Bonhoeffer: "Your kingdom come!"

“Your kingdom come.” In Jesus Christ the disciples have experienced the inbreaking of God’s kingdom on earth. This is where Satan is overcome, the power of the world, sin, and death broken.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Vol. 4, Discipleship. Edited by Martin Kuske, Ilse Tödt, Geffrey B. Kelly 

and John D. Godsey. Translated by Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003.

How has the inbreaking of God's kingdom on earth changed your life?  It's a fair question, isn't it?  When we pray the Lord's prayer, do we really want God's kingdom to come?  Or, are we satisfied with our own kingdoms?  

When Jesus was in Bethany in John 11, He had one request before Lazarus would be raised.  Standing in front of the tomb, he asked for the stone to be moved.  A strange request, don't you think.  In a blink, if Jesus had wished, He could have said the word and the stone would have been catapulted into the sea.  But He didn't do that.  He made His request and He waited for the people to respond.

I like what D. L. Moody said about this verse:

It would have been very easy for Him to have commanded it to roll away, and it would have obeyed His voice, as the dead Lazarus did when He called him back to life. 

Moody, D. L. The D. L. Moody Year Book: A Living Daily Message from the 

Words of D. L. Moody. Edited by Emma Moody Fitt. East Northfield, MA: The Bookstore, 1900.

Jesus incarnate brought God's kingdom to earth and not even the powers of Satan were able to keep Lazarus in the grave.  But before that kingdom broke the barriers of death and the glory God displayed, the stone had to be moved.  I am certain that many if not all Christians desire to see and experience the earth-shattering presence of God in their lives.  But, before this happens, Jesus stands in front of our tombs and makes a rather strange request: "Move that stone!"

What stone in your life has stood between you and the power of God?  What stone has Jesus asked you to move?  What stone are you still clinging to for no good reason?  Move that stone and experience the inbreaking of God's kingdom in your life.

Jesus is Sovereign Over All

"There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'"

-- Abraham Kuyper

I recently read this quote in Matt Chandler's new book entitled The Explicit Gospel.  Like many people, I have fallen into the trap on a small and finite perspective of God.  I forget that He created not only our world, but He also created the universe.  I forget that He is the sustainer of not only my life, but all life everywhere.  To put it straightforward, I have fallen into the trap that God is small.

It's not that I truly believe that God is small.  I know that He is bigger than I could ever imagine.  What happens for me is that I just get distracted with the "big" things that seem to be pressing on me at any one moment.  So, the struggle for me (and possible you, too) is to find a way to remember the truth that God is sovereign and that there is not one thing that happens that will surprise Him.  In other words, whatever may come my way or whatever I am going through, these do not take God by surprise.  Thanks be to God!

Paul said it this way...

And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

(Colossians 1:17, ESV)

Can you see the benefit to allowing Christ be sovereign?  That's the issue, isn't it?  It is not that we don't believe that Christ is capable to handle all that comes our way.  It is that we don't allow Him to be sovereign.  What could change in our lives today when we realize and relinquish our desire to be in control of everything?  What freedom will be ours?  What frustrations will melt?

It's noisy

"Apparently the fireball on Mount Carmel had no lasting impact on Elijah either.  Terrified for his life, the prophet put forty days' distance between himself and Queen Jezebel, Ahab's vengeful consort.  And when God next met with Elijah, he did not appear in a fire, or in a great and powerful wind, or in an earthquake.  Rather, he came in a whisper, a thin, small voice almost like silence..."

Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God, p. 89.

At times I feel bombarded.  There's a lot of noise in our world.  Electronic devices, phones ringing, music playing, TV's on, radios blaring...Noise!  I can't help but be distracted by the noise.  I feel like I am missing something because of all the noise.  There's something special about silence and many times noise distracts from the beauty of silence.

While serving as a Youth Director, I loved to take kids on mission trips.  Mission trips were the cornerstone of our summer activities.  We would go on mission trips to give the kids an opportunity to serve and also to see how God could use them and work through them.  God did some great things through us and it was an honor to be used by Him.  We saw people come to Christ.  We saw impassable situations worked out.  We experienced the presence of God guiding and hold us in the palm of His hand.  These were certainly big things.  When we were on these mission trips, I was amazed at how we also saw the smallest ways God provided.  The little things along with the big things were provided.  I am convinced even today that one of the reasons that we were able to recognize God's presence --both big and small -- was because we didn't have the distractions that we bombarded ourselves with at home.  No TV's.  No iPods.  No Gameboys.  No cellphones.  No noise to distract us, and what resulted was our ability to recognize God's presence in our lives.

