Join me for my Sunday message and the next in the series, "Evangelism, the heartbeat of God:" "Citizens of Two Kingdoms: How to Coexist as Light in a Dark World." In His High Priestly Prayer for His Disciples (and us as well) in John 17:13-23, Jesus prayed, " My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.

In the world, but not OF the world. But it seems to me that the church struggles mightily to find the "sweet spot" somewhere in the center of that equation. Often, we are either so much like the world that most non-believers cannot see any difference. Or we are "so heavenly minded we are of no earthly good" to those who are perishing in sin. In this brief passage that is a part of the Last Supper discourses, Jesus makes it very clear the role His disciples old and new are to play in the dark arena we find ourselves. We truly are citizens of two kingdoms, one earthly and full of sensuality and one heavenly filled with the promise of eternal life. As ambassadors for the Kingdom of our Lord and Christ let us yearn to take His message of love, grace and forgiveness to a world full of the darkness of sin and death.