Kingdom Rising

I recently read an article about the mother of a newborn who'd called 911 because she was unable to feed her child. She was a breast-feeding mom caught off guard when her milk suddenly dried up at 2 AM. She drove around looking for formula but could not find a store that was open. She dialed 911, and a local police officer responded by going to a nearby grocery store, banging on the door until someone inside answered, purchasing some formula with his own money, and delivering it to her front door. He refused recompense, and says, "It wasn't a long conversation, as the woman had a hungry baby to feed." What a feel-good story, right? Well, if I'm being completely honest, my first response was, "911? Really?" But common sense and the Holy Spirit prevailed. What if...? What if that had happened to me so many years ago? I've certainly been alone. I've frantically searched for a private place to nurse a screaming infant. I've needed the help of a total stranger. I've taken desperate measures to protect and provide for my children.

This world needs Jesus...

...and His people. Matthew 6:10, part of what we call The Lord's Prayer, says, "Your kingdom come; Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." You wanna tell me how that's supposed to happen if God's people aren't praying for it, working for it, serving for it, loving for it, fighting for it? Sure, God could speak it so, but we, the Church, are given the opportunity to obey His commands, be salt and light, and partner with Him in this mission to the masses. This is a privilege!

In one of Jesus' Kingdom Parables, He tells us the Kingdom of God or, in Matthew, the Kingdom of Heaven (Jesus appears to use them interchangeably; but some commentaries intimate a difference, suggesting the Kingdom of God is the overarching plan for individuals, the righteousness and holiness of Christ, and the Kingdom of Heaven is the final reign, the kingdom Christ will establish on earth. Either way, if you're not part of the Kingdom of God, you won't see the Kingdom of Heaven, so let's leave that debate alone.) --Where was I? Oh, yes, the Kingdom of God is like yeast: a tiny bit will cause the entire lump of dough to rise. Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of God as it works and expands in and through His people. It begins in a single moment, a humble cry to God, and a life begins to change. The individual goes from doing whatever they want to questioning their goals and actions; they move from this to seeking godly counsel and following that counsel; they move from this to radically serving the Lord; on and on it goes. Others witness this unique and profound transformation; or the individual, so overcome by what God is doing, gives credit to God publicly; or the individual finds themselves compelled to "share the wealth," so to speak, and the lives of others are touched by their service and kindness. The individual has changed, the world around the individual has changed, and people become witnesses to and beneficiaries of the glory of the Kingdom of God. In God's economy, the smallest things He gives us to do are multiplied and, as with microscopic cells of yeast, the whole lump is affected.

Imagine that poor mother, her lack never greater, the night never darker, her situation never more hopeless. Without the officer, the mother had nothing to give her child. And the child, so small and new to this world, its body aching with hunger and its only source of comfort frantic with concern; without the mother, the child had nothing to nourish its body or spirit. This world requires agents of change, those with serving and sustaining those without. The yeast of the Kingdom of God is what we have to give; even a small amount, worked into the dough of others' lives --a smile, a tract, a small donation, a helping hand, a word of encouragement, a generous tip, an open umbrella, an invitation to church --will cause the whole to rise. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. How are your words, your actions affecting the world today? As an ambassador of the Kingdom of God, how are the people with whom you interact gaining an accurate representation of our King? What are you doing to cause others to rise?  

Midweek: What God Wants

If you've never read C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, I would encourage you to do so. The unique premise of the writing is the domination of humanity (and the ensuing possession of glory due only to our Lord) by Satan and his minions from what Lewis determines is their vantage point. Though it has a tongue-in-cheek tone, the theology is rich and the perspective awakens our sometimes-sleepy reflections of this eternal life. I hope you enjoy this sample, bearing in mind these are thoughts exchanged between two workers of iniquity, and "Our Father" in this instance refers to the Father of Lies, while "The Enemy" is the Lord of lords:

Humans are amphibians-half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy's determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation-the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life-his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.

To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favorites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily good; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself-creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.

