Kingdom. 7th day of Lent. The Kingdom of God is like…

Kingdom. 7th day of Lent. The Kingdom of God is like…

We often come from the perspective that life started with us-
our story is our frame of reference.
We know the family tree, maybe back three generations, and we’ve been schooled with world history to know antiquity but our existence is perceived through our own history.
Our story. Our story world. Once upon a time, I was born and lived like this. It’s what I know, it’s from where I see and hear and experience life.  It’s my perspective.

And the word KINGDOM today reminds me that too often my perspective is incomplete, faulty and at times wrong.
The KINGDOM is God’s perspective on life.

The Kingdom of God is the experience of blessedness, like that of the Garden of Eden, where evil is fully overcome & where those who live in the kingdom know the eternal ALIVENESS and undefinable FULLNESS of God that is exemplified in his vast attributes like love, power, peace, joy, and righteousness.

The KINGDOM is the message Christ proclaimed.
There were two bookends of his good news message.
He would start his teaching this way, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…”
And he would end it like this “If you have eyes to see then see and ears to hear then hear.”
He warns us at the end, don’t miss what I just said to you.
You might hear and not hear. See and not see.
Huh?  That’s right. All of our faces housed the big question mark.

For years that’s what ‘The Kingdom of God’ did to me too. I would listen. Hard. I would hear. But I couldn’t get it. What this kingdom was about. Had it come with Jesus? Was it coming back? Where was it? How did I reach out my hand and touch it?

In Matthew 3, John the Baptist proclaims, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” Repent. Is that how we get the Kingdom ‘in hand’? John was calling out the religious and today some of the religious need to be called out to bring forward the fruit of repentance too. For the religious, self-effort people we hear in these words, “Straighten up, God is coming and when He gets here he is going to be really ticked.”  It’s like when mother used to say, “Straighten up and wait till your father gets home.” We totally understood ‘the hand’ that was about to reach out and touch us of discipline because of our crooked living that went on while he was away.

But wait. I remember this truth… “God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.” John 3:17

It’s like we see things up-side-down. 

So if Christ came to help, to put the world right again, I have to go back to my definition, the Kingdom of God is the experience of blessedness, like that of the Garden of Eden, where evil is fully overcome & where those who live in the kingdom know the eternal ALIVENESS and undefinable FULLNESS of God that is exemplified in his vast attributes like love, power, peace, joy, and righteousness.

Suddenly my definition of ‘repent’ isn’t working besides my definition of Kingdom. Again, I’ve made Repent about behavior that occurs when I change the CONTENT of my mind, and switch the direction of my behavior. Instead I need to redefine Repent to be about my spirit.  Renewing my mind I think differently about how I’m seeing things. Think differently afterwards because “the Kingdom of God is at hand.”

Keep reading on in Matthew and chapter 4 we read, “From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

John the Baptist grew up in a corrupt religious system and the forerunner was warning us to prepare ourselves. To get ourselves ready. The Kingdom of heaven is at hand, has come near.
Jesus has come near. Jesus the ever existing one didn’t grow up in a corrupt religious system. The King of this Kingdom is I AM.

I AM has a Kingdom perspective.
I AM is the eternal ALIVENESS and undefinable FULLNESS of God exemplified in his vast attributes like love, power, peace, joy and righteousness.
I AM has come near.  And in Him was LIFE.
“Aliveness” was near.
Aliveness, filling the atmosphere of the kingdom of God.

BEFORE creation- there was a Kingdom- filled with everything that makes things work. Imagine power and love and peace, joy and righteousness were the atmosphere soaking this place.

Jesus wants to tell us about this so he starts teaching this way-
The Kingdom of heaven is like…
Not telling us how to do earth- telling us about a reality that exist spiritually-  of aliveness- the atmosphere the fullness of God.

This Kingdom is upside-down. It’s contrary to what we think we know most of the time and totally contradictory to what the world would have us believe.  We have to have the Spirit to help us perceive it properly to know Christ is at hand. He is near to us. Not pointing a judging finger but offering his hand. And what does he want? Right behavior?

Oh, please get this.
He wants a relationship. With you.

Spirit speaking to spirit. Aliveness. Fullness. At hand. Near. Yes.
The Kingdom of God is the experience of blessedness, like that of the Garden of Eden, where evil is fully overcome & where those who live in the kingdom know the eternal ALIVENESS and undefinable FULLNESS of God that is exemplified in his vast attributes like love, power, peace, joy, and righteousness.