As it is in Heaven

Matthew 6:8-10 “Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

During our first session of Day 2 of our Church Conference, CEO Willie Nolte presented a motivating message on being “uncommon disciples” in today society; not as the lost secular world thinks and moves and has its being, but as it is in Heaven. Despite the Fall of man, we can and must change the road that we are on, from destruction to glory. Do we see the big picture, know the gospel story and live according to it?  

Acts 17:26-28 “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. ‘For in Him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.

Common people may decide what they believe is common based upon their personal beliefs and feelings, but they may not be consistent with Sovereign God’s kingdom, and we are seeing much that is contrary to the Word and Will of Creator God today. A sense of uncommon community is being uncommon in a “’blinded by sin” (John 3:3), egocentric culture, but common in the Kingdom community. What is it in us that is common in our lives, but not common in God’s kingdom and economy – tied to God’s glory and holiness activity in the world; that we can work on to improve ourselves also. We know from Revelation 21:4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”, that there are no hungry for truth, broken or lost people in Heaven, but do we pray and live for it today. Life is not a bitch and then you die, as a popular quote says, but this world will be the closest that some will get to Heaven and this world will be the closest that some will get to Hell. There are two roads, but this life is not Hell and the common road to Hell is not the focus; the uncommon road to Heaven is.

Matthew 7:13-14 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

God’s people refuse to accept that which is common in this contrary to God world system because of what is common in God’s kingdom – the King’s commands, decrees and statues reign and rule as the higher order. Shall we give up on God and the Upper Story? Back in the Garden of Eden, we were “as it was in Heaven”, but since the Fall of Adam, we have been in a declining line in Sin – the common wide road that leads to destruction. But, we are not hopeless because God breaks in with a different line, called “the uncommon narrow road that leads to life in the kingdom of Heaven” through the gospel of Jesus Christ, that intersects that descending line. Commissioned by Jesus, Christ’s church is the primary way that God has decided to show this uncommon kingdom to those on that “line of decline” in sin and unbelief, and fulfill God’s plan - the salvation and restoration of lives by turning the common life into the uncommon life ... as it is in Heaven.

 In Christ, Brian