The quality of my marriage, therefore, isn’t decided by whether or not I made a pledge twenty-nine years ago. It’s decided by how I live out that pledge now.
So too, the quality of our relationship with God and of our Kingdom living isn’t decided by whether or not we made a pledge twenty-nine years ago—or yesterday. Rather, it’s determined by the extent to which we are living out that pledge now. Whether we’re talking about marriage to another person or our marriage to Christ, our pledge is without content unless we are living it out now, in this moment—and now, in this next moment.
Unfortunately, because of the magical, consumerist view of salvation that pervades Western Christianity, we tend to assume that our life is still currently surrendered to Christ because we once-upon-a-time pledged to surrender it to Christ—which is why we tend to live largely secular lives, despite our confession of Christ as Lord. We have theoretically surrendered to the Kingdom, but the majority of our actual life is lived outside the Kingdom.
I believe that one of the most fundamental challenges Kingdom people face is to move beyond the theoretical Christianity that permeates our secularized culture, while striving to increasingly make our moment-by-moment life the domain over which God reigns. We’re to seek first the Kingdom of God, Jesus said, not merely in a theoretical way that claims God is first in our life while few of our waking moments are even aware of him. We’re to rather seek first the Kingdom by actually making the Kingdom the highest priority in our life—which means doing so in this moment.
And now, in this moment.
THE DISCIPLINE OF PRACTICING THE PRESENCE OF GOD
A seventeenth-century monk named Brother Lawrence referred to the discipline of surrendering to God moment-by-moment as “practicing the presence of God.” 2 This humble monk cultivated the capacity to remain aware of God’s presence, surrendering each moment to God, regardless of what else he was doing.
For Brother Lawrence, everyday chores like washing dishes became a supreme act of worship. The most insignificant details of our usually mundane lives become infused with eternal significance, he said, when we remain aware of the One “in whom we live and move and have our being.” Everything that pertains to godliness, he believed, was encompassed in the call to remain aware of, and surrendered to, the presence of God each moment. 3
If you’re reading this and saying to yourself: “No way. That’s impossible,” I totally understand. With God’s help I’ve been engaging in this discipline over the last decade or so, and I have to confess I’m still not very good at it. Practicing the presence of God is easy enough when I’m not doing anything else or doing things that require little attention. But when I’m immersed in conversation or a book or television or teaching—or writing (like now)—I find it extremely challenging.
But that doesn’t matter. This is not a “Brother Lawrence God-awareness contest.” The only important question is “Am I surrendered to God’s presence now, in this moment?” Practicing the presence of God is something we strive for moment-by-moment, even if it’s something we will never perfectly attain in this life.
Like me, you will undoubtedly forget to remain aware of God’s presence in a few moments. But if you’re open to it, before long the Holy Spirit will break through your secularized consciousness and whisper to you, “Remember me?” And when he does, our job is to yield to him and surrender ourselves to God’s loving presence in that moment—and then seek to do so in the next moment, and then in the next.
START NOW
So if you haven’t done it already—or if you started last paragraph but forgot by now—why not start this moment?
You are, right now, enveloped by God’s loving presence like a molecule of water in the middle of an infinite ocean. His loving presence presses in on you like the water pressure on a submarine three miles beneath the ocean. Right now, simply become aware of this truth. Let the reality of God’s loving presence be the canvass against which you experience and interpret the world around you—including reading this book.
As Brother Lawrence taught, sprinkling short spoken prayers throughout the day will help you stay awake to God’s presence. As you’re reading the next couple paragraphs, for example, you might want to pause every now and then and whisper, “Thank you Lord for surrounding me with your love” or “I surrender this moment up to you.” A central challenge of Kingdom discipleship is to make this sort of prayer a habit. I believe it’s what Paul was getting at when he told us to “pray continually.”
WAKING UP
As bad as I am at this discipline, I’ve learned over time that Brother Lawrence is absolutely right—the most insignificant details of our life take on eternal significance when they are integrated with an awareness of God’s continual presence. In God’s presence, the “secular” world disappears as it is enveloped by, and permeated with, the “holy.”
As I’ve practiced the presence of God, there have been moments when I’ve suddenly become aware of the beautiful mystery of every detail of my surroundings. It’s like the Kingdom breaks through my habitual, false, “secular” view of the world and explodes it from the inside out. In these moments I sense the mind-boggling miracle of existence in everything around me. A leaf twitching in the wind; a bird flying overhead; a ladybug on the blade of grass—it’s all an unfathomable miracle. In these moments I am tangibly aware that all things are at every moment held in existence by “[God’s] powerful word” (Hebrews 1:3). I am struck with childlike wonder. I feel like I’m looking at the world for the first time.
In moments like these I realize how much the secularized world-view has dulled my spiritual senses.
Experiences like this are magnificent, but we can’t make them happen (I’ve tried), and we shouldn’t strive for them. Our goal is not to have experiences but simply to live faithful to the pledge we made when we confessed Jesus Christ as Lord.
