How Should Christians Engage In Politics?
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They brought Jesus before Pilate in the early morning hours. The air was still cool. The city was not yet fully awake. The religious authorities, having secured their prisoner, now needed to get Rome's approval in order to execute him. They wouldn't enter the governor's palace themselves. The irony is thick here. Because they were concerned about ritual purity before the Passover.
So Pilate came out to them. He was annoyed at being summoned this early for what seemed like a local religious dispute that he should not have to get in the middle of. "What accusation do you bring against this man?" Pilate demanded. Their answer was political. It was calculated. "If this man weren't an evildoer, we wouldn't have delivered him up to you."
But when they were pressed, they revealed the true charge. We found this man perverting the nation, forbidding paying taxes to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ the king. Well, Pilate took Jesus inside away from them. That contrast couldn't have been sharper. The representative of Rome's vast empire, who is backed by legions of the world's most elite military machine, facing an itinerant preacher from Galilee. He didn't have an army, didn't hold political office, he didn't have any earthly power whatsoever.
Are you the king of the Jews? Pilate asked. Jesus responded to his question with a question. Do you say this by yourself? Or did others tell you about me? This irritated Pilate, I'm not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered you to me.
What have you done? Then Jesus spoke words that have echoed through the centuries. Words that defined the very nature of what his mission was and what our mission is. My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight that I wouldn't be delivered to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from here. Well, Pilate seized on that.
Are you a king then? You say that I am a king? Jesus answered, "For this reason I have been born, and for this reason I have come into the world that I should testify to the truth. Everyone who is on the side of truth listens to my voice." Pilate being a cynical Roman and weary at this point, asked probably the most famous question in human history. What is truth? And without waiting for Jesus to answer, he walked back outside.
This encounter between Jesus and Pontius Pilate represents a fundamental collision between two entirely different orders of reality. On the one side, you have Pilot. Now, he embodies Caesar's kingdom. A kingdom that was built on military might, on conquest, political maneuvering, taxation, intimidation, the constant constant exercise of force. Rome's peace, the Pax Romana was maintained by the sword. Its justice was dispensed from judgment seats backed by executioners.
Its glory was visible in marble temples, paved roads, aqueducts, and the architectural triumph of human ambition. On the other side of that stood Jesus who represented a kingdom invisible to earthly eyes. Wasn't established by the force of arms. Wasn't maintained by any political alliances. Not advanced by seizing the levers of worldly power. No taxation involved. No grandiose buildings.
Nothing like that. His kingdom operated entirely differently on principles of self-giving love, sacrificial service, spiritual transformation, and the power of truth itself. It's telling what Jesus did not say to Pilate. He didn't tell him, "My kingdom will someday be of this world once we get the right people in power." He didn't say, "My kingdom is not yet of this world, but we're working on a political strategy." He said definitively in the present tense in no uncertain terms, "My kingdom is not of this world." The proof that he offered for this was striking.
He said, "If my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight." Isn't that true? If Jesus' kingdom operated on the same principle as the Roman Empire and the other kingdoms of the world have, his followers would do what all earthly kingdoms do. They'd be fighting. They'd be making war strategy, organizing a military resistance, seeking to overthrow the oppressors.
Force would be involved. They wouldn't have just let Jesus be taken the way that he was. But they weren't fighting. Why not? Well, because Jesus' kingdom operates on completely different principles than the kingdoms of the world.
You got to understand this was not the first time Jesus had confronted this temptation. When he was in the wilderness after 40 days of fasting, the adversary offered him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory in exchange for just one single act of worship. That's all he needed and he could have it all. Matthew records, "Again, the devil took him to an exceedingly high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory." He said to him, "I will give you all of these things if you will fall down and worship me." Then Jesus said to him, "Get behind me, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only." Jesus completely rejected the shortcut to worldly power.
He refused the path of earthly kingdoms even though or maybe especially because it was offered as a quick route to influence a shortcut. The temptation was real. You can have the entire world's political structures. You can impose righteousness from above. He could have passed all the right laws to enforce all the right behavior. He could have seized Caesar's throne. He could have decreed justice through the empire.
He could have become the entire world's ruler and force humanity to live rightly. He could have. It was on the table. But he said no. He understood something that we humans often forget. Kingdoms that are built on worldly power, even when they start with good intentions, and a lot of them do, they inevitably become corrupted by the very mechanisms they employ. You just can't establish a kingdom of love through fear and violence.
