The Kingdom of God Idea.

Luke 17:20-21
20 Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, 21 nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."

There's a lot of people who just absolutely love the idea about God. His security and grace, oh my! They don't really pay much attention to the fact that he is the King of all Kings, God, and that he has own great, big Kingdom that starts with you!

We all look forward to eternal life with God - in heaven. We can't help imagining what it could possibly be like (even though ideally we're just supposed to think about the present). Everything we can possibly think about heaven is positive. It must be the biggest best thing. It's the largest shopping mall or the largest football field, for example. That's a big dream and I think we get stuck in these dreams that we forget all about God. What if we get up in heaven and we have all of our FAVORITE THINGS, but one GREATER BEING is missing?

I want you to think about these things that Francis Chan threw at us last week:
"Can you honestly say that if Jesus is not going to be up in heaven that you will want to go and still have everything else?"
He said, "I'd rather have him [Jesus] here on Earth than not have him in a beautiful place."

"Hosanna" sung by Starfield has some very strong lyrics.


P.S. If you have trouble with the video stopping and starting, keep the video paused, and let it "buffer" (load) as it's called for a while. You will see the red bar along the bottom advance (speed depends on your Internet connection). Wait until that bar gets pretty far along (I'd say more than halfway) before you play the video and it shouldn't pause.