This is the Kingdom. It’s all about our lives becoming a domain over which God reigns. And our lives are nothing more than a series of present moments strung together.
As we grow in our capacity to seek first the Kingdom of God every moment, surrendering to his love in each of the present moments that make up our lives, we increasingly manifest the beauty of God’s holy Life, and we revolt against the secularism that so profoundly afflicts our world.
LISTENING TO GOD
If we live with a secular mindset, our mind is consumed with self-centered thoughts. We think about our plans and desires and about how things affect us. Our mind is a domain over which we reign rather than one over which God reigns.
Practicing the presence of God begins to change this. Remaining aware of God’s presence and surrendering to God’s will on a moment-by-moment basis draws us out of ourselves and gives us a capacity to begin to hear God’s voice. Now God can begin to lead us to carry out his plans and wishes, rather than our own. Now we can begin to function like members of Christ’s body that is actually responsive to “the head.” Now we can function like sheep who hear the voice of the good shepherd. This is impossible when our mind is consumed with ourselves.
As you embark on the practice of the presence of God, I encourage you to pay attention to small promptings in your heart. This is the sort of gentle nudge we subconsciously and automatically dismiss when our mindset is secularized. I encourage you to revolt against this secularism by paying attention to these nudges.
If an action that one feels nudged to engage in is consistent with the character of Jesus Christ, I encourage you not to overanalyze it. Just do it. What’s the worst that could happen? Even if the prompting wasn’t directly from God, the worst-case scenario is that you just engaged in a loving Kingdom act. How bad is that?
A while back I drove up to a stop sign and watched a young lady with two children cross in front of me. They looked like they were rather poor, if not homeless. I whispered a little prayer of blessing on them, when suddenly I felt I was supposed to give her a hundred dollar bill I had been given earlier in the day.
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So, much to the chagrin of the driver who had now pulled up behind me at this stop sign, I jumped out of my car and asked this lady: “Do you believe in God?”
She gave me a bewildered and slightly concerned look as she hesitantly responded, “Yeah.”
“Good,” I said as I walked toward her, “because I think he’s telling me to give you this.” I put the bill in her hand and said, “He loves you and is watching out for you.” I quickly returned to my car and drove off. I glanced in my rearview mirror as I drove down the road and saw this young lady holding her hands over her face, crying.
Now, can I be absolutely sure this was God telling me to do this? No. I think it was, because I usually consider giving money to total strangers an unwise investment of God’s resources. But what if I’m wrong? At worst, I’m guilty of being foolishly generous. How bad is that?
I encourage you to revolt against our culture’s secularized world-view by practicing the presence of God while paying attention to the nudges in your heart. When they are consistent with the character of Christ and express love, act on them. You’ve got nothing to lose—except perhaps some time and money. But even these you didn’t really “lose,” because now they’re invested in the Kingdom.
As we grow in our capacity to live under the reign of God moment-by-moment, we increasingly manifest the beauty of his ever-present love while revolting against the ugly secularism that afflicts our world.
This is the heart of the Kingdom of God.
This is the heart of the revolution we’ve been invited to participate in.
Viva la revolution!
WHAT CAN WE DO?
AN ACTION GUIDE
CHAPTER 1: GIANT JESUS
Returning to the Source. For each chapter I include practical action steps that readers can take to put the chapter’s teaching into practice. The first suggested action step for each chapter is a reminder to “Return to the Source.” I include this in each chapter because it is foundational to everything the Kingdom is about. Everything we do in the Kingdom manifests the fullness of Life we get from God alone. He alone is to be our source of Life. We will find it impossible to live out the radical, countercultural call of the Kingdom except insofar as our core sense of worth, significance, and security is anchored in God’s love for us, expressed on Calvary.
I thus encourage readers to commit to continually relinquish all idols and to return to their one true source of Life. Engaging in the classic spiritual disciplines alone and with other followers of Jesus is profoundly helpful in this regard. (For information on these, see the suggested readings at www.gregboyd.com.)
The spiritual discipline I and many others have found most helpful in experiencing God’s fullness of Life involves the biblical and traditional practice of imaginative prayer (sometimes called “cata-phatic prayer”). 1 Paul teaches that while unbelievers have a veil over the minds, the Spirit removes this veil when a person submits to Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 3:14 – 16). He then adds,
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17 – 18, RSV)
Notice that the Spirit-inspired “beholding” Paul speaks of in this passage is one that occurs in the mind. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see…the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4, emphasis added). But the Spirit has set believers free to see “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (4:6).
In light of this, I encourage you to regularly set aside times when you ask the Spirit to help you experience in your mind the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Get alone in a darkened room, put on some soft lyricless background music, and imaginatively see, hear, and sense Jesus Christ expressing his perfect, unconditional love to you. Envision Jesus telling you things God’s already said about you in Scripture, but now experience him expressing it to you personally.
