The Kingdom of God

"Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever."

The Kingdom of God is everything that exists within space and time, as well as everything that exists outside space and time. It is wherever God rules, which is everywhere, forever.

When you and I surrendered our lives to him, we dropped dead in a fallen world and were reborn in his kingdom, able to see things from his perspective—vertically, instead of horizontally.

…and there's something about this kingdom…

We know we've changed, that we're not the way we were before we got here, and it's not all clouds and gold streets like in the movies, but it's not the world either.

We sense an unfamiliar peace. We're still on earth, but we're not, which might be what makes it unfamiliar. Stuff's still going on all around us, but it doesn't rattle us as much as it did. We don't feel as driven, and we can't seem to remember what it was we were driven to do or to have or why.

We still walk around and go to work or school or wherever and come home. Our family and friends haven't changed, but the way we see them has, and it's beginning to change our relationships with them.

We still have stuff, but it seems to be leaking its gotta-have power.

And the people around us are different. They'd undoubtedly look the same if we looked at them through the same eyes, but something's happened to our eyes and the brain that operates them. Maybe it's connected to what's going on in our heart. We just don't seem to be defining people the way we used to—by where they work, what they earn, what they wear, where they live, who they know or who knows them. We seem to be mostly concerned about whether they know God. We don't go all "evangelist" on anybody, but they seem to find their way into our prayers.

Over time, we begin to find ourselves more comfortable in God's kingdom than in the world. It's tempting to get religious, but temptation doesn't seem to have as much clout as it used to.

Then, there's the Bible.

Maybe we grew up with one but never read it. Maybe we never had or wanted one. Maybe somebody told us it was old-fashioned and useless today. Whatever. But it's different now.

It's not like we're gobbling it up and being enlightened by every word. But every now and then, we experience a curious "aha!" moment when a word or a line, paragraph or story jumps off the page, and we notice that God and his kingdom seem to have moved a little closer and become a little clearer.

There are also little rooms throughout the kingdom that only hold two people. You and Jesus. Me and Jesus. Whoever. Revelation happens there, but mostly the two of us just spend time together. The moment I see him, I can't seem to stop thanking him for this and that, but eventually the conversation always seems to get around to my frustrations and fears and doubts and offenses. Other stuff happens, too, that you already know about if you've been there.

There are countless things we can't even begin to describe here in God's kingdom. And he's promised us that we'll always be discovering new ones.

At the same time, because the King has become our Father, people in the world who hate him seem to hate us as well. And as long as they can get their hands on us, they do to many of us what they can no longer do to him.

"That is why," Peter said, "for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."