Followby Rebecca Passic, Ministry to Women team
While listening to my favorite podcast, Knowing Faith, I stumbled across a book that has changed my perspective on my daily living: Seek First: How the Kingdom of God Changes Everything by Jeremy Treat. I highly recommend it. I’ve been reading this book slowly, because it is packed with simple but profound truths about God’s kingdom.
One particular line Jeremy writes is, “If we submit to Jesus only in areas of our choice, then we’re looking to him not as a king but as a puppet. We call him Lord but try to use him to validate our own lordship. The call of the kingdom is for God’s reign to shape all of life.”
I was taken aback reading those lines; my face burned with shame as I realized that indeed, I have and do treat Jesus like a puppet instead of King at times. I want Christ to rule in my church life, and even in my social media, but do I truly allow the Lord to reign in my marriage and parenting, and do I trust Him to continue to reign well into my future, or do I desire reign over those things? There while reading that portion, I confessed to the Lord where specifically I had been withholding from Him ruling in those areas. It wasn’t just about how I lived my life at church but also how I lived my life at home. Does my daughter see me as a mother who is submitting to Christ, or does she see a mother who is submitted to herself? What about my husband, family, and friends? Perhaps you’re not a mother or married, but we all have areas in our lives that we need “Christ to rule in and over our lives,” as Jeremy puts it. Maybe for you its your employment, single life, college, or high school, or it’s your artistic expressions, hobbies, and sports. God cares about all aspects of our lives because He should rule over all areas of our life.
Thankfully, Christ hasn’t left me alone in my shame; instead, He has forgiven me and given me a helper, the Holy Spirit. Instead of trusting myself, I can trust what the Holy Spirit has done and continues to do in my life. He enables me to seek Christ, to submit to serving God’s church and His commission in my home and community not just by transforming me into new life but to grow in that new life. I think Philippians 2:12-13 (AMP) shows just how wonderful the Spirit enables us:
“Continue to work out your salvation [that is, cultivate it, bring it to full effect, actively pursue spiritual maturity] with awe-inspired fear and trembling [using serious caution and critical self-evaluation to avoid anything that might offend God or discredit the name of Christ]. For it is [not your strength, but it is] God who is effectively at work in you, both to will and to work [that is, strengthening, energizing, and creating in you the longing and the ability to fulfill your purpose] for His good pleasure.”
I ask that we all continue to evaluate our hearts, to trust those promptings of conviction the Spirit gives us. Not only in the major areas of lives but also in the mundane. Christ cares about all that we do because we are his subjects and children, representing His kingdom to the world.
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