Longing for the Fullness of the Kingdom

My heart has been heavy the past couple of days. The elementary principle at my old high school is on a ventilator in ICU. A freak incident at a football game - heatstroke leading to a internal temp of 107 - and his cognitive brain function may never recover, save an act of God.

There are times when I long so much for God's Kingdom that it almost hurts. We see part of it now - the Already. We know what God can do - heal and raise the dead to life - but we know that we don't always experience this in a fallen world. We long for the Not Yet - the second coming of Christ, when Death and all his friends will finally be destroyed, when all things will be made new. All nations and tribes and tongues will gather before the throne of God and sing His praises forever. The world will be how it's meant to be, how we long for it to be, because we will continually be in the presence of God.

Understanding the Christian worldview is so critical here. We have to understand that we live in God's Kingdom of the Now and the Not Yet. We still live in a fallen world, and because of what Jesus has already done, we're called to join Him in actively fighting evil. Yet we know evil and death and Satan ultimately won't be defeated until Jesus returns. We long for the Kingdom that is Not Yet fully here.

But we know the fullness of the Kingdom will come! All nations will stand before the throne of God and worship! God will fulfill His promise.

Of all the things I've learned from Perspectives, this one little snippet from Bryan Padgett has kept going through my head:

In the darkest night of my soul, I know this. I follow a God who is faithful to His promises and this is NOT where The Story ends! It may be where my story ends... but God will fulfill His promise.

Hope In "Telling the World Its Own Story"

Our theme for this week is hope. There are times I desperately need to be reminded of the hope and triumph of the Gospel, and this article has become one of my favorite resources.

A couple of excerpts from "Telling the World Its Own Story" by Richard John Neuhaus:

The story of God's creating love; His preparing redemption for the world; His calling a chosen people and from this people raising up a Redeemer, the Messiah; His establishing an Apostolic community of faith, the Church, that would then reach out through all times and all places and all languages and cultures. This story bearing the promise of the telos — of the end — the destiny of the Cosmos itself and God's loving purposes for the world that He so loved that He gave His only begotten Son. This is the story of the world.

It is the story of everybody in the world. Our job is to alert people to their own story and to help them understand that everything that goes on in this world, all the dimensions of human activity — if they are rightfully ordered, if they are rightfully understood — are sacred, for they are all endowed with the presence of the God of creating and redeeming love who continues to be disposed to His creation, of which He once said, "Behold it is very good." So also He invites a return to that goodness and a fulfillment of that goodness in Jesus Christ.

We have to share God's love for the world. To have a Christian world view is to love the world.



All of us who have contended to be Christian disciples, to be faithful, know times in which we are tempted to despair and to feel that we are a part not only of a minority enterprise but a failing and perhaps definitively failed enterprise. But we have not the right to despair, for despair is a sin. And finally we have not the reason to despair, quite simply because Christ has risen. And this is the strength of a Christian world view, the strength of the Christian way of telling the story of the world: it has no illusions about it. All the other stories are built upon delusions, vain dreams, and utopias.



Hope is a virtue of having looked unblinkingly into all the reasons for despair, into all of the reasons that would seem to falsify hope, and to say, "Nonetheless Christ is Lord. Nonetheless this is the story of the world. Nonetheless this is a story to which I will surrender myself day by day." Not simply on one altar call, but as the entirety of one's life, in which every day is a laying of your life on the altar of the Lord Jesus Christ being offered up in perfect sacrifice to the Father.

Bible Stories

Evangelical Christianity has a huge problem with understanding Scripture in its proper context. Example A - any self help book or kitschy art in a Christian bookstore.

I think a lot of this is seen in how we approach teaching Bible stories to our children. In fact, we need to stop right there. Pick a random Sunday school class in any church in America, and chances are, while they can give you a myriad of "Bible stories," they have no idea how these stories fit together in one overarching meta-narrative or even that the Bible is one story.

How can we ever hope that these kids grow up with a Biblical worldview to be World Christians if they don't even understand the context and purpose of Scripture?

Here are just a couple examples of kids' popular Bible stories that we jerk completely out of context, both in the Biblical narrative of One Story and in the global context of Scripture. Often we look at Israel, and we equate God blessing Israel with God blessing me. To be sure, He blesses Israel, and He wants to bless us, BUT it is not for the reasons we think it is.

The Exodus

The Exodus is never just about Israel. Through the ten plagues, Yahweh is systematically destroying the Egyptian gods, ending with Pharaoh's own household. Yes, God rescues Israel, but it is much bigger than just Israel. Egypt is the world power at the time, and God displays His power that He might save Egyptians (a mixed multitude leaves with Israel - 12:38) and that the whole world will see His glory. God speaks to Pharaoh and tells him:

"But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my Name may be proclaimed in all the earth." Exodus 9:16

David and Goliath

This is perhaps the most famous Bible story of all time. Many popular books have been written about how you can face your giants if you have faith like David. While this may be true, it's not the point of the story. David boldly faces down Goliath with confidence that doesn't come from target practice, but knowing the power of the Living God.

This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give you into our hand." I Samuel 17:46-7

Daniel

The book of Daniel is a mixed bag. It has a couple really great Sunday school stories, and then some stuff that's hard to understand, so most people really pick and choose what they like here. The story of Rack, Shack, and Benny is one of the popular chapters, but almost everyone quits reading before the end of the story. The end is the best part: Nebuchadnezzar literally writes a decree to the entire world!

Therefore I make a decree: Any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way." Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar to allpeoples, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth: Peace be multiplied to you! It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me. How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion endures from generation to generation. Daniel 3:29-4:3

The same thing happens with Daniel and his lion den incident, but by now, the Kingdom of the Medes and the Persians has conquered Babylon and the rest of the world. So this time, it's King Darius who addressed the entire world!

Then King Darius wrote to all the peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth: "Peace be multiplied to you. I make a decree, that in all my royal dominion people are to tremble and fear before the God of Daniel, for he is the living God, enduring forever; his kingdom shall never be destroyed, and his dominion shall be to the end. Daniel 6:25-6

Amen. As Habbukkuk 2:14 declares, "For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea"

Mobilizing the Church

I've been throwing the term "mobilizing missions" around quite a bit lately. I've discussed it here before, but I'm realizing that at the very core, mobilizing missions is not the passion of my heart. There's something even more basic, which is implied, but needs to be specifically addressed: mobilizing the Church.

Mobilizing the Church to do missions is important, and something I very much want to be involved in, but there is a more basic need, and it's probably a larger problem than I would like to admit.

The American Church is in dire need of being taught/transformed into being who the Church is called to be. Therefore, mobilizing the Church to be the Church, and mobilizing Christians to think, have a Christian worldview, and be Kingdom Christians, must proceed mobilizing missions.

(Kierkegaard thought the worst sin for a Christian was apathy. I agree to a point, but I also think it's pretty repulsive for a Christian to not know how to think biblically. At all.)