What will you do with your life? The world needs kingdom-minded Christians now more than ever.

This is from p. 89 of Jesus and the Powers, and it is a great question I have carried with me for over 30 years. Where does the Spirit want to have me active in the work of the Kingdom in this world? What I want is to be active in the Spirit.

Perhaps the single greatest threat is not the rise of secularism or the emptying of churches, but the apathy and indifference of the churches that are still here. People are too self-absorbed and too affluent to care for anything outside their own social media bubble, beyond their own circle of friends, and beyond the view of their front lawns. (p. 89)

We are “committed” to Jesus that doesn’t go beyond our point of convenience. This is the struggle I face currently, for myself and for believers around me.

We need a commitment to our own discomfort, to reach out to those not like us, to find God there and realize the depth of love that can indeed exist in our own lives.

How can we leaven society with Christian influence without lording it over people?

We are here to bear witness to the Kingdom of God, not force our religion on society. We can have the Ten Commandments on every classroom wall in America and our top leaders will still find ways to break all of them before the end of the week! We want band-aids to cover cancer.

We need to be saved from our own comforts… our own laziness. We need to wrestle with hard issues and, quite frankly, we can insulate ourselves from that task quite readily. Instead of wrestling with injustices in our society, we can label it “woke” or “Marxist” and go back to sleep.

We can cease calling out a government for corruption because we say, “CAPITALISM!” or “THEY LOWERED MY TAXES” and roll over and go to sleep again.

There are all kinds of tools at our disposal that can allow us to stick a label on something and just walk away.

But to get in the life of a neighbor who lives a different lifestyle than you is messy. You can choose to keep the wall up because they live your label of “godless.” But… they’re nice. They engage you in conversation. They ask questions about the neighborhood. And before long, God forbid, you start to like them.

We can choose to keep our internal walls up. That’s convenient. Or, we allow the Spirit to do something in us that will allow Kingdom goodness to flow in them.

It’s messy. It will keep you up at night. It will cause other “Christian” friends to question your “salvation” at times.

I’ve had members of my own congregation ask me if I had a “death wish” on my life because I was friends with Muslims. And they weren’t joking.

You will wrestle with Scripture. You will pray more. You will listen to the Spirit more. You will lean into the leading of the Spirit a bit more intently… and find in the process that you love God more and you love people more. And you don’t have all the answers.

You don’t know if they are “going to heaven.” They may never go to your church while you know them. But that isn’t your biggest concern any longer. You long to see the goodness of the Kingdom of God flow into their lives and you get to be a part of it for a time. The rest is up to the Spirit.

What will you do with your life?

I got tired of living a walled-off, comfortable life decades ago. I have to resist that feeling more and more at this time in my life, but when I reach back out and find people not like me, I feel that purpose of the Spirit rising up in me again.

I need the life of the Spirit that shakes me awake every day.

PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR