Kingdom…come!

Here is a page from my journal from June 12. I wasn’t going to share this one, but this morning I felt like I was supposed to. It’s new and rough, but I’m not going to fix it up…it’s real in my heart “as is” and has been shaking up my little world in big ways.

This morning I woke up with a throbbing tooth. I have a lot to do today, it’s my day off and I just can’t get stopped by the silliness of a tooth hurting. For whatever reason, I just said, “stop!” And I knew in my heart – so, so clearly – that my tooth had to bend to the will of God. I just knew it.

It stopped. Totally just stopped hurting and became normal.

I know it’s just a tooth, but now my mind has been racing and tumbling over itself with concepts that I know in my head but don’t own in my heart. A few things that are tossing about today:

1) God and His kingdom originate outside our realm. Another dimension. All that I need comes from that place…not from this one. That place has authority over this one. Resources can be pulled from that place. Many things – indeed MOST things – in this place can be made to bend or bow to that one. And it’s often believer-activated. That’s why we’re here…to bring the power of His dimension into our tiny, little three-dimensional world.

2) Believers – especially in America – take Jesus “into their lives” rather than going into His. They add Him on like a faith-accessory but never tap into the life and power and provision that He actually has. Jesus came to show us HOW to do that…how to live like Him in a world locked inside its own weakness and fragile humanity. When we become Christ-followers, we access His strength and His resources can be lassoed and pulled down into our world. He showed us how. He held the lunch up to His father and essentially said, “This lunch needs to bend to Your will and Your will is to feed five thousand.”

3) We are aware of needing to bend our will to Him…but we don’t make anything else in our life bend. If my will to sin can be conformed – away from my old nature and into His new one – then so can my physical body or my finances or issues that the world is facing or my ability to pray and see results. Everything in my life can come under the authority of the kingdom of God. Everything.

4) The life we’re meant to live with God is FILLED with supernatural adventure…it’s meant to be bursting at the seams with the miraculous, but such a tiny fraction of Christians live in that. No wonder we’ve reduced it to a list of rules or a code or a club or a program. No wonder. It’s all we can figure out to do with the keys we’ve been given. If miracles don’t set us apart…we’ll find something else that does, something that requires less faith.

Hmmm. So many thoughts this morning. I believe that I am here to do the things that Jesus did. And so is Steve. And our kids. It shouldn’t be weird, it should be life. I think sometimes we’ve made mistakes in Christendom when we turn the miraculous into a crusade or a conference or a healing service….it separates it from real life. People come to watch it on a platform rather than immersing themselves in it or understanding that it ought to be abundantly active inside of them. It’s not supposed to be a circus trick…but ordinary, extraordinary life. If the world could see us – each one of us – living with power to heal the sick, raise the dead, multiply lunches and money and joy…that would be appealing. That would be Heaven-on-earth revival.

Teach me how to live and love and heal and pray and bless and dance in Your world.

Your Kingdom come. Please, come.