You can't create genuine righteousness through law and compulsion. You can't force the human heart into voluntary surrender to God. It just doesn't work that way. And Jesus knew it.
Well, later when the crowds wanted to make him king by force after he fed the 5,000 people, and you can understand why, right? If you saw Jesus miraculously feed 5,000 people, you would think, "This is the guy we need in power. No one will ever go hungry again." But John tells us Jesus therefore perceiving that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
Even popular acclaim, democratic support, you could say the people's genuine desire for Jesus leadership, he rejected it all. It was still an attempt to build God's kingdom using the world's methods, even if those methods would have been better than the methods of force and control and dictation. Throughout scripture, we see the pattern of human kingdoms repeated again and again. They start off with a promise and it's very often a good promise and that gets a lot of people's support behind them, right? They consolidate power from that support. They become eventually instruments of oppression and ultimately fail. They become the thing they hate.
Every kingdom suffers from this because it's based on worldly power in control rather than God's righteousness. Doesn't matter what the kingdom is. Babylon, Assyria, Persia, Greece, Rome, all of them arose with glory. They claimed to be permanent. They were going to last forever. But they each eventually crumbled into dust, suffering from the same destruction or attrition that all kingdoms do that are born of this world. The prophet Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the great statue with the head made out of gold, chest of silver, belly made of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of mixed iron and clay.
Daniel explained it like this. You, oh king, are king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the strength and the glory. After you, another kingdom will arise that is inferior to you. And another third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth. The fourth kingdom will be strong as iron, because iron breaks in pieces and subdues all things. And as iron that crushes all these, it will break in pieces and crush.
But then came the revelation. In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, nor will its sovereignty be left to another people, but it will break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it will stand forever. That's Daniel chapter 2. Notice the contrast. All earthly kingdoms are temporary. They're conditional. They're destined for failure and collapse.
God's kingdom alone is eternal. It's indestructible and fundamentally different in nature, which is why it actually lasts when the others don't. It doesn't conquer by force. It conquers through transformation.
It doesn't impose its will from without, but it grows from within the heart. Jesus said in another place, "The kingdom of God doesn't come with observation. Neither will they say, "Look here, or look there, for behold, God's kingdom is within you." That's Luke chapter 17.
Here we arrive at the heart of it. This is our current predicament. In every generation, Christians face the seductive temptation to believe that if we could just gain control of earthly kingdoms. If we could just pass the right laws, get the right leaders, achieve the right political victories, well, we could establish God's kingdom on earth, right? Seems sound. Shouldn't righteousness be reflected in our laws? Shouldn't justice be embedded in the political structure?
Wouldn't it be better if it was that way? Wouldn't it help if godly people sought out positions of influence to change the world for the better? But there's a problem with that reasoning. It confuses means with ends. It confuses the temporal with the eternal, the world's kingdom with God's kingdom.
Jesus standing before Pilate, he had the perfect opportunity to seize political power. The people loved him. He had supernatural authority. He could have called legions of angels to his defense. If you will recall, one angel wiped out 70,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night. Jesus could have easily conquered the entire world right there. He could have had a revolution that would have made the Makabian revolt look like a minor skirmish.
But instead of doing that, he allowed himself to be crucified. He chose the cross over the crown, suffering over sovereignty, death over dominion. Why would he do that? Well, because his kingdom is established not through political victory, but redemptive sacrifice.
Not from wielding power over people, but through surrendering power in service to others. Not through forcing compliance, but through inviting transformation. Paul understood this. Look at what he wrote. For though we walk in the flesh, we don't wage war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds, throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5.
Our weapons are not the same as the world's weapons. Our battle isn't political, it's spiritual. Our strongholds aren't grandiose government buildings. They're human hearts. Our victory doesn't come through elections. It comes through conversion. Not through legislation, but through heart transformation.
When Jesus proclaimed, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." In Matthew chapter 4, he's announcing that God's reign was breaking into human history in a radical new way. Not from military conquest, not from political power or revolution, but through transformation of individual hearts that would gradually leaven the entire society like yeast working through dough.
Think about his parables of the kingdom. He compares it to a mustard seed, which at the time was the smallest seed that they planted, but it grew into a great tree. to yeast that a woman hid in a few measures of flour until the whole batch was leavened. He compared it to a treasure that was hidden in a field, to a merchant that was seeking fine pearls, a net thrown into the sea. Never, not once, did he ever compare the kingdom to a political party or some legislative agenda or to a military campaign. The kingdom advances through changed lives, through renewed minds and transformed hearts. It spreads through love that is demonstrated actively, mercy that is shown, extended grace spoken truth, practice justice both at the individual level and at the communal level.
