Seek First The Kingdom of God no. 13

“The beginning of the Good News of Yeshua the Messiah, the Son of God” (Mark (Mrk) 1:1). Last year, I made a commitment to read The Bible from cover to cover. And that meant reading several versions to read everything that is in the majority of Bibles today. I succeeded in that reading last year and read several different translations. And one thing that really stood out was the way it differs from the way I was raised to think about The Bible. I was raised to think that God’s good news was all about me and my salvation. It was about saving me. BUT after careful consideration, I think that is a rather selfish way to look at what God was doing through both Jesus and the Spirit.

What is the Good News? That is really an essential question to solidify what your testimony and understanding of God are all about. The Good News really is a framework for seeing the world and yourself within the world and your relationship to God. And I think there can be a problem when you are bombarded with biblical Good News and church good news. When your idea of the Good News is that you are important then there is a self-centered aspect of The Bible that makes me feel like I am the protagonist in the story. I get a first person perspective of my importance to the events and the action. BUT The Bible is mainly third person accounts of what other folks did. Sure, there are some second person epistles imploring folks of what to do BUT the bulk of the writing is by a narrator that is observing the action. That narrator stands aloof and mostly reports the events with little bias.

So, after reading The Bible several times over the past nearly two years in several translations, I am rather certain the Good News is more about what God did through Jesus and the Spirit than it is about me.

Jesus was out preaching the Good News before I was born. He was preaching the Good News of the Kingdom of God a long time before any of us were born, “After Yochanan had been arrested, Yeshua came into the Galil proclaiming the Good News from God: ‘The time has come, God’s Kingdom is near! Turn to God from your sins and believe the Good News’” (Mark (Mrk) 1:14-15). In order to find the Kingdom of God I need to repent or turn from my sins and believe the Good News. Not my good news, BUT the Good News. I need to believe the Good News. I am not the Good News. The Good News is not about me. The Good News is about Him. So, the Good News isn’t about me. Isaiah talks about good news way before Jesus arrives physically on the scene, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, proclaiming shalom , bringing good news of good things, announcing salvation and saying to Tziyon, ‘Your God is King’” (Yesha 'yahu (Isa) 52:7)! Isaiah announces salvation and that God is King. That sounds like Good News. The Good News is going to have to be heard and it is going to cause me problems, “But you, watch yourselves! They will hand you over to the local Sanhedrin s, you will be beaten up in synagogues, and on my account you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. Indeed, the Good News has to be proclaimed first to all the Goyim . Now when they arrest you and bring you to trial, don’t worry beforehand about what to say. Rather, say whatever is given you when the time comes; for it will not be just you speaking, but the Ruach HaKodesh . Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will turn against their parents and have them put to death; and everyone will hate you because of me. But whoever holds out till the end will be delivered” (Mark (Mrk) 13:9-13). I need to tell everyone the Good News. And Paul tells the Good News, “As for us, we are bringing you the Good News that what God promised to the fathers, he has fulfilled for us the children in raising up Yeshua, as indeed it is written in the second Psalm, ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father.’ And as for his raising him up from the dead, to return to decay no more, he said, ‘I will give the holy and trustworthy things of David to you.’ This is explained elsewhere: ‘You will not let your Holy One see decay.’ For David did indeed serve God’s purposes in his own generation; but after that, he died, was buried with his fathers and did see decay. However, the one God raised up did not see decay. Therefore, brothers, let it be known to you that through this man is proclaimed forgiveness of sins! That is, God clears everyone who puts his trust in this man, even in regard to all the things concerning which you could not be cleared by the Torah of Moshe. Watch out, then, so that this word found in the Prophets may not happen to you: ‘You mockers! Look, and marvel, and die! For in your own time, I am doing a work that you simply will not believe, even if someone explains it to you’” (Acts of Emissaries of Yeshua (Act) 13:32-41). So go out and spread His Good News.

Seek first His Kingdom which rests on the foundation of love.

Grace and Shalom to your home. The Kingdom of God is now!

I love you. I forgive you. Have a blessed and abundant day!

