Jesus Lenses: God’s Clear View for His Church

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We’re starting a new series on the church this fall. We’re going to be going through: Who are we? Who are you, anyways? Who are we? What’s our identity as the body of Christ—the church, the family of God? What are we for? Whose are we? All of this.

We’re going to define the church, and we’re going to call it “On Earth as in Heaven: The Church in God’s Story of Renewal.” Because we’re a part—we’re a small church, a part of a big story, right? The story of God.

And why do I have these glasses on? Because throughout my life, I’ve viewed the world through different lenses. I’ve seen the world through different colors, and it’s colored everything that I have seen. We do this. We view God through different lenses. We view one another through different lenses.

Maybe I’m just going to have some fun here, right? We put on—maybe at different times in our life—we view the world through our experience, good or bad. Maybe there’s a really dark season of our life where we see God through our pain, through our suffering, through everything bad that has gone on in the world. And we begin to project on other people in light of that. We see them only through the lens of our suffering and through our pain, and we begin to hurt people out of our hurt.

We begin to see God through the lens of our suffering. We wonder who God is. Where is God? We see through our suffering.

Maybe we see God through—let’s see, I don’t know if this counts for good news—through our good experiences, right? Everything’s blue and great. We’ve heard the phrase, “seeing the world through rose-colored glasses,” right?

Well, I remember sitting in these—Chris is a fan; this is good—I remember sitting in these very chairs when I was a youth pastor here, and I was just married. I was reading the book of James, I was reading some other thinkers around the church, and I began to recognize that I had been seeing God, seeing the church, seeing myself, seeing other people and the world through these lenses.

And it made a difference. It made a difference how I was living my life. It made a difference in how I viewed God. And I began to see a little bit more—I thought I began to hear that, you know what? There’s a lens that God gives us to see most clearly. The world the way the world really is. And that’s through Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the lens through which we must view ourselves, view the world, view God, view Scripture—view everything.

It matters what lens you’re looking through. And Jesus invites us, when He announces the kingdom, He says, “Let me give you a new pair of glasses. Let me show you the way the world really is. Let me show you.”

And the author of Hebrews makes this point clear. He says, “In the past, God spoke…” So God is always speaking. God is always revealing.

“In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways.”

Through the Scriptures, through experience, through all of these things. And God was gracious and kind to reveal God’s self to us—and who we are and why we’re here.

“But in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom also He made the universe.”

So here we have Jesus being elevated. These are the authoritative lenses. This is the One through which you look and see everything. It’s more authoritative than the prophets who came before you. It’s more authoritative than anything you ever heard through your ancestors or whatever stories you have been handed down generation upon generation.

Jesus, the heir of all things, gives you clarity in ways that none of these other things in the past have given us clarity. And so we need to adjust the lens through which we’re looking. He says,

“Let me tell you about these lenses. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being.”

Can you get any more clear than that? Right? The exact representation of God. Do you want to know what God is like? Look at Jesus—clearest picture. Do you want to know what God thinks of the world, thinks of you? Look through Jesus—the radiance of God’s glory, sustaining all things by His powerful word. After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

So it matters the lens we look through. And we need, as we step into a study of the church—who we are and who God is—we always want to keep the right lens on and calibrate whatever we say about the church, whatever we say about God, whatever we say about Scripture.

We’re not looking through primarily anything else.

Not even one section of Scripture has more authority than what Jesus shows us about God.

Okay, that’s a little tricky, right? But we don’t start with Paul and just look narrowly through Paul and his lens without measuring it up against Jesus. Not that they will contradict each other, but it matters the lens through which you’re looking.

And so we will understand Paul’s words about God in light of Jesus. We’ll get a clearer picture. If we start somewhere else, we can get askew. Same when we’re reading the Old Testament—man, we got to read some of those stories through the lens of Jesus to get an understanding of who God is, what God is like.

So the same is true as we step into a study of the church. We have to start with the right glasses, and we start with Jesus.

And what did Jesus spend most of His time talking about? I wonder, if we took a vote—right? Like, love? Some people say He talked a lot about hell. He talked a lot about money.

What did Jesus spend the majority of His time talking about? It’s the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God.

