Your Kingdom Come

… the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

(Romans 14:17, NKJV)

The mention of a kingdom inadvertently draws us to a journey of finding out who the members of the kingdom are, their power and jurisdiction.  It does not matter the size of the kingdom, what is important is that each kingdom has its own domain, subjects and ethos that it works through.  All people in the kingdom are given to obeying the stated and cultural tenets of the kingdom with a sense of loyalty to the monarch now and in the future. The perpetuation of the kingdom is an unspoken expectation and this allows the kingdom to continue for many years.  As believers in Jesus Christ, we also belong to a Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, one which is not limited to times and seasons but one which is eternal.  The King is our Father and God, the creator of heaven and earth, the owner of all that there is, the all-powerful and omnipresent God. 

In our prayers and church meetings, reference is made to the Lord’s prayer which Jesus taught His disciples (Matthew 6:9-13). As we pray, we ask that God’s Kingdom would come to earth in the same manner that it is in heaven.  In declaring this, we are saying that the virtues of the Kingdom of God are what we desire to experience in our lives and on this earth.  The question then is what are the ethos of God’s Kingdom that we are praying for?  Our reference verse authoritatively highlights what the Kingdom of God is: - righteousness, peace and joy as the tenets of the Kingdom of God.  In our earthly kingdoms, we see a focus on physical prowess in armies and visible affluence as a marker of its success.  This could be the mind that we bring in as we seek to know the Kingdom of God.  

Beloved, it is not lost on us all that in this world we face pain and sadness in our lives, parents watch a sick child, we face death of loved ones, we experience job losses and family strives yet we are children of the Kingdom of God.  While this could be the physical state of our surroundings, we are reminded to look deeper into God’s Kingdom which is not physical but eternal.  God in His mercies takes care of our daily needs, His Kingdom is much more than the physical provisions of our temporal needs in this life.

When we zero in to what the Kingdom of God is, we find it described by virtues which admittedly are rarely our focus.  In our world, peace seems to be elusive, one just needs to listen to or read the news on a daily basis.  One could be forgiven for being fearful that a war is breaking out anytime in the neighbourhood.  Jesus however said that He gives us peace which passes all understanding (John 14:27). Peace which is not dictated by the circumstances of our lives but is experienced supernaturally by the hand of God.  That is a marker of the Kingdom of God.  We also find Joy as the second tenet of the Kingdom.  When we face challenges of life, we tend to lose our perspective of joy, yet the word of God tells us that the joy of the Lord is our strength  (Nehemiah 8:10).  Beloved, our strength is in resting in the joy of the Lord, not because all other things are right, but because God has given His joy in spite of the situations.  The third element of the Kingdom is righteousness.  Brethren, we know none of us is righteousness (Romans 3:10), only God is righteous.  We become the righteousness of God through our faith in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21).  Clearly, all the virtues of the Kingdom of God are beyond our ability to afford, it is all a work of God in Christ Jesus.  God is merciful, that even though we cannot bring anything to Him, He allows His Kingdom to dwell within our lives as believers (Luke 17:21). 

Brethren, we do not need to look on the outside for the Kingdom of God, we live in it and it lives in us by the Holy Spirit of God.  No matter the challenges we face in the physical, may we be confidently reminded that we carry the Kingdom of God within us, through the seasons of life.  We are all work in progress, learning each day and being transformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ. May we determine to pursue the reality of the Kingdom of God in our lives by faith, as it has indeed be extended to us.

Thoughts:

What are your reflections of this topic?

How have you experienced the tenets of the Kingdom of God?

What has held you back from living in the Kingdom of God?