I asked myself what it looked like to usher in the kingdom. Here is where is took me.
It looks like a ragamuffin. A broken down, dirty, clothed in rags, joyful, laughing, filled with the Spirit, poor, a mischievous smile dancing at the corners of her mouth Woman of God who has found her place in the Kingdom. She is beginning to see how the Kingdom of God and it’s people truly have become her home.
I struggle to share my heart in this kind of form. People just keep telling me to “write Gretchen, just write. Something will come out” Although this is like pulling teeth for me I’m just going to go for it. I really don’t have anything to loose.
I was reading in my devotional the other day (Reflections for Ragamuffins by Brennan Manning) this:
This just hit home for me because I knew what God was calling me out of last year when I left for the race only to find that my real challenge would be when I returned home from the race. The depth of honest truth of who I had become and who I used to be that I attempted to walk in once I returned home was both incredibly painful but filled with a deep joy that I’m not sure I could express in these pages.
God began refining my character and pruning my branches as soon as I accepted the challenge of leaving my comfort zone for a year. He had introduced the creative tension into my life. I left with a knowledge of who I thought I was but also with a definition of who I had decided I was because of how others had defined me. Who was I really in the Kingdom of God? How did Papa Bear truly see me? He saw me as accepted, loved, redeemed, a Daughter of the King, a Princess in the Kingdom, a mighty warrior, a character for His Kingdom. I didn’t allow these truths to sink into my spirit until I had finally allowed Christ to define who I was. He helped define my character in Him through my community, through my brothers and sisters who would not let me run from truth, freedom and grace.
I posed this question to myself earlier. What does it look like to usher in the Kingdom?
Through this process of the last year and a half ushering in the Kingdom looks like calling a generation out of their mundane lives, calling them to step out of the status quo, calling them to Truth in who they are, helping them realize they’re all characters in the Kingdom. To help usher them into a Journey where they will embark in perilous freedom on a new exodus.
I have been called out again into this wild adventure. This time to help co-lead the June Squad into the depths of Kingdom Living.
To the June Squad:
Number One: I LOVE YOU
Number Two: You are “My People” welcome to the Family!
Number Three: My prayer for you this year. I pray you would allow God to reveal his character in you this year. Allow HIM to define you. I pray BOLDNESS and TRUTH over you as you walk this year out and I pray you will allow your brothers and sisters to see who you are becoming. May your Freedom make others Free. Break down the Walls!
I LOVE YOU I-SQUAD
(this blog is for you)