And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves;

~ C.S. Lewis

The Screwtape Letters, ch. 8

Are You Your Own Worst Enemy?

Does every day feel like a battle? You're fighting a body that just doesn't work. You're struggling to make ends meet. You're attacking anxiety or dueling depression. You're grappling with decisions that will impact the rest of your life. You're at war with work and feuding with failure. You're contending with all of the temptations and influences your children are facing every time they walk out the door. It's a never-ending loop of conflict. But are those really the things we are called in the Word of God to fight against? Are these the reason for our holy armor? Is this the purpose for which we are saved (Westminster Confession of Faith, 3.5)? Maybe, but probably not.

People love to quote those "victory" Scriptures --you know the ones, the ones that tell us God plans to prosper us and heal us, among other things. Of course, they are wonderful promises, but beside being taken out of context in most cases, God's promises usually mean much more than we claim. An ailing friend quotes the last line of Isaiah 53:5, "by His stripes we are healed." (There's always danger in quoting one verse absent context; much more in quoting one line of one verse) Context shows this is not just physical healing --and yes, I do mean just. To say this guarantees physical healing is to place the work of the cross entirely in the physical realm, to limit what God can do in the same way the people looked for signs and wonders, and to be satisfied with something less than what God plans to give. On what we call Palm Sunday, the people celebrated a king --a king they thought would overthrow Rome and liberate them here on earth; but Jesus came as King of a supernatural Kingdom, coming to overthrow sin and death for everyone! SO MUCH MORE than healing or rescue in a temporal sense. But back to the battle. In Psalm 18:35, the psalmist rejoices because God has given "the shield of His salvation," His right hand has held him up, and His gentleness (or condescension) has made him great. Wow! God shields me in the battle, holds me up, and makes me great. WhooHoo! Well, as it turns out, in battle a shield was used to protect one from things flying toward them! Not only that, but typically, another would put his life at risk to hold over the archer a shield so that the archer could do his job. Notice what the psalmist says in Psalm 18:34:

He teaches my hands to make war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.

The psalmist (and you and I by extension) are taught to make war; we are the archers! The imagery in the latter verses of Psalm 18, has the warrior chasing down enemies until they are completely annihilated. Chasing them down! This doesn't sound at all like we are hidden safely in a bomb shelter somewhere until the battle is over. It doesn't suggest we are sitting quietly at headquarters while conflict rages. We are running our enemies down!

So, who or what are our enemies? Clearly, Scripture tells us they are "principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this age, and spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." There are ideologies that go against everything we are taught at the feet of Jesus; they are anti-Christ. There is demonic activity at work in this world. There is the brokenness and sin that exists simply because Adam and Eve, and every man and woman thereafter opened the door to sin in this life. BUT there is us. When I was younger, my mother would tell me I was my own worst enemy. I had no clue what that meant at the time. I discovered, for me, it meant I was prideful, I judged everyone without looking critically at myself. My enemy was within me. Not until years later did I try to chase that enemy down. Not until years later did I commit to fighting my foe with everything I had, all the weaponry given to me in God's Word, and fighting daily. Not until years later did I stop whining, "Oh God, fix me," and commit to bending that bow myself. 1 Corinthians 11:31 advises, "...if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged." By the Word of God, in league with His Holy Spirit, against the life of Jesus Christ, we measure ourselves critically and often, and we ask other spiritually mature believers to measure us as well. This is how we war and, more often than not, this is who we war --our old nature, crucified with Christ on the cross --in an endeavor to depose it from the throne of our hearts and our minds. When we come to Christ, we are handed a new nature; daily is the battle to put on that nature and refrain from taking up the old nature once again.

Titus 2:11-12 promise, For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age. In the present age. As our bodies falter and ends don't meet and decisions are necessary and work is hard and failure is easy and our children are pummeled with anti-Christ ideologies, the application of God's teaching, holiness, sobriety, self-control are the captured ground that will keep us. Lest we become our own worst enemy.