Tag Archives: seek first His kingdom

DIRECTIONS FOR A NEW DAY

Christian Life, ,

DIRECTIONS FOR A NEW DAY

Every day is a new opportunity! Yesterday has gone forever, tomorrow is not yet here. How can I live today that will add meaning to my life and the lives of others?

Jesus gave us a lifegoal which should apply to us every day. He said, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matthew 6:33 (NIV). So, what should be our focus in our everyday lives, taking into consideration that we are not alike?

In a nutshell, God is more interested in our character than in our circumstances. Jesus said that we behave like pagans when we run after ‘things’ instead of seeking His kingdom. When we give our attention to taking care of our needs, and those of our families, we miss what God wants, our trust in Him as our Father, and the freedom to learn about the things that really matter.

Life is not about surviving in a tough world. That is God’s responsibility because we are His sons and daughters. Life is about learning to be His mature children so that we can be part of His ‘business’ on earth – His kingdom. It’s not only about this life – it’s also about preparing to play our part in the life to come.

This life is short. God has built into us huge potential; both the possibility and the opportunity to become like His Son, Jesus, in the same sort of world that shaped Him into who He was. This may not seem important to us in an environment where God is ignored, despised, or forgotten but, to us who believe in His Son and have been rescued from hell, it ought to be big.

It was big for Jesus. He always viewed situations from the perspective of God’s rule and He always took the long look – seeing this life as a very short preparation for the life to come. He saw worry as a foolish response to our needs because worry exposes our actual attitude to our heavenly Father. Worry cancels out faith and puts fear in the driving seat.

So, what should our response be to the pressing needs we face every day? Jesus said, ‘Set your sights on looking for every opportunity to do the right thing.’ That means imitating the way Jesus loved and served people, trusted, and obeyed the Father and always put the needs of others before His own. When we do that, we show our absolute confidence in God’s promise to take care of us and, best of all, we get to know Jesus and become like Him.

In this way, we will be well on the way to fulfilling God’s dream for us, a family of responsible sons and daughters who are just like His Son, Jesus, and whom He can trust to run His world under His authority in the life to come.

KINGDOM FIRST

Christian Life, ,

KINGDOM FIRST

“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matthew 6:33, NIV).

I have read several books by Dr Myles Munroe – a man who has extensively studied and written on the kingdom of God. Why the kingdom?

A fifteen-day fast resulted in a two-word instruction to him from the Holy Spirit, Kingdom first. Dr Munroe embarked on a 30-year quest to understand, seek, and live in the kingdom of God and teach it to the church.

If God’s instruction to him was Kingdom First, it should be no different for us because the command comes from the lips of Jesus Himself.

Jesus said we are to make the kingdom of God our priority and, in saying so, He turned the value system of the world on its head. What is the priority of the world? Things! Although we may think that money and things are the true measure of our lives, what is more significant is the way we use our time. Time is the currency of life and how we spend it reveals our priorities. Tragically, the priorities of the people in the church are often no different from the priorities of the people in world. Why?

We do not understand how the kingdom of God works.

We don’t take Jesus’ instruction to make the kingdom a priority seriously;

We find it difficult to trust Him to keep His promise that He will provide all the resources we need to fulfil His command.

Priorities are determined by our purpose. When we have no purpose or don=t know our purpose, we squander our currency of time with no return.  Says Dr Munroe, ANothing is more tragic than a life without purpose.@ (Applying the Kingdom, page 31).

According to Dr Munroe, this is what will happen if we choose to reject God’s purpose for His people and focus on the wrong things in life i.e. making a living instead of living a life.

Without the right priorities we waste time and energy on the wrong things, we do the unnecessary, we are preoccupied and major on the unimportant, we invest our time and money in what is valueless, we use our resources ineffectively, we abuse our gifts and talents, and we will ultimately be a failure in life because we did not do what we were called to do.

What is Jesus’ solution to this misunderstanding?

Firstly, our priority must be the same as God’s priority, which is:

To loose the chains of injustice; to set the oppressed free; to share your food with the hungry; to provide the poor wanderer with shelter; when you see the naked, to clothe him; and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood. (Isaiah 58:6, 7)

Secondly, His promise will come into effect:

“The Lord will guide you always; He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame.” (Isaiah 58:11a, NIV).

God’s requirement in the New Covenant is simple.

Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us. 1 John 3:21-24

FIRST THINGS FIRST

Christian Life, ,

FIRST THINGS FIRST

“So do not worry saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matthew 6:31-33.

We have already looked at what Jesus said about worry. There is one more thing we need to consider apart from the fact that worry cancels out our trust in God as our Father and makes Him out to be a liar.

When we worry about the everyday things of life, we make things, like food and clothing and all the stuff that the pagans worry about and work hard for, more important than God and His kingdom. That makes us just like the heathen – the people who do not love and trust the living God. God want us to be different because we live in a different kingdom. We are not ruled by “things” but by God’s love and His care for everyone in the world, not only those who love Him.

