So if you were God and you were deciding on how you were going to run your kingdom…how would you do it? Well first off, you’re not God, so this is obviously hypothetical. But let’s think about it. If you want to establish rank and the way your people move up and down in order, how would you do it? You want to design a system that allows your people to achieve “greatness” in your kingdom.

Hmmmmm. You definitely want to be fair about it. You want to give everyone a chance to move up. So you definitely can’t base it on finances, most are born into poverty. What about popularity? Nah…that would never work. Only those special guys and girls with beautiful faces and bodies would make it.

The wisdom of God far exceeds anything we could possibly think of. Our God has done it! And here it is….it’s the Upside-Down Kingdom so follow along closely.

You first have to die to live. Jesus said you have to throw your life away…before you can actually find it. You know, that life which is mostly dull, boring, and filled with fantasies. You have to cash it in for a real one. I life in Christ. Tell Jesus you’re sick of chasing the American Dream (which will never satisfy) and tell Him you want to fully let go of your life, in exchange for His. It’s important for you to know that if you haven’t given your life to Him, when you die you will truly spend eternity in Hell, and you won’t live life in the next Age. If you surrender your life fully to Him now, you are now hidden in Christ (Christ defeated death).

Alright, now that you understand the requirements here are the rules of His Kingdom. This is where it gets fun!

Jesus says that if you want to be great in His Kingdom (I’m talking about the Kingdom He’s going to set up here in a little while here on earth…you know, the everlasting one when “the government will be upon His shoulders!”). So when Jesus’ disciples asked Him who will be the greatest in the Kingdom, Jesus says, “If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”

Hmmmm. Read slowly, because this probably won’t line up with anything we learned in school. But straight from the mouth of God, here we have the requirements of how to move up in rank.
To be great, you must take the role of a servant in life and be willing to serve everyone else. “Whoaa! So hold on! You mean the number of times I attend church on Wednsday and Sundays isn’t going to mean anything when it comes to my role in the coming Kingdom?” Not according to Jesus.

It’s the Upside Down Kingdom guys.

The Bible says you gotta die to live. The first will be last and the last will be first when it’s all over. In this short little window called life, you get around 70 years to choose how your life will be for billions of years. We get 70 years to choose love, and serve one another. It’s the only 70 years we will ever get….after we die, we’ll never get another 70 to CHOOSE how we’ll live.

Guys, we have to war against these ideas that say, “We should live life to the fullest and live like you’ll die tomorrow.” If you choose that way, your inheritance is sure. Your portion will be everlasting fire and torment, seriously…separation from God and His people who will live forever. It’s not worth it. Cry out to Jesus to give you life! Find life on this side of eternity in Christ Jesus, and you’re future is sure. Everlasting life with a new resurrected body…you’ll never die! It’s God’s promise to you.

-dusty

Well I wanted to throw out an amazing idea to you all that I heard today in class. So we’ve all read and heard that we, the church, are the Bride of Christ. No guys that doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to wear an elegant white wedding dress…it simply refers to a position that we hold before Jesus, and the access that we’ve been given to Him as our Bridegroom. Think of the same intimate relationship that a husband has with a wife…very personal. Well we’re given that same privelege as believers and it’s important that we see ourselves rightly before God through this lens. This position of intimacy as well as authority is talked about with bridal language all throughout the Bible. Did you know this marriage between the Son and us, His bride, was actually arranged before the creation of the world! (read Ephesians 1)

Picture this. Imagine what it was like before mankind even existed. Go back before Adam and Eve. Even before planet earth was created….back before Genesis. Now imagine what the Trinity was like back then….it was just the Father, Son, and Spirit together in communion. Who knows what they were up to? I mean, this is our God who places the stars wherever He wishes. But think of the inexpressible love there was between Father and His only begotten Son, Jesus. It’s His only Son! Can you imagine the joy and intimacy that they shared even before creation of the world. Now before I go any further I want to give you an accurate picture of “intimacy” because we in the western world have lost its meaning over the years. “Intimacy” is defined by the number of shared experiences you have with someone. So how many shared experiences do you think the Father has had with the Son?! From everlasting to everlasting God the Father has existed…we’re talking about the One who doesn’t have a beginning. I just picture them showering each other with gifts and trying to out-do one another with surprises. You know…with a simple breathe the Father probably breathed out a couple of galaxies no problem. And somewhere in the middle of this explosion of love and laughter, the Father tells His Son he’ll give Him the very deepest desire of Jesus’ heart. His very own bride; a companion! And soon thereafter the great love of the Father moves Him to give His Son the object of His affection. You and me…the bride of Christ. We’re His inheritance! Consider these two passages. Read the second one slow and keep the bridal paradigm in mind. Bless you guys.

Ephesians 1:16
“16…do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, 18 the eyes of your understanding[c] being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.”

Ephesians 5:25
“25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31″For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[c] 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.”

How awesome is that last bit? “For this reason a Man will leave His Father….and be united to his wife (bride)”.

