By Simon Murphy
Think about it: in the Kingdom of Heaven, you find your life by laying it down, you become the greatest by becoming the servant of all, you get riches in heaven by selling your possessions and giving to the needy, you minister to Christ when you serve the ‘least of these’, you become first by becoming last, you can gain the whole world yet forfeit your soul, the faith that pleases God is achievable by a child, and Jesus Christ, the world’s most influential figure never owned a building, started an ‘organization’, or overly structured his followers. As much as we look for patterns and strategies in the life of Jesus, the thing that strikes us about the way the gospels record his life is the lack of emphasis on ‘strategy’. He is by no means disorganized or random, but his ways are quite different to what we would expect from a world changer. The Kingdom is counter intuitive.
And we want to change the world. We want our community to ‘perceive that we have been with Jesus’ (Acts 4.13), we want ‘there to be much joy in that city’ (Acts 8.8) we want ‘the word of the Lord to go forth from us into [Singapore and Asia]’ (1Thess 1)’. We want our lives to count, our church to usher in His Kingdom.
But we will not achieve this through ‘conventional’ wisdom. We will not gain influence through traditional channels of power. Our size, bank balance, structure and strategies won’t get us far in the Kingdom. If we want to change the world, best we allow the gospel to change us. Best we yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit. Best we serve no other God but Him. Best we seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness. Best we devote ourselves to the scriptures, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer. Best we invest ourselves wholeheartedly in other people. The ‘magic bullet’ doesn’t exist. There is no shortcut to ‘abiding in vine’ (John 15). Unless we do that, we cannot bear any fruit that lasts.