THIS BRIGHT KINGDOM

The Kingdom of God is not a kingdom of exceptionalism or a kingdom for the boastful and strong. Your merits for this kingdom are not found in anything you have to offer or how much material wealth you possess or what you can buy your way into.

It is a Kingdom upside down from the arid place that you and I live in. In this place, power speaks. Here, men and women jockey for first place, they place burdensome rule and they lay false claims to His decrees and boast of holy mandates all the while living lives contrary to the Spirit. But this is not so with the true Kingdom, because that bright and shining place breaths of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

And it is the very nature of His spirit that radiates through the lives of His true Kingdom people. His is a Kingdom of the broken and crushed, a Kingdom of the humble hearted and the weak. There is no pride or ego or boasting in its capital. The only boasting is in Him, and His radical mercy. There is no power to be swayed or positions to be curried or seats bought and sold in its courts. The humble and the beggar, they have no care for the dross the prideful greedily eat up because they, realizing the depths of their own brokenness and need humbly submit to His way. He sates their thirsts, filling their souls to overflowing and crowns them with His presence in that place and sets His love on them.

That true Kingdom is a place soon to come but alive now within the hearts of all who heed His call and live by and share by His mercy. His is a Kingdom alive within you so that you might not keep it hidden under a bushel, sharing it with only your own.

Show the world that His Kingdom is not built upon stone or brick or corrupt soil but that it is built upon the One who is all justice but still patient, kind and good. Help guide others by that pure fruit that teaches all men through grace, forbearance and common humanity.

Forced rule has never changed hearts for the better, these things only breed death because these are spiritual things that they cannot grasp. Being living epistles of His Word, this transforms men’s hearts to the Life. This is what glorifies the Holy One who has brought His Kingdom forth. And by His example He says, “Follow Me and do as I have taught you. Love as I have loved you.” Anything other is just empty words and sounding brass.