The Mission of God and Politics...

I often joke with Nathan about the things I will do when I am "Queen of the World."  My campaign is filled with silliness, but what I consider very good ideas to help out the world.  For example, everyone will be required to dance around 3pm everyday....it's just good for your soul.  Everyone will also have to do at least one nice thing for other's before the day is done...imagine a world like that.  I know that I'm just being silly but I'm very serious about things we can do to make this world a little bit better.

After the recent elections, I've been thinking a lot about making this world(and our country) better.  This morning I've been thinking about things we talked about at our last lab with Mission Alive.  We spent time discussing Mission of God, Kingdom of God, and Incarnation.

This morning I woke up noticing that not one person I voted for won.  When I told Nathan he asked me how that made me feel.  The only feeling I had was the feeling of hunger. I was ready to eat breakfast.  I really didn't care much about it.  I have this overwhelming thought that God is ultimately the one in control here.  So I wondered how can we help our leaders whether or not we like them.  I also asked Nathan how many of the candidates based their campaigns on the Mission of God...not many.

But what if that actually happened?  Or instead of what ifs...what can we as Christians do now to help the Mission of God shine through these leaders.  Instead of complaining all the time about our elected leaders can we pray for them to make the right choices in all aspects of their lives?  How awesome would it be if we all prayed for our leaders on a regular basis.  And when I say pray, I'm talking about praying for God's Mission to be very apparent in everything they do.

I live in a place where people talk about politics a lot...or maybe it's that I'm older and have to always sit at the "adult table" now and people have always talked about it.  Anyways, I hardly ever hear about the Mission of God when politics is the subject.  1 Timothy 2:1-2 says, ^-"The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know. Pray especially for rulers and their governments to rule well so we can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation. This is the way our Savior God wants us to live."from the Message  I don't like talking about politics at all, because it causes a lot of doubts in people's faith, arguments, and strife.  But I could totally talk about it if we changed our conversations to how we can pray for our leaders.

I'm thankful that I don't have to be Queen of the World.  Although I think I'm going to start praying more for the Mission of God to be in our leaders.  Prayer is a powerful thing, more powerful than you can even imagine.  I'm thankful that we have the Bible to read and see people like Paul who believed in the power of prayer.  I'm even more thankful that we have a God who is more powerful than any leader of any elected position.  I hope we can start praying to speak in love and of God's mission when we talk about politics.  My prayer is that we can have leader's who are filled with the Mission of God and who long for the Kingdom of God and who will be Incarnational in our world.