Jesus didn’t come merely to tell us how to get to heaven. He came to declare that heaven is coming to earth.

When we take Jesus at His word and we pay attention to what He said, and how He said it, and what He did, and how He did it, we see that Jesus isn’t ushering in—giving us a rescue and escape plan to get out of earth. He is coming to renew and restore earth, bringing heaven to earth.

We see in Revelation 21 that we see heaven coming down to earth. We’re not escaping earth. God is transforming earth, renewing earth, restoring earth—the cosmos, relationships.

So the message of Jesus is—He says at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark—”The Kingdom of God is at hand. It is near. It is here.” He actually begins: “The time is fulfilled.” In verse 14: “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news.”

Repent and believe the good news.

Scholar Ron Sider says

the Kingdom of God is not just a future destination. It’s the very heart of the gospel. It’s what Jesus and the apostles proclaimed, and it’s what we are invited to live in right now.

Okay, this is the invitation of Jesus. This is the gospel. This isn’t abstract stuff—stuff to just think about, theological concept. It’s not a footnote. This is everything.

This has everything to do with who Jesus was, who we are, how we’re invited to live our life—the lens through which we’re invited to look and to live.

So Jesus starts by announcing the manner of this Kingdom. Rachel read it. This is a direct quote of Isaiah 61:1–4 that Jesus takes and applies to Himself.

In Isaiah 61, this is Isaiah declaring the promises of God for the people of God—what God’s agenda is for the world, how He wants to restore, renew, reverse the curse of sin and death, make all wrong things right.

And He says there is a day coming. Messiah will come. I will anoint Him with my Spirit, and He will usher in the Kingdom.

So the first public words recorded in the Gospel of Luke—Jesus’ first publicly recorded words—are these. He’s in Nazareth. He’s in a synagogue. And He says, as is His custom, He went in. They handed Him a scroll. Coincidence? It’s Isaiah 61 scroll.

He opens it up and He reads it. He says:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me”—verse 18—
“because He has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

That’s shorthand for the year of Jubilee. Every seven years, there’d be a mini jubilee where the land was laid to rest. And then the seventh seven years—forty-nine years—the fiftieth year, all the land would be returned to the original owners. All slaves would be released. It’s a very political, here-and-now reality that this happens.

It’s crazy. Imagine this being a politician’s campaign promise: “In fifty years, everything goes back to where it started. Everything you’ve accrued goes back to the original owners. We all start from scratch.” Yikes. No one’s voting for him.

And this is why Jesus wasn’t super popular all the time.

He rolled up the scroll. He gave it back to the attendant. And He sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him—right? Because this is crazy, crazy stuff.

He began by saying to them, “Today…” When? In two hundred years? In a thousand years? Next week? No. “Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

So we see that with the arrival of Jesus is the arrival of the promised Kingdom. A new reality. A new way of life. A new arrangement of people and priorities and perspectives. Here’s the Kingdom.

So it’s the message that Jesus preached. It’s the message that He told His disciples to preach. He sent them—the disciples—out to proclaim what? The Kingdom of God.

In another place, when He sends out the seventy, He says, when you come and you proclaim the truth and you heal diseases and you cast out demons, what are they supposed to say? “The Kingdom of God has come. The Kingdom of God is in your midst.”

And so this is the message of the disciples in Acts. After Jesus rises from the dead, Jesus just can’t stop talking about the Kingdom. This is after He lived, He died, He rose from the dead, and now He’s on earth for another forty days. What is He talking about with His disciples? What’s He doing? What’s He hanging out in the upper room—having coffee?

After His suffering, He presented Himself to them. He gave many convincing proofs that He was alive. And He appeared to them over a period of forty days.

And what is He talking about?

The Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God.

He’s trying to get the glasses right before He leaves earth and ascends to heaven. He’s like,

“Get the glasses right,” because it matters. It makes all the difference in the world.

Now, the Gospel of Acts is all about the movement of the church, right? The Acts of the Spirit through the church. This is how Acts begins.

If you’re telling a good story, you want a point to be communicated. You’re going to have typically the beginning and the end as kind of a declaration of your main points, okay? Write a good essay—say what you’re going to say, say it, and say it again, right?

