As believers, we are sojourners from another Kingdom while we live here on Earth. The documentation of our heavenly passport and the word of God define who we are and how we are to live in this world when its demands of earthly citizenship contradict our higher allegiance. We should always speak with the accent of Heaven and carry with us the customs and lifestyle inherent with that citizenship. Without those distinctions, we will slowly fall into the slumber of compromise where we will succumb to ways of thinking we would have never thought possible when our faith was awake and clearheaded.
Kingdom
John Mark Comer
Basically: don’t invest all your time and energy (and money) in things that get old and rust and go out of style and can be snatched from the back of your car if you park too far from the streetlamp. Instead: put your life into things that matter, like your relationship with God and life in his kingdom. Because where you put your resources is where you put your heart. It’s the steering wheel to your engine of desire.
N.T. Wright
Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about.
Paul Tripp
This is the work of the kingdom of God: people in the hands of the Redeemer, daily functioning as his tools of lasting change.
Malcolm Muggeridge
Jesus’ good news, then, was that the Kingdom of God had come, and that he, Jesus, was its herald and expounder to men. More than that, in some special and mysterious was, he was the kingdom.
Leon Connolly
In God’s Kingdom, there are no majorities and minorities, just brothers and sisters invited to the banquet of life.
Author Unknown
It is easy to identify an earthly monarch’s trusted staff by their regalia. May it be just as easy to identify those who are trusted by the King of Kings. May our regalia of compassion, love and grace be the colors that mark each of us as one of His trusted servants.
Dean Sherman
The church aims to demonstrate and pray for the kingdom, but the way to join the kingdom fully is to become a part of the community of believers. So, the presentation of the kingdom should lead to the planting of the church, and the planting of the church should lead to further manifesting of the kingdom. The Church is who we are, and the kingdom is how we live. Church is the vehicle, and the kingdom is the result.
Eugene Peterson
“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ…” (Mark 1:1). The important word here is gospel. It is an old word, both in the Jewish and pagan worlds. It meant the publication of good news. But it was not just any good news that might be found in the headlines of a newspaper. It was specifically in regard to the kingdom, to some aspect of the rule of the king. It was the glad news to the populace, resulting from some statement or action of their king. This word, used before anything is said at all, defines the contents of Mark’s book as primarily information (that can anticipate a glad reception) about the reign of Jesus Christ.