The Kingdom of God is Within You

If you missed my post that went up at SpiritualDirection.com on Saturday, here it is. For the rest of you, don’t forget to visit www.callherhappy.com today, where I have a short guest post on Purgatory for my book blog tour. Here is the beginning of the SpiritualDirection.con post:

The other day I was feeling disgusted at the depravity of our culture. I am an idealist. I would like the world to be perfect, a place where everyone is striving to follow God. Or if I can’t have that, I’d settle for a world that tolerates people who are striving to follow God and does nothing to hinder their spiritual growth. As we all know, that’s not the world we live in. The “real” world is a fallen world, a world tainted by sin. I don’t like it.

I’m especially bothered when I see the world presenting my children with enticements to sin, or making it hard for them to live for Christ. I don’t remember what happened the other day that tempted me towards despair, but I felt depressed and beaten down when I went to prayer.

But I went to prayer! And I find that if I am truly open in prayer, my fears and frustrations tend to melt away in God’s presence.

This particular day, I was telling God that I wished we were still in the Garden of Eden. I wished we could live in a perfect world, walking with God in the cool of the day. Then the Holy Spirit nudged me. He reminded me that we can.

One day some Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom of God would come. He told them that it was already here. “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).