Category Archives: The Kingdom

The Kingdom

On the eve of the apocalypse

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Window snow

Having abandoned my post right through the presidential campaign and it’s aftermath, it’s probably time to dispatch a few thoughts on the eve of the “Mayan apocalypse”.   A good chunk of this three month silence has been due to a heaviness in my heart that’s bordered on depression.   Though I hate to admit it, the politics, injustice and deception of the world are sometimes more than I can bear, and it’s tempting to give up and dream of an easy way out.   After a week of unimaginable horror, disingenuous politics,  religious crazies, media sensationalism, and my Mother’s deteriorating memory, I almost wish I could believe in the Rapture end-game, or the Mayan apocalypse.  But I can’t.  I believe in the Kingdom.  I believe in hope for this world.  I believe the wolf will lie down with the lamb, that men will beat their swords into plowshares, that darkness and deception will be scattered by the light of God’s glory, and that peace will reign on the earth.   I believe that the Christ who came as a man is the King of a Kingdom that is silently growing in our midst.

Satan seems to busy himself with two great lies regarding the end times.  The first is that Jesus will never return, that the whole thing was only a fairy tale in the first place.  This is the lie he whispers to the unbelieving world.  “No worries.  None of it is real, so just carry on as you were”.  But the second lie gets air time right from our pulpits: “Jesus is coming to snatch you away from this cursed earth and to take you to heaven where you belong”.   This is the lie of gnosticism cloaked in the religion of the “Rapture”.   The trouble is, the “Rapture” is neither a victory for Jesus nor for us.   In the end it persuades us that Satan has so ruined the neighborhood that God’s only option is to burn it down and move us all to a “nicer community”.   What a lame ending to an epic story!

No… the real ending is full of triumph and glory, where the King vanquishes his ancient foe, brings heaven to earth, and restores all things back around to the way they were intended in the first place.   That day is on it’s way.  It began the moment the Son stepped into human flesh, and it will be consummated the day he returns to the earth He loves.   When the sun comes up tomorrow, know that the King stands towering over His creation, determined to keep His promise.

“For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you.  And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”   (Isaiah 60:2-3)

Discipleship, The Kingdom

The idea that changes everything

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One of the great miracles of the early church is the story of how this little fellowship of fishermen, household slaves and tax collectors evolved into a force that supplanted the pagan culture of the world’s greatest empire.   “We have filled all you have”, said the great Tertullian in the third century,  “your cities, islands, forts, towns, assembly halls, military camps, town councils, the palace, the senate, and the forum.  We have left you nothing but the temples.”   Armed with grace and truth, this was a church that out-loved, out-thought, and out-died their Roman neighbors.  It was a church with a vision for a better world, and a blueprint for a new kind of Kingdom.

Perhaps we could learn something from them.   The modern western church by contrast has largely exchanged grace for judgement, martyrdom for materialism, and truth for education.  When the Son stepped into His role as Messiah he introduced something new into the mix of life passed down through the Jewish scriptures.  To the ancient injunction of Deuteronomy 6:4, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength”, he added “and with all of your mind“.  (Mark 12:30)   Here, I believe, is one of the places where the contemporary church parts company with early believers: we have abandoned the Christian mind, leaving the heavy lifting of how we ought to live to the academics and even, (God forbid), to the government.

One of the towering Truths of the kingdom is that the King himself IS Truth.  The God who created all things, and holds all things together, (Colossians 1:15-17), is the same God who shares His mind with his people.  (1 Corinthians 2:16).  The early church knew that they carried within them the One “in whom is hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”.  This was the well of wisdom, the engine of innovation, and the fountainhead of reformation in the early centuries of the Christian church.   Kingdom disciples honor this gift and look to the Lord for fresh insight, ideas and inspiration.

On a personal note, I’ve just finished teaching a delightful group of musician/disciples here in YWAM Denver.   We had many moments of laughter and tears as God unfolded the beauty of His kingdom as the hope for our broken world.  I live for these moments and find myself feeling profoundly grateful that God allows me to do what I love.

The Kingdom

Politics

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Some friends have wondered why I’m not more direct about politics here.  Honestly, it’s a big temptation for me.  But my reason is simple: I eschew politics in order to guard against muddying the waters of the Kingdom or alienating those who come here with a hungry heart.   Others may be called to write about political issues, but my call is to write about the Kingdom.

This morning I read Matthew 9:35-38:

Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.

Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”

Evangelicals have traditionally seen this passage as a plea for more evangelists whose preaching will rescue multitudes from an eternity in hell.  But a closer examination shows that Jesus’ primary concern here is not so much about the afterlife, but about the condition of the people in the here-and-now.   They were “distressed and dispirited”, (an internal problem), and “like sheep without a shepherd”, (a societal problem).  It kinda sounds like the present condition of humanity.

