Whose Kingdom are You Building?
Everything was made with a purpose in mind. Staplers were made to affix pages together. Cups were made to drink liquids. Phones were created to make calls. Toilet paper was created to…well, you get the point.
No inventor ever sat around and said, “I’m going to make something that has no purpose whatsoever.” There is a purpose to everything. That includes us.
Randy Alcorn writes, “We were all made for a Person and a place. Jesus is the Person. Heaven is the place.”
1 Corinthians 8:6 plainly states, we know that there is only one God, the Father, who created everything, and we exist for him. And there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom God made everything and through whom we have been given life.
We exist for God. We are alive because, through Christ, God made us and placed us here. That knowledge should effect how we live out our lives.
Unfortunately, there are many people who Craig Groeschel refers to as “Christians Atheists.” That is, people who believe in God but act as though he doesn’t exist.” This group sadly makes up the largest “denomination” in the United States—what Rick Warren terms the “Church of Self.”
Realize that it is possible to accept Christ and begin to experience Him in your life. It is further possible to pray regularly and receive answers to prayer. It is even possible to faithfully attend church every week and grow in your knowledge of God.
It is possible to do all of that, to be totally filled in your relationship with God and yet not touch a single person around you.
To illustrate this further, let’s take a look at an Old Testament king that you probably have never heard of. His name is King Jotham, and we find his story in 2 Chronicles 31.
Reading through his brief biography given in Scripture, you would find Jotham to be a good king. He followed God’s laws, helped reconstruct a portion of the Temple, and lived to please the Lord.
Yet, in the midst of that, we find some troubling things. For example, we read that the people of his country continued in their corrupt ways and his own son would become one of the most immoral kings in Judah’s history.
How could this happen? Digging back into that Scripture, we find some clues. We see that Jotham spent a lot of time and effort building up his own kingdom. He fortified walls, he built fortresses, he created cities, and he waged war. In short, he spent a good deal of time furthering his kingdom, while spending precious little time investing in the Lord’s kingdom.
I know many people that could be described as “Good Christian folk,” and I bet those people have experienced answers to prayer and seen the power of God in their lives. Yet, they have children who’ve never been trained and equipped to follow God, and they have neighbors and co-workers who don’t even know they are Christians.
While at the National Center for Fathering, I learned about a study done of 10,000 fathers. This study sought to isolate the strengths and weaknesses of dads across our country. Do you know what the weakest area was for American fathers? Spiritual equipping.
(This is why I have written books like The Christ-Centered Home.)
Even though God has called men to be the spiritual heads of their homes, fathers are doing a lousy job of passing on their faith. Like King Jotham, many men are wrapped up in their own kingdoms. Working all the time, invested in their hobbies, and never at the table with their child and a Bible saying, “Let’s talk about what really matters.”
Let’s not just jump on fathers. It is possible for any of us to have cultivated a relationship with God, yet have never shared our faith with friends, relatives, classmates, neighbors, or co-workers.
I worked at an office-supply store while in college. A co-worker and I knew each other for a solid year before we had the “You’re a Christian? Wow! So am I” talk.
We can all be much like King Jotham. He was a good, earnest follower of God who experienced the Lord’s power in his own life. Yet the people around him, even those growing up in his own home, remained untouched.
The greatest thing you can do with your life is to give it over to Christ and begin living for Him. You can only build one kingdom at a time. If you are busy building your own, you’re not building Christ’s kingdom.
So, what do you say? Let's all start building what really matters!
