6 "Kingdom People" Theses

1. Kingdom people are those who live, first and foremost, under the reign and rule of God, and who by the Spirit say exclusively, "Jesus is Lord." (Romans 10.9-13).

2. Kingdom people are to understand the times in which we live, but to know at their core, that our times are in his hands. (Romans 13.14, Matthew 16.3, 1 Chronicles 12.32, Psalm 31.15).

3. Kingdom people typically are exposed as unreliable to other partisan agendas, because of their primary allegiance to the Lamb. (Revelation 5).

4. Kingdom people live in the messiness, the nuance, the complication of this world with all of its beauty and decay, its injustice and justice, its truth and lies, its goodness and wickedness. That messiness does not permit us to compromise our ethics, or to mitigate our commitment to reconciliation, peace, forgiveness, mercy, justice, righteousness, and our advocacy for the vulnerable. (Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5).

5. Kingdom people value what others evaluate as rubbish, speak what others deem ridiculous, and live in a way that often seems contradictory to the way of violence, war, retribution, or any death solution. (Matthew 26.52).

6. Kingdom people believe Jesus who says, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." (John 14.6).

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi (Prayer for Peace)

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.