So Acts starts with Jesus proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Acts 1:3.

Where do we end at the very end of Acts? What’s Paul talking about? He’s in prison for two years. He stayed there. He rented his own house—I don’t know how that works. Welcomed all who came to see him.

He proclaimed what? The Kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus with all boldness and without hindrance.

What’s the message of Jesus? What’s the message of the apostles? It’s the Kingdom of God.

The Gospels—the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—tell us the good news about Jesus. Twenty times they make a direct connection to the gospel being connected to the Kingdom. It’s the gospel of the Kingdom of God.

What does “gospel” mean? The Greek word is euangelion. “Evangelistic,” right? That’s the word we get “evangelism” from. Euangelion is a Greek word used to describe what the Roman Empire, or the Greek Empire, or Babylonian Empire, or any empire used to proclaim and declare over the territories they conquered.

“We’re going to proclaim the gospel—good news. Rome is your new ruler. Congratulations. Pax Romana. We have overtaken your land, and now you get to live in Rome. You have to live under a new ruler. Caesar is now your lord.”

Again, Caesar calls himself lord. Jesus says, “Jesus is Lord.” When the early church confessed “Jesus is Lord,” it’s a challenge to Caesar. Saying, “You’ve got a new lord. There’s a new allegiance. There’s a new kingdom in town. Good news.”

Now, as opposed to Rome, as opposed to Greece, as opposed to Babylon, as opposed to Persia—when Jesus comes announcing the gospel of the Kingdom, it is good news. It’s good news because the poor have good news preached to them. The blind have eyes to see. Those in prison are released and comforted. We see that it is the world restored to how God intended it to be.

There’s a new King in town. And He’s always been in town—but we haven’t noticed it. And now we do. And He says, “Let’s get some new glasses. Live in light of this Kingdom.”

This Kingdom of God that’s on the move—that challenges everything you thought was true.

So what is the Kingdom?

The Kingdom of God is the rule and reign of God. This is kind of the academic definition here: the reign of God through Christ, manifested in the lives of His people—that’s you and me—and the world, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Let’s put it simply.

The Kingdom of God is God’s reign. There’s a new King. There’s a new emperor. There’s a new Lord. And it’s breaking into our world.

He says, “Today, this is fulfilled. The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe.”

It’s a present reality—not a future hope, purely. It’s where God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

This is how Jesus teaches us to pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your Kingdom come, your will be done”—where? “On earth,” right? “As it is in heaven.”

It’s about heaven breaking in. It’s life the way God always intended it to be—full of justice, joy, healing, and peace.

So let’s break this down a little bit. Obviously, there could be a whole sermon series and a whole lifetime study on the Kingdom, but I think these are the important things to know today as we go into an exploration of what it means to be the people of God, to be the church, to be a people of on earth as it is in heaven, right?

The Kingdom has a King. Every kingdom has a King. Every kingdom has a people. So God creates a Kingdom as well. And then, the Kingdom is kinetic.

You know, all those K’s. Now, please forgive the three K’s—that’s not great. But we’ll forgive that. Let’s move on.

Marks of the Kingdom.
The Kingdom has a King.

Again, we just went over this, but let me hammer it home a little bit more.

Jesus says, right before He ascends to heaven—He gathers His disciples, He’s been crucified, He’s risen from the dead, He’s been talking about the Kingdom for forty days, and now He’s on the hill and He’s about to be taken up—and He says:

“All authority…” How much? Ninety percent? Ten percent? Is this a democracy that we’re talking about? No. “All authority has been given to Me”—where? “On earth as it is in heaven.”

This is an authority that is all-encompassing. He’s the King.

N.T. Wright reminds us that in the first century, when people heard “gospel,” they weren’t thinking about this private spiritual message for me. They were thinking about this royal announcement that I just talked about—that there’s a new King in town. The King had come in power.

And so God’s reign has broken into history. Heaven is being unleashed on earth as it was always intended to be in the beginning.

Right? God created the heavens and the earth, said it was good, and He walked in the garden. We enjoyed communion with God. This is God restoring Eden.

So Jesus, then, is not merely a teacher of morality. He’s not a dispenser of religious experiences. He’s the rightful ruler of all creation.

