Well, we have come to the end of a seven-week journey. I have endeavored to share with you what I do to prepare my heart for Kingdom living. As you recall, nearly two months ago, I shared with you that I came from a place where I had ended a decade-plus-long struggle with God. I lived, then, in some of my darkest moments in life, and my family had to endure this dark age with me because of my rebellion against God.
But God was gracious to me. He didn’t write me off. He didn’t let me go my own way. There was always an ember in my heart with a faint glow. God blew on that ember and kept it alive. He left the safe ninety-nine sheep as He went into the wilderness with me to lead me home.
I still remember the moment when I broke and surrendered to God. I was driving to work on Sachse Road, and the culmination of years of questions, accusations, bitterness, hatred, obstinance, and rebellion melted away into surrender. God had worked His work in me and brought me to where I had to be. It was on that road that I determined to fully give myself to my Master for the rest of my days.
That was a few years ago, and each day I have only grown stronger in my resolve to live in Him. Today, I have a stronger relationship with God than I have ever had in my life. But it wasn’t like that when I surrendered to Him on Sachse Road that day. God had broken me with a contrite spirit. My life was a shambles of broken pieces, and I had to begin the process of piecing things together again. I had a lot of consequences to face and a heart that needed attention if it were to survive the task ahead.
So, I determined to eat this elephant one bite at a time. My task was monumental. Left on my own, it would have been impossible. But for the first time in over a decade, I wouldn’t be doing it alone. Jesus would be walking this road with me, and I placed my faith in Him to help me with my impossible task.
He was faithful, and together we rebuilt my faith and my life. As I have said in these last few weeks, I decided to work on one thing at a time to prepare my heart for Kingdom living and trust that God would be gracious and merciful to me, seeing me as a work in progress. As long as I was walking with Him each day, my faith was fully in Him, and I never let Satan convince me that I was a lost cause or that I was so far gone I might as well give up.
So I started with the easy things to do. I made commitments that only involved discipline. I knew I had to fill myself up with His Word.
So I committed to reading His word every day, on average, an hour or so a day.
Then I focused on my prayer life, speaking to God when I arose and when I went to bed. Within months, I found myself praying without ceasing, and I cannot imagine facing a day without being able to pray to Him. I greatly covet my one-on-one time with Him.
I then started to work on controlling the things I let into my heart. From the movies I watched to the empty time wasters, I began to limit things that were of little value and replace them with wholesome things that provided the building blocks of strong faith.
The next thing I tackled was developing a heart shaped by service. In my Bible readings, I could not escape the expectation Jesus gave me to become His disciple. That manifested itself in service. I knew that if I stopped growing, I would not have the heart I desperately wanted. So I sought ways to do something each day to serve others. In this, the Lord opened my eyes to the numerous service moments that were always around me.
Then that led me to focus on stepping out and purposely building relationships with others. I realized that God had never intended for me to walk through life alone. I had done this for over a decade and proved to be a miserable host of my own life.
All these things have taken years of purposeful deliberate planning and commitment. But they started with small steps that the Lord helped me take each day. I spend this time with you now, retracing the things we talked about over the last seven weeks because it helps bring context to this last thing that I focused on to help me develop my heart for Kingdom living:
Confess Jesus Daily.
Having built a foundation, I knew that I was ready to grow into the next step. I was committed to finding ways each day to confess my Savior to others. I began my days with a prayer for God to help me have the wisdom to know how to confess Jesus that day, and I ended with a prayer that God would accept my confession of His Son that day.
That led to conversations with people I worked with and friends I have known for years. When one of my elders encouraged me to share my insights on Facebook, I agreed only after I prayed to God and agreed with Him that if I did this, it would be for His glory and to further confess His Son daily.
I’m still developing this part of my heart for Kingdom living, and it’s become a regular part of my prayer each night that God has accepted the confession of His Son that I make each day. When I stand before Jesus, I want no possibility of being denied by my Savior before His Father in Heaven:
“So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven,
but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32-33 ESV).
As I close this series, I hope I have said something that can help you as you look to prepare your heart for Kingdom living. If you are like me, you might find it a daunting task at times. Satan will try to convince you that it is too hard.
But I can tell you from experience that Jesus will walk with you every step of the way, giving you His grace to succeed.
The Spirit will give you the wisdom you need to grow in the Lord each day.
The Father will work on you each day to conform you more and more into the image of His dear Son.
And along the way, you will surround yourself with others who are taking this journey with you.
