But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,
and all these things will be provided for you.
Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow,
because tomorrow will worry about itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6:33-34)
Seek His righteousness?
What does it mean to seek the kingdom?
How do we seek righteousness that isn't ours?
Seeking is a journey both mental and physical of finding the kingdom and discovering a foreign righteousness.
Clearly the kingdom is not physical so we must find the mental seeking part mostly utilized.
So mentally speaking, how can we seek the kingdom? By our thoughts and logical reasonings. By knowledge and by understanding. By meditation and fighting for the right answers to smash doubt and fear. Maybe. That is definitely PART of it.
Let's see how this might work by understanding how we seek anything, such as a bargain deal. We ask around. We get a general idea and from there we sift through the details. Quality. Price. Value. Availability. Distance or time to getting what we want. Of course the effort we put it is only on par with the degree or intensity of our desire to get what we want. In other words, if you have to have something enough you will do whatever is within your human strength and capability to get it, and if wanted enough you may even risk your very life for it--like in the movie with Denzel Washington who took a hospital hostage in order to get his dying son treated when he didn't have enough money. He risked his life to get what he wanted. Love is very valuable.
When I want to eat something I'm particularly craving, like veggie grill or a soy flat white from Starbucks, I will sacrifice a few things and not others.
I will sacrifice my hygiene, my money, and my desire to stay home in order to get up without showering and dish out the ridiculous amount of money in order to go get what I am craving or desiring at that moment.
I might sacrifice my time, my plans, or my image too if my craving for the food or drink was high enough, but I would NOT sacrifice a person's life to eat or drink something.
In other words, there's a limit as to how far I will go to get what I want. Now if I wanted to catch a non refundable flight to Ireland where my five star hotel and traveling expenses had already been paid for, then I'd sacrifice a heck of a lot more to be on that flight. The sacrifice would only go so far as the reward at the end, but if the sacrifice exceeded the reward then that's when I'd stop seeking. For example, I would not pass up seeing my mom or dad in the hospital if I heard they got into a major accident and were in critical condition. They matter way more to me than a million trips or a million dollars. I would go to the hospital and let the plane to Ireland with all expenses paid for (by my heard earned wages at work) go down the drain, why? Because I value the love of my parents more than I value the love of money, Ireland, or five star hotels.
Hmm, so it seems from my train of thought that seeking and sacrifice go hand in hand.
Perhaps seeking is not JUST looking for something, but seeking is fueled by seeing something as more valuable than another thing, because otherwise why would we seek it? In the example above I was not seeking the love of my parents, but when I was seeking my vacation in Ireland with everything prepaid something happened to my parents which averted my eyes away from my initial desire and took them toward the greater desire of suddenly seeking the higher value of the lives of my parents.
It would be strange if nothing happened to my parents and yet I skipped my flight and my plans to Ireland to seek after their love for me. I could just call them from my five star hotel and in fact my happiness would make them happy as well because I know they love me.
They are not suffering or being threatened. They are alive and well. And in such a condition I feel fine and great about leaving them to go to Ireland.
We might see the kingdom of God as such. It is there waiting for us, just fine and dandy and so we go about our day without looking at it much. We just carry the kingdom around in some mental pocket of ours as if nothing is happening to it.
When Jesus says to seek first the kingdom of God and everything else will be added to you, I imagine that to be quite difficult to do unless the kingdom of God was suffering some kind of violence.
And then I remembered something:
From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been suffering violence, and the violent have been seizing it by force. (Matthew 11:12 HCSB)
That passage came to mind and I couldn't quite wrap my mind around the connection it had to what I was thinking in regards to how we are to seek the kingdom.
"From the days of John the Baptist
until now,
the kingdom of heaven has been suffering violence,
and the violent
have been seizing it by force."
(Matthew 11:12 HCSB)
If that's true then all my other desires and plans and valuable things will be put on their scale compared to the value I place on the kingdom of God.
Is the kingdom suffering violence?
What does that mean?
How could it be suffering violence?
I thought everything was just find and dandy up there after Jesus died and took care of my sins, and I was just trying to enjoy myself in the meantime within a decent moral boundary that looked acceptable to God as He waved from His big throne in the sky.
If my parents were in the hospital and I got the call that they were in critical condition while I was in line at the airport check-in, I'd get myself out of line and get myself to them as soon as I could. But if I never got the call, if no one ever told me anything, even if my parents had been in an accident, I would be mentally unaware and unconvinced that they were suffering and in life threatening condition. I would be getting on that plane, making plans and day dreaming about how wonderful it was going to be, all the while the ones I loved could be breathing their last breath. The moment I would hear about it would be the moment that my entire trip would no longer matter or have any value for me. It would be ruined, and all I would want would be to see my parents on the first flight out of there! I'd have no mood or emotional stability to just go shopping or sight seeing if I became aware of my parents' condition back home.
"...and the violent have been seizing it by force."
I would do whatever it took to get to that hospital where my parents were, and more so if I had the ability to save their life though some sort of transplant or blood diffusion. I would be a bulldozer seizing my way to them by force in order to keep them alive. Because losing them would be more awful than losing a trip to Ireland or a million dollars.
