Love, grace, and freedom are at the core of a Kingdom Culture. Everything else flows from them. They are values or qualities that define the very heart of who we are and our relation to one another. When we lose them we get all religious and our lives and relationships end up based around rules and become performance oriented. Fulfill the rules and you’ll be welcome, accepted, loved etc..
Love.
God is love. Full stop. We need to hear that and take it in. Love takes us back to the heart of God Himself and his own peronal relations within the Trinitarian community of Being. He never started loving, he has always been love. His love has never wavered or waned. Father, Son and Holy Spirit have given and shared love from all eternity.
Love is at the heart of the Good News of the Kingdom. God loves fallen, broken, sinful, rebellious humanity. That love is seen in Jesus’s birth, life, suffering, death and resurrection. A love of immense proportion.
It’s a love that goes out, calls, redeems, and gathers us back into relationship with the Father. To that end Kingdom Culture must be full of love, a people who reflect the heart of the King. People who know it. People who live it. People who give it.
Grace.
Such love is full of grace. Love without grace is unimaginable, it would be a strange kind of love. But God in his love has shown us outrageous grace. It’s staggering, amazing, astounding (you could pile up the superlatives!) that God should love and save us in the way he does and delights to do – if you don’t know or realise that, then you don’t know how far you’ve fallen and what a messed up rebel you were and what it took for Him to save you.
A Kingdom Culture is one that lives in and out God’s outrageous grace for a fallen and broken world. It’s a place where people are welcome in all of their brokenness. A place where the Good News is central and they can experience the mercy and grace of God. A place where they can experience the transforming power of grace. A place where seventy times seven is the practice!
Freedom.
Freedom is something everyone longs for, yet something so elusive. And the reason? because we were never made to be totally independent free selves. That’s always been a lie of the enemy, that somewhere out there we could have a godlike freedom of our own, free to decide and act as we will without any encumbrance and consequence.
True freedom is found in knowing God and being who he has called us to be. Jesus said, “who the Son sets free is free indeed.” That’s not a freedom to go and do as we please, but a freedom from the shackles of sin, guilt, fear and shame, a freedom from the power of the evil one. It’s the freedom to truly live as God intended in every sphere of life.
A Kingdom Culture is one that helps people discover that freedom and live into and out of it.
Each one of these could be expanded on, but you get the idea… why not discuss them with someone?
The Word 4 Life 