Romans 14:17b-18
(God's Kingdom) It’s what God does with your life as he sets it right, puts it together, and completes it with joy. Your task is to single-mindedly serve Christ. Do that and you’ll kill twobirds with one stone: pleasing the God above you and proving your worth to the people around you.
I love the beautiful interchange that takes place in these short two verses. It starts out letting us know what God's Kingdom is:
- a work in progress
- intiated and being completed by God
- a making of things right
- being done in joy
It seems so simple yet profound and so often we miss it and instead make it harder than it needs to be. Once again Paul reminds us that God has started this, God is doing the work and we've been invited to ride along in joy. Our only task: to SINGLE-MINDEDLY serve Christ.
I just finished The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawerence and I was struck when he said he made it his mission to never think an evil thought and to only think thoughts of love. If I put that into practice, I think 75% of my thought life would be X'd out and I wouldn't have much to talk about! But it also jarred me to consider what it means to serve Christ, in my thought life and to truly let the beauty of who He is rule and reign even in the places where no one else can see. The verse above and Brother Lawerence's example will only result in blessing for ourselves and others. So as we walk away from this, let us be reminded that:
We have this treasure in clay jars,
so that it may be made clear that this
extraordinary power belongs to God
and does not come from us.
from 2 Corinthians 4
In Christ,
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