There's no time to waste. Let's do this

 

Many have been praying often for the global church. For us to be reminded of God and his kingdom and that the Kingdom of God is not of this world. We are in this world, but not of this world. Our earthly world is really struggling right now. There is so much pain and injustice. It’s heartbreaking. People have let go of things they used to hold dear and value. Our light as the church has dimmed in leading the way. The path ahead seems dark and obscured. Where have we wandered off the path of life? Jesus said very clearly that he came to bring life and life in abundance. That abundant living seems to have been swallowed up with fear and lies.

There is a desperate need for the veil to lift and for us to see clearly ahead. The current moment is calling for deep repentance from us and lament for what has been let go of, thrown away and lost. We need to let the tears flow while down on our knees with our heads bowed before God. Destruction has been the result of sinful actions, of letting go of God and his ways. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. But at the same time, we have the mind of Christ, and the Spirit of God dwells in us. The Holy Spirit is calling us, drawing us back to those ancient paths, the ones we used to walk on and to a simple way of living. The path that requires sacrifice, humility and obedience. With the focus of loving God and loving others. With treating others as better than ourselves. A time to sit and reflect and unpack what that means. How do we show that we love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind? What does it even look like in practice? What does the word ‘all’ mean to us? How do we then love others on the back of loving God so completely?

There is an urgency for us to remember this path of love and to open our eyes to the incredible pain all around us. For us to find ways to ease that pain and bind up the broken hearted. To look around and allow the Holy Spirit to direct us to pick up the building blocks that we have dropped. Those blocks that we were building our lives with. Gold, silver and precious stones to lay down upon the foundation of Christ alone, our cornerstone. Compassion, empathy, care, love and a godly justice that seeks to right the wrongs in our world. To seek after the Shalom of God which looks towards restoration, renewal, redemption and mutual flourishing on earth as it is in heaven.

God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit co created each and every living soul and put their joint image into us. They then called for that image, that imago dei, to be seen, to be heard, to be loved and to be cared for as if it was God himself in front of us. This calls us to honour our fellow people. To raise the standard of loving, where everyone is included and no-one is left out. Where a person feels wanted in our presence and never cast aside. Where they feel valued and spoken well of. Remember we are bringing heaven to earth. Our goal is ‘on earth as in heaven.’ To see everything through kingdom lenses. The colour and brightness is intense. It is so brilliant as it shines from God’s throne of grace and righteousness.

Imagine heaven for a moment. Let’s close our eyes, relax and breathe in the moment. What can you hear? What can you feel? What can you smell and taste? What can you sense? Open your eyes ‘in heaven’ and what do you see? Are you seeing and hearing the same here on earth? What can we do to change this? The Bible describes heaven as a wonderful and beautiful place. A place where God dwells, where his robe, his presence, fills the temple. The goal is not to dream of it for one day in the distant future, the goal is to live it right now, here on earth. The kingdom now and the kingdom not yet.

Remember the words of Jesus, remember his actions and his great love he displayed. He came and changed everything with a new covenant and a new command. He is the only way, the truth and the life. He spoke of things like calling us to watch our anger levels and to love our enemies. Radical choices for us to make. Daily choices for us to make.

Let Jesus be the air we breathe, let him be our daily bread, let him infuse us from top to toe with his power, let him be everything to us because there is no-one like him. We are complete in him. Then let him lead us to those who need us most, the poor and vulnerable, the excluded, the sick, the marginalized, to people who might have dirt on them and smell, to the people that society casts aside as ‘less than’, to those in prison, to the children and to the elderly. He came for these people. For the lost, the lonely and the sick. He mentions these people. He wants us to care for these people in particular. To stand with them in solidarity. To stand up for them. To advocate for them. To fight for them. To wash their feet and to love them. To stand against any injustice against them.

If there is ever a doubt in our minds when we are trying to discern between wrong and right, we can know the truth. We can know the right choice to make. Keep going back to Jesus, keep going back to what the Kingdom of God stands for. Look for the greatest commandments, look for the Beatitudes, look for the fruit of the Spirit. Look for what Jesus tells us to be clothed in, as God’s chosen and dearly loved people, saved through Jesus’s death and resurrection, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Be willing to be persecuted for his sake and to have endurance to run the race of faith. To put our trust and our hope in God.

