Basing My Life on Reality: Or what am I doing here, really? Part 2

The lyrics from "Beautiful One" expresses exactly what I felt about 40 years ago in the summer of 1972 when I begin to understand more deeply who God is and how he felt about me:

You opened my eyes to your wonders of anew
You captured my heart with this love
‘Cause nothing on earth is as beautiful as You

This personal feeling informed my understanding for my life and work for years and still does. He loves the world and that world includes me. He captured my heart; I find him incredibly beautiful; he fills me with wonder. I feel passionate about sharing the good that I am finding in him. While this understanding of my purpose is good and biblical, I have been learning that it needs to be filled out with a larger understanding of God's purposes for us.

God's word insists that we human beings have "a high calling;" we are made for greatness. We are made in God's image, and from the beginning we were called to have dominion, to rule over, creation. We are the ones who reflect God in his creation, who do his work in taking care of all that we see. Obviously we have made a mess of it: we bear God's image, yet we kill each other and exploit creation for our own good instead of caring for it as treasure created by God.

But the good news is that God never gave up on us, sending his son Jesus as his own rescue project for us and for the world that he created. In one fell swoop, in Jesus, God forgave us our sin, our complete disregard of his purposes and our wickedness toward each other, and put Jesus on the throne as the earth's new ruler. Ascending to heaven, Jesus was raised to the right hand of God in order to rule.

As John says in Rev. 1:5, Jesus is now the ruler of all the kings of the earth (and consider the implication that John says this at a time when those kings were often torturing and killing disciples of Jesus all around the world). At the present time in Rev. 5 John says that this new reign of Jesus and our place in it is expressed in song before God's throne in these words:

You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed people for God, saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on the earth (9 - 10).

This is the reality. In a world where so much seems out of whack with God's purposes, we live in the age in which Jesus presently reigns and everything is subject to him, although - as the Hebrew writer says in chapter 2 - we do not see everything in subjection to him - yet. But it will happen. Paul says in 1 Co. 15: 25 - 28 that the process is ongoing, that ultimately Jesus will put all enemies under his feet, the last enemy being Death.

All of this is according to God's purposes. God worked through Jesus to rescue man and creation. God had Jesus become King through suffering and dying on the cross. Then, God raised him from the dead. By God's plan, Jesus reigns now - even though we may question that rule because we see so much evil and so many things that don't make sense to us.

But just like God worked through Jesus to initiate his rescue of the world, Jesus now executes his reign through us. When Jesus ascended to God's throne to rule, he released his Spirit and gave it to us so that we could be empowered to carry out his rule.

So where does that put us? We are Jesus' agents, given his Spirit and made part of his Body, through whom Jesus does what he does to effect God's will on earth as it is done in heaven. We are Kings and Queens who are learning to do what Adam and Eve were designed to do, to take care of God's creation, to reflect God's rule throughout his kingdom on earth.

Normally, I have thought of God's reign in very personal terms, meaning I think of his reign in me and my need to have him help me overcome sin in my life. And that is an important concern and can't be neglected. But I want us to think about our call to reign, to extend Christ's kingdom here on earth.

God has given us a unique ministry for us to fulfill. As Dallas Willard points out in The Divine Conspiracy, each of us has a kingdom where we reign. It is the kingdom of our lives, composed of the things and situations that we directly influence. There are a lot of things that we may feel we have no control of and little impact on, but there are dominions that we rule or, at the least, impact with authority. And in the kingdom that God has given us to rule, we ask that God's will be done as it is done in heaven.

One of the realms that we have is in the workplace. For me, as a teacher, my realm includes my classes and students. God's call for me goes beyond "being a good example." Of course, I am called to be a good example. But I am called to more than that: I am called to look carefully at my students, what I am teaching, what my goals are and pray, "God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

This is an entirely different reality than what I tend to live by. The reality that I think that God wants me to see is that I have been called to reign; I have been given the authority to rule; and I am participating interactively with him as I learn from him how to take care of the dominion given to me. I am learning to see things with his eyes, to talk to him about what needs to be done, and to depend on his life-giving power to accomplish his work of healing, feeding, and liberating. As someone whom Christ has put in charge of this part of the world, I am being called to reign in a way that reflects God's image, that extends his will into the world. It is a matter for prayer. Everyday.

Here is a very important consideration for reigning. If we miss this, we will only affect a parody of God's rule and cause others to hold him in contempt. Our reign is not executed in the way that the Gentiles do where everything is done to bring us glory, power, and to fulfill our needs. Instead it is done God's way, which means that we do what we do - we reign, we take care of God's creation - for the sake of others' welfare and good. Doing things God's way now in this present age does not mean glory or prominence or praise. What it means is humility, service, suffering, and sacrifice. That's just God's way. It is the way that Jesus became king. It is the way that we exercise our royal ministry now.

God has given us responsibilities and gifts, just the right ones for just the right time. We have all the resources that we need. Pray. Let him use you. And stand back and watch what he does.