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Description
Whether inserting yourself into the story line of the Bible, or seeing the Bible’s reflection in today’s world, this episode really jumps towards the childlike heart, stepping into the kingdom of God. Activate your imagination and join the battering ram team commissioned to smash out darkness and represent Thy kingdom come.
Transcript
Nathan Sack 00:10
Welcome to another Faith Horizons Kingdom brief. These are short podcast between 5 and 10 minutes. The purpose of a kingdom brief is to share highlights from ongoing Kingdom activities and announce events in Kansas City. Whether inserting yourself into the storyline of the Bible, or seeing the Bible’s reflection in today’s world, this episode really jumps towards the childlike heart, stepping into the kingdom of God. Activate your imagination and join the battering ram team commissioned to smash out darkness and represent Thy Kingdom come. Here’s my conversation with Scott Stanger. One of the things that was brought up at the God’s Relay Race was the story of Haggai. And you were able to look that up through the Bible project, which I’ve had some knowledge of the Bible project. But you know, I didn’t realize that they were doing such a great work. But so we actually walked through just a story of Haggai and just talked about what God did in four months.
Scott Stanger 01:11
Well, let me just talk about this a little bit. As children, we had our favorite series or storybooks that we like to read, maybe a Little House on the Prairie as one, or the Boxcar Children, or Curious George. As children, we read those stories, and we insert ourselves in the story, we allow our imagination to imagine what it would be like to see that funny little monkey hopping around and doing these things. What would it be like to be, you know, Laura Ingalls and the story of Ma and Pa, and so on. And Jesus said, Hey, we must to enter the kingdom of God, we must come as little children. In other words, we must allow ourselves first of all, to be humble, and teachable, but also to use imagination. Imagination and emotions aren’t something that is going to be cast out of heaven. And we aren’t going to have these things. No, these can be redeemed and sanctified by the power of the Holy Spirit in God’s word. And so I was encouraging all of us, let’s insert ourselves into the story, just as a child inserts themselves into the Curious George story. Let’s read this, as Paul said to Timothy, in 1Timothy, I think it’s 4:17 or so says, forsake not the public reading of Scripture. And so that’s what we did we read aloud the story of Haggai. There, and we inserted ourselves into that to say, Hmm, what would it feel like to have been back during that time of what Haggai was saying to the people, and how Joshua and Zerubbabel were responding, as well as the people he refers to him as the remnant. What would it be like for us to insert ourselves and how much of that story has significant parallels to the times that we live right now. So maybe we can take that story, not just insert ourselves into that story. But we can take that story and insert it into our times, and get some direction from God, Spirit to say, here’s how we can respond right now. And really, the response of the people was two things: humility and action. Humility and action. There’s a part where God says, Be strong, be strong, be strong. And then the response is, the people got to work. So our response to when we insert ourselves into the story and insert the story into us is that we can be humble and yet get to work take action. We’re no longer spectators in this thing. We’re not going to Arrowhead to sit in the stands, we need to make the field bigger than the seats. So we get on the field, all of us, it’s 70,000 people on the field, making the passes and the catches and the blocks and the tackles, and so on, get in the game.
Nathan Sack 04:2
Awesome. Absolutely. How do you think humility almost begets How do you think humility births action?
Scott Stanger 04:30
That’s a great question. I have this little thing that I do. You know, there’s four chambers to the physical heart, literally are four chambers. And so I go through this process all the time. I believe God’s helped me to identify aspects of each of those chambers. And the very first one is humility. So those four chambers to me are humility, gratitude, obedience and faith. Humility, gratitude, obedience and faith. You can’t see it on this podcast, but I’m actually doing the motions of when you cross yourself like, imagine a baseball player when he steps up to the plate and he, he crosses himself. That’s what I’m doing starting with my head, and I’m saying humility, and then gratitude, obedience, and faith. And so that is where we got to start. We got to start with humility. God resists the proud and gives grace to the
humble, and we’re coming before His throne of grace. And so we need grace to get to grace. So it starts then with humility, that we are posturing, our heart posture ourselves before the Lord with humility, and then grace, abounds to us so that we can fulfill His purpose. Grace goes forward, mercy is for our past, grace is for our future. So we’ve got to be in this place where we come before Him with humility, and grace abounds to us in that place to accomplish His will.
