The Church and the Kingdom Part 1 #19

The Kingdom Cowboy

Summary:

As we read through the New Testament, you can find many places where both John the Baptist and Jesus talked about the Kingdom of Heaven and it being at hand and it is within us. This is why the church needs to be putting much more emphasis on it. The church and the Kingdom are very intertwined. One of the parts of the kingdom message is how important it is that we open up and allow the Father to come in to our hearts, and how He uses trails and challenges to refine and purify our hearts to become like Jesus. That allows us to see our walk with God as more of an adventure rather than just walking through life.

Show Notes:

• The reason we are doing this Podcast is to help people along and get moving in their walk with the Lord. When you listen to this Podcast, there’s a whole team of people who help us with this project, who do both the audio editing and the show notes. Also, none of this could have happened without an unnamed benefactor and some credit to the family right here at Trinity Fellowship, who have helped us flesh this stuff out for almost 35 years.

• So, how does the church and the kingdom relate together? The church is not the kingdom, but it’s included in the kingdom.

• My uncle, Jack Taylor, said this years ago, “When God said, Let there be light, the light started going in every direction at the speed of light, and it hasn’t stopped since God said that”. So, if you can believe this, that’s the domain, the King’s domain of which He rules, and it is an ever expanding kingdom. All we can do right now is speculate a little bit.

• We can teach on the kingdom from now on, and never exhaust the content. That’s the most profound, broad, vast subject that there is. Don’t complicate with logic that which can only be understood and attained by faith.

• Trials and testings are such an important part of any Christian life. There is redeeming value in the trials, the problems, the roadblocks, and all those things you go through in your life, because those things really figure into us being conformed into the image of Jesus and being refined like gold. That’s God’s plan for us.

• Eric Metaxas wrote a book entitled, “Letter to the American Church”. In it, he talked about all these challenges that we go through in life, the ups and downs of mountains and valleys and all that. He called it the Abrahamic adventure.

• If we could look at all these ups and downs, challenges, heartbreaks, and those kinds of things as an adventure, rather than looking at all of this as a negative thing, it would change all our lives in a very profound way.

Quotes:

• The Kingdom of God should be at the forefront of the mind of leaders who are leading the churches in this season. I think it’s that important.

• The church is the answer for every negative thing that we see in the world. It’s more important than just a counterculture, or where people go and get a spiritual touch.

• It’s the church’s responsibility to offset the darkness that exists in the world, with the light that comes from Jesus. It’s the only organism on the whole planet that God has given the authority and the power to cooperate with Him and co-labor with Him as He establishes His kingdom of the earth.

• I get asked all the time where in the Bible is that sinner’s prayer. It’s not there. And, you would think that a principle that we’ve built the whole evangelical Christian faith on, is praying a prayer that we don’t find anywhere in the Bible. It’s kind of interesting. All we really have to do is open the door of our heart, and allow Him to come in.

• The kingdom is the new frontier. I believe that this generation has the golden opportunity to see the Kingdom of God manifest in a greater way than any generation prior to now.

• Everyone I know right now is undergoing extreme testing. He doesn’t test our faith so He’ll know where we are in terms of our faith. He tests our faith so we can know where we are. It’s kind of like one of those signs in a mall that shows you right were you are.

References:

Matthew 6:33

Matthew 16:18-19

Revelation 3:20

Genesis 12:1

Take Away:

If we can open up to this, the Kingdom of God is probably the greatest adventure that we can ever live. The Kingdom is so close to us right now, and it’s so important that the whole church start to teach and live it the kingdom now, rather than putting it off to some future event.