Through Kingdom Eyes - by Jim Van Rite (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

I started to write this book in my thirties and couldn't put it together. I was too much about me in those days, and as I say in the book, I was unable to access my feelings. I had an epiphany moment in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting when I saw in my imagination a little airplane pulling a banner that said Surrender. I had never surrendered entirely even to God, and this after having been a United Methodist minister for ten years.

I was frightened at the prospect of losing myself, and I remembered how I had fought that very thing in my just-failed marriage. If I could just have stopped protecting myself from her needs, then I could have seen the hurt that she carried in her, and I would have been doing love by listening to her instead of pulling away. Instead, when God showed me that surrender to such a path was the way to gaining access to my feelings, and really better access to him, I was too frightened to risk it.

This book is about a wondrous truth that God has revealed to me over the decades since those times. He showed me that we are eternal spiritual beings and that we live in the kingdom of God in the here and now. He showed me that the kingdom of God is the true fabric of reality, and the world of darkness that we walk around in is unable to fulfill the spiritual needs that God has instilled in us.

We are made to love as he loves us. We are made to show others the grace that he shows us. We are made to forgive and not to hold grudges and judge others.

God is being, and we are being made of him. The forever kingdom of God is meant to be manifested in what we call the here and now, through us. The sweet bye-and-bye is just a transition from one part of eternity to another. This part of eternity is meant to be changed by us as Jesus calls for in the Lord's Prayer ("thy will be done on earth as in heaven").

We are the spiritual agents meant to change the world. We must see it first and thus Through Kingdom Eyes.