeting Japanese positions on the island.
Goodbye, sleep. During these wakeful times, a nighttime view from a foxhole was eerie. Not only was there the constant deafening sound of artillery bombs and gunfire, but the night sky was always filled with strobe-like flashes from artillery and the bright overhead illumination of exploded star shells which were launched to give our troops visibility of enemy movements on the ground. One of the biggest problems with foxholes on Iwo Jima was that they were shallow and unstable. The worst places were on the assault beaches where it was like digging in oatmeal.
The sand ran back into the hole as fast as the man tried to take it out. When I visited Iwo Jima with my father during the 60th anniversary of the battle, I was amazed at how exposed this foxhole location was to the enemy artillery fire. He was right out in the open. It was striking to see with my own eyes the looming form of Mount Suribachi and know that with the right kind of firepower the enemy could hit almost any position on the island foxhole or not. What happens in a foxhole is a jarring wake-up call.
Though small, a lot happens there. It gives a dramatic illustration that this world is not our home. A foxhole is a microcosm of life, but with all of the difficulties of life experienced in their most concentrated and extreme forms. The discomforts and threats one experiences in a foxhole foreshadow many of the trials men face in life. Those trials should drive most men to their knees.
Foxholes epitomize the insecurity, the danger, the exposure, the filth, the death, and a stench of war. They make a dramatic statement to all who live in them that this world is transitory, that life is a vapor. These reminders often make men face their mortality And of course it is from there the term foxhole conversion comes. The realities of the frailties of life and extreme danger cause men to remember their maker and some are truly converted. Others however leave their faith behind when they move to more comfortable accommodations.
The things our boys faced in the foxholes of Iwo Jima are the same kinds of things our boys will face in life. A father must, number one, prepare his son to rightly relate to earthly comforts and accommodations. A father's training can mean the difference between a boy's falling in love with this world and everything it has to offer in entertainment and comfort or falling in love with heaven. It's a high-stakes business. A father, by his own priorities and instructions, can assist his son in forgetting about heaven and thinking only on the comforts or discomforts of his ride in this life.
He can either sharpen or dull the awareness of important things. Number two, lead by example. A training a son begins with the father's behavior, which is always a genuine expression of his heart. This means he has a lifestyle and a vision that will guide his son into a proper understanding of earthly and heavenly things. If your desires for earthly accommodations are too great, your son may become like you.
Your son may gain the whole world and lose his own soul by following your example. If a father is troubled and whines about his accommodations or degrades other people's accommodations, he may find that he has raised an unthankful son who is dissatisfied with the provisions of God. A father's dissatisfaction can stimulate a son's dissatisfaction with his accommodations and might even turn him into a whiner. The antidote for this is a heart level knowledge of God's provision. Jesus spoke tenderly to his troubled disciples about this problem.
John 14 1 to 3, let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me, in my Father's house, or many mansions. Number three, recognize the inadequacies of earthly dwellings. The confrontations of life in a foxhole warn us about all these frail earthly dwellings we now inhabit. As we move among various accommodations in this life, No matter how rugged or plush they might be, we must face the reality that all earthly homes are inadequate.
What matters is the spiritual condition of the inhabitants. What matters is that they complete the mission to which God has called them. Think of Abraham who left Ur and did not know where he was going. He never had a house, just a tent. The only land he owned was a gravesite for his wife.
Yet this didn't seem to bother him because he was looking for a city made without hands. He was fulfilling the mission to which God called him. The accommodations were secondary. Contrast this with the desire in our hearts to seek every comfort and amenity. Because of the frailties of earthly dwellings, Father should instruct some about the adequacy of heaven alone.
This home is only a temporary foxhole, can be broken into or destroyed at a moment's notice. Sons need to clearly understand that because our dwelling places here are temporary, their purpose is not to fulfill all their dreams. Number four, show the relative importance of mission and accommodation. As we train our sons, our first objective ought to be to help them understand the greatness of their mission and insignificance of their accommodations. Boys need to understand that accommodation do not have to limit their goals.
Life will not always go as planned. Sometimes it will be hard. Boys need to understand this from the beginning through a father's instruction. Even the most well appointed homes are always temporary and are nothing compared to the heavenly dwelling places God has prepared for his people. For this reason it is silly for us to fall in love with those earthly dwellings Even though they might be much better than battlefield foxholes, Hebrews 11 16 shows a more reasonable way.
But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God for he has prepared a city for them. Number five, understand that shallow men and boys fall apart. Collapsing under the pressure of loss is not a manly quality. We don't want our boys to be so shallow that they fall apart if they lose their earthly dwellings.
We need to get boys ready for action when they lose their homes or their jobs or whatever possessions they might have. They will be tempted to fall into despair but we must help them to be ready with positive knee-jerk reactions. For example, if his home falls down, burns down, blows up, floods or rots, he needs the mental preparation that activates him to just Dig another foxhole. Earthly dwellings provide no security or protection. Only God can provide that.
Train up sons who are strong in the spirit, who are capable of happily getting to work when disaster strikes, digging the next foxhole. Number six, value assets that are true assets. Because your home is temporary, help your son to know that his greatest assets are spiritual assets. How tragic it is when a young man is held back by his possessions like the rich young ruler who was sad at the words of Jesus and went away sorrowful for he had great possessions. Mark 10 22 I have met many men who seem to have an obsession about giving land to their children.
Please don't misunderstand me here for I think it is good and godly thing to give a house or land to your children. Proverbs 13 22 does say a good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children. But I do not want my son to overvalue his house or his lands to the degree that he would be tied to them in any way or feel obligated to them if God called them to other things. Often men do not go where the Lord has called them because they have overvalued family, land, and held tightly to it, baking in a worldly tether on their ankle, often resulting in compromise. It is not the outward appearances or worldly possessions that matter, for they can be swept away in a moment.
It is the inner spiritual resources that are the treasure of the kingdom of heaven. When these are cultivated there is strength for anything life might present. It doesn't matter so much where a man lives but what lives inside the man. Spending time in a foxhole in Iwo Jima helped many of our boys understand the frailties of the accommodations in this life. May we all see our everyday foxholes and remember that Christians true home is elsewhere.
In a foxhole there is a lack of shelter from the elements. In life there may be seasons of wandering and homelessness. This world is not your home. In a foxhole your position is temporary. In life don't put your hope in temporary things.
This world is not your home. In a foxhole, there's a lack of cleanliness and susceptibility to sickness. In life, sickness often comes to the righteous. The world is not your home. In a foxhole, there are horrors of surprise in the night.
In life, there are surprises in the night. The world is not your home. In a foxhole there is mind-numbing sleeplessness. In life there will be worrisome sleeplessness. This world is not your home.
Further, Hebrews 11 37 to 40 reveals even more of the hardships the saints of old endured. We and our sons may need to endure them as well. They were stoned, they were sawn into, were tempted, were slain with a sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskin, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in the desert and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth, and all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith did not receive the promise God having provided something better for us that they should not be made perfect apart from us We look instead for our heavenly home.
2nd Corinthians 5 1 to 7, for we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan earnestly, desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven. If indeed having been clothed we shall not be found naked for we who are in this tent groan being burdened not because we want to be unclothed but further clothed that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now he who has prepared us for this very thing is God who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we always confident knowing that while we are at home in the body, we're absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.
Son, this world is not your home.