Nathan Sack 05:58
Amen. Awesome. Thank you so much. Oh, yeah. Okay, there’s one other story. Let’s just talk about this for a second. In 70 AD, there was a battering ram,
Scott Stanger 06:08
Nico.
Nathan Sack 06:10
This was just a really fun part. I was just thinking of it just imagining, you know, they had in 70 AD, was it Nico?
Scott Stanger 06:18
Yeah, was the name of the battering ram. They use the Roman army, when they laid siege to Jerusalem. And Jesus foretold us so you know, He’s, He dies some time, around 30 AD, of course. So it’s 30, some years later, when the words of Jesus are fulfilled, that this temple and the city are going to be destroyed. And it’s the Roman army, and they’re laying siege, and they’re using this battering ram, that the way it’s constructed, it’s like a, it’s a large, sort of like a swing set, if you will, but much larger. And they’ve got this log, that is the battering ram, and they’ve got ropes around it. And so these, these Roman soldiers would go up, and they get the ropes and they would have a, like a song, or we don’t know exactly what sounded like but they had this song that they were doing that would allow them to get into rhythm and harmony, and may take this piece of wood, and batter it into these huge stones that were a part of the walls of Jerusalem as well as the temple itself. And they were able to just smash these stones that weighed hundreds of tons each and smash them into smithereens. Because what were they doing? They were in rhythm, they were in unity, in unison, and they were laying siege to a point of a specific point in this stone with this object. And so they just kept laying in laying siege to this thing with this, this battering them, boom, boom, boom. And we’ve done that at times, but God’s Relay Race, we’ve taken a verse, for instance, and we’ve just stood there something that the Holy Spirit put our hearts to say, lay siege to a stronghold with this truth, this verse, this passage or whatever. And together, we would just speak that over and over and over, resisting the enemy, submitting ourselves under God, and the enemy will flee. This is a part of what intercession looks like, when God’s people come together. You know, we talked about arrowhead, for instance. Arrowhead is known as the loudest sports stadium in the world. And the players talk about how they feed off of the crowd. What is the crowd doing? They’re putting their voices into it, their voices, those players on the field are energized by the voices of the people. And that’s just part of what we’re doing there at Gods Relay Race, we’re coming and we’re putting our voices into the players. Some of those players come to God’s Relay Race, some of them don’t, or they’re there for a time, and they’re not- that doesn’t matter. What matters is the crowd has come together and is putting their voices in one accord to see the plays executed, the Kingdom plays executed in this generation. That’s what we’re doing. And that’s what’s going to move God’s Kingdom forward.
Nathan Sack 09:33
Amen. And, to your point of, you know, God’s Relay Race is kind of like we’re on the battering ram team. Amen. And, and you’ve talked about God’s Relay Race before being an incubation location and also it’s, I put down in my notes, a place of calling forth, a calling forth and a place of gestation to begin to birth these things. And so if you’re a business owner and you’re in Kansas City, you know, to your point come to God’s Relay Race and get energized.
Scott Stanger 10:06
Bingo. Get energized. The voices, the voices of the intercessors, the priest are going to be there declaring God’s truth from His word. You’re going to go out of there encouraged and energized.
Show Notes
God’s Relay Race is a workplace prayer gathering that meets on the second Saturday every month at the Plexpod in Wesport.
You’re invited!
The Second Saturday of every month from 8-10am at the Westport Plexpod.
To add to your calendar, click on the link below.
Add to Calendar
You’re invited to pray with other business leaders!
For more information go to – www.kcpray.com
