The Kingdom of God is Here -- Right Here, Right Now!

The Kingdom of God is not something new. It is something old. It is the original purpose for the earth. The Kingdom of God is the way the earth is designed to function and operate. We think of it as something new because we lost it. But even though we have lost it, it has been regained -- not by us, but by Jesus Christ. So the Kingdom of God is not something new that is coming, it is something old that has been rediscovered. The Kingdom of God is not a new way to be, or a new reality -- IT IS REALITY! It is reality the way reality was intended to be real.

The Kingdom of God is not something we bring into existence, or something we strive for, or try to make happen. It is simply something we receive, or something we reject. Jesus said:

“The coming of the kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the kingdom of God is among you.” (Luke 17:20-21)

The Kingdom of God is not new, it is here! It has always been here! Someone will say: "That's crazy! The world is full of violence and hatred and wars and death and disease and greed and corruption and inhumanity and hunger and want and poverty and oppression and murder! How can you say that the Kingdom of God is HERE?!" Someone else will say: "If this is your Kingdom and your God, then I want nothing to do with either of them." But the Kingdom of God IS here! It has always been here. So why can we not see it? We cannot see it because we think wrong -- our attitudes are backward. We choose to live in the world we have made, rather than in the Kingdom of God that was made for us.

The first sermon Jesus preached in the Gospels is:

“This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)

The Kingdom of God is here! That’s what the “time of fulfillment” means. The word fulfillment is the word “to fill up” -- it is the word for when children who want as much soda or a drink as possible in a glass keep pouring more and more into it, until there is a point when the glass cannot hold any more liquid, and the liquid forms an arch that rises above the top of the glass. One more drop and the liquid spills over and runs down the glass. That is the meaning of the word πληρόω (pler-o-oh) -- “fulfillment.” The world is crammed full of the Kingdom of God. On more drop and it will spill out all over everything. So “Repent, and believe the gospel.”

Repent is the Greek word μετάνοια (metanoia) -- it is a change of understanding, a change of the mind. When someone is called to repentance, she is called to change the way she thinks about things. So what Jesus is telling us is:

“The Kingdom of God is here! Right here, right now! This world is so full of it, that one more drop would cause the Kingdom of God to spill all over everything. So change the way you think about the world and believe in the good news!”

The Kingdom of God is among you! Let go of the world as you think it is and accept the world as it was designed to be! “For behold, the kingdom of God is among you.”

We have to change the way we think about the world. We have to stop thinking that the world is a cut-throat place, so we have to cut throats before ours are cut. We have to stop thinking that we have to “look out for number one” " that our interests and our wants and our needs are all that matter. We have to stop thinking that we have to compete, to withhold, to get as much as we can for ourselves. These are ideas and attitudes that are contrary to the Kingdom of God. These are attitudes and ideas that will keep us from living in the Kingdom of God, or even seeing it.

The Kingdom of God is not new, it is here! It has always been here! But we cannot see it if we hold onto our old ideas and attitudes. We cannot see the Kingdom of God if we believe that the world is a “dog eat dog” place where people have to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and “the one with the most toys wins.” We cannot live in ways that are contrary to the Kingdom of God and expect to live in the Kingdom of God. We cannot hold attitudes and values that are contrary to the Kingdom of God and expect to see the Kingdom of God. But make no mistake, the Kingdom of God is among you! We only have to open our eyes to see it. We only have to open our hearts to find it. We only have to open our hands, our minds, our ears. The Kingdom of God is here, among us, but we have to be willing to live in it in order to see it.

The Kingdom of God is among us, right now! We have to change the way we think about the world to see it. We have to change the way we think about the world to live in it. We have to make the choice to no longer live in the world we have created for ourselves " a world of corruption, greed, selfishness and indifference --  and instead live in the world as it was created to be. This is good news that comes from a reliable source! Believe it!