The kingdom of God is not fine and dandy because Jesus says that it has been suffering violence ever since John the Baptist came on the scene. It suffers violence in regards to our having it. Just as the scenario of my parents in the hospital revealed that in regards to me they would be gone if I did not reach them in time, meaning they would not be with me or mine any longer. We must understand that the kingdom is something we seize violently, because the sin in our lives is deadly, deadly to try and make the kingdom of God a fake or fraud. So how on earth can we fight sin so that we believe in the reality of the Kingdom of God?
It is only by the grace and power of God, through Jesus who died to cleanse us from our sins, that we fight sin by the Spirit. We don't fight sin because it makes us a better person or because the bible says so, but we fight sin because our most precious and valuable asset is suffering violence and we must seize it by force. In other words, we have all that we need in Christ to fight sin, but the desire to do so will only come when we realize that the Kingdom of God is suffering violence by our sins. One perspective, namely the sight of our guilt and shame, is not enough to fill us with the desire to fight sin. It must be the glorious love of our Father that we long to keep and have forever that matters to us. When we see the glory of being heirs to the kingdom of God as Royal sons and daughters of God the King, we then also see our sin as the thing that is making us to be unaware of this beautiful truth. Every time we sin we are battling unbelief, succumbing to our desires for sin above our desire for holiness. This is not so much because sin is so irresistible, but because we do not see our inheritance as that which is more valuable. We might see our inheritance as some vague or ambiguous nice thing that we get when we kick the bucket. Or maybe we might see it as fine and ready for us whenever we get done with our short lived pleasures. It is not just sitting around waiting for us like that. Jesus says that it is suffering violence, and that the violent are seizing it by force. This indicates a type of person who will grab heaven. The violence of battling unbelief is no light matter.
There are two competing desires in every human being. One for the self (which is laden with sin) and one for the kingdom of God (which is laden with God's presence and love). As we pursue or go after desires of the world, allowing sin to happen, we must remember that all the while the greater Kingdom of God is suffering violence.
We are not fighting sin, Christ fought and defeated sin, we are fighting for the kingdom of God. Because though Christ defeated sin, we are grasping the divine kingdom by force through His death and resurrection. By a violent faith we are called to believe the unbelievable. It is a mentally and physically violent fight that we take on because we are believing that Christ set us free, and that though sin still entangles us we are holding on to what Jesus did as fiercely as one would hold on to the ones they loved. It is not a walk in the park to have heaven, nothing is fine and dandy, but it is a violent and forceful grab of faith that we trust in what Christ really accomplished for us. That Christ opened the door to the Kingdom of God, and only those that see the freaking Kingdom of God as such, beckoning us to come in and be with God our Maker forever, will believe in Jesus and violently put off the deeds of the flesh in the only way they can be put off: with an even more violent cry for help to God who gives us His strength by His Spirit in us to sever the sins that entangle us from Him. We have the power to put off sin not by our willpower but by His Spirit in us.
Let's get real for a minute.
You battle sin, wherever it's a sin of doing something you shouldn't or not doing something you should. You really battle both, but you're probably only conscience of one or the other at any given time. Unbelief is sin. Not forgiving someone is sin. Laziness is sin. Not thinking about God and praising Him 24/7 is sin. Anything that is not 100% perfectly holy, like Jesus, is sin.
I'm eating fruit and I'm in sin. I struggle with fear and anxiety about my self and my future and that feels like the greater sin, but both eating fruit and being anxious is sin, why? Because I am a sinner. No matter what I do I'm sinning.
Poor me, I basically can do nothing then. Literally I can't do anything if even eating fruit becomes an act of sin. Breathing becomes an act of sin. My existence is sin. I am incapable of fighting sin.
So then I look at Jesus, and He says that He wiped away my sins and gave me His obedience. He says that by faith, if I believe in Him, He clothes me in His righteousness. This means that by faith I believe that although I am a sinner, in Christ I have perfect obedience and I'm holy just like God.
And then I steal something.
Sin.
Wreaking filthy sin is right in front of me, under my nose. That's when the guilt and the shame sets in. I start to doubt and worry and fear my real acceptance by God because of the evident sin I see at that sin. All the while forgetting that I was always sinning, even before and now after I had stolen something.
So what is my battle. My battle is not that I keep sinning. My battle is that I don't believe that the door Jesus opened to me, to take hold of the kingdom of God and be an heir and His beloved daughter, is actually really open to me. Why? Because I'm a sinner. I sin. I don't deserve such a valuable gift. I'm battling unbelief with the wrong weapon. Instead of violently crying out for the Spirit of God to save me from my unbelief, I am grasping ...my sin! And when you grab sin to fight sin, you end up with more sin.
Battle unbelief with God. Have a relationship of violently crying out to Him to help you understand and see sin for what it is and to save you from its temptations. But always look up at what is yours in Christ, namely the kingdom of God laden with love and glory. The value of God must exceed the value of all other things, and since we are sinners we will be battling sin until the day we die. That is how the kingdom of God suffers violence, but the violent seize it by force. The force of the Spirit of God in us who is the only force powerful enough to overcome all things and bring us into the love and glory of the kingdom of God.
Seek the kingdom of God first.
Seeking, sacrificing when seeing value, violently calling upon the Spirit to be our force of power to get in.
And seize it. (This is by doing everything and anything, like a bulldozer, that the Spirit says for us to do according to the Word of God given to us)
By faith, through grace, in the power of the Holy Spirit within us,
Be violent about your inheritance,
Jmegrey.
No comments:
Post a Comment