We know that there are times when God seems to shout and say, "I am with you!  I love you!"  We also know that there are many times when God does not "shout" over the noise in our lives, and He speaks in a still, small voice.  Elijah quickly forgot about the "shout" of God at Mount Carmel when he was being pursued by Jezebel.  He was afraid.  He was running.  He felt alone.  He was distracted.  But in the silence of being alone, Elijah recognized the small voice of God speaking to him.

Stop and sit in silence today and let God speak to you through His comforting, small voice.

The Action of a Disciple.

His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

(John 2:5, ESV)

If we've said it once to our children, we've said it a dozen times: "You've asked, we've answered."  Sometimes I would like for them to just do what their mother and I ask them the first time instead of us repeating ourselves over and over again.  But, we still love our children despite having to repeat ourselves.

This verse is from John's account of what happened at the wedding in Cana.  I've read this passage many times and I am afraid that many of those times I've missed the point.  I looked at the fact that Jesus blessed the marriage with His presence.  I wondered what was being said about alcohol in this passage.  I looked at the relationship that Jesus had with His mother.  All of these are valid issues that are mentioned in the passage, but what stuck out to me yesterday was the uninhibited trust that Mary had in Jesus.  She said to the servants, "Do whatever He tells you."

I want to be a disciple of Jesus.  There is no doubt about this, but what is the action of the disciple.  It is as Mary reminded the servants, "Do whatever He tells you."  There is an inclusive bent on this command.  As a disciple, our response is not to question or to delay.  We are to do whatever Jesus tells us.

What is He telling me is found in the Scriptures.  Passages that tell me to pray for and love my enemies.  Passages that tell me that make disciples.  Passages that remind me to worship and praise my God.  Whatever He tells me, the action of a disciple is obedience and we, as disciples, are to obey the first time.

Oswald Chambers, "Delay is quiet rebellion and rebellion is sin."

Put your heart into it!

"I saw, that giving even all my life to God (supposing it possible to do this, and go no farther) would profit me nothing, unless I gave my heart, yea, all my heart, to him."

Wesley, John. The Works of John Wesley: Addresses, Essays, and Letters. 

electronic ed. Albany, OR: Ages Software, 2000. A Plain Account of Christian Perfection.

It was in the small fifth grade Sunday School room at Community Alliance Church in Butler, PA, where my teacher led me in a sinner's prayer.  It was in this very room at 10:35AM in the early 1980s that I ask Jesus into my life.  In the handwriting of a ten-year-old boy, I wrote the details of this day in the front of my Bible.  This Bible is still with me and it has a prominent place on my shelf in my office today.  Even though I asked Jesus into my life at the age of 10, it was not until I was a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh that I gave God my heart.  I asked Him into my heart at 10, but I didn't allow Him to have control until I was 18.

Jesus summed up all of the laws with this: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:37).  Before my freshman year of college, I couldn't help but think that I had not been loving God like this let alone loving others like myself.  I asked myself what it meant to love God with all my heart.  I asked what it meant to love God with all my soul, mind, and strength.  A crisis in my faith ensued as I began to seriously consider the practical implications of lovingly responding to such a command as this.

John Wesley's words above remind me that our heart is at "the heart" of our lives.  It reminds me that I need to remember that my Christian walk is not an island by itself.  Rather, my Christian walk and my love for God must be at the heart of who I am and all I do.  It is not something that I do just on Sundays.  With God's help, I allow it to infiltrate every nook and cranny of my life.  

I heard an athletic coach tell his players some time ago to "put their heart" in it.  What was he telling them?  He wanted them to put their all in the game.  I hear the same encouragement coming from John Wesley: "Put your heart into your Christian walk!  Give it your all!"  

I am afraid many have become slack in our Christian life.  I am afraid many have surrendered too much ground in our churches.  Where is our urgency to further God's kingdom?  Where is our urgency to pray and worship and love God?  Where is our passion to reach the lost?  Where is our fire to allow the love of God to so bubble in our hearts that it overflows into every other area of our lives?  Unfortunately, we are compartmentalized people.  We have our work life, our play life, our Christian life, and our social life.  Unfortunately, many Christians have not allowed our Christian life to leave its compartment and affect the other compartments in our life.  Poke holes in the barriers and compartments and allow your Christian life to affect the way we work, play, and socialize.  Put your heart into loving God and allow it to touch every other part of who you are.