Jesus, of course, was busy preaching “the gospel of the kingdom“, which is God’s total answer to man’s total need.  And he was calling for others to preach that same message.  The good news of the Kingdom is just as much about rescuing people from their “present” hell as it is about rescuing them for eternity.  That’s something that politics will never be able to do.  And that’s why I reserve this blog for the Kingdom.

The Kingdom, Uncategorized

God’s total answer for man’s total need

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This morning as I prayed, “Lord… reveal your Kingdom for the world to see”, the Holy Spirit said, “You reveal it”.  Clearly He is getting serious with me about my shameful neglect of this blog.

It’s August already, and here in America national elections are just three months away.  The media is sponsoring a devil’s buffet of campaign promises, accusations, propaganda and bias, and if you’re like me you just want some clarity about the reality behind the hype.  Don’t expect it from the world.  This is a time when believers need to pray for discernment and ask the Father to reveal the underlying reality behind the devil’s smoke and mirror show.

And it’s time to dig our heals into the message of the Kingdom.  Politics will never solve the world’s problems.*  Never.  This tired earth wasn’t designed to be administered by political power structures, but by a Servant King ruling in the hearts of His people.  (Matthew 20:25-26).  We do well to remember that in the words of E. Stanley Jones, “The Kingdom is God’s total answer to man’s total need”.

  • Is the problem lawlessness?  The Kingdom is the answer.
  • Is the problem poverty and unemployment?  The Kingdom is the answer.
  • Is the problem guilt, despair, mental illness, broken families, drug abuse, tyranny, or indolence?  The Kingdom is the answer.

If America is ever lost, the blame will rest firmly at the door of a church that has preached nearly everything except a clear message of the Kingdom.   These are the days of the “restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21), and it is up to God’s people to go public with the news: “God has a plan!  He is with us to redeem and to make all things new!  There is a better hope than the failed politics of the past”.   The Kingdom is the only hope big enough to sort out the mess we find ourselves in.

 

* It goes without saying that Kingdom people will be involved in the political process, even though our hope does not rest there.   To have a voice, and to make it known is a gift from God. 

 

The Kingdom

The cure for depression

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My Mom recently reminded me that my Father, (who passed away in 1998), was a news-hound, “though he always found it so depressing”.   As much as I miss him, it’s probably best that Dad is seeing today’s headlines from the vantage point of eternity.

I seem to have inherited the news hound from my Father, and then had it supercharged by missions and travel.   And just like him, I fall into despair almost every morning by the time I’ve caught up on world events.  The creep of darkness seems to grow ever deeper, and few in the media are interested in anything hopeful.  So I’ve taken to refreshing myself with the truth of Psalm 2 after my daily dose of the news:

Why do the nations rage, and the peoples imagine a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers plot together,
against the LORD and against His anointed, saying,
“Let us break their bands in two and cast away their cords”.
He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the LORD shall mock them.
Then He shall speak in His anger, and trouble them in His wrath.
“Yea, I have set My king on My holy hill, on Zion”.

(Psalm 2:1-6)

What a great reminder of Who holds the editorial power of history.  Try as they may, the nations haven’t a chance against this King and His determination to write a good ending to this story.

The Kingdom

Chicken Little, Mayans, and the Kingdom

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New Year’s Day 2012 seems an appropriate time to bust-down another of the enemy’s well-planned strategies.  One of the big stories of 2011 was Harold Camping’s doomsday bus tour announcing the rapture on May 21.  Even though most of us didn’t buy into the circus, it provided the media with tons of fodder about clueless Christians shooting themselves in the foot.  This year, of course, the Mayan calendar has reserved “doomsday” for December 21st.   The enemy loves to send us off on apocalyptic rabbit trails that distract us from the true hope of the Kingdom.  It’s the Chicken Little syndrome, and we ought to know better.

The Rapture tells us that working for a better world is like rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic as it slides under the water.  And that’s exactly the Enemy’s intention: to infect us with passivity like a tropical disease.  Of course we believe Jesus is returning!  Nothing could be more clearly stated in the scriptures.  But many have gotten it backwards:  His return is not about Him taking us up to Heaven, but about Him bringing Heaven to earth.  “Then I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven”. (Revelation 21:2)  “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”   

Maybe we should take our cues from Jesus, who never once used the word “Rapture”, but spoke instead about the Kingdom and of making “all things new”.  (Revelation 21:5)  Let’s engage our neighbors in conversations about hope and possibilities, about God’s answers to aimlessness, despair, poverty, and injustice.  The Kingdom calls us to action: “live quietly, work hard, bless others, create beauty, plant gardens, raise families, preach the gospel, heal the sick, entertain strangers, and pray for my Kingdom.  Oh, and by the way, I’ll be back”.  This is the promise before us in 2012.   Earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes will come as the “Prince of this world” realizes his time is short.  I’m excited about this year.  It could be a difficult one, but my hope is grounded in a Kingdom that is growing nearer every day.

