The Kingdom Now and Net Yet, Part I

Have you thought about what it means to live in the Kingdom of God?  We live in it, today, right now.  It is the now.  It is also the not yet, because we will live in it someday. 

It's a challenging and fascinating dichotomy.  The now and the not yet.  What does it mean to live in the Kingdom of God now and not yet?

I taught Sunday school yesterday, and hidden in the lesson plan, right at the end, was a list of five thoughts about just that question.  One little paragraph -- a whole lot of meat, and it was stuck at the end.  Reading through it and teaching it, I thought it might make a nice five-part blog series.

The first thought is that we live in the expectation of the coming of Christ.  We believe he is coming again, a second time.  We wonder if we are prepared, if we are preparing correctly.  We wonder when it will be.  Now?  Later?  Much later?  And we live in the idea that we are not to know that answer to that question.  All of that means we have to trust God.

And we live in the expectation that Christ is here now.  Sitting in the room with you as you read this post, as I write this post.  Christ is in the hospital room of the dying grandfather, in the car with the speeding teenager, in the classroom with the struggling student.  Christ is in the office with you, and he is in the kitchen with you.  Christ is in worship, and he is outside the church, hoping to be invited in.   Christ is here, now. 

That should make a difference in our lives.  It should transform the way we live our lives.  We are never alone, and we wait for God.  And God waits for us.  A fascinating dichotomy.