November 2006

There is life in the Kingdom of God. I am assured of that. But we don’t often choose it. I’ve felt something shift in me recently, especially since I read Brian McLaren’s latest book, “The Secret Message of Jesus”. Not that there’s a whole lot new in there that I haven’t read three and four times over from every Dallas Willard book I’ve read, but its starting to sink in. We have a choice. In every moment and situation. We can choose to live life the eternal kind of way, the Kingdom way that Jesus showed us, or we can choose the normal path of this world. Its basically a realization that we have true and utter freedom in each and every circumstance. There is no place where our responses and behaviors and thoughts and feelings are dictated by what happens to us or around us. We often make that excuse. But that’s just living as a slave to this world. Jesus has set us free. He has proclaimed, “The Kingdom of God is at hand!” Even, or especially, in difficult, trying situations, we can respond to people and things and situations in the Kingdom way rather than the way we feel we have to respond (for “fairness’ sake”, to “set things right”, because we’ve been hurt or made angry, feel we are wronged, etc.). We can seek to bless and build up others, even when we feel misunderstood or misjudged. Regardless of whatever “rights” we would have to validly respond otherwise, we have the freedom to forgoe the path where only greater frustration, stress, anxiety and anger lie. We have the freedom to simply seek to love and encourage and constructively build up others rather than responding in kind to any mistreatment. God doesn’t save us from our circumstances, he saves us in them, giving us an alternative path, the Way, the Kingdom. We need to believe in free will more and not less. Not everything that happens to us happens for a reason. But we can make reason out of each moment by how we respond in it. God has given us true freedom by offering the Kingdom, telling us that it is near, at hand. Let us walk in it. Oh blessed freedom! Praise you God for your gift. Keep us that we may walk in your light always!