Kingdom Looks Like Family

I love how God speaks to us and how He gives us dreams and visions for the future. It is an amazing concept that the God who created the universe, and who created us, has chosen to partner with us. I believe His plan is to work with us to display His glory to the world. This concept consistently blows my mind.

What I've begun to notice is how we, as humans, can respond to what God speaks to us. He tells us secrets from Heaven of how we are meant to carry out our part of His plan. Then, we tend to operate out of a mindset that our part is the ONLY part, or the most significant part.

This mindset proves to be extremely damaging when other people enter the story. The temptation is to view people for what they can do for our part of the plan, instead of who they were created to be. One of the main areas this affects is the intrinsic need all people have to be accepted.

On our journeys, we go into communities, connect to other believers, and strengthen and encourage the local Church. This photo is of us getting instant family with others in SD!

This is harmful is many ways, one of which is that we may not be allowing people to become all that God created them to be. If our focus is on how people can help us fulfill God's calling on our lives, we run the risk of diminishing the calling God has put on their lives.

I've been learning more about how the Kingdom of God functions, and there are vast differences from how the kingdoms of this world function. “Outside Christ, people perform to create an identity so they might be accepted. The longing of everyone's heart is to belong. It is vital. But, in Christ, things are different. We start out accepted by God. From that place of acceptance, our identity is formed. And it is out of our identity that we perform” (Raising Giant Killers, Bill and Beni Johnson).

This beautiful family invited us in for dinner and encouragement. "Random connections" in Springfield ?

I believe this has happened way too often within the body of Christ, the Church. People come into a group of believers and sense a role that is expected to be filled. Therefore, they pick up that role as their identity in order to belong.

That is a major bummer because we miss out on all of the wonderful and unique giftings of people. God, in His radical goodness, has declared that we all belong to the family of God. He has adopted us first and then invites into a journey of discovering who He created us to be.

First, we are accepted and loved. Second, we begin discovering our true identity as a child of God. Third, we choose to perform out of a place of love and boldness.

Sometimes "ministry" looks like family dinners and lots of simple things: like clean clothes and washed dishes ?

love always