1 Corinthians 4:20

The Kingdom of God, you see, isn’t about talk—it’s about power.

~New Testament For Everyone

For the kingdom of God is not just a lot of talk; it is living by God’s power.

~New Living Translation

How have I never encountered this verse before?

What an amazingly pithy statement.

We could say that the kingdom of God is the range of God’s effective will—where what God wants done is done. It is not where what God wants done is merely talked about. Rather it is enacted through God’s power.

I was at this church planting forum a month or so ago, and at lunch one of the guys I met asked our group, “So what is God doing here in your city?”

What a great question. He didn’t just want to talk about the kingdom, pointlessly philosophizing, he wanted to hear what was actually happening via God’s power.

To be candid, I’ve grown quite bored with philosophizing about the kingdom, and simply want to live it, and hear stories about what God is doing. That’s what inspires people, way more than talking about theories or principles or what we could or should be doing.

Lots of talk quickly becomes a yawn-fest.

God’s power is….powerful.

Like the blind man who was healed by Jesus giving his testimony: “Look, I don’t know how He did it. All I know is I was blind, He put some mud on my eyes, told me to go wash in the pool of Siloam, I washed, and now I can see!” (John 9)