Building Kingdoms

John (my son) has started getting into the kingdom building business. He builds his own animal kingdom. He sets up dinosaurs and other plastic animals we have in the specific ways he wants. I usually am not allowed to help. Well, every once in a while, he’ll let me play with the giraffe or zebra. I never get a triceratops. I always get the same ones. He doesn’t like it when I start messing with his little kingdom. Sometimes I move a few of the animals or suggest a new plan, but his response is quick. “No, Daddy. Stop, Daddy. You play with the zebra, Daddy.”

We are all kingdom-builders at heart. It is our nature. Now is it a part of our sinful nature or created nature? Are we kingdom builders because God has created us that way or are we kingdom builders as a result of sin?

Think about your kingdom, the kingdom you’ve built. It is good to be king. It is good to have your kingdom built the way you like it. It is good when people respect your kingdom and don’t mess with it. We all want to say to others who mess with our little kingdoms, “No. Stop. You play in your kingdom. Leave mine alone.” Sounds a lot like Genesis 11:4 where the people build the tower of Babel out of their desire to build their own kingdom.

Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."

To answer whether kingdom-building is a God-thing or a sin-thing, just ask one, simple question, “Whose kingdom are you seeking to build?” If it is yours where you are king and have all authority, it is sin. If it is God’s and you are seeking to encourage others to come under His reign and into His kingdom, it is a God’s.

These questions pertain to the local church. Whose kingdom are we seeking to build at our church? Ours or God’s? If ours, then what matters is us and what happens here. We define success then by how we grow, how we succeed, how we look, how we matter, how we measure up to the other churches building their own kingdoms. We look at their kingdoms as competition, seeking to get in the way of what we are trying to do. We say to them, “Play in your kingdom. Leave mine alone.” (Don’t you wonder sometimes why there are so many denominations all claiming to have the right way to follow Jesus? – It’s a kingdom-building thing, isn’t it?)

We are seeking to build God’s kingdom. No, there is a better way to say it. We are seeking to submit ourselves to God so that HE CAN BUILD His kingdom through us. Us is not defined as OUR church or OUR theology or OUR denomination. Us is defined as those who follow Jesus and live for Him. If that is our perspective, other churches become brothers and sisters, family members, who are IN IT TOGETHER, SEEKING THE SAME GOAL. We are not competing. We are working together. So we strive to do that.

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor
in vain. Psalm 127:1

We see each other as teammates. We encourage, pray for, love, and challenge each other to do what God would have us do.

Are you just as excited when a new Christian comes to faith in the Methodist church as you are when it happens here? Are you just as excited when you hear someone praising another church and its people? Are you just as excited when you hear God is moving in another church as you are when it happens here? Do you pray for, love, and long for other churches to experience God’s blessing and bear fruit for Him?

Whose kingdom are you seeking to build?