It grows every time we feed the hungry. Anytime we welcome a stranger or visit a prisoner, care for the sick, not because there's any law that require we do it, but because we've been so transformed by God's love for us, we cannot help but extend that same love to others and a reflection of what he's shown us. Jesus was very explicit about this in his teaching. You know that the rulers of the nations lorded over them and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. Whoever desires to be first among you shall be your bondervant, even as the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Matthew 20:25-28. You see, the kingdom operates on what you might call inverted or upside down principles. Greatness comes through service, not conquest. Leadership comes through sacrifice, not military strength. Victory comes through surrender, power from weakness, life through death. Those aren't the principles that earthly kingdoms operate on, which is exactly why Jesus said that his kingdom is not of this world.
When Christians become primarily focused on achieving political power, it that's tragic because here's what happens. You start to adopt the methods, the rhetoric, the divisiveness, the spirit of those worldly kingdoms. You start to see your citizens who disagree with you as enemies to be defeated rather than souls to be loved. It's a contest. It's a competition.
We begin to trust in the arm of flesh and power rather than the spirit of God. We place our hope in supreme court appointments rather than spiritual awakening. We measure our success by electoral victories and not by what we should be measuring it by, which is transformed lives.
The early church conquered the Roman Empire, but it didn't do it by seizing political power. They didn't have any. They conquered through suffering love, through costly witness, radical community, caring for widows and orphans, for the slaves and the free, for the Jew and the Gentile. They proclaimed a crucified and risen Lord. And they lived out an alternative society that was based on kingdom principles. And gradually, so slowly over centuries, they transformed the empire from within.
Tertullian, an early church father, he wrote that Christians were everywhere in the empire. They were in the army, in the senate, in the forum. But they didn't seek political revolution. Their revolution was a spiritual one. Their conquest was one of conversion. Their power was the power of changed lives, bearing witness to a different way to be human. When Constantine finally made Christianity the empire's religion, many church fathers actually mourned.
They mourned. Think about that. They recognized that what looked like victory could actually be a Trojan horse. And sure enough, the marriage of church and state that followed led to centuries of compromise to enormous amounts of corruption and the gradual conflation of God's kingdom with earthly rulership. And that's a confusion we're still dealing with today.
Paul wrote to the Philippians, "For our citizenship is in heaven from where we also wait for a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ." This is our primary identity. Citizens of heaven, ambassadors of the eternal kingdom, representatives of a king whose throne has already been established forever and ever. Now, don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean we're indifferent to earthly affairs. As citizens of heaven, we are still residing on earth. And we are called under these kingdoms that we temporarily reside under to be salt and light, to pursue justice, to love mercy, to care for the vulnerable, to speak truth. But we do these things not as representatives of this kingdom, these kingdoms here on earth, but of God's kingdom, not as partisan political actors that are trying to impose our will through governmental power.
Think about the difference here. When you work for justice as a citizen of the kingdom of God, you do that with humility. You recognize your own fallenness. You recognize your need for grace. and you extend that same mercy to other people because we've received mercy and so we want to give it. We refuse to demonize those who disagree with us. That's not how Jesus was and that's not how we are.
We seek the good of the entire community, not just our own political tribe. We're willing to sacrifice our own interests for others. We trust that God's kingdom will ultimately prevail, but not because of our clever politics or strategies, but through his sovereign purposes and the actions that are carried out on this earth by means of his spirit. Now, in contrast to that, if we become primarily political in our endeavors, well, now we're going to start adopting the world's tactics. We're going to demonize our opponents. We're going to start thinking that the ends justify the means. We're going to uh exhibit tribal loyalty over truth.
We're going to seek for power instead of seeking to serve. And we're going to try to win instead of trying to witness. We'll measure success by the election results rather than how many souls are saved. By the laws that get passed rather than the lives that we change. by political influence rather than what really really matters most, spiritual fruit.
In the Lord's prayer, it says, "Let your kingdom come. Let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Matthew 6:10. That's our calling to see God's kingdom manifested here on earth. But how does that happen? Well, in heaven, God's will is perfectly obeyed, right? Not because heaven's residents are coerced and forced to do so, but because they're fully aligned with God's character and his purposes.
