Practicing The King's EconomySample

Joy in the Journey

Practicing the King’s economy is all about receiving God’s rich, immeasurable, unfathomable, deliriously intoxicating grace. Our hope in writing the book this devotional is based on is that by embracing these practices by faith we experience God’s transforming, renewing, and restoring power. If we try to come at these practices in a workaholic, legalistic mode, we’re missing the point. We believe these practices fit God’s generous offer of His kingdom. Exercised by faith in God’s generosity (see Ephesians 2:4–10; 1 Timothy 6:17–19), they will help train us for godliness (see 1 Timothy 4:7) and protect us from “ruin and destruction” (1 Timothy 6:8–11).

Because such disciplines help us “tune in” to God’s great gifts, we believe the emotion that most often accompanies these practices is joy. In our lives, seeking to embrace God’s economic kingdom through such practices has been a glorious adventure—and we recognize we’re just getting started. We pray Jesus will give you similar joy on your journey.

As we embrace this journey, we believe we may see a church whose embodiment of God’s economy spills out into the world in all sorts of unique ways, providing us with new, as yet unimagined, ways of loving and serving in neighborhoods, businesses, banks, workplaces, church spaces, and politics.

You and I have a choice. We can keep working for an economy that won’t last, that rust and moth are already destroying, and that can never satisfy. We can make profit maximizing the sole goal of our market activities. We can aim at the economy of “me and mine” and donate our scraps to the soup kitchen. We can continue to develop economic habits and practices that will leave us clueless when God invites us to join him in establishing his new heavens and new earth economy.

Or we can welcome his kingdom now, we can embrace and embody the good news to the poor declared in our King Jesus, and we can make the economy of God encounterable for the world through the way we live our lives. We can create businesses, churches, families, and homes where the way we worship, work, spend, save, invest, compensate, share, and create all aim at establishing a community where everybody can bring a plate to the potluck.

What is one truth or idea you are taking from this devotional that will change how you view loving others?