The more we look into the face of Jesus, the more we look into the mirror of his love, the more we see the reflection of his love in and through us. If we do this each and every day and throughout the day, we will find ourselves melting in his presence and becoming more like him. With his love flowing through us, we will remember the old paths. Fear will leave us. We can refute the lies and allow truth to fill us. We can be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Love will tumble out of us. God’s shalom, his peace, his justice and his love will be on display. The world around us will look different and it will be different. Relationships will be restored, wars will come to an end, hungry tummies will be filled, there will be sharing so that everyone will have enough of everything they need. Pain, loneliness and exclusion will be replaced with comfort, care and belonging. We will be witness to heaven being pulled down onto earth.

Oh Church, with everything in us, let’s urge each other towards this new picture, this new world with the kingdom of God on full display in and through us. Let’s run towards it. Let’s drop everything that has hindered us and kept us from it. Let’s run and run quickly. There is great urgency for transformation. May we let the Spirit of God flow through us with rushing and gushing wide rivers of love, mercy and joy. There is no time to waste. Let’s run!

Which power do you choose?

 

2026 has just started. There is a lot going on. There are a lot of things causing great concern for people across our world. It is times like this that we need to ask some critical questions of ourselves and our faith. We do not need to live in fear or wobble.

Stability is a word and a hope that our world needs right now. God’s kingdom is all about stability. God’s kingdom is where God rules and reigns in entirety in heaven. He brought this kingdom to earth in Jesus, so that we could see in person what it was all about. That’s when he chose to step down and come close to us in human form. Every word from Jesus while on earth was telling us what the kingdom is all about and how we can be a part of it. We step into it when we choose to follow Jesus and everything he represents. We get to show what it’s like here on earth by the way we live and love, and we get to bring it down onto earth as in heaven when we act on what Jesus taught us. When we die and go to heaven we will experience it in completeness. So, in the Lord’s prayer when we say, ‘Thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as in heaven’, that’s what we are talking about. That’s what Jesus taught us to do in our praying. He was giving us the very basics right there on how to live as representatives of his kingdom here on earth.

Instability is a word that our world feels like right now. The instability is brought about from people in political worldly empires trying to rule in their own power, which is not God’s power. Worldly empires are about themselves, their greed, power and control. Straight away we can see those words have nothing to do with God’s kingdom, so if we are a part of God’s kingdom, we cannot look to those earthly structures for stability or how to live. Worldly empires are not in partnership with God’s kingdom. They are in direct opposition to it. It’s oil and water and the two cannot and will not ever mix. Yes, we live within these political spaces because we live on earth, but if we follow Jesus, we need to be living according to God’s kingdom principles. That reminds me of a Scripture that says, ‘we are in this world, but not of this world.’

Worldly empire and God’s kingdom operate with different power. We need to ask ourselves what power we really want. We seem to sing about God’s power in church on Sunday and then very quickly slip into trusting in political worldly power at other times. Maybe it’s because we think we can see it better playing out in front of our eyes, I am not sure. But even the focus of the power is different. God’s power is absolute and is against evil powers that come against it. Worldly political empires are very self-focused and mostly see people as the enemies and obstacles in their way to complete dominance.

Even the weapons are completely different.

Worldly empire’s power uses force, fear, hate, lies, aggression, arrogance, coercion, boasting, abuse of power and weapons that destroy people and planet. It’s very selfish and all about winning and conquering. It’s all about excluding people and only about a few who win and gain all the wealth for themselves. They do not care about those they trample on to get there or what happens to them afterwards.

God’s kingdom power is one of servanthood, being co-workers, love, compassion, humility, thankfulness and joy. It’s also always putting him as the focus and the aim of destruction is at the evil powers, not at people or planet. It’s completely unselfish and others focused. It’s all about welcoming, including and adding people into the kingdom for their benefit, so that all can mutually flourish.

God’s Kingdom stays the same, always. Worldly political empires change all the time, depending on so many different things, but mainly because they are run by human people and their own power.  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. A steadfast assurance for his followers.

Right now, we are watching international law crumble before our eyes, never to be the same again. But God’s principles remain the same. We should be standing on those principles and calling political power out when they go against them. Jesus was not silent when people practiced injustice towards anyone. If we see hurt and harm, we should not celebrate it, we should be saying that it is not okay. We should be defending the poor, the marginalised and the weak. Jesus came up against political empire the whole time he was on earth. They eventually tried to silence him in death, but we know how that ended.

