Because in running toward what I thought was better, safer, more pleasurable, more fulfilling, less painful, less complicated, or less confining, I've actually been running from God, from His will, and from His blessing. And I'm tired of running. Aren't you?

As C. S. Lewis put it, "Aim at heaven and you will get the earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

The Kingdom cannot be learned like other subjects, such as science, geography or history. The Kingdom is learned only through revelation by the Spirit. It cannot be explained, contained or controlled—thus it is unexplainable, uncontainable and uncontrollable. It is not taught as much as it is caught—and only through the Spirit can it be caught. It cannot be embraced, explained, applied, pursued or entered without the Spirit of God.

The essential message of Judaism and Christianity is that life is not an end in itself. Life is to be a means—to goodness, to sanctity, and to God. The belief in life as an end in itself is a form of idolatry.

When you commit yourself to God's will without reservation, God becomes responsible to provide for you.

I'm enjoying simplifying things.

Conscious of time, Jesus spent His time doing things that mattered. No time was wasted on things not vital.

The leader cannot spend time on secondary matters while essential obligations scream for attention. A day needs careful planning.

Rarely do we see a person so entirely taken up with spiritual matters, that attention to this world's affairs is made a secondary matter or postponed. And why is it so? Simply because true conversions to God are uncommon.

Often truly authoritative leadership falls on someone who years earlier dedicated themselves to practice the discipline of seeking first the kingdom of God. Then, as that person matures, God confers a leadership role, and the Spirit of God goes to work throuh him.

So when Jesus directs us to pray, "Thy kingdom come," he does not mean we should pray for it to come into existence. Rather, we pray for it to take over at all points in the personal, social, and political order where it is now excluded: "On earth as it is in heaven." With this prayer we are invoking it, as in faith we are acting it, into the real world of our daily existence.

If we seek things that are virtuous and lovely, we surely will find them. Conversely, if we seek for evil, we will find that also.