Struggle on

Which kingdom do you live in?

Kinda sounds Matrix-ish, which gives the sentence an adventurous feel (dorky, too).

 An ultimatum. A veiled threat. A choice. Choose this day which king you serve. Jesus said where your treasure is there your heart will be also. And I admit, where your loyalty lies there your time follows. Which kingdom are you part of and, which one do you spend most time in? Are you Hosea’s wife, legally married to a man of God and secretly sleeping with everyone else? Are you Israel, claiming to come under God’s blessing but not His will?

 It’s interesting that this is all coming to a head in my life now. Being intentional with everything I do has been on my heart for quite some time. So has the truth that discipline in my life should look like submission to God’s will, not necessarily my own. And then the Revelation class motto, “Come out of Babylon,”, the modern day idolatrous culture, has been spinning around my head and I wonder, what does that mean? What does any of this mean?

 I feel as if I have a lot of separate pieces right now, and God has me blindfolded, sticking random pieces together upon instruction, not sight. And in the back of my mind, I see a small village with makeshift huts and not enough water, and not enough food, and too much death. I see sick children, and hurting victims, and unloved throw-aways, and persecution. I see a need, everywhere I look. And I feel as if it’s more of a burden to have the answer to that need in my own life than to own that need myself. There is so much wrong with the world, and so little right. There’s so much evil and not much good. There is so much suffering and so little comfort. And I can’t help but grow impatient, staying here in the middle of affluence and wealth and waste. And I grow fearful, hoping God does not make me stay in this place that I all too often forget is not real. It makes me uncomfortable to realize that I am spending my short time on earth in a terrible parody of “the good life” while other people die and suffer and are still grasping at attaining the “life” part.

I guess we are alike in a way. Neither of us is really living.

So I pour dying and fading things down myself in effort to try to stir something inside of me and they die and fade with too much untapped inside them and it’s a spiral that keeps traveling down, down, down. Until we wake up and find we lived our entire life in a fog, vaguely aware that there was something more but too groggy and chained to even try to reach out to it.

Which kingdom do you spend your time in? Whose values do you emulate? Whose standards to you strive for? Whose love do you crave? Whose glory do you pursue? Are you part of what you see, which happens to be what is not real? Or are you part of what you believe in faith, which happens to be the only reality that won’t fade? And if you are part of the latter, do you dwell there? There is a distinction that is necessary to make. If an animal calls itself a wolf, and yet lives inside a palace, eating off silver platters and chasing it’s tail and performing for children, is it still a wolf? By letter of the law perhaps, but in spirit it has been a lapdog from the start. Are we real children of God, who claim Jesus’ blood and partake in His heritage, who are still tripping over ourselves trying to dance to the music the world keeps seducing us with? 

While we stand with one foot in each kingdom, we struggle with suffering and endure insult. We cry out at persecution, because we don’t understand why. Why (when we live in two kingdoms that are in deadly opposition to each other) do we have pain? Why (when we claimed allegiance and loyalty unto death to our God) are we sometimes asked to cash our loyalty in? Why do I still struggle with sin (when I am presently in the flesh and my spirit is fighting against odds to be present in truth)? Why is life painful (when I have drawn a line in the sand and claimed victory over demonic powers that do not necessarily lose power when I give my crown to Jesus)?  

Because there is conflict when a kingdom is divided between itself. And there is trouble when you’re waging war against an army you keep switching over to fight with. You cannot expect to be caught within a spiritual battle of epic proportions and skip away with only a Jesus sticker and a souvenir get-eternity-with-Jesus-free card.

And when you get up every morning and set your sights on a world with a shifting standard, a façade of morality, and a defeated king. And you set your expectations on a world with an absolute moral law, a clearly defined line between truth and lies, and a King Who demands your entire being and worship. And you then try to live in between the two, dodging bullets of conviction and setting yourself up to receive accolade that never quite sustains, and denouncing what you know is a lie and yet living your life as if it’s truth. Running, striving, sprinting towards a standard that has already been defeated.

And begging God to please take away the pain in your life(which is, in reality, what is making you come alive) And pleading with Him to not make you uncomfortable or unhappy (which is, in truth, knocking away false props and letting you realize that the unseen is where your stability and hope lies).

Yes. There will be war. And there will be wounds. And Jesus said we’d get protection, not a free pass.

Which world do I choose to live in daily? I wish I had a straight answer. But all I am really left with is struggle. That awkward, in between, slippery, breathless struggling place that comes from knowing something in your head and having a heart that still struggles to assimilate it. That struggle that comes from knowing in my heart my allegiance is sold and still trying to pawn it off to the first bidder I see. That struggle that comes from seeing my circumstance and realizing it is fleeting in my head, but being gripped by fear that it is all too real in my heart.   

But I’d rather struggle than backslide. Eventually, maybe, I’ll wiggle free.

Struggle on