They can see him. They're in front of him always. And of course, they want to reflect his love. Because love reigns supreme when everyone is motivated by it. Justice flows naturally when all hearts are just. Peace prevails because everyone's at peace with God and at peace with each other. So when we pray for this reality to come to earth, we're not really praying, at least not predominantly praying for Christian political dominance.
What we're praying for is hearts to be transformed, for God's character to be reproduced in his people, for his spirit to fill us so much that we naturally live out kingdom principles, which naturally spreads his kingdom all over the earth. We're praying for a spiritual revolution. And that kind of revolution begins not with warfare or physical strength. It begins with individual hearts. And it radiates outwards into cities, towns, countries, societies, and eventually the whole world.
That's why Jesus spent his time not in Pilate's court trying to seek seek political appointments, but he went to the towns, to the villages, to the people. He taught, he healed, he transformed people's lives one at a time. He invested in 12 disciples who carried out that mission. He focused on the little flock who would be levaven in the dough, who would be the light of the world, the light in the darkness, the salt that preserves and flavors the earth.
The prophet Zechariah declared God's word to Zerubbable, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says Yahweh of armies." Zechariah 4:6. That's the engine that advances the kingdom. It's not human power or political might or laws or elections, but the spirit of God working in and through individual surrendered lives.
When Jesus stood in front of Pilate that day, he embodied the ultimate principle of the kingdom. Victory came through apparent defeat. His power came through seeming weakness, triumph through his suffering. The cross looked like Rome's victory over a troublesome Galilean preacher. But that wasn't the case at all, was it? The reality was that it was God's victory over sin and death and the powers of darkness. The resurrection vindicated Jesus approach.
His kingdom conquered not by taking life but by giving it. Not by inflicting suffering but by bearing it. Now Peter, who as you will recall once drew his sword to defend Jesus in the garden and cut off the servants's ear, he later wrote, "For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. To this you were called because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin and no deceit was found in his mouth. When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats.
Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. In 1 Peter chapter 2, this is the kingdom's methodology. Suffering love, patient endurance, and entrusting yourself to God's just judgment instead of trying to seize power in order to enforce your own will or your own concept of justice.
That's how the kingdom advances. Through crucififor witness, through lives that are poured out in service, through love that absolutely will not retaliate, and through grace extended to enemies. Jesus even went so far as to say to love your enemies.
In the current political climate, that seems impossibly naive, doesn't it? How can we stand by and just watch injustice? There's injustice all over the world. No one would deny that. Shouldn't we fight? Shouldn't we use every tool available to us, including military power, political power, to advance righteousness? But Jesus answered that question for us already.
If my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight. His servants don't fight. at least not with the weapons that the world uses because his kingdom operates on different principles. Now, don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean that we're passive in the face of evil. It means active resistance through spiritual weapons. We pray, we fast, we perform prophetic witness, we love, we serve, we tell the truth, we form communities, and we have spirit empowered proclamation of the gospel.
One reason that Christians became so anxious about politics is because we've lost sight of the long view. We're only thinking of the short game here. We think in terms of election cycles, two years, four years, maybe even eight in some circumstances. We panic when the wrong candidate wins or the wrong law gets passed as if God's kingdom hangs in the balance of a Supreme Court decision. Right? But that's not how God's kingdom operates. It operates on a completely different time scale.
The early church, let's be real here, they expected Christ's immediate imminent return. They did, but they invested in building communities that would last for generations. They planted seeds knowing they might not see the harvest. They worked for kingdom transformation even though they understood that it might take centuries to fully manifest. Consider the abolition of slavery. How long did that take? It took generations of faithful witness, extreme sacrifice, and spirit-led movement before that evil institution was finally destroyed in the western world.
Then we had the civil rights movement that also took decades of patient, courageous, nonviolent resistance before legal victories began to be achieved. Both of those movements were fundamentally spiritual in nature. They were led by people who understood, they intensely understood that this battle was ultimately for the hearts and the minds of people. Wasn't just about political power. It wouldn't matter if you got the right law passed and people didn't understand why the behavior was evil to begin with. When we adopt the world's frantic, anxious, injustify the means approach to the way we perform politics. The problem with that is that we end up revealing that we've forgotten where our true citizenship citizenship actually lies.
We've forgotten we're not working for kingdoms down here. We're working for the kingdom that can never be destroyed. We serve a king who's already won the decisive victory. We're participating in a mission that will ultimately ultimately succeed because God himself guarantees it. It doesn't matter who gets elected or who's sitting on the Supreme Court. None of that matters.
