For a minute, I want you to imagine that you are Jesus’ chief kingdom strategist, kind of a Karl Rove for Christ.
In Matthew 4, Jesus has come into the world announcing the presence and availability of the long awaited Kingdom of heaven. You have sat back and listened as Jesus has told absolutely anyone who would respond to the message--no matter how spiritually bankrupt, how insignificant, how much they doubted their own righteousness--that they were invited to live their lives under the reign and rule of God (Matthew 5:1-13)
Even more, Jesus said, he would use all who follow him in living out the Kingdom of heaven here and now to be salt for the earth, light for the world. Those who become kingdom disciples of Jesus will be the more essential people on the planet, preserving what is good, saving the world, the ones who reveal the light of God’s presence to all of creation. (Matthew 5:14-17)
While we are invited to follow Jesus just as we are, he is not going to leave us as we are. All who respond to the Kingdom message will be transformed into people of genuine righteousness, taking on the very character of Jesus. (Matthew 5:18ff)
Now, it’s your turn: If you were strategizing with Jesus to call and send out the most essential people in the world, part of his saving work, revealing God’s presence in the world, what would you have them do first?
If you were going to prepare people to be part of God’s reign and rule, literally training them to reign in their particularly spheres of the world as a representative of God what is the first thing you’d have them do?
Recruit? Evangelize? Share their faith? Maybe come together in love and unity?
But what does Jesus do? He tells the people who are going to make the greatest PUBLIC difference in the world to focus on secret piety.
Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. (Matthew 6:1)
Jesus goes on to use three examples of spiritual activities that need to become more private in order to develop our public witness. First acts of charity, then praying, then spiritual disciplines (specifically, fasting), teaching his disciples to give in secret, pray in secret and fast (or other disciplines) in secret, for God’s approval only.
Jesus point: We will make the biggest impact for the Kingdom on the world by learning to keep our focus on the Father.
Jesus method for world transformation is to begin with heart transformation. To wean his disciples off of the approval and affirmation of the world so that they are freed to seek only God’s approval.
Jesus helps us recognize that our desire for praise and recognition from people can in the long run keep us from actually making a difference in our world. What happens when our doing good ISN’T praised by people? What if we need to love our enemies, when the people around us want them punished? What if righteousness demands forgiving someone that the world deems unforgiveable? What if we need to live out our faith in a cause that is unpopular, unrewarded, even costly to career or resume?
Jesus has told us that as his Kingdom followers, our responsibility is not to be well-liked or praised, well-regarded or affirmed, but to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world—even if that means that our very acts of goodness and piety are like shining a light in eyes that have been accustomed to the darkness.
Do you want to become truly salt and light in the world? Do you want to be part of God’s work to preserve and save the world? Do you want your life to reveal God’s presence in the world? Then you and I must refocus our lives away from ourselves and more and more toward God. And we do that through a committed, cultivated secret spirituality that seeks only God’s praise, God’s reward.
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