We Are Called...No...Expected....To Live Beyond Our Circumstances!

Jesus walked among His disciples and He taught them. I would think that one of the toughest things for His disciples to grasp was that they must live outside and beyond their circumstances. His disciples were men who had been taught from childhood that the Messiah would come and set up a Kingdom. Among themselves they had visions of overcoming all their enemies and even discussed, at times, how they would rank in the new Kingdom.

Then.....Jesus explained about that Kingdom thing.... It was to be a Spiritual Kingdom and the new King (Jesus) would be given up, tortured and crucified. Also, in this Kingdom, those who would be first will be last and those who would be last shall be first. Jesus explained that the world was not their home, that His Father's mansion has many rooms and that when He left them, He was going to prepare a place.

He called them to look beyond the hard times and persecution and beyond their circumstances to the reality of a new and eternal Kingdom of God. Jesus told them they were called to be in the world, but not of the world. What a concept for us now and, wow, what a concept for those steeped in the Law of Moses. Judaism and the Law had become a weight that held them in a world of ceremony and physical, fleshly atonement for their sin. Now they were shown a spiritual Kingdom they would be welcomed into through the great and final atonement of One.

About 50 years after Christ's death and resurrection,  Paul continued to admonish followers of Christ to avoid the perceptions of the world. In the 12th Chapter of Romans, he writes: "And, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."

We cannot live in and be shaped by our circumstances and hope to fall within the will of God.