Aligning With The Kingdom Series

Has anybody had to get their tires aligned on their car lately? Hopefully, you are doing that occasionally because if you don’t do it you have to get new tires. You wear the tires wrong. Bad mileage. A lot of noises. Shaking steering wheel. Possibly even getting in an accident. Today, I am not really interested in talking about tire alignment. Today, I am talking about spiritual alignment. In other words, aligning your spirit with God and his kingdom. We have been going through this series on discipleship. We have defined discipleship as ordinary people learning to live everyday life like Jesus. We talked about the fact that if you are a disciple at Bellevue Christian Church there are three things you should be involved in or you should be doing. You should be gathering, training, and going. Hopefully, by the end of the series, you might actually memorize these three things and maybe the definition. When we talk about gathering, we mean gathering together on Sunday morning and throughout the week in small groups. When we talk about training it is learning about the various curriculums. And going is taking that information that we are learning in the small groups and taking it and applying it into the world. We are going to be addressing each one of those areas in the next few weeks.

But today, I want to continue to just talk about the theme of discipleship. In particular, I want to strengthen the link between the kingdom of God and discipleship. I would like to spend the first five minutes recapping where we have been. I think this idea of the kingdom is foundational to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. You may recall that a couple weeks ago I made a strong statement that I think some of you may have struggled with. The idea that our salvation, our born-again experience, or becoming a Christian is not simply about getting us a ticket into heaven when we die. It is more than that. It is giving us an entry into the kingdom of heaven now that continues on until the point of death and beyond. I said that if we just have that limited view of salvation as getting to heaven when we die, then we begin to ask ourselves what is the point of being a disciple? What is the point of being a follower of Jesus Christ? What often happens is if we don’t see a point, then we just kind of hang around on this earth dealing with the trials and tribulations of life as best we can, but really we just don’t change at all. We don’t do anything differently. We just wait for the rapture to come and take us on home. Although there are people like that, I think most would say even though I might feel like that, I still feel like I need to do some things. Like I need to go to church and maybe serve on a committee or as an usher and throw a couple dollars in the offering tray occasionally. The attitude is that is fine but don’t mess with my life. I have schedules to keep. I have agendas. I have places I have to be. I have places I have to take the kids on Sunday. I have all these things. Don’t mess with my schedule. What happens is this thing called discipleship becomes a purely optional activity and, for the most part, people tend to opt out of it except when it is convenient for them. I also suggested that maybe when Jesus, in The Message translation, said these words “Time’s up. God’s kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the message”, he wasn’t just offering a get-out-of-hell-free card or a ticket to heaven. He was offering an opportunity, an invitation into a new life. An abundant life. What he would refer to as the kingdom life that begins today and carries on through all eternity. I know that is a different way to think of things. But I think if you read the gospels, you will see that is what Jesus was trying to get at. When he talked about kingdom of God, he didn’t necessarily have a place in mind. I know sometimes when we think about the kingdom of God, we just think about heaven. Something that is going to happen way down there in some distant galaxy that only the Starship Enterprise can get to. We put it off in some corner of the universe. Instead, we have to think of the kingdom as really a realm of influence. A realm basically where what you want done gets done. I talked about the idea that everybody has a kingdom. Some people’s kingdoms are very small. Some people have just their house and a few people in their house. They pretty much run the house and what they want done gets done. Some people have larger areas of influence. Some people extend out into the community and local politics or regional politics. They have an area of influence where what they want done gets done. Then you have people in jobs. Some oversee a few employees. Some people oversee thousands of employees. What they want done gets done. I know some of you know the Pope has been in the U.S. All the people following him. You wouldn’t call it his kingdom, but in many senses he has his own realm of authority, realm of influence that pretty much encompasses the entire Catholic church and beyond. My point is that we all have kingdoms. God has a kingdom. God’s kingdom is where his will, his influence is done. That is why when we say the Lord’s Prayer we say “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, your kingdom come, your will be done”, kingdom and will are basically the same thing. Where your sphere of influence is happening. So when Jesus said “Time’s up. God’s kingdom is here”, what he is saying is there is something very unique happening in history right now. Last week I called it a kairos moment. A very unique thing that never quite happened. When Christ came and specifically when he died on that cross he was saying something is happening. There is a reversal going on. God’s kingdom is coming in in a mighty way and it is beginning to expand out and encompass all sorts of realms in the world.