The Kingdom of God Is Either WITHIN You, or Your "Form of Christianity" Is an Illusion

9/30/2025

The Kingdom of God is WITHIN you, or it’s NOT. Yet. Make it so!

Clue: It has nothing to do with being splashed or being in the right place.

Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst, within you.” (Luke 17:20-21)

Okay, so we all realize the total unbiblical nature of the little hand gesture for children, “Here’s the church and here’s the steeple, open the doors and see all the people.”

1. The first “church building” archaeologists have ever found was over two hundred years after the beginning of the church that was Jesus’. The early disciples, the early believers, and the early Christians knew how to walk with Jesus daily—with one another. Hebrews 3:12-14 was nothing like the other world religions. The Saturday holy day, or Friday holy day, and the special feasts and seasons, were not something to be copied and transported to Sunday. Paul said in essence, “I fear I’ve wasted my time on you because you are observing special days and holidays and calling them Christian.” “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain” (Galatians 4:9-11). Sunday is mentioned twice in the sixty years recorded in the New Testament, and never is it described as the Christian holiday or hinted that it was some special day to attend a building, or a “Christian Sabbath.” That just didn’t happen. Humans invented that two centuries after Jesus. We get that. It’s a convenience innovation for human flesh, and a petri dish for growing leaven.

2. We also know that in Matthew 23, Jesus forbade clergy and laity and titles. But humans do it anyway, because it’s like the other world religions that need a holy man, a medicine man, an advocate, or master of ceremonies. It’s “too dangerous” to have a “kingdom of priests” and a 1 Corinthians 12-14 Life together—where we “consider how to spur EACH OTHER on to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24). And “All ought to be teachers by now,” (Hebrews 5:12). Daily—Hebrews 3:12-14. Crazy, huh?!

3. We also know that God commands that we get leaven out of the batch, or we will all be diminished—leavened. But if we are Sunday attendance-based, clergy and laity, it is impossible to recognize leaven, let alone remove it. It would require ridiculous legalism and external judgments to obey the command to remove leaven when we don’t see anything of the daily life of those around us, only the “Sunday morning best.” How could anyone possibly know the difference between the immaturity of a true baby Follower of Jesus versus a fraud? There would be no way to identify such a thing. The result would be unidentifiable as even Christian. When Jesus said “the field is the world” it creates a dilemma for the Sunday morning attendance-based system. The field is not the church. The field is the world. We are “in the world, but not of the world.” God will separate the wheat from the weeds in the world, but in the church, we are to get the leaven out lest we all be leavened, children ruined, adults diminished.

Okay, we get all of that.

Still...

Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst, within you.” (Luke 17:20-21)

It remains absolutely true: there is no utopian “new way”—that’s just like the Acts 2:36-47 first-century expression of church—“as we rise up and sit down and walk along the way”—that negates the real topic.

“The coming of the Kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the Kingdom of God is in your midst, within you.” (Luke 17:21)

Every person must have their own “wedding clothes” and “their own oil.” A special way of “having church” that is not centered around clergy and laity, but instead a “priesthood of believers” with many varying gifts: 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4, Romans 12, and special way of church that doesn’t have holy days and holidays labeled “Christian” when the Bible had no such thing... means nothing if the Kingdom of God is not within you!

Hiding behind a certain way of doing things, while you have no oil and no wedding clothes and no intimacy with Jesus himself, is just as fraudulent as wearing a clergy collar or attending a “service.” In some ways it’s worse because the opportunity to become a man of God or woman of God was trampled upon, and there are plenty of very sincere believers with their own oil scattered in the Sunday morning religious system, having had far less Opportunity.

“The coming of the Kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the Kingdom of God is in your midst, within you.” (Luke 17:21)

Please find Jesus in your daily life, in your reactions to things, and your desires, and hopes, and dreams, and fears. JESUS. Within.

Being perfect is a hoax. Doing things perfectly is a delusion. Knowing and believing all the right things is impossible.

So! Be on your knees in the quiet places and the difficult places, in the chaos, in the storm, in the good days and the bad days, in poverty or in plenty—just make sure YOU and Jesus together live a Life, in the Vine, in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Pretty please?

I thought it was the striving

The trying to be right

But then You changed my seeing

With your sunshine’s guiding Light

Not worrying when there’s shadows

Not rules I have to do

But every step with You, Lord

Is a Garden breaking through

Flowers bud, flowers blossom

As Your will is being done

In the quiet of our closeness

Flowers bloom... where there were none

Flowers bloom... where there were none

It wasn’t just my silence

It wasn’t just restraint

It was a holy nearness

A sweetness none can feign

To close my mouth in stillness

Because You said to wait

And feel the beauty blossom

In such a tender way

Flowers bud, flowers blossom

As Your will is being done

In the quiet of our closeness

Flowers bloom... where there were none

It’s not hard, not heavy

There’s such joy knowing You

Even in the crosses

Your light is breaking through

It’s not the tree of good

But the tree of Your Delight

Where every step with You

Blossoms beautiful... Divine

Flowers bud, flowers blossom

As Your will is being done

In the quiet of our closeness

Flowers bloom... where there were none

His invitation is not for the strong, but for the soft and the listening. Even one’s contrite and humble acknowledgment of, “I have no flowers, but instead only a stony path”—when truly offered and surrendered to Him, can begin to see the beauty blossom in such a tender way. “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”

•  To Wear His Name You Gotta Be Digested By His DNA