What did Jesus mean when He said, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness”? We may often say this verse but do we know what it means? In the Bible, “righteousness” means “doing the right thing.” God is righteous. That means that He always does the right thing. He loves every person in the world no matter who or where they are. Is that doing the right thing? Yes, it is.

We live in a world that is full of sin. People make wrong choices and do bad things. Other people suffer because of what bad people do. God gave us the freedom to make choices and when we choose to do wrong, He does not step in and stop us because He respects our freedom and does not treat us like puppets. But God always does the right thing when we trust Him. He is able to work for our good even when we make wrong choices or when other people harm us. God does the right thing by bringing good out of evil in spite of our suffering.

God promised to help us and to provide for us if we trust Him and obey what He commands. God had provided enough of everything for everyone in the world. When greedy people hoard what God has provided, other people suffer and become poor. God wants us to have the same loving heart for everyone as He has by sharing what we have so that we can keep His provisions going around. That’s how God rules the world, by taking care of people and giving them what they need, but He does it through us.

When we share what we have, we are also doing the right thing. In that way, God is able to meet everyone’s needs as long as we keep what He has given us circulating. The pagans don’t understand that. They think that they will only have enough if they stash it away like a squirrel stashes nuts for winter. In God’s kingdom, the way to meet our own needs is to help others in need.

The people in the world don’t understand this because it is part of God’s supernatural kingdom. We need to show them how it works by being obedient to God and trusting Him to take care of us as we take care of others. When we do that, people will see what a great and loving God we serve.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Parables Of The Kingdom

Christian Life, , ,

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM

 

Like a diamond, the kingdom of God is many-faceted. The kingdom must have been as difficult for Jesus’s disciples to understand as it is for us. Jesus told stories, many of them beginning with the words, “The kingdom of God is like . . .”, to shed light on the kingdom (but only for those who desired an understanding) – what it is like and what it is about.  Each story illustrates only one small part of the whole. He needed to re-programme their thinking from their fixation with Rome and a restored Davidic kingdom to a higher and unseen realm where God is at work to restore everything that was broken by the Fall.

 

Matthew set out a block of these stories in chapter thirteen of his gospel, beginning with the story about a farmer who sowed seed in his field (Matt. 13: 1-23). This is one of the few stories in this group of parables to which Jesus attached an explanation. The meaning of the story is quite clear; one kind of seed, four types of soil, four different responses to the word of God (Luke identified the seed as the word of God – Luke 8: 11). This was how He told it, but what was the point of the parable?

 

This is the surprising part. Jesus explained that one of the reasons why He taught in parables was to confirm the condition of people’s hearts. When people have no desire to know the truth, what they are told only serves to harden them in their unbelief. Their minds are closed to the meaning and value of God’s kingdom because they do not want to know.

 

His disciples were privileged to be given understanding because they had a heart to follow and become like their rabbi. As for the rest, the more stories He told, the less they understood because that was the nature of their hearts.

 

To His disciples Jesus made one thing clear; they were to seek to understand and follow God’s way above everything else. His rule had to take priority over all else because His way as interpreted and lived out in front of them by their rabbi, was the only way that would lead them to the Father. Even His disciples did not understand that He was the way to the Father until He spelled it out for them.

 

Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus answered, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ (John 14: 5, 6)

 

Whatever Jesus had to say about the kingdom of God was, in the end, exemplified in Him. He was the interpretation of God’s rule and the mirror image of the Ruler – the Father. Experiencing the kingdom would not be difficult if they simply stuck to their role as His talmidim because He insisted that the purpose of His coming was, among other things, to show them how to live in the spirit of Torah.

 

This is how He summarised what He expected of them as His talmidim, both in their own lives and in the way they showed others what God’s kingdom is like.

 

But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matt. 6: 33)

 

How often we quote this verse without having much idea of what He meant! Once again we must put it in context, both in the immediate context and in the context of the entire Sermon on the Mount. His sermon was about how to live under the rule of God. He described the lives of the people who relinquish their right to make their own rules in favour of returning to the path – the way which takes them to the Father.

 

A large part of what we relinquish is our worldly attitude towards money and things, which was at one time characterised by selfishness and greed. Instead of being preoccupied with making a living or getting rich, we should be focussed on living under God’s rule. Life is not about how to make ends meet because He has pledged to take care of our needs. We have an obligation to demonstrate God’s compassion towards those who are in need, and to do something about it as our response towards God for His compassion and mercy to us.

 

A ”righteous”  person is one who stays on the path and follows the landmarks that take him towards God’s name – His character mirrored and exemplified in Jesus, the replica of the Father. Every opportunity we have to show mercy and compassion, in the spirit of Torah, is another landmark on our path towards the Father.

 

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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