The Cross Revealed

God has given us all that we need to lead a life pleasing to Him. We abandon confidence in ourselves or other men, and cast ourselves on Jesus, "The author and finisher of our faith".

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Seek the Kingdom

Brother Larry Crabb presented a seminar on Maui last weekend based on his new book, "66 love letters". Larry's message is essentially that we in the West have tried to fit God into our story, instead of letting Him reveal to us where we might fit into His story. That is, we seek God for comfort, or riches, or ease in relationships. We have treated Him as if He were our servant, a cosmic genie in the sky.

Brother Larry has hit the nail on the head. Far from "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness", we end up with a homeocentric babble that is not in conformity with the Bible we supposedly honor as our authority. Seeking first the Kingdom ALWAYS leads to our cross, which is an opportunity to trust God within whatever unpleasent environment we find ourselves in, rather than a ticket out of it.

The Kingdom is a great mystery. What makes sense there most often baffles us here. What is high is made low. What is abased is exalted. God doesn't play by our rules. He never intended to. We might not understand why a child dies, or a young girl is abused, or why a terrorist flies a plane into a building, and God apparently does nothing, or sometimes even takes credit for that which we deem as evil. To resolve this, we must first put on "the mind of Christ". All that God does is good, but we won't see this unless we have humbly entered the door of the Kingdom