When worldly political power tries to silence things like inclusion, equity and diversity and we can see those are principles in God’s kingdom, we should not be the ones jumping on the bandwagon and agreeing with empire. We should be pointing out that those concepts are dear to God’s heart and it’s what he wants us to practice in bringing his kingdom to earth.

Christ is a sure foundation. He is our solid rock. All other ground is sinking sand. Reminds me of a song many of us grew up singing – the wise man built his house upon the rock and the foolish man built his house upon the sand. So, when the rain came down and the floods came up, the house on the rock stood firm and stable and the house on the sand fell flat because of complete instability. We have a choice to make daily. Where are we going to build?

God’s kingdom is the rock. Political empire is the sand. It cannot offer anything stable. There is no surety.

We are urged to build our lives on Christ, so it must start with Jesus and the New Covenant. We can’t have our foundation from anywhere else, and we also can’t build on top of Christ with anything that is not of his kingdom. So, if we put our faith in any worldly political empire, we are building that on top of Christ. It just cannot work. He still stays the same and solid, but we muddy the waters because we can’t even see him anymore because of what we have taken onboard. We land up in confusion and think that the worldly empire now has the answers. Sometimes it comes because of fear and it looks like our fear can be relieved by trusting in the actions of the empire.

Our trust and hope can never be in a political empire. It is sinking sand. It stands in direct opposition to the kingdom of God. It’s building a golden calf to bow down to in hopes of our freedom being protected. We know the argument of separating church from state. There’s good reason for that. The two cannot be in bed together. There cannot be an alliance with oil and water and thank goodness for that. But if we convince ourselves otherwise and start believing lies and we forget to keep looking to Jesus, we will find ourselves in bed with the enemy.

It's so clear right now that we have a huge divide in the church. We have church people posting absolute opposites on social media. The political right and left is brought into many of these accusations. There are arrows flying at each other. There are nasty words being said. There is huge disagreement on big topics. It’s obvious we have a clash of kingdoms going on. Parts of the church have climbed into bed with political empire. They are trying to go against the principle of oil and water not mixing. And many comments from people saying, ‘but how can you really know what’s true.’ There has been building of other stuff on top of Christ. There are warnings in God’s word about choosing wisely and with care how you build onto your foundation. We can know what is true if we line up what we are concerned about with the kingdom of God. It’s the only sure and true starting point. We also will not get our real answers about God’s kingdom from social media, we will only find the truth of it in God’s word and in the life of Jesus.

God’s kingdom power and political empire power look very different, sound very different, use different weapons, they do different things and they have completely different outcomes. The one will benefit a few, the other will offer benefit to everyone. Let’s not get starry eyed about the political empire that looks and sounds like it has our best interests at heart when our baseline is fear. I saw a comment the other day that said, ‘people have been trained to experience equality as loss and diversity as a threat.’ That sounds like it’s been set up by political empire so they can convince people that it’s okay to climb ladders of power, it’s ok to exclude others, it’s okay to win at all costs, it’s okay to protect what you believe is yours to feather your own nest, it’s okay to fight and trample others to get ahead and to stop the threat.

It made me think in that moment to put it alongside God’s kingdom. Do we think God’s intention for the world was for us to experience things as loss or a threat? So, it doesn’t hold weight in his kingdom then to be concerned about loss and threat, especially when it is about 2 concepts that he holds highly and dearly. I mean the trinity is all about equality, inclusion and diversity. We need to remember if we want to be great in God’s kingdom we need to learn to be the servant of all.

Ultimately, we have a choice whether we want the stability of the kingdom of God to be able to live within the instability of worldly political empire or will we choose what looks powerful and mighty with a human sword? Our Prince of Peace said on several occasions to put the sword/the human weapon away. “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent any arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” Even when Peter did use violence to protect Jesus, Jesus reminded him and said, ‘no more of this’. He then had compassion on the man who had been hurt (by power/violence that is not of the kingdom) and touched him and healed his ear.

May we choose to put our trust in the only person who deserves any accolade for peace in our world. May we choose Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, the Prince of Peace, from a kingdom that is not of this world but one that helps us to live for him in this world.

Pictures from St. Peter's Rainbow Village in Gqeberha