And understanding this is to acknowledge also that there are rival kingdoms. There are kingdoms that are opposed to life, that are obsessed with power and control and accumulation and exclusion and all of these things.

So when Jesus comes announcing His gospel, there are other competing gospels, definitions of good news, and empire, and ways of arranging our life.

And so to declare “Jesus is Lord” is to say that Caesar is not. It is to proclaim allegiance to Jesus—and to say, “We declare allegiance to God.”

Not to a flag. Not to a donkey. Not to an elephant. Not to a parent. Not to a business. Not to a manifesto of any kind.

It is Jesus. And He alone is our allegiance. We give our allegiance to Him.

So …

faith then becomes about loyalty. It becomes about following our King and no others.

So that’s the Kingdom has a King.

So we are people that pledge allegiance to Jesus. And that’s the act of baptism—publicly proclaiming our allegiance to the King. The King of kings and the Lord of lords. Acknowledging that He is the One whom we follow. The One who grants us good news—defeat of sin, evil, everything.

Then the Kingdom is a kin-dom.

All right, you may have heard this. Some scholars start to recognize that the kind of Kingdom that Jesus establishes is not like the kingdoms of the world. It’s not like Rome. It’s not like Greece. It’s not like Babylon. It’s something completely different.

It’s a family. It’s a kinship.

Kinship is this word that speaks to the most intimate of relationships—blood relationships. There’s kinship care in the foster care system, where children, if they have a family—a relative—to go to, rather than just a stranger in the foster care system, the courts prefer to place them with kin, with kinship care, because that’s where life and nurture can really take place. And often there’s that blood connection.

Well, Jesus comes not only to create a kingdom of this kind of, you know, where He’s King, but it’s a different kind of Kingdom where He doesn’t rule through a strong iron fist.

He comes creating a loving family, a community of kinship—a kin-dom.

And this family is not defined as we typically define human families. It includes people from every tribe, every tongue, every nation, every culture. And all are included into the blessed family of God.

The King forms a new kinship that transcends bloodlines, ethnicities, and borders. And so

in God’s Kingdom, all kingdoms—all families—are grafted into the family of God.

You know, in certain churches, they really emphasize this. They’ll say, “Hey, brother. Hey, sister. Hey, Brother Jesse. Hey, Brother John. Hey, Sister Rosemary.” It’s brother and sister. It’s acknowledging that in the Kingdom of God, He makes us kin—no matter where we come from, no matter where we’ve been, no matter what we’ve done—we become family, and we belong to one another.

Brothers and sisters, bound not by biology but by baptism. This is beautiful.

There’s a guy named Gregory Boyle. He’s a Franciscan friar—or I think he’s Franciscan—but he has been in L.A. for some time. He started Homeboy Industries. He wrote a book called Tattoos on the Heart, which is awesome. I highly recommend it.

But he works with gang members in L.A.—people who have committed murder, people who have done kidnappings and dealt drugs and all kinds of horrific, horrible things they’ve both perpetrated and experienced. And he just majors on this idea of kinship—that we all belong to each other.

That’s the deepest desire of a gang member. That’s the deepest desire of a businessperson. That’s the deepest desire of the President of the United States. That’s the deepest desire of someone struggling, nameless, in some slum somewhere—it is to experience belonging and to know that they have dignity, value, and worth. That they are loved.

So this is his main thing. And he says:

“No daylight separates us. Kinship is what God presses us on—to imagine a circle of compassion, and then imagine nobody standing outside of it.”

It’s a beautiful image of the Kingdom of God. And this is how Jesus manifests and embodies the Kingdom. He’s always eating with people. He’s always including. There’s no one left out of that circle.

And He’s always getting criticized by it—by those who want to maintain those rigid lines and boundaries. He’s like, “No. The Kingdom of God—the table of God, the meal of God—is open to everyone. It’s a circle of compassion, and there’s no one outside of it. Come and eat with Me.” It’s the Kingdom of God.

So I think it’s important to realize then—again, to emphasize this—the invitation of Jesus is not just to individuals.

The walk of following Jesus isn’t an individual pursuit. It’s very personal, but it’s not private.

