Thy Kingdom Come
DISCLAIMER
This is a sharing on my opinions and learnings of a topic in the bible. The following content should not be taken wholesale. I would recommend you to conduct your own study too because I do not claim to have complete expertise on this subject although this post was written with the best of my research and knowledge as of date. I vouch that my sharing is not of a fickle-minded nature because i take the studying and preaching of Word seriously. However, it is subjected to further changes because learning is a lifelong process and i may get new insights. My ultimate aim is to inform and whet your appetite to study the bible more so if you think any of my explanations lacking, that's great! Find the answers and we can have a discussion to strengthen our bible knowledge bank ;)
Recently i attended a fellowship outside of my own church. A speaker was preaching about what exactly is the Gospel. After that session, i walked away with eyes opened. It is so interesting how Christians take in a lot of basic beliefs/values/terminology without truly understanding them. I am speaking for myself too. Can you imagine? I never truly grasp what heaven meant until a few years into being a Christian. This correspondingly dilutes my understanding of my salvation. I acknowledge that there are a lot of things to uncover and learn about God and His Word but what amazes me is the amount of fundamental things that i thought i knew but i actually dont.
So then, what exactly is the Gospel?
Most of us would say something like: "God sent His one and only Son, Jesus, to take on our sins and save us."
That was the answer i gave. It is not incorrect. But what was interesting was that even when Jesus was doing his ministry, he told his disciples to preach the gospel - all while he himself was still alive (and he had yet to reveal to them he was going to die). Does it make sense for Jesus to ask his disciples to tell people to turn to him for salvation when they don't even know what's the plan for salvation?
Now here comes an even more interesting part. Jesus never once told his disciples to preach the gospel of salvation. He told them to preach the gospel of Kingdom (of God). In fact, the term Kingdom of God is mentioned far more times than salvation is mentioned in the New Testament.
It is to the point that Jesus' model prayer guide goes like this:
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
Immediately after praising God's name, the most important prayer point is for the Kingdom of God to come, followed by repentance. Says a lot, doesn't it?
So what exactly is the Kingdom of God?
kingdom
ˈkɪŋdəm/
noun
a country, state, or territory ruled by a king or queen.
a realm associated with or regarded as being under the control of a particular person or thing.
"the third floor was Henry's little kingdom"
Hence, when we invite God's Kingdom to be on earth it essentially means to have Him rule.
Imagine if Adam and Eve had not sinned. What would the world be like today? Would there still be computers? Telephones? Cars? Quite possibly. For all these are human inventions - what's to say that we won't be able to develop such technology? But in a world without sin, wouldn't the content be very different? Would there still be racism in everyday life? Pornography available through the internet? Violence encouraged via the media?
V and I were talking about the change in our families' atmosphere. I have noticed how my parents grew more and more loving towards one another. In the past, i only remembered lots of fight and then years and years of silent stagnancy. I honestly do not have a lot of memories of what happened within my family because it was really just all of us living our own lives under one roof. But slowly i witnessed my mom laughing at my dad's corny jokes (
shudder), both of them deliberately taking out time to spend with the family, my dad honouring my mom etc.
Yes, i did play my part. I nudged my dad to be more supportive towards my mom. I insisted on birthday celebrations (we used to not celebrate birthdays at all to the point i don't know when my parents' birthdays are. A confession: i still don't know exactly the dates but we make it a point to celebrate nevertheless). I tried to stop being rude towards my parents... But this is exactly what preaching the Kingdom of God is - As Christians, we have the presence of God in us. And we are commissioned to invade the fallen world with God's presence. And surely when God's presence invades, there must be a difference?
The speaker then told us a story:
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This story is about Landa Coope who wrote a book that addresses the issue of the failure of the Church to operate from Jesus' paradigm of the Gospel of the Kingdom versus the Gospel of Salvation.
Her opening chapter tells a story about her sitting in her living room one day watching television when a British journalist began to say that Christians believe that the more Christians there are in a community, the more that community will be affected for good. The greater the Christian presence, then the greater the benefit to the society at large.
The TV journalist went on to describe a research project that was designed to discover if this was true. He evaluated the most Christianized city in America to see how this influence worked out practically. He defined most "Christianized" as the community with the largest percentage of church attendance regularly. That city was Dallas, Texas. He looked at various statistics and studies, including crime, safety on the streets, police enforcement, and the justice and penal system. He looked at health care, hospitals, emergency care, contagious diseases, infant mortality rate, and the distribution of care givers. He reviewed education, equality of schools, safety, test scores and graduation statistics. Jobs, housing, and general economics were also evaluated. Each of these categories was evaluated using racial and economic factors. Was there equity regardless of color, creed or income? And so on.
By the time the journalist host was done with the conclusions of the Dallas study, Landa was devastated. No one would want to live in a city in that condition. The crime, the decrepit social systems, the disease, the economic discrepancies, the racial injustice all disqualified this community from having an adequate quality of life. And this was the "most Christianized" city in America. Landa wanted to weep.
The host took this devastating picture of a broken community to the Christian leaders and asked for their observations. One by one, each pastor viewed the same facts about the condition of his city. With simplicity, the narrator asked each minister, "As a Christian leader what is your response to the condition of your community?" Without exception, in various ways, they all said the same thing, "This is not our concern ... we are spiritual leaders."
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Let us not kid ourselves. Salvation is important. But if salvation were the only message, then why go church? Why stand up for godly values in our workplace? Why do all these when our salvation is guaranteed the moment we invite Jesus to be our Lord and Saviour and mean it?
"There would be no reason for us to remain on earth if there was not a work to be done. So why has God allowed us to receive this new birth and remain on earth? It is so that we might bring the Kingdom of God into our world--our families, our workplace, and our communities. While salvation is part of bringing the Kingdom of God on earth, it includes much more. When Jesus came to earth, He came in order to penetrate the very kingdom of darkness with light. He came to bring healing to sickness, replace sadness with joy, and fill meaninglessness with purpose. He came to change things for the better for a world that had no hope outside of God."
Jesus came to redeem everything that was lost, everything that was originally His. And that includes... well,
everything.
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Amen over and over again.
X
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