Randy Alcorn: Misplaced Inheritance

The more holdings we have on earth, the more likely we are to forget that we’re citizens of another world, not this one, and that our inheritance lies there, not here. Pilgrims are unattached. They are travelers, not settlers, who are acutely aware that excessive things will distract and burden them. Material things are valuable to pilgrims, but only as they facilitate their mission. If you were traveling through a country on foot or on a bicycle, what would your attitude be toward possessions? You wouldn’t hate them or think them evil—but you would choose them strategically. Unnecessary things would slow your journey or even force you to stop.

Many of us are called to stay in one place and we naturally become “settlers” in one sense, living in houses, building barns, owning furniture, tools, crops, and businesses. There’s nothing wrong with this. But we must cultivate the pilgrim mentality of detachment, the traveler’s utilitarian philosophy concerning things. We need to be able to live in a house without owning it, or own a house without being owned by it. If God so directs us, as he has many of his disciples, we need to be able to leave behind a farm or a business or a house without going back.”

Randy Alcorn in Money, Possessions, and Eternity (Carol Stream: Tyndale House, 2003) 165. Download the book in PDF form freely here. And enjoy the header photos this week from Trinity College, Bristol, where I did my Ph.D. in New Testament.

This is the third of seven posts from this book at this time. Special thanks to Courtney Markley for collaborating with me to identify key quotes from this great book. If you missed the back story on these posts, go back and read the post on 18 October 2026.

The Scriptures are crystal clear of the location of our inheritance. It’s not here; it’s in heaven. Consider this word picture. I will call it the road to heaven.

On the left is a ditch, asceticism. Don’t go there. God created things for you to enjoy and share. On the right is a ditch, materialism. Don’t go there. Too much of a good thing is not good. Down the middle is the pilgrim way. Pilgrims are unattached travelers on their way to heaven.

The challenge with most people is that they get too comfortable in this world. They become settlers. The danger here is attachment to the wrong world. This earth is not heaven. This leads to a misplaced inheritance. Don’t let it happen to you. Your inheritance is there!

I once heard Alcorn use another illustration. Go through life as a pilgrim like you are living in a hotel. You don’t own the hotel room do you? Of course not. So you would never paint the walls or put family pictures on the walls of your hotel room, would you? Of course not.

People act as attached settlers and make themselves and act like this temporary dwelling is home. It’s not. And while I do encourage painting walls and having family photos, you do well to go through life thinking of your dwelling as nothing more than an extended stay hotel.