Kingdom of God

Cultivating Kingdom Values - Part 4: Abundance

Cultivating Kingdom Values - Part 4: Abundance

…We often look at this miracle of Jesus feeding the 5,000 and celebrate how he saved the day. So long as Jesus is around, we have nothing to worry about. He’ll fix it. He’ll take care of it. If he won’t send them away, he can feed all the people.

The only trouble is that’s not exactly what happens in the text. Jesus doesn’t send them away and Jesus doesn’t technically feed all those people.

Instead, we read in verse 16, “Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’”

“Whoa. Hold up now preacher. What do you mean telling us to do it. That’s what we pay you for?”

“We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish,” they reply. “What do you expect us to do?”…

Cultivating Kingdom Values - Part 3: Worth

Cultivating Kingdom Values - Part 3: Worth

… God saw you and me and every person who ever lived scraping our way through this sin ridden life and believed we were valuable enough to sacrifice his only Son just to dwell with us as it was in Eden. Do we value God and the Kingdom of Heaven as much as God values us? As one of my former pastors used to ask every Sunday, “Will you say yes to the one who said yes to the cross for you?”

The Kingdom of God

The Kingdom of God

It’s not easy to end a series like this when the crisis of our “not-OK” reality continues on around us indefinitely. It’s not easy to hope, to wander together in this wilderness, to see others around us as companions on the journey instead of threats, to “fumble with love” as we trip over the meaning and intentions of our own words, or to move ladders that we have been afraid to move for so long.

No matter how much we fear war, it seems we fear peace more…