“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” -C. S. Lewis
It’s a universal truth: things are not as they ought to be. If they were, the concept of fairness wouldn’t exist.
It’s easy enough to tell. Read the latest news headlines: war, disease, drugs, death, crime, depression, and corruption. It’s the same tune stuck on a loop over and over since Eden.
Many thought the efficiency of industry and the technology of science were the answers to the human plight. But as Sting once sang, “I never saw no miracle of science that didn’t go from a blessing to a curse. I never saw no military solution that always didn’t end up as something worse.”
We can ask, “Why aren’t things as they ought to be?” But a better question is, “Where does our sense of better, good, right, and just come from?”
C. S. Lewis was right. Nothing this dank, broken, prison-world ever has or ever will provide can truly satisfy us because we were, in fact, made for another world. We were made by Christ for His kingdom.
Despite that reality, many spend their entire lives in denial. Rather than accepting and opening the gift of faith - access to the kingdom given to us by our King, Jesus Christ, many choose instead to make the prison their home. Their choice to reject the King and His gift of Himself at the Cross exposes their desire for a counterfeit kingdom where they sit atop the throne.
The Bible tells us Satan poses as an angel of Light. His desire is for us to continue our futile efforts to clean up the prison with our filthy rags of self-righteousness. They look like political correctness, tolerance, “random acts of kindness,” and “paying it forward,” rather than the true ministry of the Gospel.
If whatever we’re calling “ministry” isn’t leading people to repentance from sin to Christ…
If it isn’t causing them to GATHER with us as members of the Bride and Body of Christ…
If it isn’t causing them to GROW in the faith and reality of God’s Son, measured by the full stature of Christ…
If it isn’t causing them to GIVE themselves away in Gospel-Community, each member doing their part for Christ…
If it isn’t causing them to GO in the power of the Holy Spirit to expose the truth of the Gospel to the ends of the earth…
…then whatever we’re doing isn’t coming from faith in Christ, which means it’s sin (Romans 14:23). It certainly isn’t ministry. We’re striving instead to tidy up the prison, making ourselves and other inmates more content with the stay.
- GATHER: Acts 5:12; Luke 11:23; Ephesians 2:10
- GROW: Ephesians 4:13; John 17:21-23; 2 Peter 1:5-9
- GIVE: Matthew 20:26; Ephesians 4:16; Proverbs 4:26
- GO: Romans 1:5; Acts 1:8; Matthew 28:19-21
King Jesus said, “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness!’”
If what we’re calling ministry isn’t telling people about the true King and His everlasting kingdom… if it doesn’t pass the “gather, grow, give, and go” test for Christ in Gospel-Community, then it is most certainly not the Father’s will.
And if it's not ministry, then we’re doing the exact same thing Satan does… posing as angels of light, “paying it forward” with our filthy rags as “random acts of kindness” and keeping others from Christ by keeping them content with their sin… and cozy in the prison of a counterfeit kingdom.
Blessings,
-PK
#jointeamunstoppable
https://www.unstoppablekidsbook.com/