Okay, so we have a very personal relationship with God, but it’s not an individualistic one. It’s not just “me and Jesus,” all right?

And in our culture, that’s one of those lenses. That’s the American Western lens, right? “It’s me and Jesus. I don’t need anyone else. I just need my ‘me and Jesus’ time.”

Well, Jesus says, “No. Look around you. I have developed a Kingdom, and this journey is a journey in community. I have created—this is not a solo sport. It’s a team sport.”

And so we need each other. And sometimes the basketball star doesn’t want to have a team, but he needs a team.

We’re called to be a team. And so we follow Jesus as community. And this is also the source of our healing and the source of the world’s healing.

We’ll talk about this as the church. But what is Jesus—the Scriptures call the church? One of the terms that we are named is the body of Christ.

So think about Jesus—His body—moving through the world, the dust of Nazareth, right? Touching lepers. Restoring people on the margins. Eating with people. Proclaiming the Kingdom of God. That’s what His body was doing.

Now we are the body of Christ. And so, as we are incorporated into the body of Christ, grafted into the Kingdom of God under King Jesus—this is how we restore our healing.

Look around at each other right now. This is the source of your healing. This is the body of Christ to you.

That’s not always the funnest thing, right? You’re like, “That person? The body of Christ?” Yes. Together. This is the source of our healing.

This is where your marriages will be restored. This is where your families will be restored. This is where your bodies will be restored. This is the source of your healing.

And it’s also the source of the healing of the world—that Jesus has called not just an individual but a community, a body, to be His presence in the world.

And so this is the hope of the world. Look around you. You are—we are—the hope of the world. The Kingdom of God.

And we invite people into this kinship. And that’s where they experience their healing. And they get to be a part of our healing. And then it just keeps going.

Last but not least, the Kingdom is kinetic.

Anyone who knows me knows I probably have no idea really what “kinetic” is, but I know it has to do with movement. Right? I don’t know the scientific stuff, but the Kingdom is kinetic. It is not static. It has movement. And it is moved by the Spirit of God.

I love this connection that we see in Scripture. The Kingdom is a Spirit-driven movement.

Jesus promises the arrival of the Spirit. And in the Gospel of John, Jesus tells—or John describes Jesus—after He is resurrected, He breathes on the disciples. And in the Gospel of John, this is the impartation of the Spirit. He gives the Spirit to them. He breathes on them.

And this calls to mind a couple of other times God has breathed. He’s breathed at the beginning of all things—Genesis 1 and 2. His Spirit hovered over the earth. It was formless and void. And He breathed into Adam—breathed life.

And what was He breathing life into Adam for? Well, it gave him life, but it also empowered his calling to steward the earth, to be in communion with God and all creation.

Then there’s another time we see the breath of God. We’ve sung about it a little bit in “Graves Into Gardens.” Ezekiel 37. There’s a valley of dry bones. And the Spirit of God, the breath of God, goes over the bones. And what happens to the bones? They take on flesh. They come alive.

It’s the people of God resurrected. It’s you and me, resurrected, empowered by the Spirit.

And so the church is a Spirit-moved, Spirit-motivated, Spirit-empowered people, enabled to be the body of Christ.

The church is the Kingdom’s kinetic body—right?—to heal, renew, and restore.

So it’s important to realize that when we talk about the Kingdom, we do not talk about a static place you go. But it’s a reality—a dynamic reality—you enter.

Okay, so

the Kingdom of God is not a future place we go. It is a dynamic reality already at work in the world, unleashed, that we choose to step into.

I think of—you know, if you’ve ever been to the ocean or on a river float or something like that—you get in with that bodyboard. You know, the ocean, you’ve got to try to catch the wave. Right? Bodyboarding or surfing, you kind of get in there. And sometimes you catch the wave just right and it carries you along.

But you’re not always in that right current. You’re not always there. And sometimes you go there and you just get nose-dived.

And so

being a follower of Jesus and being a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven is all about moving, following, finding the flow of the Spirit and going with the flow—where the Spirit is going, bringing renewal, joy, peace, justice, forgiveness, healing, victory—all throughout the world.

