I can’t get enough of Jesus.
Not in a forgive-me-more-of-my-sins kind of way, but in a deeper way.
There’s something about Jesus that hits me the way a freight train hits a farm truck on a country railroad crossing. It’s devastating.
And He’s very unapologetic about it.
This Kingdom He brought isn’t candy coated nor does it have one of those looped handles that prevents choking like those suckers the pediatrician hands out.
It was meant to choke us. It was meant to draw dire contrast between how God has ordered His world and how we have learned to function within our world.
It stops us in our tracks like an old guard dog with raised hackles staring you down on a gravel road. You’d best change your route.
We have no example of a Disciple, Apostle, or willing bystander who was caught in Christ’s vortex of salvation who went on to live a life that was safe and tidy.
The Kingdom life is a mess. It’s mess because it demands that we dive into the crevasses and hidden folds of people’s lives. We touch their darkest areas. We lay our hands on rotting wounds. Our eyes sting with the sulfur of demonic deliverance. We’re surrounded by corpses whose hearts beat with the hope of life. These are our companions that accompany the Kingdom life.
If we are unwilling to touch a person at their worst, we will never see them at their best.
Be at home here.
To find ourselves at home within the Kingdom–and we should–we have to acknowledge that we are not at home here among a world that strives for riches, influence, and power.
Worldly cares take second place. Or third. or tenth.
Here in the Kingdom, we speak a language of compassion that when melded together with faith, creates a conduit for the power of the Holy Spirit to flow into the lives of the least-of-these.
“And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 10:38-39 ESV
To embrace Christ is to embrace His life. And as we embrace His, we slowly lose ours. Then, incrementally, we find ourselves where we were always meant to belong; firmly planted into the Kingdom of God.
-Pastor Jared
As always, I invite you into a conversation. Share and comment.