The Kingdom of God: Guides and Gardeners

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

- Jesus, John 8:36

My pur­pose is to give them [us] a rich and sat­is­fy­ing life.

- Jesus, John 10:10

In the last post I talked about find­ing the “king­dom of God” that Jesus intro­duced to the world.

As we dis­cussed, noth­ing is more impor­tant in life than hav­ing that deep rela­tion­ship with God that Jesus intends for us.  When we enter the king­dom of God, we will find the free­dom and the rich and sat­is­fy­ing life that Jesus promises.  So how do we get there?

We start by call­ing upon Jesus through prayer to help us, and of course he will.  But most of us could use a lit­tle help from other peo­ple too.

In fact, Jesus did ask his dis­ci­ples to spread the good news and help oth­ers to the king­dom, and those fol­low­ing Jesus today are still doing that.  Great — there’s help avail­able!

But wait.  Unfor­tu­nately, not every­one who claims to fol­low Jesus may actu­ally be doing so.  Jesus warned us to beware of deceit­ful or just plain mis­guided peo­ple that would speak in his name.

This shouldn’t be too sur­pris­ing.  Just as you wouldn’t trust every doc­tor with your health and any old lawyer with your trial, you can’t trust all Chris­tians or min­is­ters to help you grow in your rela­tion­ship with God.  Bum­mer.

How are you going to find peo­ple to help you?  In my last post, I talked about how Jesus implied that “guides” and “gar­den­ers” might be help­ful here.

So let’s exam­ine some of the char­ac­ter­is­tics that would help to make a good guide or gar­dener.

Imag­ine you are select­ing a guide to help you hike through a for­est to see a spec­tac­u­lar water­fall.  First, the obvi­ous — the best guide to help you should have actu­ally been to the fall before.

Only then can you be com­pletely sure that he or she knows the way.  Beyond that, you would want your guide to be friendly and patient with you, as per­haps you’re not as phys­i­cally fit as he is.

Will he slow down and give you a hand to help you over the rough ter­ri­tory, or will he berate you for not being able to keep up?  Will he be able to keep you safe?  Is he wise and does he have good judg­ment?

Gar­den­ers must also be wise and patient with good judg­ment.  Gar­den­ing is a mat­ter of tend­ing to a plant’s nat­ural desire to grow; of under­stand­ing its basic biol­ogy; and of pro­vid­ing just the right amount of light, water and food at just the right time.

Fer­til­iz­ing too much or too soon, can kill a young plant.  In both cases, guides and gar­den­ers, they should be more focused on how to help (either the client or the plant) than how to force results.

This sounds a lot like what the apos­tle Paul had to say about peo­ple that have matured in their rela­tion­ship with God.  In his words:

“…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kind­ness, good­ness,
faith­ful­ness, gen­tle­ness and self-control.”

- Paul, Gala­tians 5:22–3

I think what you’re look­ing for is becom­ing clear.  You should look for a kind, lov­ing,  patient and gen­tle per­son to help you grow spir­i­tu­ally.

Don’t fol­low the arro­gant, rude, mean, or unhappy guide no mat­ter how well he or she claims to know the ter­ri­tory.  Best wishes on your jour­ney.

Let me know if I can help.