Lookahead:  Kingdom living is not being guilted into supporting a “Kingdom-building ministry” no matter how worthy the cause.  Kingdom living is hearing from God and gliding on His wings as we support any work that He asks us to join Him in.  And, for all I know, this above-referenced leader could be a genuine KO too with the best of intentions.  Paul embedded dozens of suggestions, on what we should be doing with our Christian lives, in his epistles.  But if we skip the most essential first step of going to God for our own individual marching orders, we will never enter into the Kingdom.  The ultimate takeaway here is that God builds the Kingdom.

There is a certain segment of ministers who believe that the Kingdom is for us today—however, not only are we citizens of this Kingdom, but we are highly accountable for doing “Kingdom Work”—i.e., aggressively helping God to build His Kingdom.  For example, I heard a sermon on Christian TV at the end of 2020 which, in summary, said that our mission is to bring down what is heavenly to earth…to give (human) expression to what exists in heaven…and to influence those on earth how to be better.  The speaker underscored that we should be embracing our heavenly citizenship more than our earthly, e.g., Are we a Christian first? Or an American first?  Ooops.  Was that Christian first? Or Kingdom Citizen first? 😊

Sometimes I feel like there’s some ambiguity between what the perceived Church’s charter is, and what the Kingdom’s charter is. Paul could not have been a more genuine Kingdom Occupier (KO) in action…and he did the incredible work of helping to build and exponentially grow the nascent church—as He enjoyed a Kingdom existence.  I believe that without the Kingdom experience, he would not have been able to accomplish most of what he did.  The kingdom experience was the rocket fuel that launched him up and kept him in orbit.  Without that fuel I believe that he might have crashed and burned.

My take:  Kingdom living is not being guilted into supporting a “Kingdom-building ministry” no matter how worthy the cause.  Kingdom living is hearing from God and gliding on His wings as we support any work that He asks us to join Him in.  And, for all I know, this above-referenced leader could be a genuine KO too with the best of intentions.  Paul embedded dozens of suggestions, on what we should be doing with our Christian lives, in his epistles.  But if we skip the most essential first step of going to God for our own individual marching orders, we will never enter into the Kingdom.  The ultimate takeaway here is that God builds the Kingdom. 

This time of year, we get a whole bunch of marching orders from well-meaning televangelists: calls to prayer, sermons on first fruits and good stewardship, invitations to join them in extended fasts, and recommendations for New Year’s resolutions;  the lattermost includes having a legit quiet time every morning…with suggested past-times like faithfully (1) reading our Bible-In-A-Year scriptures, (2) journaling—with the male contingent saying, “You too!” to their bros, (3) praising God in the valley and performing the six other steps needed to enter in beyond the veil, (4) speaking in our heavenly prayer language up to and including travailing in the spirit, (5) renewing our mind by memorizing/meditating on a boatload of scriptures, etc., etc.  If this is the plan to get us and keep us in a Kingdom existence, I would venture to say that it may be ineffective. 

When I was speed-reading through the epistles, the thought occurred to me—what was Paul’s quiet time like? Well, we can’t say much with certainty except  that:   

He didn’t have the Bible-In-A-Year version—or the New Testament for that matter (because he was busily writing more than a third of it on the fly.  And OBTW, he didn’t have the gospels—or even the benefit of a lot of “word-of-mouth” from the apostles as their visits were few and far between). 

• But Jesus was always close and nigh, as Paul’s personal rabbi and teacher.

Paul wasn’t journaling his spirit impressions from God

• Paul was moving out on the impressions on a moment-by-moment basis in real-time and recording them in parchment for posterity, during the rare occasions when he had a spare second 

Paul wasn’t praising in the valley during his daily quiet time. He and Silas were busy putting this into literal practice while they were nursing 39 lashes in prison

• They were able to do this because all their soulish energy wasn’t focused on fighting or avoiding pain—all their energy was focused on honoring their Redeemer and following His marching orders, e.g., to get a prison warden saved.    

Paul wasn’t focused on following the other six steps to go through the veil into the Holy of Holies

• This was probably because, on any given day, Paul might be caught up to the third heaven.  And he realized that all this was totally God-initiated. 

Paul wasn’t whispering in his heavenly prayer language for fifteen minutes in his prayer closet because he was afraid he might offend the wrong people

• He was allowing the Holy Spirit to speak through him—as the Spirit willed—whether in private or public

Paul wasn’t diligently navigating through his prayer list each morning

• Paul was praying unceasingly…and, actually, what is prayer? How about, talking to God in a person-specific format, i.e., full duplex bi-directional communication                                      

Finally, daily meditation on the Word may have involved…the Living Word

• When Paul recommends meditating on the Word it’s possible that he was referring to the Tanach or Old Testament; but the scrolls typically resided in the synagogue and “yeshivas,” and weren’t readily available.  Therefore, when he talks about renewing our minds in Romans 12:1,2, Paul probably wasn’t talking about mentally rehearsing verses from Leviticus (i.e., the Law).  He may have been talking about rehearsing…the firsthand accounts of Jesus…or the latest amazing miracle that Jesus had worked through His apostles. All we really know is that somehow, without using the various Quiet Time formulas or CONOPS, Paul and his brethren were able to achieve the following state:

Romans 5 (The Passion Translation) …Our faith in Jesus transfers God’s righteousness to us and he now declares us flawless in his eyes; . (we) enjoy true and lasting peace with God; Our faith guarantees us permanent access into this marvelous kindness…; What incredible joy bursts forth within us as we keep on celebrating our hope of experiencing God’s glory! Even in times of trouble we have a joyful confidence; we can now experience the endless love of God cascading into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us!…we overflow with triumphant joy in our new relationship of living reconciled to God…we are held in the grip of grace and continue reigning as kings in life, enjoying our regal freedom through the gift of perfect righteousness in the one and only Jesus, the Messiah!… the perfect righteousness that makes us right with God and leads us to a victorious life now available to all…

I confess—I’m not there—although I’ve been a Quiet Time adherent for years! So what am I saying?  Should we forget the whole Quiet Time thing?  Absolutely not, but I believe that we should try not to be guilted into it because it will make some minister happy.  More important, we probably should try not to merely go through the motions because the minister told us that we need it to get into the Kingdom.  Further question, am I casting aspersions on what really amounts to different communication techniques? Again, absolutely not!  We’re fine as long as we’re not working some minister’s formula.    

But if we have to slog through a mountain of inertia to communicate for fifteen picayune minutes in a Quiet Time each morning with the One who gives us every single breath, I think we should ask ourselves why?  And maybe skip the seven steps on that particular day? In fact, I’ll go one better…I think we should ask Jesus for the answer to our why question.

 To be continued….