Before we get into that, let's talk about what the kingdom of God isn't.
If we aren't careful we reduce the Kingdom of God down to a set of rules and rituals. That was never God's intention. Remember God is wanting relationship with us. He has invited us into a partnership with Him. We are "labourers together" with God according to 1 Corinthians 3:9.
The mistake Israel made at Mt. Sinai is typical of the one we make as well. When God appeared to the nation on the mount they said to Moses, "You speak to us and we'll listen, but don't have God speak to us or we'll die," (Exodus 20:18-19 MSG).
It seems we prefer someone else to tell us what to do rather than think it through for ourselves. "Just give us a set of rules we can follow." When it comes to walking with God however, there is no substitute for personal communion.
God isn't looking for performance. He desires a functional relationship, one that allows for an interchange of thoughts and ideas and conversation.
That may sound heretical to some because we see God as superior to us which He is but let's remind ourselves that He deigned to commune with Adam and Eve. He communed with Abraham, Moses, and the disciples. He answered questions and even accepted challenges such as when Moses pled with Him concerning Israel's fate in Exodus 32.
And the LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people! Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation." Then Moses pleaded with the LORD his God, and said: "LORD, why does Your wrath burn hot against Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians speak, and say, 'He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth'? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.' " So the LORD relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people.
(Exo 32:9-14 NKJV)
I've gone to these lengths because when we get into Paul's letter to the Roman church and chapter fourteen He addresses some of the flaws of performance thinking that lead us away from the truth of God's Kingdom.
It's not about what we eat or don't eat or what day we worship on or whether we wash our hands a certain way, etc. Are there rules in the Kingdom? Of course there are but the heart with which we enter into and embrace the Kingdom makes the rules a secondary issue instead of primary.
I like the way The Message renders Romans 14:17 - "God's kingdom isn't a matter of what you put in your stomach, for goodness' sake. It's what God does with your life as he sets it right, puts it together, and completes it with joy."
(Rom 14:17 MSG)
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