The Gospel of the Kingdom

The Beginning

From the very beginning of time, God set in motion His very purposes. God created us for relationships - relationship with Him, relationship with our marriage partner, relationship with our friends, and relationship with creation. It is not good for a person to be alone, not in God's story anyway.

We Blew It

The Creator did not create humans as robots or machines, but as humans with the freedom of choice. We are free to respond to God's invitation to be in relationship with Him, to be in His story, or to go our own way, and then create our own story. This is the beauty and curse of free will. We have a tendency to lean toward isolation, independence, and aloneness. Our selfish behavior becomes number one priority, the independent spirit, and this is the primary characteristic that destroys connection, relationship, community, and that is what eating the fruit is all about. And as a result of "eating the fruit," we cover and hide from God and others - losing the intimacy and vulnerability which we were created and fashioned for.

The Invitation

God entered into a special relationship with a man named Abraham. The Lord said to Abraham, "Leave your country, your people, and your father's household, and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." Throughout the last four thousand years, because of our tendency toward crisis and chaos, we have misunderstood those words. When we think we are chosen only to be blessed, and forget that we are blessed to be a blessing, we distort our identity and drift from God's calling for us. When we assume that we are blessed exclusively rather than instrumentally, when we see ourselves as blessed to the exclusion of others rather than for the benefit of others, we become part of the problem instead of the solution. If more people understood what it meant to be religious in this way - being blessed to be a blessing to others, not just to be some spiritual elite or some fat overly blessed person - then religion would have a better name in the world and more people would enter into relationship with God. Abraham's family is being enrolled as God's helpers, co-workers, partners, team-mates in cooperating with God on mission, to be blessed to be a blessing...calling people into relationship with God and each other. That has always been our calling. The calling hasn't changed.

Co-Workers

God continued in relationship with His people through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses. Over a period of time God raised up Judges and then Kings. He also sent priests, prophets, poets, and philosophers. God continued to be faithful to His people, this special formed community, even though they disobeyed Him by walking out of relationship and thus writing their own story. God had relationship with these people and sent them to call this community back into relationship with Him and one another. God continuously called His people back to join His story, to fulfil His purposes. For hundreds of years we have a group of people walking in and out of relationship with God and one another.

Christ

God sent Jesus into the world to absorb all the punishment for our sins. That is what the cross was all about. He became the substitute for all of us. He was the Victor over sin and death. Jesus became a representative of all humanity, as a way of acting out real repentance for the human race. Jesus is showing God's loving heart and makes visible the self-giving love of God. Jesus demonstrates what the Kingdom of God is all about - self-sacrifice and vulnerability.

Community

Jesus called people to follow Him...to be His disciple. The word "disciple" means "learner." A disciple wants to know and do what the teacher knows and does, so we apprentice ourselves to the teacher. Jesus was creating a community of followers. A disciple is a follower of Jesus - and there was a way of living as a disciple. They were disciples, which speaks of their being called together to learn and follow Jesus. They were also apostles, who would be sent out to practice and teach what they had learned. That is what apostle means, a person who is sent on a mission. So Jesus brings together this community of men and women who are called out from the crowds to be disciples, and then these disciples will be sent back into the world on a mission of expressing Jesus' message of God's Kingdom, and helping others become disciples who will in turn help others, and so on. Jesus was sent into the world, and He also sends us as a community of faith, to express, in word and deed, the saving love of God. Jesus was sent here on a mission, and He said, "As the Father sent me, so I send you." This mission has us! The Holy Spirit is changing us to be Christ-like people - transforming our lives from the inside out. The Holy Spirit tries to do something in us - makes us more like Jesus - and then tries to do something through us by involving us in God's mission and giving us some special part of the mission to do. The Holy Spirit connects us with a community so we can together learn and follow Jesus and carry out this mission to make disciples of all nations.

The End

There will be a day coming when we will be told, "Well done! You forsook your own story, laid it down, to live out my Story. You have lived your life as my disciple (learner, apprentice, follower) and have made disciples too, by your words and deeds. You have an eternal place in my story. Come, continue in relationship with me for all eternity."

Or God can say, "Sadly, you forsook my Story to live your own. My heart is sad because I love you so very much. But because you have rejected me all your life, you have chosen to live according to your story, and will have to continue to live for all eternity apart from me."

What story are we living - Gods or our own? "For what does it profit a person if he pursues a story of personal gain that makes his soul languish and his character miss its chance to really come to life? It would be better to lose that selfish story, to abandon that plot line, and to enter God's better story..."

God invites us to repentance by forsaking our own story, our own independence, isolation, and selfishness, and join His story, putting our faith and trust in God through Jesus, realigning our lives with God's hopes, dreams, and purposes.