Quest for a Kingdom Life

After Jesus rose from the dead he taught his disciples about the Kingdom of God over the next 40 days. The disciples then spent the following 10 days in daily prayer preparing for the Kingdom life they had been taught. We go from Resurrection Sunday to Pentecost Sunday, a period of seven weeks (50 days), but do we  spend much time on this all important subject of understanding the Kingdom life we're called to?

It wasn't just those 40 days however, Jesus also taught a lot about the Kingdom prior to his death. If it was a subject so important to our Lord should it not be equally important to us? In fact, Matthew records 10 teachings of Jesus saying, "the kingdom of heaven is like..." It's important we know what the "kingdom of heaven is like so we live in light of the Kingdom life we are called to, in the present proclaimed Kingdom as we look toward the perfected Kingdom. 

The graph below shows the developing Kingdom through the whole Biblical account. We should understand something of the unfolding nature of the Kingdom from the Old Testament that foresaw the coming Kingdom. And, we should set our hope on the future perfected Kingdom to come. But we must quest to live in light of the present Kingdom Jesus proclaimed and calls us to proclaim as well -until our task is finished. What task? Jesus tells us...

"this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." Matthew 24:14

Over the coming days, I will be blogging through the 10 "the Kingdom is like" saying of Jesus. Hope you will be blessed by these posts and share them with others.