Matt 6 : 33 "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. This is a great subject to discuss. My response is somewhat devotional in nature as this is a very heartfelt subject to me. I am adressing your question from the angles of patience and purpose. Forgive me if I do not touch on exactly what you were looking for. A friend recently said "You must be before you can do." I didn't understand this at first because I equate being with doing. Activity equals "life" in my mind. Given that we live in a world of spiritual darkenss and physical suffering, it is easy to become overwhelmed by urgency and impatience. We should run out into the hailstorm of problems and do that thing we see to do. When we admire the Christian heroes of the past...it is their exploits that defined them to us. Perhaps if they were here today, they would share quite a different secret.; they knew their God...Such communion is the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. These great men were "men of God" not by their fruit, but by the vine they abided in. We, who see the outside, know them by their fruit. But God knew them by their heart.All this seems obvious and childish on paper but very diificult in real life. Working "for the Kingdom" as we often understand it, is quite bearable as it's clothes us in glory before God, but having to work for a lesser purpose leaves us naked before Him. Consider Abraham and his descendants. Yes they had the promises of blessing from God but by the fouth generation they were marrying cananite women. So God called His beloved to make bricks for Pharoh. If God had not taken the children of Abraham into the empty "womb" of Egypt for 400 years they would have surely lost their priestly identity. God was establishing His kingdom.Likewise, the Kingdom of God can not be established by our physical endeavors in the harvest fields. The Kingdom of God is that which He establishes and harvests within us. To that royal purpose, the King may have some of us priests working a "meaningless" job for 20 years because there is a princely virtue in that life that cannot be known in open ministry. Some subjects He may have suffer in prison for preaching because it reproves and challenges others from becoming complacent. Here are words from someone who understood the Kingdom of God and His righteousness as well as any saint that has lived; Amy Carmichael."The Bare Bush in Snow..."You were like a leafy bush, and many things came to you for shelter.You were not great or important but you could help those little things.And it was the joy of your life to help them.Now you can do nothing at all.Some desolation----illness, monetary loss, or something that you cannot talk about to anyone, a trouble no one seems to understand----has overwhelmed you. All your green leaves have gone.Now you cannot shelter even the least little bird. You are like a bush with it's bare twigs, no use to anyone. That is what you think.But look again at this bare bush. Look at the delicate tracery of its shadow-lines on the snow. The sun is shining behind the bush and so every little twig is helping to make something that is very beautiful. Perhaps other eyes that you do not see, are looking on it too, wondering what can be made of sun and snow and poor bare twigs......I know that sun and snow are working together for good. And the day will come when the memory of helplesness and the inability to give help to anyone else, or the memory of hard financial times, or of loneliness, loss or isolation----these all pass as a dream in the night. All that seemed lost will be restored. He will not fail you, who is the God of the sun and the snow.Years ago a man was trapped in a terrible business quagmire that convinced him that his life had become useless for God. For several years, while a storm raged all around him, all he could do is take shelter at the throne, weeping pitifully night after night. Years later, after that awful time had passed, the business man was contacted by another man that knew him then to tell him that he had become a Christian primarily because of his influence. The business man was surprised because he never remembered witnessing to the caller.That callers' testimony meant more to that businss man then any other he had for the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.BlessingsMC