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoKingButChrist #EmbraceTheWithin #SeekFirstTheKingdom #NotMyWayYHWH

Seek First The Kingdom of God no. 12

“Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged. For the way you judge others is how you will be judged — the measure with which you measure out will be used to measure to you. Why do you see the splinter in your brother’s eye but not notice the log in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ when you have the log in your own eye? You hypocrite! First, take the log out of your own eye; then you will see clearly, so that you can remove the splinter from your brother’s eye” (Mattityahu (Mat) 7:1-5)! A lot of us think we don’t have logs in our own eyes. I spent an awful lot of time pointing out splinters while I was walking around and knocking folks over with the four by four post in my own eye. And I have spent a lot of time focusing on my own hypocrisy because one thing there is more than enough of in Christianity is hypocrisy. Church people are overflowing with an abundance of hypocrisy. BUT that is never a reason to give up on them or not love them or not forgive them. And it is definitely not a reason to judge them.

“Wait up there. Aren’t you judging those church people? I thought you just said we shouldn’t judge others? What kind of hypocrite are you? You just said it and now you’re going out and doing it?” I know those folks are already warming up their fingers to type up their heated reply because whenever you write anything or say anything about judgment, there are going to be folks ready to just jump at the trigger. Say the word judge and they are off to the races with their own judgments of what I just said. BUT, kindly read me out? Hold off your judgments about my own hypocrisy until the end? And then just let me have it. Type away your condemnation and how I got it all wrong. Go ahead and tell me I’m a hypocrite, a heretic, and I don’t know what I’m writing about because that wouldn’t be anything original. I’ve written about the Sermon on the Mount before. I kind of get used to church people telling me I am wrong about a lot of things. And I probably get a lot of things wrong.

I want to focus on the second sentence there in the quote. The one that says, “For the way you judge others is how you will be judged — the measure with which you measure out will be used to measure to you.” And brothers and sisters, I was in big trouble. I had no idea how to show compassion or forgiveness. I was missing, “. . . love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, self control” (Galatians (Gal) 5:22-23). I was a mess of hate, chaos, impatience, rudeness, evil, hypocrisy, pride, and recklessness. I had it all figured out and everyone else was stupid. And I even suffered from those same flaws when I got back to walking with Him. I wasn’t God’s Etch-A-Sketch. He didn’t just clean my slate. I had to work at changing my heart. It wasn’t a switch that just turned off all those habits I had built over years of routine. I had to make changes. I had to do some things. Just knowing that Jesus is enthroned didn’t make me a better person. He isn’t magic. He’s God. And He created me to work.

So, I had to put in a lot of work with Him indwelling. I had to make a lot of choices about what I was going to eat physically, mentally, and spiritually. I had to choose whether I was going to have healthy nourishment or consume garbage. So, I had to make a lot of judgment calls on what I did. And as I spent more time judging myself and my walk with Him, I had a lot less time to judge everyone else. I was a lot of work. I am still a lot of work. BUT forgiveness for myself and forgiveness for others went a long way to leading me away from judging other people unfairly. It took a long way to finding a palace where I can judge folks with the same judgment I would like used on me. And that judgment is tempered with a lot of grace and understanding.

I want to give people the benefit of the doubt because I am seeing a lot of folks that need discipleship. I don’t know if their church is failing them, if they go to church, or if the community of The Church is failing them BUT folks are struggling in His Kingdom. So, I need to be a lot more understanding of their struggles. When I first got here to social media, I had to endure a lot of “KJV-only” and calling folks that disagree “heretics” and just shameful behaviors by folks that are claiming Jesus. And I was appalled at this behavior. It was the same sort of hypocrisy that I see in real life in churches. And that isn’t Jesus. That is surely not love or forgiveness or holiness or peace, “Keep pursuing shalom with everyone and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses out on God’s grace, that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble and thus contaminates many . . . “(Messianic Jews (Heb) 12:14-15). Our judgment is poisoning His work. Our inability to seek peace and forgiveness and show His love is driving folks away. AS IT SHOULD. Because we are to be a light to the world and not the same as the world. Folks can find rejection and hate everywhere. So, let’s start acting like Him? “Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful, not proud, rude or selfish, not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Corinthians (1 Co) 13:4-5). And being like Him means judging not like we are God BUT like we want to be judged by God, how we want our family to be judged by God, and how we want our friends to be judged by God.

Seek first His Kingdom which rests on the foundation of love.

Grace and Shalom to your home. The Kingdom of God is now!

I love you. I forgive you. Have a blessed and abundant day!

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoKingButChrist #EmbraceTheWithin #SeekFirstTheKingdom #NotMyWayYHWH