Paul wrote, "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord's work because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." Our form of kingdom work is never in vain. And it's not because we achieve political victories, but because God uses our faithful witness to accomplish his eternal purposes.
Let's get practical for a little bit, though. What does that mean for us today? How do we live as kingdom citizens in a world that's so politically divided?
Well, first of all, we prioritize spiritual transformation over political alignment. You have to recognize that changing hearts is what produces change societies and not the other way around. You don't change hearts by changing laws or changing rulers. We invest our primary energy into prayer, worship, the study of scripture, the formation of communities in evangelism, the means by which God's spirit actually transforms lives. And we practice enemy love. Like I said, Jesus commanded, "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you, that you may be children of your father who is in heaven." Matthew 5:44 and 45.
That includes our political enemies. As much as we don't like to think that way, we do not demonize. We don't slander. We don't hate people on the other side. Even if we disagree with where they stand, we see them as imagebearers of God. They were made in the image of God, too. They are souls for whom Christ died.
They are potential brothers and sisters in the kingdom of God. Third, we pursue justice through the means that are recommended to us by the kingdom. What did Jesus say? feed the hungry, house the homeless, visit the imprisoned, welcome the stranger. We don't lobby for government programs. We might support certain programs, and that's okay. But we personally incarnate God's love and mercy, and in so doing, we become the solution.
Doesn't matter if the law is there or if there's a social program there, we're still doing it. We build our turn alternative communities that demonstrate kingdom principles in action. Fourth, we speak prophetic truth to power without trying to grab that power for ourselves. Just like the Old Testament prophets, we call out injustice, we call out hypocrisy, and we call out oppression wherever we find it, whether it's in our own communities or in the society at large. But we do that as people who don't have a political axe to grind, no partisan advantage that we're trying to gain, only a concern for God's righteousness and for human flourishing.
Fifth, we hold our political convictions with humility and grace because of course we're going to have our opinions, too. But we recognize as sincere Christians, we can disagree on all kinds of prudential political matters while still agreeing on kingdom essentials. We refuse to make our political positions a test of orthodoxy or a measure of spiritual maturity. That is just simply not the case. We have to extend the same grace to other people that we hope to receive.
Six, we live as exiles and sojourers. And we have to remember that we're never fully at home in any earthly political system. Just like Abraham, we lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents. For he looked for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Hebrews 11:9 and 10. Our hope isn't in making America or any other nation great again. but in the coming of God's eternal city.
And I will say it again, that doesn't mean we don't support certain ideas and concepts and actions. We can do that. But ultimately, we understand that is not what's going to make the world truly great. God's kingdom coming to earth is what will restore all things. Nothing else. Now, this isn't a message saying that we should withdraw or retreat. Not at all.
This is a call to the most radical, transformative, worldchanging activism ever imaginable. Kingdom activism. Activism that operates through the spiritual rather than through political power. Through our sacrificial love rather than through force, through our patience and our witnessing, rather than demanding immediately results. Right now, now. Now.
Throughout all of history, when the church has been most politically powerless, isn't it interesting that it's been the most spiritually powerful and successful? The explosive growth of Christianity in the first three centuries occurred under persecution, not under patronage. The church's moral authority has consistently been strongest when it's been the most clearly distinct from political power structures, not when it has been most closely allied with them. And it makes sense why. When you start to mingle Christian, the kingdom of God, Christian authority, call it that, with political authority, what happens? Corruption happens. And when the church becomes corrupt and people see that, it lessens the appeal of the kingdom of God.
That actually should give us hope. God's kingdom doesn't depend on who occupies the White House, who controls Congress, what the Supreme Court decides. It advances through ordinary believers living extraordinary lives of costly love, bearing faithful witness, proclaiming good news, and trusting the spirit to do what only it can. Transform human hearts and establish God's reign in human lives. And I just want to say, I'm not telling you who you should back. I'm not telling you which political side you should be in favor of, whether in the United States or in any other country in the world. What I'm saying is to pay attention to what John wrote in the book of Revelation.
The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. He will reign forever and ever. Revelation 11:15.
That's the true future of humanity. That is not wishful thinking. That's prophetic certainty.