* Interruption: So my roommate just came in (it’s almost midnight!) and asked me if I wanted to prophesy over this guy who’s leaving tomorrow to go back to Puerto Rico. Where else can you have a roommate blow through your door asking you to get out of bed and minister to a friend who’s hopping a plane for another country in less than 5 hours?!!

Well guys, I just wanted everyone to know I made it here and all is well. I already miss you guys. Keep an eye out for me in the Prayer Room…I’ll be the one crying out for God to break in in Dumas when everyone else is focused on Kansas City. Love you guys.

dm

Let’s throw away all the presents, baked foods, shopping, wrapping paper, candy canes and christmas lights for just a minute and ask ourselves what this day is really about. Because that is what strikes me over and over again with amazement. When we celebrate this day, we celebrate the very birth of the One who created me and you! Isn’t that crazy? The uncreated God of heaven, the same God of Genesis 1 who spoke and created the heavens and the earth and everything that exists today decided to become a man and join me and you here on earth over 2000 years ago. He humbled Himself (brought Himself low) and took on flesh to walk and talk on the very earth we inhabit today. Ok, let’s pause for a moment. Now we’re talking about the One who decided on the limits and boundaries of the oceans. The One who said to them, “This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt”. The God who needed no counsel when He stretched out the horizons over the earth and took no advice when he created and set up the order of all the creatures of the world. Yeah, that God. He humbled Himself, and on this day in history decided He would dwell with people like me and you. And to kick if off His humble beginnings started off in a manger!

So this day in history, the world as we know it was forever changed. Never had anything like it happened before, and never will we ever need Him to come do what He did again. His name is Jesus. And He would grow up just like you and me. Real eyes, real hands and feet — yeah, even real emotions and feelings just like you and me. For real. I guarantee you He yelled when he stumped His toe in the middle of the night just like you and me would. He really was a man! And it was completely necessary that He become like you and me — vulnerable and weak. And the whole reason for his coming was for one purpose; to save you and me from that which we couldn’t save ourselves from. Ourselves. Our sinful selfs. So back to this humanity thing — there’s some things here I want to communicate that have really stunned me here lately. This Man…probably about 5 foot 7, brown eyed, stirdy build, Jewish carpenter was fully man and we have to understand this! Now we all know that He would grow up to be hung on a cross and brutally beaten, but what we don’t always connect with was the fact that he suffered pain in its entirety the way you or I would. If you’re like me, you’ve grown up not even giving this idea thought because you just figured that since he was God, well…he probably had a way of making the whole process painless. Right? “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was a heroic act of courage to go through all of that … but come on. He was God!” Unfortunately this is not the true story. Yes He really was God…but fully human as well! He had to learn to crawl before He could walk, as a matter of fact Isaiah says he grew up “like a tender plant out of dry ground.” What a picture! Jesus was tender…he was vulnerable to the same things me and you are. And by vulnerable I mean He was affected by the cruelty of this world just like we are. All the misfortunes and scars we receieve from this thing called life. Consider this next passage of Isaiah.

Isaiah 53:3 – He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Let’s digest this a minute. This isn’t exactly stuff you learn in Sunday school. So Jesus Christ, the Son of God while growing up was “a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering.” Whoa. Guys I want to tell you that this alone has flipped my world around to know that the God we celebrate on Christmas has experienced the lows in life like I do. We don’t serve a God who is unfamiliar with the sorrows we go through. The rejection we receive from friends, family, or the enemies in our life — well…you must understand that He faced it as well, for real. He’s not a God who doesn’t understand our troubles. He knows them, has lived with them, and most importantly overcame them all….even the brutality of the cross. The life of rejection He lived culminated with His very enemies hanging Him naked on a cross before His people. Can you imagine the shame of what He went through on that cross? Yet, consider this:

Isaiah 53:5 – But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

Because of Him….we are healed! Because of Him we now have peace with God because Jesus became the ultimate sacrifice, once and for all that would allow us as believers to be joint heirs with Christ. In short, we get what Jesus gets. We get free access to the Father and the rights to become sons and daughters of God…with Christ! The promise of never dying….though we may die in this age, we will live with Him in eternity. Hallelujah!

Guys, it’s my prayer that we would enter in to this reality. It’s our portion. Sure, it’s mind blowing and awesome to consider His ways. But how about His humanity? When failure finds me like it does so often…I can pray to a God who knows my situation. He isn’t far off, but rather a God who is near and fully understands my circumstances. Knows it firsthand. How awesome are Paul’s words in light of this…

Phillipians 3:10 – ..“that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;”

Oh yeah, and the best part of it all is that “tender plant” is coming back very soon to return to earth once more. I’m serious. Here in a minute He’s coming back for the one He loves, His bride (believers), to judge the nations and set up His eternal government in Jerusalem. He’s coming back to rule and reign on planet earth…for real!

I love you all. Be blessed and enjoy the holidays.

Merry Christmas,

-dusty

-dusty