Our Message

Over the years my perception of the message of the Kingdom, has morphed somewhat. I mean, when I was very young, the message was delivered by one type of believer, who held certain values and convictions, and thereby influenced the shape of the message.

As I grew and entered college, not only did I meet other believers who held different values and convictions, but I also came face to face with professors who also held different values and convictions. And I get that, I get the fact that our Kingdom is far more global in its reach and scope, and the variances of values and convictions are no less broad, but somewhere, deep behind all our presuppositions and filters IS a universal message.

And I hold the belief that Our Message must somewhere somehow have some common ground, that cannot nor should not be altered in anyway. Our Message, meaning the genuine message of the Kingdom of God, must be universal and consistent. And therein lays the challenge set before us. Set before me as a preacher.

We must be able to discern and decipher what God is communicating and then accept it and implement it. But oh how challenging that can be; with so many variants within our own family called Christian.

The apostle John records Jesus’ own words regarding the Kingdom message.

John 12:47 (The Message)
“If anyone hears what I am saying and doesn't take it seriously, I don't reject him. I didn't come to reject the world; I came to save the world. But you need to know that whoever puts me off, refusing to take in what I'm saying is willfully choosing rejection.”

Please take note of what Jesus says. If anyone doesn’t take seriously His message and implement it, He WILL NOT REJECT them. Catch that; Jesus will not reject you if you don’t get the message right or implement it, because He didn’t come to reject people, but to save them.

But don’t miss the gravity of what He is saying. Because He doesn’t reject us, we can easily be lulled into believing we’re still in good standing with Him. That’s right, since His role is not to reject us, we can find ourselves so deluded that we fail to realize we’re off message. We can fail to realize we’re drifting from Our Message and moving onto some other message.

Maybe I’m not making it clear, the risks we run when we come to Him. Because He loves us so much and His job is to save us and not reject us, we can be so far off the mark that we suffer great loss; all the while we think we’re still okay.

Because He won’t reject us, we figure we’re still okay with Him even when we’ve perverted the message and passed that perversion on to others. That’s the dangerous risk of grace.

Granted, I’m hoping that the Holy Spirit, the Great Counselor of my soul, will indeed speak to me if and when I’m off message, but that relationship too can be compromised, if I grieve or quench Him too often.

So I leave you with this question. Do you know Our Message? Do you know the genuine Message of the Kingdom of God? The Message that cannot be compromised no matter how chic-less it becomes?

Our Message does matter. And it better be right.