The Kingdom: Part 1

From the Salvation Army, you're listening to Wonderful Words of Life. Welcome back, everybody. We are excited to have you back on Wonderful Words of Life. And I'm excited to have my friend, Captain Jimmy Taylor back. Yeah, I'm so excited to be here too, Bernie. Thanks for having me again. It was a great opportunity to bring you back south to the Atlanta homeland for this program. So welcome home, Jimmy.

Thank you. We're in our fourth week of this series, The Least of These. If you've missed any episodes, this series began on January 5th. So be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts or visit salvationarmysoundcast.org to get caught up. This week, we begin discussing the Kingdom of God, this knowledge and belief that we are all connected to this kingdom through Christ and the larger family that we are a part of as a result.

Yeah. In this episode, Heather says something so beautiful and I just want to say it again so it sticks with you. She says that Jesus invited me in, but the family of God kept me there. That's powerful.

It is. I find when I go to church, I'm not always necessarily there, Jimmy, to hear the message. I'm there because I enjoy the family of people that I'm surrounded by. Now, because of that environment and its welcoming nature, I'm more apt to listen to what happens on the platform or behind the pulpit or whatever. But there's a real sense of family in a healthy church, I think.

Yeah. And, you know, I think about some of the things that I've dealt with, especially in our current appointment where we have a shelter and we're constantly inviting people to come and they don't understand this concept of family. Some of them find themselves abandoned by family or family was a bad thing for them. I'm thinking about this one lady.

She was coming from our shelter. She attended church and she had two twin children and she just didn't feel welcome anywhere. And I want people to understand that the family of God is truly a family.

It really is. It's not blood family, but it's spiritual family. And when you get together and you fellowship together, you edify each other, you build each other up, you encourage each other. And that's what this lady found at our core. She still attends today with her children.

They're now junior soldiers and things like that. But, you know, Jesus, I mean, but who kept us there? The family of God. And I hope your core is really truly the family of God and embracing the people that walk in the door, especially for the first time.

Yeah. I think any church that's going to have quote unquote success is going to have a welcoming environment for sure. It's something that we can all be challenged to consider as we go through the doors each week.

Well, we hope that you'll be encouraged by this message and pray that you'll join us again next week so we can talk more about it. This week, we're talking about the kingdom as part of our least of these series. Absolutely. When we think about the kingdom of God, we recognize that the kingdom is something that we can experience in our lives, but it's also so much more than what we can see with our eyes or touch with our own hands. Right. But it's also the kingdom that calls us to go.

Yes. You know, we sit on these verses where Jesus talks about the kingdom is here and now, you know, but thy kingdom come. Right. So the kingdom comes, but Jesus didn't come to sit on a throne as King.

Right. The kingdom comes so that we can go out. So what we're talking about when we talk about the kingdom really for me to begin is how did I get here? Like what called me into the kingdom?

I know who did. It was Jesus that invited me in and he invited me into relationship with him. But then beyond that, he invited me into relationship with his people, with the body of Christ, with the church.

Right. So we're saying what brought you here into the kingdom? Why did you stay?

And why does that matter? It's such a, those are really good questions, especially in light of the scriptures that we're looking at this week, both in Luke chapter 10 and in Mark chapter six, because those are accounts of Jesus sending people out to be evangelizing those that they encounter to be in full-time ministry, whether that's preaching ministry, healing ministry, deliverance ministry. But as you and I have both testified already and in our series, it's been the family of God that really kept us and helped us to grow into the Christians that we were meant to be. And when we go out into the world, we have to ask ourselves, what are we inviting people back to? What do we have to offer as the church? Who are we as a people?

And for you and I, Rob, we start with the question, well, what brought us here in the first place? Right. And I love it as we look at those scriptures when Jesus sends folks out, you know, two by two to go out into the crowd. And it's not just that he sends them out in this functional way and this practical way. He does, because he's like, you know, heal those that are sick, cleanse those that are experiencing leprosy, right?

Raise the dead. Like, like there's transactional things happening here, but they're transformative. It's not just about going out and doing the stuff, but in the fullness of the kingdom, in the fullness of who Jesus is. I believe there's this also this moment where we get to do the stuff or see Jesus come and do the stuff in our midst, but then we get to live it out together in the kingdom.

That's right. So when I look into the word, Luke chapter 10, starting at verse seven, he's talking to the disciples about as like how they should live out amongst people. And he's not saying to them, like set up a tent outside of town and go back to your tent every night, but like live with people, like share their home, be in relationship with them, break bread with them, sit around the table. And you and I know in our studies that back in the day in Jesus time, they were not having like, they're not eating in the car on their way to church on a ways a night Bible study, you know, rush rushing through it. But rather the meal was this, you know, hours long experience of sitting around a table, being close, leaning in shoulder to shoulder, you know, everyone reaching in and dipping their pita in the same hummus bowl.

