August 7, 2025
You know how sometimes we pray the words of Jesus? That little bit that says, “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” can be a difficult thing to agree to. It’s especially difficult when it comes to laying down our own kingdoms. We want Corinth to thrive and grow. We think, for the most part, we want to see Corinth thrive because it is a small little kingdom outpost. A place where the Kingdom of God is the most important thing. If the day ever comes when Corinth is more about personal ego, pride, power, or Jason, Jared, programs, or anyone’s personal kingdom, I would hope we would have the courage to pray for God’s Kingdom rather than our own.
Sometimes in our own stories, God’s Kingdom comes at a cost. It may be financial security, job security, or reputation. There are a million other things that we hold onto, things that are important and special to us, but need to be sacrificed for the sake of God’s Kingdom.
God’s Kingdom is a kingdom where life grows out of death. The things that we think are important to us sometimes must give way so that something far more beautiful than we could ever have imagined can take root, grow, and bloom in the soil of lesser expectations and hopes. It’s beautiful and so incredibly worth it, but it can also be hard.
There is often a give and take and even a trial and error involved in finding God’s Kingdom. Humanity has wrestled with this as the church has moved through time and space. Think of The Crusades. This was a time in history when we sought to bring the Kingdom of God to the cities inhabited by Muslims. This was a noble dream, a desire to bring Jesus to those who did not know Him. This mission in history was led by blood, death, and greed. Humanity often gets in the way of the things God would do through us.
The same could be said through the eras of western expansion in the US, slavery, and the Civil War, and even now as we try to love our neighbors who may not share our values.
We try to seek out God’s will and how He would bring His Kingdom to earth, but sometimes we miss the mark. I say all of this because I want to let you know that our Brazilian brothers and sisters who planted a church to worship God in our building have decided to no longer gather. Church plants are, at their heart, an effort to see God’s Kingdom expand. A church plant is always a noble dream and a good hope. But sometimes after working through the logistics of gathering a community of people and seeking to build something for the Glory of God, life gets in the way. Slowly, attendance began to wane, and they found themselves in a position of asking if this was the best thing that they could do. So they decided to no longer continue to gather as a group of Brazilian believers.
There are a few ways to look at this.
We can lament. We should grieve for our brothers and sisters whose dreams did not turn out the way that they hoped. This was indeed a good dream and a good thing. And maybe one day God will gather a few of those who were a part of this ministry back together and reestablish what He started.
We can also celebrate. We can be glad that we got to be a part of that for as long as we did. We have an amazing space and we can be happy that we were able to offer them the space to gather for the time that we did.
We can dream. We still have that space, and who knows who will be the next to lead an effort to see God’s Kingdom come similarly? Maybe we can find another group that would like to plant a new way of worshipping God and we can partner with them.
We can think about ourselves. We can look at our faithful brothers and sisters seeking to bring glory to God and reach people for His Kingdom, and we can honestly ask ourselves, what are we doing? Are we reaching out to our friends and neighbors? Should we consider planting a church? Maybe we should just invite someone to ours? Going deeper, we can ask, what parts of our own lives and souls are we afraid to pray to God, “thy will be done”?
God’s Kingdom is powerful and life-changing. It will absolutely change the world and each of us along with it. We are told that one day every knee will bow and every tongue confesses that JESUS IS LORD. In the meantime, we battle our own heartaches, shames, fears, and wounds. Let’s commit that we want to see His Kingdom come and see where we can join Him to make that happen and see His will done. Let’s do this even when His dreams might surprise us. They will always be better than our own.
Jared and Jason