And we ride that wave wherever the Spirit of God is being breathed. We get carried up and along with the Spirit of God.

To be a part of the Kingdom, to live in the Kingdom, is to live in the rhythm of the breath of God that brings life and joy and justice and flourishing.

And so the question then is: how do we enter this present reality?

Jesus tells us. This was His message. This is really good news—that the Spirit of God is at work in the world, bringing renewal and restoration and healing and forgiveness.

And so He says, “You want to be a part of it? There’s a new King. There’s a new Kingdom. There’s a new flow. There’s a new reality. Would you join with it?”

He says this is what you do. “The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is at hand.” There are two things: repent and believe.

Repent and believe.

So to repent, then, in this context—right? With the right set of glasses on here—to repent is not just to feel sorry for your sins. It’s so much bigger than that. It’s way bigger than that.

It’s to switch allegiances. It’s to say, “I was following this king, and now I’m following a new King. I am turning away from the reign of myself in my life, and I’m putting Jesus on the throne. I am turning away from the reign of fear in my life, and I am trusting the One who has defeated fear. I am turning away from the reign of money in my life and the pursuit of wealth in my life. I’m turning away from the reign of sex and indulgence and covetousness and all of these things.”

These no longer are my king. I switch allegiances. I follow Jesus and His way, and I order my life accordingly.

So that’s to repent.

To believe is then to trust—to say, “I will remain loyal.”

You know, to say “I have faith” is not just intellectual assent. It is whole-bodied allegiance. It’s saying, “All right, Jesus, You’re going this way. I’m following You. I’m going where You go.”

That’s faith. That’s allegiance—to trust and to believe that Jesus is the true King ushering in the true Kingdom, and the Spirit is moving.

So we are reminded this morning and through this series that the church—you and me in this place—is not a waiting room for heaven, for people trying to get to heaven.

Right? We’re not like an elevator waiting to go up. We are an outpost of heaven in the world. We are a witness of what God is doing, and we are the people—Spirit-empowered people—through which heaven is coming to earth by His Spirit.

So I love the prayer of Saint Francis, who gets at this. We’re reminded again that the Kingdom of God—allegiance to Jesus—is not abstract. It’s not just something I pray in my heart and that happens as some mysterious thing out here.

It impacts my relationships and my life. It means paying attention to the Spirit as He hovers over your marriage. What is God doing? How is God at work in your marriage? How can you join with the Kingdom of Heaven coming and breaking into your marriage?

How is the Spirit hovering and breathing over your neighborhood, and how can you join it? Are you looking?

We’re like “I spy. I spy the Spirit.” How am I going to join what the Spirit is doing in my neighbor’s life? Or in my workplace? Or in the healthcare system? Or in your business? Or wherever it is?

We’re being swept up in God’s renewal project. That’s what it means to be a part of the Kingdom.

And so the prayer of Saint Francis says, “Where there is hatred, let me sow love.” He says, “Let me be an instrument of your peace.” You could say, “An instrument of your Kingdom.”

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there’s despair, hope.
Where there’s darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.

We are a people that looks for the Spirit in all these places and brings life.

So the Kingdom has a King.

The Kingdom has a kin-dom.

And the Kingdom is on the move.

And today, the King is inviting us.

He’s inviting us to repent and believe this good news, and to pledge our allegiance and to join the movement—to be a part of the new family of God, to live under the reign of the King whose breath is making all things new wherever it goes.

So, TJ, could I have you come on up here?

As we move into communion and are invited to this meal of the King, I would love for you to just reflect on this prayer. You don’t have to pray this prayer, but it’s a guide as a response.

So read through it. Sit with it a bit. And see if you’re willing to pray this prayer in response to King Jesus inviting us into this new way of life.

So let’s be still. Spend some time with the Lord—personally. Not individually, but personally.

Lord Jesus, You are our King.
Let Your Kingdom come in us and through us.
Make us a people of Your peace,
Your justice,
Your mercy,
Your love,
Your forgiveness—
all of it, Lord.
Your joy.

May Your will be done on earth, within Foothills,
within our families,
just like it is in heaven.
Starting right here.
Starting right now.

We pray these things in Your name. Amen. Amen.