I found this in George Barna’s book Revolution:

What are the priorities that reflect our absolute sellout to the Kingdom of God?

Obedience to God - Anyone who obeys God’s laws and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 5:19)

Love – But I say, love your enemies!…If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? (Matthew 5:44,46)

Justice- God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied (Matthew 5:6)

Peace – God blesses those who work for peace (Matthew 5:9)

Holy Living – Let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father (Matthew 5:16)

Integrity – Just a simple, “Yes, I will”, or “No, I won’t” (Matthew 5:37)

Generosity – When you give to someone in need,…give your gifts in private, and your Father, who sees everything, will reward you (Matthew 6:2,4)

Spiritual Connection – You must worship the Lord your God and serve only Him (Matthew 4:10)

Spiritual Wholeness - Is anything worth more than your soul? (Matthew 16:26)

Biblical literacy – Haven’t you read the Scriptures?…Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures (Matthew 19:4, 22:29)

Faith in God – Because of your faith, it will happen…You don’t have enough faith…If you had faith even as small as a mustard seed,…nothing would be impossible…But with God, everything is possible (Matthew 9:29, 17:20, 19:26)

Blessing People – Jesus not only regularly taught this, but His constant healing of, training, and praying for others demonstrated how to bless them

Disciple Making – Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations (Matthew 28:19)

While these are some good thoughts, what didn’t make it on the list was actually DEMONSTRATING the Kingdom of God!  How did Jesus demonstrate the Kingdom of God to them?  Look at Matthew 4:23:

And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.

Jesus didn’t just preach about the Kingdom of God.  He actually demonstrated it!  He gave us an example for how we were supposed to do it. 

One of the most gripping passages of Scripture about demonstrating the Kingdom was when Jesus told the Pharisees and chief priests in Matthew 21:43 that “the Kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof”.

Let it be our prayer today that we bear fruit of the Kingdom of God both in our life and in the lives of others.

Servant of a wicked cool God,

Matt Legere

In the course of life, there are individuals who, because they haven’t heard specifically from Jesus regarding what their next steps should be, they automatically make the decision themselves based on where they feel they can make the best impact. 

This principle (if you could call it that) is not only unbiblical, it’s lazy and based solely on results. 

Many times through Scripture, if people had followed this principle of impact, they would have been outside of the timing of God.  For example, let’s consider Jesus Christ.  He gets baptized to fulfill the Scriptures and then the Spirit leads Him where?  The wilderness?  Wait, that makes no sense at all.  You are God manifest in the flesh and have just been baptized.  Go into the harvest and impact your world!  Some of us would have said even more as a way of expressing our lack of understanding at how this could be the will of God. 

God is more concerning about relationship than impact.  In my relationship with my wife (which is supposed to model our relationship with our heavenly Father), what would mean more to my wife?

1. Listening to her desires and then going and getting 12 red roses in a nice vase as a “just because” present?

OR

2. Listen to her desire for flowers and then renting a flower truck to dump 1,693 red roses around her vehicle?

Before you answer which one, think carefully.  Wouldn’t there be more impact if I went with option #2?  I mean, if she likes flowers then “by-golly miss molly” let’s give her some!  Yeah, option 2 may make a bigger “splash”, but it wouldn’t be what she wanted.  Because of our relationship, I find out what she specifically likes and then do my best to fulfill that and more.

Likewise, the Lord may have plans for you that are way beyond what may be thinking.  But if you are not in the right place at the right time, then you may miss it.

Still not convinced?  Look at Acts 8.  Philip the evangelist was seeing great results within the Samaritan community.  Things were going great and he was impacting a lot of people.  Then comes Acts 8 and verse 26:

“Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road-the desert road-that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza.”

Are you noticing a trend here?  People (and Jesus) are either impacting or have the potential of impacting large quantities of people and the Holy Spirit pulls them into another direction.  In this scenario with Philip, he gets pulled into the desert to reach a single man: the Ethiopian eunuch.

As you seek after God for your family, your ministry, your career, your community, or your calling, don’t get sucked into this ridiculous concept of focusing on “impact”.  Have enough faith that God knows what He’s doing and trust His plan for your life.

Servant of a wicked cool God,

Matt Legere

Have you ever noticed that “follow your heart” is a catchphrase that can be found in seemingly every chick-flick, inspirational movie, or every movie on the Lifetime Channel.  Whenever someone seems unsure of what advice to give someone, they immediately saying something along the lines of “Well, if you will just follow your heart, you will be just fine”. 

That phrase may make a great movie (or a sappy movie depending on which genre floats your boat), but it’s something that is completely contrary to how we are supposed to live our lives in following Jesus Christ.  I’m not supposed to let my heart decide my destiny and future for me, Jesus is the one who holds my future in His hands.  Let’s see what Proverbs 18:2 has to say:

“A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself”. 

When we follow our own reasoning and intellect, we are basically telling God that we don’t need or want His help.  Proverbs says that it is a fool that let’s his heart discover itself.  Jeremiah 17:9 says it this way:

“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked…”

When we end up following our own hearts in our own natural wisdom, we can be easily deceived.  To be deceived means that at one point, the solution seemed logical to us but we later were disappointed to realize that we were incorrect. 

We have an opportunity to serve Somebody who isn’t bound by time or space.  Someone who is already standing in your future.  Somebody who had your entire life laid out in His mind while He gave His life for you.  With loving eyes, He’s telling us “Come, let’s reason together”.  

He desires to transform our hearts so that the seed of the Kingdom of God can be planted there.  When we hear something about the Kingdom of God and His plans, whether it be from our peers, a minister, or from the Lord Himself, we are given an opportunity.  Do we reason that word to death in our minds?  Or do we let it affect our hearts (the seat of our emotions)?  Mark 4:15 tells us that if we do not let the seed take root in our hearts that “Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sowed in our hearts”.

The reason that Satan is after the seeds of His word being sown into our hearts is that Ephesians 6:6 tells us that “servants of Christ do the will of God from their heart”. 

Let’s truly give Jesus Christ our hearts so that He can transform us and enable us to do His will.

Servant of a wicked cool God,

Matt Legere