In every country I visit I usually have at least one meeting with pastors, business and government leaders. In the last few months, I think I have been asked one common question in every one of these meetings. The question is concerning what I think about the situation in Iraq—if I think it was a just war, and what I think the future is going to be there.

The stages in the development of an army are the following:

PHASE 1: The Call or Mobilization – The call into the Lord’s army begins with our own redemption, salvation, and devotion to live for the Lord and His purposes.

          The Lord Jesus said that we could not be trusted with the true riches of the kingdom until we learned to handle earthly riches. It has been estimated that from one-third to one-half of the biblical teachings on righteousness have to do with stewardship.

This week we will look at Ephesians 4:20-24:

The primary way we get to know the voice of the Lord is by being with Him, yet some principles we learn in our own personal relationship with Him can be helpful to others. He relates to each of His people in a unique and personal way. This is not because He is changing, but because we are all unique, an attribute He seems to especially love in His creation. This is why He gave a different word to each of the seven churches in the Book of Revelation. Even though they all existed at the same time and in the same region, they were all unique.

The kingdom economy is built on trusting more in the principles of the kingdom of God as taught in the Scriptures than in the trends and principles of this world’s economy. Of course, there are many areas in which the principles of both overlap, or are at least similar, but there are many areas where they are diametrically opposed. We will examine a few of the most basic ones here.

As we close out 2007, many will certainly be saying “good riddance!” to it. As someone once said, “Life is hard, and then you die.” As we recently heard in our Disaster Response training, the mortality rate still hovers somewhere around 100 percent, so basically we are all terminally ill. It is true that life is hard for everyone, but what are the alternatives?

Last week we began discussing what the earth will be like when the kingdom has come and the earth has been restored. Certainly there is far more to this than we have covered, but since the Bible is quite general about this we will be the same. The Bible is general about such things because we do not need more information about this now. We only know that it will be fully restored to its original intended purpose and state—a paradise that man will rule over as he again walks daily with God.