Mark Palmer...
For those of you who don't know this guy named Mark Palmer, you need an introduction.... a young guy who's wife died of cancer about 1 1/2 years ago. This fall he got remarried, and now he's been diagnosed with rectal cancer... He has some incredible insights into real kingdom living... I dare you to read his blog... a recent post read:
One of the young thinker's in our community sent me a laundry list of questions over email the other day, the first being "If the kingdom is already here, and manifested itself in the life of Jesus and then through the disciples, then where did it go? Why, two thousand years later, do we seem so far from what we started out as?" I thought I'd let you peek in on my answer, not because it's all that profound, but because I had a sense while I was writing it that it was for someone else out there reading this blog today. So, my attempt at an answer......
This is the question we all want an answer to, especially right now, isn't it? Let me begin by saying this; Jesus is plain that the Kingdom is come. Paul's entire gospel is built around the fact that the Kingdom has come. So, whatever our experience is today, that content of Jesus' and Paul's message is undeniable...the Kingdom has come. You can chooose to not believe their teaching if you like, but you can't deny the content.
That being said, if we don't experience the reality of the Kingdom come today, I think we have a serious problem. But it is not the Kingdom's problem, or the Triune God's problem, it is OUR problem. There are a million answers to why we have drifted so far, all of them with some validity. You know a lot of them inherently; I don't need to tell you what they are. We've talked about this before.
Here's what we do...we pray "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done." with a recklessness that we have never had before. We pray it with all of the hope we can summon, and then a little bit more. Now is not a time for practicality, it is not a time for sensibility. It is a time for recklessness and hopefulness and dreaming. I am slowly seeing the Kingdom come in my life. I think we are slowly seeing it come in the life of the LP. But all of us have a responsibility to seek it, to look for it, to fight for it. And in our seeking, we will find. In our looking, we will see. In our fighting, we will win.
One of the young thinker's in our community sent me a laundry list of questions over email the other day, the first being "If the kingdom is already here, and manifested itself in the life of Jesus and then through the disciples, then where did it go? Why, two thousand years later, do we seem so far from what we started out as?" I thought I'd let you peek in on my answer, not because it's all that profound, but because I had a sense while I was writing it that it was for someone else out there reading this blog today. So, my attempt at an answer......
This is the question we all want an answer to, especially right now, isn't it? Let me begin by saying this; Jesus is plain that the Kingdom is come. Paul's entire gospel is built around the fact that the Kingdom has come. So, whatever our experience is today, that content of Jesus' and Paul's message is undeniable...the Kingdom has come. You can chooose to not believe their teaching if you like, but you can't deny the content.
That being said, if we don't experience the reality of the Kingdom come today, I think we have a serious problem. But it is not the Kingdom's problem, or the Triune God's problem, it is OUR problem. There are a million answers to why we have drifted so far, all of them with some validity. You know a lot of them inherently; I don't need to tell you what they are. We've talked about this before.
Here's what we do...we pray "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done." with a recklessness that we have never had before. We pray it with all of the hope we can summon, and then a little bit more. Now is not a time for practicality, it is not a time for sensibility. It is a time for recklessness and hopefulness and dreaming. I am slowly seeing the Kingdom come in my life. I think we are slowly seeing it come in the life of the LP. But all of us have a responsibility to seek it, to look for it, to fight for it. And in our seeking, we will find. In our looking, we will see. In our fighting, we will win.
posted by Randy Buist at 12:16 PM
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