the Kingdom of God – Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment.

May 19: Reading the Holy Bible in a year.

Luke 16. Jesus told the parable of the unjust steward to show it is not enough to follow the practices of the land, one must be above reproach in spiritual things, even if you are following the Law and the Prophets to the letter you will fail. He ended with the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

1 Kings 12 tells of the revolt against Rehoboam and Jeroboam’s Golden Calves at Bethel and Dan. They were put up so Rehoboam didn’t have to go to Jerusalem to sacrifice.

1 Kings 13. From Judah came a Man of God with a message. It did not go over well, so through lies and intrigues the Man of God was killed by a lion. One quote from this chapter: “After this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way, but made again of the lowest of the people priests of the high places: whosoever would, he consecrated him, and he became one of the priests of the high places.” Large portions of the Old Testament describes how not to worship, let this be a warning for us.

June 30. The word for today.

Yesterday the word was “the heavenly realms” found 5 times in Ephesians. The King James translation renders this “heavenly places” suggesting it is a physical location. The original Greek does not mention realms or places, it simply calls it “the heavenlies”. For we, created in time and space, have a hard time getting hold of God, after all he exists since creation of both time and space. Just think, without physical matter time and space has no meaning. The apostle Matthew calls the heavenlies the Kingdom of heaven, Mark and Luke calls it the Kingdom of God. Jesus himself says in ^{John 18:36}“My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.“

We tend to think that what we do makes a difference. God has given us access to the spiritual dimension, or realm, or even place in the form of the Holy Spirit, and thanks to that He has given us power. No, he has given us access to the heavenlies, not in our selves but it is Christ, in the form of the Holy Spirit that lives in us. Without him we can do nothing.

Something happened to us today that has never happened to us before. After a successful shopping trip we went to a diner that serves excellent crab cakes. After finishing the meal, the server, followed by the manager, came and said, somebody paid for our meal. At first we were dumbfounded, we have heard of acts of random kindness, but why us, we don’t look that destitute, as a matter of fact, we look rather good, considering our age. We humbly thanked the server and manager for the anonymous generosity. Leaving the diner I remembered that we always pray before the meal, holding hands, giving thanks to God for what He has tone today and for the meal, all in the name of Jesus.

There is something going on, i can sense it. We are praying for a revival of Biblical proportions, and a worldwide awakening. After all, God gives more grace.