A Day in the Kingdom
I have just returned from a day of royalty. There was a kingdom, there were princesses, castles, kings, crowns, frogs, and Space Mountain. It was amazing. The happiest place on earth! The Magic of Disney! But if they turned people away at the door for being greedy, immoral, and impure…I am afraid there wouldn’t be much of a line for flying with Peter Pan. Even so, the happiest place on earth has nothing on the kingdom of God, even if they do have awesome fireworks above Cinderella’s castle.
Idolatry is such a downer when placed as an obstacle into God’s kingdom. When you worship something besides God, you give impurity and greed a fast pass to the front of the line. Being sucked in by the selfish messages of the world is easy and it is an amazingly slippery slope. One sort-of immoral thing, leads to an immoral one, which leads to many immoral things and before you know it you are a full-fledged idolater of immorality. You adore the immoral. You hold it in reverence and honor it always. At that point, you cannot get in. There is no room for you in the kingdom of God. Your worship of the immoral, the impure, the greed, has superseded your relationship with God.
Since we are who we are…human, sons and daughters of Adam…we are going to be greedy, we are going to cross the line of impurity and immorality. If what is permissible in our lives butts right up to what is not permissible, we are more likely to fall into that trap like the fox into rabbit’s briar patch. However, if we leave plenty of margin around the edge of our lives, if we err on the side of 3 steps back from immoral instead of just one, our inheritance is rich in the kingdom of God. He still remains the center of our lives.
So remember to put first things first. God is the grand marshal of our parade. When he is first in line the kingdom awaits us! The riches of God’s glory and our inheritance into his kingdom will fit perfectly into our lives like a familiar glass slipper.
Thanks Jen for the reminder of whose Parade we are in and who is leading it. I thank the Lord for his grace and forgiveness when I deviate from the parade and end up in Never Never Land. He always woo’s us back to the Parade.