Kingdom 2

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Have you wondered if the Lord accepts the praises of the person across the church from you who lied about and hurt you, yet they are right there in church like nothing happened? Do you think 'turn the other cheek' means being willing to be misused and suffer loss? (wrong) My newest series, "Forgiveness, How to be a forgiving person in an unforgiving world" answer questions like these and more! The link is to the right.

Kingdom of God
Remember from last week, Jesus is the king of the kingdom of God, and He spent time eating and drinking what was set before him, spending the night with them in their homes, walking through the countryside, sitting around the campfire. What a king! What a kingdom, where the common man was valued and had something to offer.

Jesus taught about the culture and values of the kingdom of God among the people during daily life; values very different from both the Roman and first century Jewish culture around them. Herod nor the religious rulers, minor kings, mixed with the common man, spoke on their level, or valued daily hardships of life.

When Jesus was alive He taught of the kingdom of God. When He was resurrected, Acts 1:3 says in those 40 days He taught them about the kingdom of God. A few years later, Acts 8:12 says when Philip preached in Samaria, they believed him concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ.

Some 30 years later still the book of Acts concludes in 28:31 saying Paul '..proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ with boldness and without any hindrance from his home'.

They carried that awareness and culture of the kingdom, that of the approachable and relevant King, to the people! Not Hollywood Jesus, not a Lord where you have to climb 120 steps on your knees to light a candle, but a down to earth King and Lord, who now lives in us. That's a kingdom unlike any other, and they taught about it and lived it throughout the New Testament.

Our focus?
Jesus was offering people citizenship in a whole other kingdom with a whole other set of values than what Imperial Rome, the Jewish religious aristocracy, or the gods, goddesses and temples of Rome offered. Today the gospel of the kingdom remains as different from modern life and churchianity as it was from Rome.

Are we as aware as they were that we are citizens of the kingdom of God? Are we presenting a whole picture of the culture and values of the kingdom? Do we practice our faith the same way Paul and the writers of the New Testament did?

Church culture says 'turn or burn', or maybe no confrontation, just 'seek', raise your hand, meet the pastor after the service in the reception room. Church culture says 'join us' in competing marquees each posting a witty saying as a means of saying 'come here'. Is that church culture or kingdom culture?

The Bible values relationships; we value numbers. The Bible converts people by teaching and then doing as we walk through life together - the older teaching the younger, the experienced teaching the new to the faith in relationship; we wonder how many attended and how big the offering was.

They gathered people in homes recognizing the home and the family together as the core place for learning about God ever since Adam & Eve were joined in the garden by the Lord; we gather people into large auditoriums where the family separates to age appropriate groups to hear strangers tell them about God.

Their faith was dirty. They knew each other, walked through life's struggles with each other, challenged, offended, forgave and worked through difficulties with each other; we have a sterilized faith where we give money in the offering and someone else will be involved with 'those people'.

They taught the whole package of another kingdom with a different set of values - the kingdom of God; we present a tiny sliver over and over until people think that is what God is all about. As a result, the churches that were once 'cutting edge' of what God is doing, have become irrelevant to their generation and even a laughing stock to anyone with an objective mind, as empty as most of the denominations that preceded them down the path into traditions of men and social irrelevance.

But...People are mentally and prayerfully sorting these things out in an internal struggle. In one column they are listing values of the church world around them, in another column they are listing things that resonate in their heart, in their spirit.

Bible reality
If you read the Great Commission, there is nothing about being born again. There is nothing about tent meetings or revival meetings or crusade evangelism designed to get a count of hands raised or collect cards with names on them for a count of how many 'decisions' were made. Praise God for the people won to the Lord using those methods, but what if we went back to spreading our faith as they did?

Jesus said spread the gospel by 'teaching them to observe and to do what I commanded you". This is relationship, for teaching and observing cover both the learning elements of teaching, while 'to do what I commanded you' is the demonstration in daily life of how to apply what Jesus taught. Mt 28:20

Mark 16:20 says signs followed the believers. Healings of body and soul were the results of them having been in a home, in relationship with others in the faith - healings and other miracles were the aroma of wholeness lingering as they taught and showed others how to live their faith.

Today we advertise miracles and healings BEFORE they happen to get people to come because we have no relationship with them - just another meeting to go to and maybe see a miracle, making us no different than an ambulance chaser who just wants to see what's happening, or the John 6:26 people who followed Jesus not for eternal life, but because their appetites were satisfied. Which group do we want to be in?

It has been observed and I've said it and will say it again; Christianity started out as a relationship when God came to man in Israel. It went to Greece to become a philosophy, to Rome to become a religion, to Europe to become tradition, and to the USA to become an enterprise.

The book of Acts is normal Christianity
I remember realizing this as a teenager. I remember telling myself the denominations are not normal, they are abnormal. They all may think that what I believe is abnormal, but the reverse is true. Acts is normal.

It is normal to see people healed, to see demons cast out, to have experiences seeing angels and/or the Lord as in the book of Acts. It is normal to have close friends in the faith, meeting in homes in informal meetings. What I see around me; the structure, the hype, the merchandising, the honoring of one gift above all else, is abnormal, even dysfunctional...the book of Acts is normal Christianity. It is how the kingdom was practiced by our founding fathers of the faith.

That's one reason Barb and I latched onto what we called at the time in the mid 1970's, 'prayer meetings', and grew so fast. Thursday night was a meeting in a church basement - a bunch of teens and a church elder who opened the building for us. Saturday night was at a farm house with a mix of all ages. Sunday night was with a smaller group of teenagers rotating host homes.

We worshipped, we prayed, the gifts flowed, no matter who was leading, they would always lay aside the direction they thought the meeting would go if the Lord took it another direction. But we often had contact with each other during the week. Some saw each other at school. Hours were invested on the phone or in person talking through family situations or growth in Christ decisions to be made, always one generation of experience helping the younger generation, even if there were only months separating our ages, spiritually one was an elder in the faith while the other was a babe in Christ, yet we were all equal.

For the first time in history perhaps, at least in terms of numbers this big, people are leaving church and not falling away from God, but finding Him. They are finding him in true relationships, in home meetings, just as the book of Acts presents.

We have become as the heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11:16: "But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly, therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city."

Next week - walking it out
Blessings,
John Fenn
www.supernaturalhousechurch. org