You might, for example, experience the Lord looking into your eyes as he tells you he loves you with a perfect everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3), that you are his beloved friend (John 15:5), and that nothing can separate you from his love (Romans 8:35 – 39). You might experience the Lord holding you as a little child, promising you that, in contrast to what some others may have done in your life, he will never leave you or forsake you (Matthew 28:20).
It’s one thing to know about these truths, but experiencing the Lord communicate them to you personally is far more transforming. Experiencing the beauty of Christ’s love as the source of our core worth, significance, and security sets us free to live in the Kingdom revolution.
Examine yourself. Alone and with friends, reflect on the extent to which your life mirrors the life of Christ. What difference does following Jesus make in terms of how you view others and spend your time, talents, and resources? If you were not a follower of Jesus, how would your life look different? Ask God to reveal to you aspects of the broader culture that you have unwittingly appropriated, especially those inconsistent with his reign.
When you discern inconsistencies, don’t judge yourself harshly. Conviction is helpful, but judgment isn’t. Simply remind yourself that your worth, security, and significance come from what God thinks of you as defined by Calvary. Ask God to empower you to live consistent with the Kingdom identity and to manifest his beauty. Ask fellow Jesus-followers your share life with to hold you accountable to this commitment.
CHAPTER 2: CHRIST AND CAESAR
Return to the Source. We can’t hope to change the world until we ourselves are changed. When broken people—including broken Christians—try to fix the world, we only succeed in breaking it further. Our Kingdom impact can never outrun our own Kingdom transformation, and the key to personal transformation concerns where we go to get Life.
We cannot hope to advance the Kingdom as long as we get any aspect of our sense of worth, significance, or security from anything other than the King. If we get our Life from our political or national allegiances, for example, we will invariably fuse them with our (now compromised) allegiance to the Kingdom, and we will tend to view those opposed to our political or national allegiances as enemies. To keep the Kingdom holy and to live in love, we must consistently return to the one true source of Life, Jesus Christ.
Set aside regular times when you drink deeply from the infinite reservoir of God’s love. Relying on the Holy Spirit, imagine Jesus expressing to you all the things Scripture says about you because of your identity in him.
Process this chapter. Alone and with friends, reflect on how this chapter impacted you. Did it challenge anything you previously thought about government, Jesus, or the Kingdom of God? How might you live differently because of what you learned? What questions does this chapter raise that you hope will be answered later in the book? Did you disagree with anything in this chapter? If so, ask yourself if yours is a legitimate counter-perspective or if it’s rooted in something else.
Examine yourself. Alone and with other followers of Jesus you share life with, honestly explore what kind of power you trust. Have you allowed a “power-over” mindset to compromise your allegiance to the Kingdom of God? Are you ever tempted to think that your political opinions or activism are advancing the Kingdom of God? When you encounter conflict, as we all do, is your first impulse to win? Or do you try to manifest the self-sacrificial love of Christ to the person you’re in conflict with? If you tend toward a power-over mindset, ask the Spirit and people you are in community with to help you discern why this is. Ask God to give you the same mindset that was in Christ Jesus when he humbled himself, set aside his divine rights, became a human, and died on the cross (Philippians 2:5 – 9).
Be the first fruits of the coming Kingdom. The New Testament refers to Jesus followers as the “first fruits” of a coming harvest (2 Thessalonians 2:13; James 1:18; Revelation 14:
4). “First fruits” refers to fruit that ripened and was picked before the rest of the harvest and was then consecrated to God (Exodus 23:19). As the “first fruits” of God’s coming harvest, our call is individually and collectively to manifest heaven ahead of time. Everything that will characterize the Kingdom when it’s fully come should characterize us now, and everything that will be absent when the Kingdom is fully come should be absent from our life now.
In light of this, reflect on and discuss with friends what aspects of your life (thoughts, attitudes, values, behaviors, etc.) will not be present in heaven. When you’ve assessed this, remind yourself that you are called to be heaven on earth and that these aspects of your “old” self do not reflect who you truly are in Christ. You are empowered by the Spirit to put them off and manifest your true identity (Ephesians 4:22 – 32). Commit to yielding to the Spirit of Christ throughout the day, and covenant with other Kingdom people you share life with to help each another be “first fruits” of the coming Kingdom.
Wake up to spiritual warfare. How do you respond to the claim that Jesus’ revolt was primarily against the Powers, not against people? If you, like most Western people, find that spiritual warfare has little or no role in your life, despite the fact that it was central to Jesus’ ministry and the early church, ask God to open your eyes, as Elijah prayed for his servant (2 Kings 6:15 – 17). Ask God to help you see, in a spiritual way, the Powers that are behind the evils plaguing society and creation. Together with others, pray that God will help you see yourself as a soldier stationed in enemy-occupied territory whose primary task in life is to topple the enemy’s empire and set humans free (2 Timothy 2:4).
The Myth of a Christian Religion Page 17
