The Kingdom has a Monday!
This week, we were encouraged as a church to think past our Sunday morning meetings. Yes, very often, we focus a lot of our efforts and concentration on our weekly Sunday morning gatherings. However, when we look back at the early church, that was not the focus. Their focus was depending on God in their everyday life – living together, eating together, sharing life together – from Monday onwards!
We were asked – Well, what is the Kingdom?
- The Kingdom is NOT just a place we go to – we do not focus only on going to heaven once we complete our journey here on earth, but it is how we live under the King.
We were challenged with some questions – for example: How does the Kingdom change our views?
- The Kingdom changes how we treat people – it’s not about how important a person is.
- It changes how we handle conflict – someone else’s behaviour should not affect the citizen of the Kingdom.
- It changes our definition of success.
One interesting point was the emphasis on how God began with hope for all mankind, through Adam – but he failed… and again and again, human beings failed God. Different covenants were made with different men of God – Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David.
The people asked for a king -so God gave them Saul, David, Solomon and all the Kings under the split kingdoms of Judah and Israel as well – and their kings led their followers towards God or away from God.
From all mankind, it became King-centric.
But still they all failed. The previous kingdoms all proved failures – until the perfect King, Jesus came in to take His place. He came and set a new covenant and a new kingdom.
Over the years, in Powerhouse, we have often taught on this topic of how we need to develop the practice of Double Listening (coined by John Stott)– and that the Kingdom of God is not just for us to enjoy and to focus on going to heaven and to stay in our Sunday ‘bubbles’ – but for us to live it out on the Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays etc.
This week’s sermon was a great reminder for us that the Kingdom goes to work on a Monday!
Be blessed and have a wonderful week.
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