568. How to Enter the Kingdom of God - Romans 14:17

Welcome back to the Follower of One podcast. I'm your host, Mike Henry Sr., and today I want to talk about the kingdom of God. 

We talk about this from time to time. Particularly, I want to speak about how to enter the kingdom of God. And I'm using one single passage about this, but I've done several podcasts on the kingdom of God.

I wanted to add this verse today. It's Romans 14:17. "For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." 

Paul's  talking about divisions among the people of faith and whether or not you follow certain rules, whether or not we eat meat sacrificed to idols.

Many of these divisions are things that we don't interact with much today, but there are other ways that we divide ourselves up in the church. But rather than go into the divisions, the eating and drinking part of this passage, I want to focus on the positive side. The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking.The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. The Greek word translated "righteousness" means the character or quality of being right, or just. This word simply means that we line ourselves up with God. We put ourselves in line with what Jesus would have us do. 

When I became a Christian, what I realized was I needed to believe Jesus and stop believing what I told myself.I want it to line my life up with what I knew about Jesus Christ instead of lining my life up with my own decisions, doing my own thing. That's what I believe this word righteousness means; that we align ourselves with God. And as a result, we also experience the peace and joy that we get from the Holy Spirit.This lining ourselves up with God, experiencing his peace and his joy; that's the kingdom. 

We can punch into the kingdom of God by simply lining ourselves up with Jesus and then doing what he says. That's part of the reason why we talk about the first daily prayer daily activity that we want to recommend to our members is to punch in. It's to say, "Here I am, God. Help me line me up with you today. Help me do what you say." And I expect the peace and joy that come from the Holy Spirit living in me. 

I believe we enter the kingdom of God the moment that happens. The kingdom is not a territory or a place. We can't put a fence around it. I actually got some of these ideas from a book called Eternity Is Now In Session by John Ortberg. 

We can't put a fence around the kingdom of God. I don't believe the kingdom of God is what John would call a bounded set. There's certain people who are in and certain people are out. I believe the kingdom of God consists of all the people who follow Jesus.And that kingdom is growing. It's more and more people every day. 

Jesus is growing his kingdom right now. And when we line ourselves up with him, when we put ourselves in line with his commands and his character, we're right. We're just, we're aligned. And we experienced the peace and joy of the Holy Spirit.I believe you can enter the kingdom of God today by simply telling God that you want to follow him and asking him to help you, and  then doing what he says. 

Thank you for being a marketplace minister. Thank you for joining us in the kingdom of God. I believe we're there and we bring the kingdom of God with us, wherever we go by simply praying to Jesus and doing what he says as we interact with the people that we interact with every day.

Once again, thanks for being a marketplace minister. If you'd like to know more about Follower of One, or if you'd like to be part of a community that wants to help you practice being in the kingdom of God, being properly aligned with Jesus, then check us out at https://followerofone.org. Thanks very much.

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