Well, good morning, 1122. How's everybody doing? Good. That's what I like to hear. All right. Hey, when I was in high school, I had an English professor. His name was Mr. Harold. One day, took us outside, and anything to get out of a class was great. And so he took us outside and told us all, lay down in the grass, and I want you to

stare up at the sky. And so he did that. And then he said, what's beyond what's beyond? Right? To my little

16-year-old brain, I thought, whoa, I don't know what's beyond what's beyond. Like beyond is what's beyond,

what's beyond. I don't know. know it's one of those questions those ideas that just was a little mind-boggling like it made smoke come out of your ears it

was just hard to even comprehend or even to think about and i don't know about you but do you ever come to the scripture? Do you ever come

to an idea and you think, this is hard to understand? Like smoke is going to come out of my ears

if I ponder this thing for a little too long. And one of those ideas Jesus taught about all the time was the kingdom of God.

A hundred and eleven times Jesus would say something like, the kingdom of God is like,

or the kingdom of heaven is like, or my kingdom is like. And then he would tell a parable or he would tell a story.

Parable just means to throw alongside of it.

So he'd take this big idea and he'd throw alongside of it a common everyday, ordinary story.

But the kingdom of God was such a centerpiece to Jesus' life and to his teaching. He would say things like,

seek first the kingdom of God. Before you seek anything else, where you do anything else,

seek first the kingdom of God. Or just like we just saying, when you pray, pray our Father,

who's in heaven. Hallowed be your name. god i'm going to praise you and then the very

next thing he says to pray is to say your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven

jesus said i i have to go to other towns talking his friends, to proclaim the good news of the gospel

of the kingdom of God. For that is why I came. Jesus said the reason that I came was to demonstrate

and to proclaim the kingdom of God. He would tell you and I, here's what I want you do. I want you to go

out and proclaim the gospel of the kingdom of God.

In Acts chapter 1, after Jesus had died on the cross and he had been raised to new life,

he came back and it says for 40 days to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people,

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