The Kingdom and the King

This is my answer to this week's question for my Essentials*Blue worship theology and worldview course. Thought I would post it here for you to have a glance at. The question is based out of reading section two of N.T. Wright's book, Simply Christian and watching a great bit of media by Dan Wilt entitled The Nature of God...

Upon reading this section of the book, I found myself leaning back, putting my hands through my hair, widening my eyes and sighing out heavily. “This thing is just so BIG” I thought to myself. And it is because of that intense “bigness”, I am feeling passionate, excited and thriving on every time the “Kingdom” pops up in our discussions.

Let me ground something here. I love the “Kingdom theology”. I have studied it, I have poured myself into trying to live a Kingdom lifestyle for years now and if you get me into a cafe for a coffee, we won’t leave without me at least once talking to you passionately about something to do with “the Kingdom”.

And I think that is what has challenged me, yet again. (When will you learn Dan?!) The Kingdom is a huge topic. It is not something we just read in a few pages of a book, or listen to a Wimber teaching, or pray a few prayers and we have then mastered. The history, the characters, the positioning, the timing, the attitudes, the blessings, the war, the outcomes, the struggles, the faith... and so-on and so-on... It is a life pursuit that lies before us. 

“Seek first the Kingdom” Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, and I see why. When we let other things become first, the Kingdom isn’t anymore. And when the Kingdom story isn’t in the front of our thinking and manifesting in our actions, we start thinking about other things which aren’t so important and send us down a side-track of time-wasting, people-pleasing or ego-feeding instead.

As for the four theological ideas on the Nature of God, I immediately struggle and debate which I would isolate as the one to use. But after biting the clicker-bit off my pen and procrastinating and changing over my vinyl I was listening to, I am reminded of how when the word “Kingdom” is broken down, it means the “King’s domain”. 

It would be impossible to raise up a strong Kingdom-influenced church without worshipping the King, learning about the King, and declaring who the King is in our worship.