Last week we read a passage from John 6:65-66 that I feel strongly I need to read again: “And He said to them, ‘Therefore I have said to you that no once can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by my Father.’ From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.”

How will you respond to the Kingdom as it comes to you? My Aunt Eva told me once before she died that she had read the Word of God once a year for more than half a century and that sometimes she still didn’t understand everything. But she said, “I just keep following because He never lets me down.”

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You know what I have learned? You just take what God has given us in His Word and trust Him in it. You don’t need to reconcile it all, just rest in Jesus Christ. He is the final ans-wer, the final resolution to all our questions. We just receive Him and He will give us more light as we need it. You keep following. He’ll never let you down. In the hard teaching, in the hard times, in the times when the Kingdom doesn’t look like it is here, just keep following.

The Kingdom will come. It will shine. But what are you going to do with what you have been given? This is what these parables are all about today in your life and mine.

Not too long ago I was about to take my own little family vacation. It was going to take me about two day’s drive to get to our destination. A friend shook his head and said, “You know you are wasting a lot of time! Why not fly? Think of all of those wasted hours!” Well, I have nothing against flying. But his idea of wasted hours was my idea of vacation! Mae and John Michael and I love just driving, so we can be together and talk and talk and talk and laugh and “just rest in the presence of each other.” I told him that “the journey itself is the destination for us.”

And you know what? That is what we need to know about life in the Kingdom. It is here and not yet. The destination is eternal life with Jesus Christ but it is also true that the destination is the journey as we come to rest in knowing Jesus through the journey.

Please listen to this final word. Whatever you are facing, wherever your journey has led you to this point -- even if it is dark on your journey of faith -- Jesus is saying that the Light will come. The day will dawn. Wrongs will be righted and right will win out. The Kingdom will come . . . in your marriage, in your business, in your family, in your health, and if everything fails, if life itself leaves you, He will not leave you. For the Kingdom will come finally through resurrection power and through a Savior who is coming back to judge the quick and the dead and to establish a new heaven and a new earth. No more tears. No more sorrows.

But the passage forces us to ask, “What is your response” to the journey you are on right now? One woman’s response became the title of a 19th century Irish hymn. The chorus of that hymn goes like this:

Jesus, I am resting, resting,

In the joy of what Thou art;

I am finding out the greatness

Of Thy loving heart.2

“Are we there yet?” No. No we are not there yet. But we are learning that He is here. And, for now, that is enough. Why don’t you rest in Him today by receiving Him as Lord and Christ? And for some of us, let’s just rest in the joy of His loving heart?

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Michael Milton is Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, TN, and is a Contributing Editor to Preaching.

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