Healing and Wholeness: God’s Shalom – Week Four
Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom.
His disciples asked when the Kingdom would be restored to Israel.
The decisive act was the resurrection.
Because Jesus is risen, we are freed from the guilt and power of sin. We are no longer are subject to sin’s mastery, and we are no longer subject to the power of death.
Therefore we live lives here on earth under the control, the lordship, of Christ, making his love apparent and real.
We live in a ‘now, but not yet’ time.
Our epistle is sandwiched between two more famous passages: there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, and nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
For those who do not acknowledge Jesus’ Lordship, the world seems as bad as ever. Even for those of faith, we reflect in the words of our hymns this morning the struggles of the world that we share and inhabit, and our longing to see God’s Kingdom open, revealed, triumphant. All creation ‘stands on tiptoe’ to see what will happen when God’s new kingdom is actualised. The message to the people of Bree: there is a King once more and things will get better.
In the meantime, we get glimpses, down payments on the glories of heaven that are to come.
In the midst of griefs and struggles, God sometimes heals or intervenes. Because God is God, and we do not understand all his ways, we cannot predict, command, or explain when he does this, but we humbly accept it. Because Jesus told us to teach all he commanded his disciples, we are bound to preach repentance, forgiveness, and the power of God to cleanse, heal, transform lives, in the world today.
How are we to pray? We rely upon his Spirit to guide us and pray ‘within us’: sometimes we cannot find the words.
Discussion starters:
1. What is the most hopeful thing for us about being a member of God’s kingdom?
2. What is our response to suffering and illness?
3. What could we do, as individuals and as a church family, to reach out to bless others and share God’s love and power?
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