One day, you will look back and be amazed at how far you have come, not because of your strength but because of what God has done in your heart. This is how I have begun to prepare my heart for Kingdom living here on earth and for the age to come.
All of God and none of me.
I am in the book of Job in my daily Bible reading. I have heard people say that Job didn’t have a sense of an afterlife because he focused so much on the finality and futility of death.
But they miss the point that Job is making. Job is talking about serving God vs. not being able to serve Him if he is dead. He’s talking about not being able to do anything good in this life when he is in Sheol.
On one hand, Job argues for what God will miss if he dies. On the other hand, he longs for death to bring a permanent end to his suffering.
But as the Ecclesiastes writer says, God has put eternity in man’s heart. Even Job had a sense of eternity. As he struggled with his suffering, Job gave us a glimpse of his eternal perspective in chapter 19.
“For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!
If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’
be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.” (Job 19:25-29 ESV).
I believe this core belief in something beyond death anchored Job. Eternity is the anchor we can also hold to when our life becomes a struggle and seems so futile to us.
Our Redeemer lives, and we shall also see Him after our skin is destroyed.
Yes, Job believed in life after death, even though his suffering invited death. And though his death would bring him before God, it would mean he would no longer be able to do any good on the earth forever.
This is the hopeless permanence of death that Job laments.
We do what we want, thinking God will always bear with us while we rebel against Him.
Samson didn’t even know the Lord left him after he continued to rebel against God.
The Jews didn’t believe God would abandon His temple, even while they continued to rebel against Him.
God doesn’t leave anyone who is striving to serve Him; He departs from us once we depart from Him.
“Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:5-6 ESV).
When was the last time we confessed Jesus before others?
When was the last time we denied Him?
Confession is a purposeful action.
It happens more than one time in our lives, fulfilling our duty as disciples.
Confession is an everyday thing we do.
We confess Jesus with our mouth.
We confess Jesus with our actions.
We confess Jesus when it’s convenient.
We confess Jesus when it brings us derision.
We cannot stay silent in our words or actions and still confess Him before men.
Silence is denial.
If Jesus returned today, can we stand on the confession we have been making of our Lord?
Our confession of Him will dictate the confession He makes of us.
“So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven,
but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32-33 ESV).
I am in the book of Hosea in my daily Bible reading. This is a heartbreaking book. Israel is committing adultery with God, leaving Him for other gods.
God longs for them, but they laugh in His face as they seek others to replace Him. Yet, God still seeks to woo them back.
Listen to how God describes their utter spurning of Him:
“Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel, for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land;
there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.” (Hosea 4:1-2 ESV).
Can we really be considered a “Christian nation” anymore? To my brothers and sisters in Jesus, I plead and pray we never commit spiritual adultery with those in our nation, our world, who partake in the sinfulness that characterizes our world; the sinfulness that Hosea describes in chapter 4.
We have long moved past the point where we are a good nation with bad people in it.
We are now a sinful nation with good people in it. Let the righteous stay faithful to our God.
“My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, he shall not raise them up at all.” (Hosea 11:7 ESV).
I am in the book of Micah in my daily Bible reading. This time though, I am reading the books of the Bible in the chronological order in which they were written.
This gives me a unique perspective. When the people of Judah and Isreal hear from prophets, they hear messages of judgment with a call to repent.
Over and over, year after year, this is what they hear. As I look over the rest of the readings in store for me, the messages of judgment will only grow more intense for God’s people.
“Writhe and groan, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in labor, for now you shall go out from the city and dwell in the open country; you shall go to Babylon. There you shall be rescued; there the LORD will redeem you from the hand of your enemies.” (Micah 4:10 ESV).
But the Lord still shows His grace to them. Unlike the judgments that come upon other nations, God promises grace and mercy to His people.
“But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.” (Micah 5:2 ESV).
This is the message that Israel and Judah will hear for decades to come.
This is the message I will read over and over for days to come.
The world is celebrating Easter today. That’s a good thing. As Paul said, regardless of the motive, at least Christ is preached. Let’s focus on the good today and not look for the bad. We will find what we are looking for.
I am in the book of Isaiah. It’s passages like this that cause me to lose hope for the direction of our country today:
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!
Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink,
who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!” (Isaiah 5:20-23 ESV).
In the next chapter, Isaiah has his lips purified and his guilt taken away. This prepares him to live among the wicked people of his days and answer the Lord’s call:
“And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”
And he said, “Go, and say to this people: “‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’“ (Isaiah 6:8-9 ESV).
May our lips be pure and our guilt be taken away so we, too, can answer the Lord’s call from the midst of a wicked people.