Embracing Our Identity as Kingdom People

1) "Jesus offers us another option. It's the kingdom of God. This is the off-ramp out of crazy town into the place of peace, wisdom. It helps us to love our nation better because we love something better than our nation more. Helps us to love our nation better. Helps us to love our nation better because we love something better than our nation more. Now, we're going to tell you, like the punchline of this whole series is not who to vote for, how to vote. That would just be adding more noise, right? We're talking about stepping back from the noise to anchor ourselves on something bigger than the noise that reframes the noise back and puts it back in its proper place." [01:20] (36 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2) "The kingdom of God is not heaven when you die. It's not what the New Testament means at all when it talks about the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is God's will and God's ways breaking into right here, right now to bring this beautiful biblical word, shalom. It's translated peace, which is a great translation. But it just means peace. Flourishing, wholeness, everything right, right? Physically, spiritually, financially, economically, prosperous and fruitful abundance in every direction. It means God's wisdom, God's truth, God's justice, God's righteousness, God's love, reordering all the things, starting with our hearts, starting with us personally, right? We're the ones who are first changed." [03:05] (37 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3) "The kingdom of God sometimes requires you leave behind something that's comfortable, familiar, and kind of working for you in order to enter in. Now this isn't easy, right? it's really challenging. But for 2,000 years, millions of people have done just this. Millions of people have left behind things that were comfortable, familiar, and kind of working for them in order to follow Jesus into his kingdom. And if we could traipse them all up front here and have them all tell their stories, every single person would say, what I gained in following Jesus meant the thing that left behind was nothing. The thing left behind was nothing compared to what I gained by stepping into the kingdom of God." [05:04] (38 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4) "Jesus loves to interrupt lives, doesn't he? He loves to disrupt. Familiar, comfortable. And kind of working for you to invite you into something better. And there's this beautiful phrase. I love this phrase. It says this. It says, he—that's Jesus—saw a man named Matthew. If you're looking for something to read in the Bible, Bible. Maybe you're new to the Bible, or maybe you're like, I'm just kind of not sure what to read next. Go through the gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and look for the phrase Jesus saw. Jesus saw. Jesus saw. Because he sees like nobody else sees. He sees like nobody else sees. He sees through them and around them. He sees that there is potential in them." [08:00] (36 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5) "Anything that stands between you and the kingdom of God is terrible for you, even if it's kind of working for you, even if it's kind of good. If your family and loving your family is more important to you than the kingdom of God, it's terrible for you, no matter how good it is. If your job is keeping you from the kingdom of God, if you're too busy to be a kingdom of God person, it's terrible for you, no matter how good your job is. Anything that stands between you and the kingdom of God is terrible for you, even if it's comfortable, familiar, and kind of working for you." [12:40] (38 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6) "Invitations to come and meet Jesus are one of the holiest things you can possibly do. Invitations to come meet Jesus. Because you got people and I got people that don't look like they need anything. They're pretty comfortable, familiar. Life's kind of working for them. They're making a ton of money. They're doing their own thing. They do whatever they want. They don't think, it doesn't look like they need anything. And Jesus says, well, what if you invited them to come? Come and see me. Just like Matthew did. My friends, who has God put in your life that you might extend an invitation to come and meet Jesus? Because in him is life and life abundantly." [21:25] (41 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7) "In the truth of God, religion is not the goal. Becoming a person who looks like Christ is the goal. And when religion is serving the bigger purposes, that's when it's working. This is what Jesus says. So when Jesus hears the Pharisees all upset about what they're doing and what they're not doing, he says, here's the deal. He says, listen, sometimes our religious practices are what's familiar, comfortable. and kind of working for us, but terrible for us. Sometimes our religious practices, the things we're doing, are making us more self-righteous, not more loving." [26:09] (33 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8) "The kingdom of God sometimes requires us to leave behind what's comfortable, familiar, kind of working for you, because anything that stands between you, the kingdom of God, is absolutely terrible for you in this life and into all eternity. And when the church is working right, we're going to look just like dinner at Matthew's house. Because Jesus brings together people like no one else ever has, or ever will, who never would have hung out together otherwise, to be in the same community in and around him." [29:01] (25 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)