Life is such a journey isn’t it? We understand this reality, but we also all long to finally “get there." We want to “arrive." Usually this is because we believe that if we finally get there, life will be better, easier, or more fulfilling. I have to continually fight against this “arrival mentality” and remind myself that the journey is rich and beautiful and the place where life is actually lived.
God has really intensified my growth and learning over the last six years of my journey. There has been a lot of pain, new experiences, much fruit, and tremendous transformation. There is a common mantra out there that “people don’t change," but I think that’s bogus. Transformation is possible if you want it.
One central thing that I have become aware of in this last season is the Kingdom of God. I came to realize that the Kingdom is at the center of the Christian faith and I had little to no understanding of it. It was the starting point for Jesus and the thing he kept coming back to. He proclaimed the good news that the Kingdom was now available, demonstrated the power of the Kingdom, modeled what it looks like to live in the Kingdom, and taught about it through many parables and conversations.
Despite my new awareness, I continued to find the Kingdom of God something that was very hard to get my arms around.
In Matthew 13 Jesus describes the Kingdom of God as yeast, a mustard seed, a treasure hidden in a field, and a lost pearl. The metaphors in these parables are consistent my experience: that there is a certain hiddenness to the Kingdom and without intention, without seeking out the Kingdom of God, I miss it. Part of my missing it is the hiddenness, but the other reality is that there are many other “kingdoms” that are vying for my attention.
So what I'm finding is that without searching for it, I don’t find it or experience it and I allow other kingdoms to guide me.
As I’ve been searching for the Kingdom, I'm learning that one of the essential components is getting to know the King. In this last season, I have come to know the King in a much deeper and experiential way and am beginning to understand what it means to live as his son.
Living life in interactive relationship with the King and learning to see myself and operate as his son in his Kingdom is an incredible adventure. It is very exciting and you learn pretty quickly that there really is not a "destination”. There is so much to learn, so much to explore, and so many resources available to us.
So welcome to my journey, and I invite you to join me in the search.
My plan is to post a new thought or learning once a week. Over the next four to six months I will launch three different 6-12 week series. My hope is that it’s helpful for you on your journey. I would encourage you to sign up for them with your email as I’m viewing them more like a weekly nugget for you to chew on and sit with. Each time I’ll end the thought with some questions and/or experiments for you to use to take action. I call them experiments for a couple of reasons:
One thing I’m coming to understand is the power of self-discovery and how experiential knowledge is essential. These experiments will help you process and wrestle with the topic on your own. They will also allow you to take it from “head knowledge” to “experiential knowledge”. Most of us actually don’t need more information.
You can’t fail. It’s just an experiment. Our culture has conditioned us to be afraid of failure and to not act unless we can succeed. This view prevents our experiential knowledge. No matter what happens, you will learn something. In every other part of life, we understand the importance of practice and learning from experience and failure, but for some reason we often don’t apply that same principle to our spiritual lives.
We all know the journey is a lot more fun when you are with others, so thanks for joining me!
#Welcome #Kingdom #Experiment