~ Kingdom Come – Our Response

Our God will build His kingdom, He chooses us to be His agents for change but we are merely catalysts.  It is He who is present when a person comes to faith and it is He who receives that person in that moment.  They may be talking to us about things but it is the testimony of Holy Spirit who confirms the truth to that person.

So what does this mean to us in our lives following Jesus?  The fact that God is the kingdom builder does not mean that we are redundant.  In fact nothing can be further than the truth.  An architect may be the designer of a building but he has no involvement in the construction, he has labourers for that.

As followers of Christ we have the privilege to live according to the teachings of Jesus, to function in a God honouring way.  We reach out to people not by speech or through programs but by the way we live and love them right where they are.  Father enables us to show Jesus by the way that we relate to others, or that is His plan.  We take up that enabling when we take radically the life and commission that Jesus placed before us.

The radical life that I am talking about includes

To love the people we encounter positively

To hold all in high regard with no reference to their social position

To speak up for and support the powerless

To serve all regardless of their desire to be served, and
Make disciples to teach them the way of Jesus and to integrate them into the Community of Faith by way of baptism

There is, of course, the option that we may take that positions us at a lesser commitment than what I outlined above.  In many of Jesus teachings He seems to countenance the possibility that there may be more than one level.  The story about the returning Bridegroom in Luke’s Gospel speaks of servants who were rewarded for being vigilant by the groom, but the implication is there that suggests that others were not as vigilant and were not vilified.

Paul however does spend a lot of time trying to encourage church members back to the true path of faith.  He is standing up for more than a limited commitment; he is dealing with issues of entrapment where the Church members were being sidetracked by things that should have been left behind, things that compromised their new faith with wrong beliefs.

There are, of course, consequences if we decide not to be fully committed.  First and most significant I think is that we fail Father, He is love but He hurts when we refuse to take seriously His call on our life.  Of equal importance is that people yet to believe see us as being what we are uncommitted and as a result see the Church as less than relevant in their lives, or worse they see “Christians” as hypocrites

In our society it is not easy to reach out to others.  They often see this from under an umbrella of suspicion, or defensively.  Often too we are our own worst agent because when we get a rebuff we make it personal and see it as a failure.

I often feel that we can become embarrassed by the way that we live as followers of Jesus.  Especially so, when we become aware of the deeper believer making provisions that can be found in the New Testament.  There is another way to live.

Let us step, up take seriously Jesus call on our lives and honour the things he teaches in the Bible and enjoy the fullness of life He promises