Yet you will be close enough that you will experience in its fullness heaven on earth.  You’ll be close enough to watch people pass from death unto life with your very own eyes. 

    1 John 3:18 says, My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.

    Sisters, let us not sit comfortably in coffee shops, talking about truth while the rest of the world is dying without hope.  Let us help build the Kingdom of God with our very own hands.  Let us live the Gospel of Jesus Christ! 

I have chosen to lay aside comfortable coffee shop Christians in exchange for a poured-out life for Jesus.  I hope you will join me today. *

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by Kelly Monahan

coffee

shop

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED, “Where do I go to find the Kingdom of God.  How do I truly build His kingdom on a daily basis?”

That question began to burn upon my heart intensively about a year ago.  Until recently, most of my time seeking Jesus has been spent in coffee shops, sitting comfortably in a leather chair, with my Bible on my lap and a $5 latte in my hand. 

This is the kind of Christianity I’d grown up with.  But then one day I began to wonder - is this really how Jesus would define Christianity?  Is this what it means to enter into the Kingdom of God?  Is this even the environment God would have us truly know Him?  

God has shown me over these past moths and years that this “comfortable coffee shop Christianity” is not His pattern.  The real problem isn’t that we don't

know where to go to find the Kingdom of God.  It’s that we don’t want to go there.

God’s Word makes it clear that to know Christ, we must walk as He walked.    To live the true Gospel we must be willing to lay down our lives for those in need.  Wherever the poor and afflicted are around this world is where Jesus is – and where He calls us to be.  We build His Kingdom by being His body –His hands and feet to the lost, oppressed and dying.  Whatever we do unto the least of these, we do unto Him.

      God began to challenge my heart with this question: "How desperate are you for the Kingdom of God?  How desperate you are to see heaven on earth?  Desperate enough to leave safe suburbia and head into the inner city?  Desperate enough to go overseas on missions? Desperate enough to seek

until you find?”

        God is waiting to impart His Kingdom here on earth.  He gives us the supreme privilege of walking as He walked – of participating in His works. It brings Him the utmost delight when we choose to help build His Kingdom here on earth.

If God then is so eager to give this to us, why is it that so few of us are actually experiencing and living within His Kingdom today?  

       I believe it is because we are too far away to hear the cries of the people that need justice.  We are too wrapped up in our own pursuit of spirituality that we have become deaf to the 3 billion people who are crying out, "Someone please tell me about Jesus!  I have never heard of such a name!" 

How can we spend one more minute asking

where the Kingdom of God is today, while there are so many voices crying out, pleading for us to come to their rescue?  Why are we so deaf to this call?

HOW DESPERATE ARE YOU

FOR HEAVEN ON EARTH?

Why don't we make the drive into the city to serve the poor?  Why do we eagerly sign up to lead a small group Bible study and quickly drive by the homeless shelter without one thought of stopping in?  Why is that we can speak Jesus on our lips while passing by the needy on the streets when it is in our power to do something?  We are carrying around the most precious truth one can hear and speaking it solely amongst ourselves,  in our comfortable coffee shops.

These greatest way to experience the Kingdom of God today is to actually know and love the Lord.  To love our Lord is to act on behalf of those who otherwise cannot act for themselves. To know Him is to know His heartbeat for the lost.  

        Jesus came for one purpose which would bring the Kingdom of God here on earth; He came to spill out His life, die so that we may live.  Are we greater than our Master?  Is not this the exact same way in which the Kingdom of God will come down today?  The Kingdom of God will come when we live with one purpose, to die to our comforts, to die to our dreams, to die to our selfish pursuits so that others may know Him.  We must be like Jesus and spill out on those who are seem unworthy, on those who the rest of the world has left behind.  We must die, so that they may live.

Jesus time and time again says, “Don't go to the rich.  Don't go to those in high positions with power.  They will never show up to inherit the Kingdom of God.  Rather, Jesus says, to go to poor, the lame, the blind and crippled.”  

Why then are we so often found associating with the wealthy?  (Remember just owning a car puts us well above the majority of people living around the world!)

    Oh girls I pray you hear this desperate cry from one who has grown weary of coffee shop Christianity!  Let us go and rescue the needy!  Let us bring the transforming power of the Gospel into their lives!  I am so desperate for like-minded sisters who will practically partake of the Kingdom of God.  Not just talk about it or contemplate it, but actually taste it and experience it firsthand.  

I must warn you though, that it is costly.  I’ve discovered that bringing justice to those who are in need is the most costly thing you can do with your life.  You have the privilege of bringing the most precious thing in God’s creation, human life, back to Him.  It will get personal when you get close enough to hear the stories, close enough to embrace the lonely, and close enough to know their pain.