I’ve been reading “The Divine Conspiracy” by Dallas Willard. Spoiler alert, the conspiracy is that “God’s desire for us is that we should live in Him.” You remember, “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). But, what does this really mean?

Willard suggests God is, in God’s own nature, a “community of boundless love” from which we are all “invited to make a pilgrimage into.” For many of us, we’ve been taught this unifying end game is heaven, a place detached from the material world. Gratefully, the revelation of Jesus in history suggests we don’t have to wait for death for our own life to experience God’s plan for us, or the world He loves.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “Our faith is not a matter of hearing what Christ said long ago, and trying to ‘carry it out’.. Rather the real Son is at your side, He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself.” Could this be true? Could the coming of Jesus kingdom have flung open the reality in this present life to enter the passion of God’s own nature. God’s suffering, divesting, and perfectly glorious nature are indeed at work in all who believe and follow Jesus way.

This is how the kingdom of Jesus moves and advances in the earth.

To be a Christian, is to be like Jesus Christ, not just do like Christ, as meaningful as that. All our doing flows from God’s divine conspiracy to transform our being. Once we begin this journey of transformation, participating in the active will of God becomes our aim as the church. Willard says it like this. “For God is unlimited creative will, and constantly invites us, even now, into an even larger share in what he is doing.” As we are caught up into God’s active will, “our deeds become an element in God’s eternal history.”

Isn’t that a wild thought! We all want to be participants in God’s unfolding history. We all care about what’s happening in the world and if we’re human, want to be part of bringing lasting, flourishing change. Yet, to experience this, I’m learning I must enter God’s reality, and actualizing God’s kingdom in the moments. His kingdom is here, and our transformation into Jesus image from the inside out advances it forward.

This makes mission all the more daunting, and sacrificial. God’s not interested, I believe, in a people willing to fling a particular message around to our neighbors. We are to, in the pattern of Christ’s coming, incarnate love, which begins with taking up a cross… then we are privileged to enter the lives of others, like Christ, and love (whatever the cost).

I’m reminded in all of the political upheaval presently in the West, that Jesus kingdom was not of this earth (Jn 18:36). That doesn’t mean that Jesus kingdom wasn’t intended FOR earth, but rather Jesus dismissal of the current world’s broken system. If ever there was a need for the church to embody Jesus, and enter our cultures as a people being transformed!

Bruce Crowe