by Dave Huller, Lay Leader
During Jesus’ short ministry on earth, He encountered a society in which most Jews were treated harshly by both the Roman authorities and the Jewish leaders of the temple. “Average Jews found themselves constantly victimized by the taxes and demands of Roman and Jewish overlords. The Kingdom of God in heaven is a place where justice reigns; where all people are treated and loved equally; where there is no abuse by the powerful and no patronizing of the poor; where a person's status is derived from no other fact than being a child of God.
The currency in the Kingdom of God is quite simply the love of God distributed lavishly and without prejudice upon all those who simply choose to embrace their status as unworthy but grateful recipients of God's grace.” - Don Underwood, Pray Like Jesus: Rediscovering the Lord’s Prayer.
This promise was made by the most humble to ever walk amongst us. Consider his credentials -”Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself...While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying his executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth - his coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is the cornerstone of the human race. I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.” - James Allen Francis
As you approach your life over the next few weeks, ask yourself, “what would Jesus do?”
“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Live a purpose-driven life that is Christ-centered.