{"id":4240,"date":"2009-01-02T09:13:27","date_gmt":"2009-01-02T15:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=4240"},"modified":"2009-01-02T09:23:53","modified_gmt":"2009-01-02T15:23:53","slug":"kingdom-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/kingdom-coming\/","title":{"rendered":"Kingdom coming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Brood of snakes! What do you think you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing slithering down here to the river? Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to make any difference? <strong>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s your life that must change, not your skin!<\/strong> And don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think you can pull rank by claiming Abraham as father. Being a descendant of Abraham is neither here nor there. Descendants of Abraham are a dime a dozen. <strong>What counts is your life. Is it green and blossoming? Because if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s deadwood, it goes on the fire.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m baptizing you here in the river, <strong>turning your old life in for a kingdom life<\/strong>. The real action comes next: The main character in this drama\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcompared to him I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a mere stagehand\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwill ignite the kingdom life within you, a fire within you, the Holy Spirit within you, <strong>changing you from the inside out<\/strong>. <strong>He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to clean house\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmake a clean sweep of your lives. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll put out with the trash to be burned.&#8221;<\/strong> Jesus then appeared, arriving at the Jordan River from Galilee. He wanted John to baptize him. John objected, &#8220;I&#8217;m the one who needs to be baptized, not you!&#8221; But Jesus insisted. <strong>&#8220;Do it. God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work, putting things right all these centuries, is coming together right now in this baptism.&#8221;<\/strong> So John did it.<\/p>\n<p>(matthew 3:7b-15)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Brood of snakes! What do you think you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing slithering down here to the river? Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to make any difference? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s your life that must change, not your skin! And don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think you can pull rank by claiming Abraham as father. Being a descendant of &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/kingdom-coming\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Kingdom coming<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,19],"tags":[1750,1749,1751,1155,1752],"class_list":["post-4240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-reflections","tag-come","tag-coming","tag-inside","tag-kingdom","tag-out"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-16o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}