hope

I just love this class I'm taking on missions. Mostly, because its about more than just "missions" as we tend to define it, its about the meaning of life.

I wish I had taken this class in college.

So today, I'm doing my homework and we're reading our chapter on the Kingdom of God. Just to put this all in context, the first week emphasized that God is at heart a "missionary" God - the entire Bible paints Him as the one who constantly reaches out to us, constantly seeks us, and constantly does whatever it takes to initiate relationship with us.

The second week was about God's mission statement, His own "meaning of life", which is to bring Himself glory. Don't think abstractly here: what is glory? It's brilliance, fame, the entire worthiness and magnitude of something. God's mission is that all of creation recognizes Him for who He is in perfect worship.

Just stop and think about that. That's the underlying reason for every single action He takes. The cool thing about God is that this mission plays out in two directions: in order to help us "glorify" or worship Him, He displays His glory to us - which basically means that He shows us the brilliance and magnitude of who He is so that we respond by worshiping Him!

God's purpose in life is to constantly show us how amazing He is so that He gets all the credit for being Himself!

On to this week: the Kingdom. If you are thinking heavenly real estate, think again. Kingdom is not a place, and its not primarily a realm: its all the qualities that dwell in a King which make him King. To be a King, you have to rule, so inherently it implies the power and authority to rule. If you don't have power to rule, you aren't a king.

When Christ came, he announced that the Kingdom of God had come. In fact, that's almost all that he talked about it. When God charged man with having dominion over the earth way back in Genesis, we surrendered it to Satan with the Fall. We started out with our own kingdom and it quickly became the Kingdom of Darkness. Jesus said no more - the Kingdom of God has now come and right now you can choose: God's Kingdom or Satan's. The Jews missed their Messiah because they were looking for the second coming of Christ when the Kingdom would no longer be a choice: it would be reality.

This passage in my reading for tomorrow puts it really well:

It has come quietly, unobtrusively, secretly. It can work among men and never be recognized by the crowds . . . The Kingdom of God is an offer, a gift which may be accepted or rejected. The Kingdom is now here with persuasion rather than with power.

This is why we have hope. Because we don't think God is merely holding things together until the end, because Satan has complete dominion and reign. We hope because we know that God's power and authority have now come to dwell on earth through us.

But we have to choose it. And we have to live it. The darkness of both spiritual and physical oppression will not be vanquished if we think that our eternal salvation is all the gospel is really about.