Christ's kingdom will prevail. Every knee will bow. every tongue will confess. But not through military conquest, not through some elaborate political maneuvering, but through the inexorable advance of God's purpose in history. Our calling now is to live as citizens of that kingdom, to embody those principles today, to be the signposts that point to its future complete manifestation. We are the advanced guard of the age to come. We live by its rules in this present age.
We demonstrate its reality through our transformed lives into the alternative communities that we build and maintain. No matter what the law tells us to do, we still exercise the principles of Christian love, mercy, kindness, goodness, faith, self-control, all of it. When we do that, when we really invest ourselves in kingdom work rather than getting so caught up in these worldly political struggles, we become powerfully attractive witnesses to the world who is watching. People who are exhausted by political tribalism and they are everywhere. People disillusioned by all the broken promises. They're cynical because of all the power games. They're hungry for something real, true, transcendent.
Who do you think they're going to be drawn to? They're going to be drawn to us. To authentic kingdom communities that live out radical love, real genuine justice, and hopefilled service.
So, let's turn our focus back to the true kingdom. Let's redirect our passion, our energy, resources, prayers, and hope toward the work that actually transforms the world. The slow, patient, costly, spirit empowered work of making disciples, building communities full of love, bearing prophetic witness, and incarnating kingdom principles in our daily lives. It doesn't mean we ignore politics entirely. We're citizens of earthly nations. We have responsibilities. We can vote our conscience.
We can advocate for justice. We can participate in civic life. Those things are fine and good. But we do it as those whose primary citizenship is elsewhere. Whose ultimate hope rests not in the political outcomes, but in God's sovereign purposes, whose deepest investment isn't in the temporary political victories that we might attain, but in eternal kingdom advance.
When Pilate asked Jesus if he was a king, Jesus answered this way. For this reason I have been born and for this reason I have come into the world that I should testify to the truth. Everyone who's on who is of the truth listens to my voice. John 18:37.
That's our mission to testify to the truth. Bear witness to the reality of God's kingdom. to live in a way that those who hunger for truth, who long for something more than all the empty promises that were handed down by politicians in the kingdoms of this world, they will hear our voice and recognize in it the echo of the king's own voice. Why? Because we use his words. We reflect his principles and we empower are empowered by his spirit. The world is drowning in political rhetoric today.
It's swimming in partisan propaganda. It's exhausted by all the tribal warfare. Into that chaos, we are called to speak a different word, to live a different way and point to a different kingdom. One that will never be shaken because it cannot be. It will never end. It cannot end. that's even now breaking into the present through every act of kingdom faithfulness that you and me and all of the body of Christ perform every day of our lives.
Let this be our prayer. Aba, Father, forgive us for the times we have placed our hope in earthly kingdoms rather than in your eternal kingdom. Forgive us for fighting with the world's weapons instead of with the weapons of the spirit. Forgive us for seeking power over others rather than following our crucified king and the way of sacrificial love. Renew in us the vision of your kingdom, not of this world, but breaking into this world with transforming power. Help us to be faithful citizens of heaven while we sojourn on earth to be salt and light without becoming entangled in partisan tribalism to pursue justice through kingdom means rather than worldly methods. Fill us aresh with your spirit that we might bear authentic witness to the reality of your reign.
Give us courage to live as kingdom people even when it costs us worldly advantage. Grant us patience to work for transformation that may take generations to fully manifest, trusting that our labor in you is never in vain. Help us to love our enemies, to bless those who curse us, to overcome evil with good. Make us instruments of your peace in a polarized world. Ambassadors of reconciliation in a divided society, living demonstrations of the better way that is found only in Christ. May your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. beginning in our own hearts, radiating through our communities and ultimately transforming the whole of creation, not by might nor by power, but by your spirit.
In the name of Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, whose kingdom shall have no end, we pray. Amen. I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my book, The Broken Mirror: Rediscovering Our True Nature in Christ. Readers call it a fantastic book where you will feel yourself discovering your identity in Christ. One reviewer praised it as five-star material for the spiritual mystic or group Bible study. It's time to escape legalism and shame. Discover you're already God's beloved child with divine nature flowing through you with what reviewers describe as excellent writing style and elegant pros like a campfire discussion with a knowledgeable and gifted wreck on tour.
Journey from Genesis to Revelation, uncovering your true identity. This book shows how to access God's peace, wisdom, and strength from within. Your struggles become opportunities for divine light to shine through. Available in hard coverver, paperback, Kindle, and audio book. The link to the book is in the video description. May God bless your journey along his path for you. [Music]
