Posts with the tag “kingdom-of-god”

Uncle Ben made it famous: with great power comes great responsibility. But here is the problem for most believers. It is not that we fail to take responsibility seriously. It is that we have drastically underestimated the power we are actually carrying. The lessons of Scripture describe the gifts of the Holy Spirit as tokens of the Messianic Era — a down payment on the age to come, pressing the power of the future kingdom into the present moment. Every person in whom the Spirit dwells is walking around with a deposit of eternity inside them. You are not a reservoir. You are a riverbed. And the city around you needs what you are carrying. Read the full post.  Read More

The Eisenhower Matrix divides your to-do list into four boxes: urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and neither. It is one of the most useful productivity tools ever invented. But it has one fatal flaw. It assumes you are working with the right definition of important. Jesus walked up to ordinary people doing ordinary work and announced: the time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. And the early disciples reorganized everything around that single declaration. That is not a productivity hack. That is an eschatological reordering. And it is still the invitation on the table. Read the full post.  Read More

There is a seat at your grandmother's table that nobody sits in anymore. The chair that was always his, always hers. The empty place that represents a meal that is not finished yet. Every family has a version of that chair. And if you listen closely, the Lord's Supper is the Church's answer to it. Because on the night before He was crucified, Jesus did not just start a memorial. He made a promise. He said: the next time I eat and drink at this table, it will be in the kingdom. The meal is not over. The guest of honor is still coming. Read the full post.  Read More

Most of us have spent our whole Christian lives with a vague picture of what we are actually waiting for. Heaven. Something nice. Something far from here. But the prophets were not vague. They described a capital city, a real table, nations stopping their wars, the blind seeing as a matter of course. Not escape from this world but the best possible version of it under the best possible King. The question Monday is asking: are you building your life on something that survives the trumpet?  Read More

From two years old to ninety plus, GracePointe showed up yesterday. A prayer team on their knees before anyone else moved. Quarters at a laundromat. A prayer walk on First Street. Two cars at a car wash. Yards cleaned for faithful senior members while their neighbors watched and wondered who these people are. That wondering is a door. And we are praying God walks through it. Grace in Action is not a Sunday. It is a posture. And the pointe of grace is always outward.  Read More

The prophet Ezekiel saw a river flowing out from the Temple in Jerusalem. A trickle at first. Then ankle deep. Then deep enough to swim in. And everywhere it went, things came back to life. Even the Dead Sea turned fresh. Jesus stood at the Temple during the water ceremony and said: that river is Me. And everyone who believes in Me becomes part of it. The question is not whether resurrection power lives inside you. If you belong to Jesus, it does. The question is whether it is moving. Because the river was never designed to stay at the source. Read the full post.  Read More

For over a century, the Hatfield and McCoy families turned the Appalachian hills into a war zone.  Read More