The Kingdom, Worldview & Truth

Truth and the battle for the Kingdom

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The Kingdom is Truth, total Truth permeating every facet of God’s creation from relationships and government to economics and environment.  When the King identifies himself as “Truth” (John 14:6), you can be sure His Kingdom will reflect the flawless reality of His original intention in all of our living, loving, working, playing, and laughing.

Lucifer, the World-Hater, has only one real weapon in his arsenal of destruction, and that is the simple, yet effective strategy of deception.  Daily He disseminates lies like dandelion seeds, which in turn poison everything they touch:  Lies about neighbors contaminate communities.  Lies about government sabotage our freedoms.  Lies about morality breed slavery and destruction.   Lies about health metastasize into cancer and disease.

Recently God has been teaching me to pray for the Spirit of Truth to expose lies and to stir up an appetite for Truth in the church and in the nations.  Picture how effectively wars can be turned when the enemy’s plans have been laid bare.  It’s a non-partisan prayer, really.  Whether the lies are liberal or conservative, yours or mine, church lies, media lies, or Hollywood lies, they all must be rooted out before the Kingdom will emerge with great glory.

An additional bonus to this kind of prayer is the transformation of the way I read the headlines.  Instead of daily discouragement, I take heart when one more instance of corruption, infidelity and greed has been exposed to the naked light of Truth.  Imagine with me what God might do if His people banded together in asking that – come what may – the Enemy’s hidden agenda would be exposed like cockroaches to daylight for all to see.

Grace, The Kingdom

The hopes and fears of all the years

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I’ve just returned from a delightful week with the Crossroads Discipleship Training School in Kona, Hawaii.  It was a diverse group of international students ranging from their late twenties to well past retirement age:  attorneys, pastors, educators, farmers, engineers, sculptors, painters, an internationally acclaimed sports photographer, and a young musician who recently fronted a popular heavy metal band.

The “Plaza” at the University of the Nations in Kona, Hawaii.

The week convinced me all over again that the yearning for grace and the dream of a Kingdom are universal human longings.  Grace assuages our fears of abandonment and assures us that flawed as we are, we’re loved, received and valued by our Creator.

And the Kingdom?  It affirms our hope for a better world and whispers to our heart that we matter;  Though we are small, we are part of an epic story that is unfolding towards the grand redemption of all things.

Not an hour ago I was at the local nursing home singing Christmas carols:  “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight”.  Both the hope for a new world and the fear of abandonment were met in the manger when the King of grace took on the flesh of a child.

The Kingdom, Worldview & Truth

Everything matters

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Back when I was religious, I had my life all sorted into neat piles of “things that matter” and “things that don’t”.  Church, Bible study, prayer, and Christian music had value because those things were “sacred” and eternal.   But other things, “secular” things, were essentially meaningless:  Hollywood and hobbies, politics and parties, the way I dressed and the way I kept my yard.  It was easy in those days to prioritize: I merely had to sort the sacred from the secular and turn my focus full onto the sacred.  Now that I see the Kingdom I’ve come to realize that my twisted thinking was just one more remnant of hyper-religious, super spiritual yada yada.   The truth is, Everything Matters!

From the majesty of a sunset to the stripes of a caterpillar, ours is a world designed for glory and destined for redemption.  Every little piece of it.  Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch theologian captured it perfectly when He said,  “There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, ‘This is mine! This belongs to me!'”  There is no division between sacred and secular because there is no secular.  It all belongs to a holy King, from the tidiness of my car, to the trimming of my shrubs, to the brightness of my smile.  In fact, everything I do carries the seeds of significance.

I’m reminded of “The Broken Window” theory that became a crime-fighting strategy of former Mayor of New York City, Rudi Guilanni.  The theory says that there is a direct correlation between broken windows and crime rates.  When people go into a neighborhood and simply replace the broken windows of the vacant buildings, crime rates will drop measurably.  Glory begets community health as surely as neglect and broken windows beget crime.

So while our postmodern neighbors suffocate under the lie that says “nothing really matters”, we believers have inherited a message of hope, the glad news of a Kingdom where everything matters!

The Kingdom

Stepping ashore

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The kingdom is the only thing big enough and grand enough to fulfill every human longing.  Only the kingdom has the largesse to ceaselessly nurture the intellect, move the emotions, inspire the will, feed the creativity, and fuel the passion of the human race without giving way to routine, boredom, or burnout.   Because the Kingdom is a reflection of the infinite glories of King Jesus Himself, there will always be more to be had;  more beauties, more truth, more life and more of the adventure for which we have been created.  The Kingdom ceaselessly calls us forward with no horizon in sight.  I believe if I were to live to be a thousand, I would still have only inched across the shore of this New World we have inherited in Jesus, the King.