The Kingdom of God

It seems to me like there is a natural tendency for us to see the Kingdom of God as something very far off; something that we won’t see until we reach heaven. This is a sad thought and I used to think it too.  It’s so sad because it has affected how Christians live their lives.  The Kingdom of God is not a far-off place in heaven.  The Kingdom of God is here with us right now.

Throughout the Gospel of Matthew I see Jesus teaching about the Kingdom of God.  When he was teaching about the Kingdom of God, he started the same way each time. “The Kingdom of God is like…” and then he goes on to paint a picture of something that needs to be found.  Something that is desperately longed for.  A lost coin; a lost treasure; a pearl of great price – that took a rich man forever to find, and when he did find it, he sold everything so he could have it.  If the Kingdom was something that was unattainable until we reached heaven, why would it need to be found?

The Kingdom of God is fellowship with God.  John the Baptist told us that the opportunity to have fellowship with God was coming.  He was trying to describe to us what Adam and Eve had with God in the beginning.  When Jesus came he fellowshipped with us, which brought the Kingdom of God to us.  When Jesus died on the cross, he made it possible for everyone now and forever to be able to fellowship with God – and on a personal level.  Jesus took away the need of someone speaking on our behalf to God.  We could have fellowship with God now. 

Change is always hard on us, but naturally, things do change gradually over time.  That’s not how the Kingdom of God changed the disciples.  They didn’t gradually stop going to the priest, so he could talk to God for them.  They prayed directly to God from day 1 after Jesus rose from the dead.

Being a part of God’s Kingdom will change how we view and act towards everything around us. We will begin seeing everything holistically, as it has always been. Everything around us belongs to God and is holy. The environment is holy; our physical bodies are holy; our soul is holy; our relationships are holy. If we continue to fellowship with God we will change.

We won’t liter or waste products made from our environment because we know that God made our environment and that makes it holy.  We will feed our souls by reading God’s word, by praying and by fellowshipping with God because our soul is holy and we need to take care of our soul.  We won’t harm our physical bodies with toxins: like excessive drinking, smoking, doing drugs, eating too much or not eating enough because God made our bodies holy.  We will treat everyone we know with respect.  We won’t judge others for their habits, actions or thoughts that are different from our own.  First of all, God is the only judge of those things and secondly, we need to be purposeful in seeing all our relationships as holy.

I don’t want to go off on a tangent, but let me say one thing: We have turned too many fellow believers away from the church simply because we haven’t respected them and we have judged them.  Most often, we don’t even realize that we have judged them, but when they feel that condemnation coming from a fellow believer, they don’t believe you care about them anymore.

By the way, when Jesus was on that hill teaching the people about how to find the Kingdom of God, he was talking to people who already believed in God.  They were people who were searching for more. When we get hungry for more of God, we need to go searching for his fellowship – which is the Kingdom of God.  The reason the first message Jesus and John the Baptist preached was “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand” is because you can’t search for more of God if you don’t repent and enter into that relationship with him.  After you know God as your personal savior, you can get hungry for him.  If you search for fellowship with God, you will find it.  That’s a Biblical promise.

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7

“But from there you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.”  Deuteronomy 4:29