You in God’s Kingdom
Imagine God’s Kingdom in You
Here is a painting, in words, of God’s grace to His children.
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
– John 3:3
As one that is born again, imagine that God placed in your heart the kingdom of God as a gift, wrapped in beautiful paper. Your soul looks at this gift and understands it is a gift of great value. You can’t see the kingdom of God because its beauty is hidden behind the wrapping paper. You discover, written all over the wrapping, are marvelous words. These words are living words (John 6:63), handwritten by the Father; they cover the entire gift.
As your soul studies this gift from God, the Holy Spirit says to you, tear off a piece and read it. When you do, you see that it is a passage of Scripture from God’s Word. Where the paper was, your soul now sees a small piece of God’s kingdom. The Holy Spirit tells your soul to eat what your soul tore off. When you do, a small piece of your mind is changed to think and act like a small part of God’s kingdom. You see a small part of your mind living within this magnificent gift.
The Holy Spirit tells you, again, to tear off a piece of the wrapping and eat it. When you do, another piece of your mind is transformed to act and think like a citizen of the kingdom of God. That piece moves to live inside the kingdom of God. God warns you to consume all of the Living Word. This process continues throughout your life. Scripture by Scripture, the Bread of Life feeds you on God’s hidden mana (Revelation 2:17).
Bite by bite, morsel by morsel, your mind lives inside the kingdom of God. By this, you are changed to think and act more as a child of God, and less of your mind participates in worldly thinking. You find you love people, you seek out joy in sacrificing for people, and your focus is shifting from the Bible as a book of instructions to Words that invigorate you and stir your heart to acts of great sacrifice and humility.
You cannot imagine having been transformed without the Living Word of God. And you cannot imagine living as His child without offering yourself as a living sacrifice. (Romans 12:2)
Coming to Live Within God’s Kingdom
Having been reborn, when you die and go to heaven, you find that it is not foreign to you, for you have had some of God’s kingdom in you for many years.
To say this another way, when we ingest God’s Word we discover more of His kingdom, and with each verse, we are changed to truly live more completely as a citizen of God. We live in a process of consuming and being consumed.
I do know that for me, I need to do a “health check” from time to time to ensure that I am still being transformed. The greatest loss I fear is that I desire too little from God.
If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
– CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory accessed on June 27, 2022
Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova on Unsplash
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