What if they double dipped? I don't know, but they weren't afraid to get close to one another. Well, and I think we live in this world that's so connected, right? And we get that. We talk about that a lot, how connected we are through our devices and just with technology, you know, we feel very connected, but in some ways with each other, we feel pretty disconnected. And there's also this thing where we kind of look at our lives these days and say, well, it's not like it used to be. We're so busy now, you know, we're taking the kids here and we're doing this and our schedules are so crazy. And we almost come to this place where we're so connected through technology and, you know, through our devices. But then we sense this disconnection with each other and we kind of look at the world and say, well, the world's different and it's so busy. We just don't have time for that.

You're right. And so when it comes to the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God is just so other than the world because the kingdom of God does not conform to the pattern of the world. The kingdom of God always has time for double dipping with the hummus and the pita. The kingdom of God always has time for togetherness, holy togetherness. And in our experience, what that looks like is learning to find that holy community in the midst of what God is calling us to do.

Right. And I think we get that like as believers and people that are walking with Jesus and learning about Jesus. I think we get that.

I mean, there's books and books written about this podcast. We talk about this so much. The idea of Sabbath, of rest, about being connected in the world that we live in.

We get all this. And I think when we hear this something in us, it resounds like we know that this is true. But then sometimes we just then go on and we don't actually get there.

So I wonder, what is it? How do we actually move from, you know, being so disconnected from the kingdom, maybe to moving into that rhythm where we're making room for the kingdom to live in fullness, where, you know, my schedule or all the stuff I have to do, whether that's in my daily life or in my family or even in my ministry, how do I move past the to do list into the kingdom where we spend time and get to know each other? How do we actually do that? Well, I think it just starts by making the next best choice. So sometimes I want to make a whole big comprehensive plan with all these moving parts and revamp my whole life to shape around it.

But that's not practical. I think sometimes it just starts with doing the next best thing. And maybe the next best thing is today I don't eat lunch at my desk in my office on the fourth floor. I take my lunch and I walk down, social anxiety or not, awkwardness or not, and I eat lunch in the lunchroom at a table. Maybe I make a plan with a friend to say, hey, I'm going to go down to the lunchroom.

Do you want to sit with me? And, you know, I've got one person I know and we just make a friend. Could it be something as simple as that? Well, and maybe that begins with just the one person that we have opportunity to engage in front of us, whether that's our coworker, you know, whether that's whether that's one of our kids. You know, I was thinking yesterday, when's the last time I just took my oldest son, Jonathan, just out to do something that he loved to do and just sharing that moment with him. Because the beauty of that, it isn't in trying to find the perfect thing or the most, you know, Instagrammable thing or whatever the case may be that's going to rock his socks off. It's, you know, the two of you going for a drive and getting a drink and talking and laughing about his day.

And when you see his face light up because he's telling you something funny that happened to him, there's joy in that moment in sharing life together. Right. And we asked the question, what brought you here?

But also, why does it matter? And maybe that's what keeps you coming back? Right. Is that connectedness? I think it is because the promise of the gospel is Christ in me, the hope of glory. It's that that for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him doesn't perish but lives forever. But this idea of like never having to live alone, but always living forever connected with Christ.

It like it is that terrible loneliness that comes from just living in a world that is technologically connected. But in terms of holy togetherness is just an absent. And so, I think about how knowing that when we are born again, that the Spirit of God comes to live in me and the Spirit of God in me, witnesses with the Spirit of God in you. So, there's such a joy for believers in fellowship. There's such a joy when you get to share with somebody about knowing Jesus or something crazy he did for you last week, whether the person you're sharing with knows him yet or not, they're like, huh, I didn't, God, I didn't know you were a Jesus person. And then you get to begin to share that joy.

I think it's really beautiful. And maybe the go could be as simple as that. Right. And I think this idea where Jesus is like, I have some water for you that when you drink of it, you'll never be thirsty again in this invitation, you know, I have some bread for you when you eat it, you'll never be hungry again, that there's a connectiveness in the kingdom between us and Jesus through his Holy Spirit. And then between each other as brothers and sisters in the kingdom, where we get to taste of something that truly satisfies and it's a connectiveness that doesn't exist in the world like that connectiveness in the world really is just a false image of what God has to offer.

Sure. So when we think about scripture and we focus back especially on Mark chapter six, when Jesus is sending his disciples out, like the people that have been rocking and rolling with him for like the last couple of years, and they've been spending every day with him and they, you know, have been discipled by Jesus, the Christ, he says to them, he doesn't like tell them to like fill all these suitcases full of supplies and VBS kits and, you know, extra pairs of clothes to give out to people that need. He said, don't take a bunch of stuff because, you know, the best thing that we have to offer when we go is we have, what we have to offer lives within us by the power of the Holy Spirit. It's, I want to tell you what the Lord has done, what the Lord has done for me. He lifted me from the miry clay.

Oh, what a happy day. I want to tell you what the Lord can do, what the Lord can do for you. He can take this life that you're living now and make it a new. And that's, that's the go of the gospel. The Salvation Army's mission, Doing the Most Good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support.

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