The Kingdom of God

The world's in a mess, the Church is failing etc. This is a great time to be a Christian. It is a wonderful time to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Forget the doom and gloom of statistics, abandon the woeful planning for "downsizing", do not listen to counsels of despair. Remember: this is the favourable time of the Lord. Is God any less with us? Is Jesus Christ no longer our Risen Lord and Saviour? Are we not the recipients of His wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit?
Do we not recall His words that He would be with us till the end of time? Do we not have faith any more?

This is a wonderful time to be a Christian. We should thank God for being alive at this time in the history of salvation. God is seperating the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats. This is a time of choice: are you for the Lord or against him? To be for him means a whole hearted committment, an act of faith not just belief in teachings and doctrines, not just Sunday observance. We are asked to choose to follow the living Lord. We are being asked to take up our cross each day and sometimes that taking up of the cross will involve loss; loss of things familiar and comforting.

But what is being stripped away is not the reality of God, the truth of His saving power or humanity's need for Him. We are losing non-essentials, things that have served their purpose, things that no longer point to Jesus but have become an end in themselves. We will lose buildings, stuctures, systems, people both clergy and lay. We see the "power" of the Church brought low in worldly terms. Hallelujah! We will become the Church of Christ and not the compromised Church that we have become. "My Kingdom is not of this world".

We cannot build His Kingdom. Only Jesus can do this by the power of the Holy Spirit and the submission of those who truly call him Lord and do His Father's will.

So it is great to be a Christian. The old is passing away. The new is being born.

We are like the Christians at the beginning: persecuted, few in numbers, lacking power and influence in the world; but filled with the mighty power of God's Spirit and becoming a holy nation, a royal priesthood, living by faith. Praise God for what he is doing in out time.

Purification (2)

Then there is the world. It's in an economic mess. There are wars, threats from terrorism, erosion of personal and civil liberties in the name of security, increasing centralisation and globalisation. We have epidemics and threats of epidemics and we have governments willing to pass legislation contrary to God's law of life and to make life increasingly difficult for Christians to practice their faith. And these are democratic states not repressive dictatorships. Militant secularism and militant atheism have more political and cultural clout now than the Church or religion generally. The indifference and hostility of many towards religion and Christianity in particular and the advance of nonsensical New Age beliefs make it difficult to see how the churches can recover lost ground, let alone advance into new territory. The world no longer needs or heeds the Church.