"....For the Kingdom of Heaven is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." (Romans 14:17)
The Church has by and large missed the whole message of the Kingdom of God/Heaven. Just notice its rejection for the evangelical preference of, "born again," in John 3:3 & 5. "Jesus answered and said to him, 'Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God....Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." Notice that seeing the Kingdom and entering the Kingdom is the main point. The, "born again," is to get us into that Kingdom.
I am sharing some insight into the Kingdom of Heaven from a passage in E. Stanley Jones' book, The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person.
"I was speaking in a cathedral in West Germany on the kingdom of God. On the front seats were prominent German leaders. As I spoke they kept pounding their benches with their fists. I was puzzled. I did not know what it meant--- was it for me or against me? But at the close they revealed what the beating of the benches meant: 'You seem to sense why we turned to Nazism. Life for us was at loose ends---- compartmentalized. We needed something to bring life back into wholeness, into total meaning and goal. We thought Nazism could bring that wholeness. But it let us down, let us down in blood and ruin. We chose the wrong totalitarianism. We now see that what we were seeking for was the kingdom of God, but we didn't know it.'"
Father, in Jesus' Name, help me to live the Kingdom of Heaven/God, not just read and talk of it. Amen.
When Peter, an 18 year old Norwegian, "heard the call to evangelize China, on that day he not only emptied his wallet into the collection plate, but included a small note with the words, 'and my life.'"
Hebrews 12:2
