The Kingdom is Close, But How to Be a Part of Its Coming Fully?

When I think of the Kingdom of God, I think of God ruling in my life, in the life of the church and in the whole world. To be a follower of Jesus to me is to have him be Lord, or ruler, or king on my life. From accepting him as my Lord and Savior, I have believed that to do his will, in his kingdom, is the meaning being in His Kingdom.

For us to go to Belize years ago, was just responding to his will for us to work in his Kingdom in his work for us to do. Now when we discerned that that task was concluded some years ago, it felt good to move back to the States and settle in where we had lived before. But is retirement Biblical, I used to ask? Is there an end to Kingdom work for us ever? At first I just enjoyed it, but was haunted by the question of what we should be doing for God. I did not want to get into anything heavy. I picked up a few things we could do: Be neighbors to our close neighbors and pray for others. Still I was uneasy at times feelings there must be somethings else for us. Then one word came to me: CONTENTMENT. Only occasionally has a word come to me like out of the blue, not from my thinking at all. I relaxed and opened my self to BE rather than to DO. To serve God with my heart rather than activity

Since then, our life has been enriched in a larger view of BEING God's love to our neighbors in the way we relate to them, seeking ways to encourage them, and praying for them and ask God to bring more of them into our sphere of relationship, and for God to work in them to understand His love through us and by his Spirit in them.

Another area of his close Kingship in our life is in intercessory prayer. I have time to be much informed by local, American, and world news, so I find much to pray about. I am also deeply aware that the Christian church is not, perhaps cannot reach the whole world, especially as it is weighed down with cultured values of wealth, self-preservation, politics, etc. I was encouraged by the theme of that seminar at Harvest church that we are Partners with God. The Kingdom of God is to be close in us, in the church, in the world, and with God's messengers in nearly every country. Yet it seems that it just can't quite come fully. God must do something Himself to bring in his Kingdom. We can help but it takes more than we can do to fully bring it in. Thus we have prayed a lot recently for God to act in bringing His kingdom to earth. As I put it down in the style of the similes of John Milton, an English poet, when I studied in college:

“Like a young man walking with his father along a road with multitudes of helpless, cold, and homeless, hungry people filling the ditches on either side of them, the task of helping them totally overwhelming for him to relieve them, pleads with his compassionate father to do something about it, SO WE CRY out to our Heavenly Father to relieve the suffering of mankind who can do little to provide for themselves as they suffer from natural and unnatural disasters, caused by weather, cruel governments and corrupt leaders, which we see daily on the media or closer and feel we and God's people are starkly unable to cope with the magnitude of the problem of the billions of suffering mankind.”

 So we pray earnestly for God to do what we can not do in bringing His Kingdom to all. In this we also pray for him to speak clearly to us about his will for us, and for the church and for missionaries to boldly proclaim the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.