KINGDOM
OF GOD, KEYS TO

THE KEY to the kingdom of heaven is not a key that opens an earthly door. If you’re looking for an earthly solution to your problem, and you are trying to use the key to the kingdom of heaven, you are using the wrong key on the wrong lock.

On a trip to New York, I arrived at my hotel, checked in at the front desk, and was given a card access key to enter my room. I went to my floor, stuck in the key card, on came a green light, and I had access to my room, a part of the bigger kingdom called the hotel. I had been duly authorized to have access to my own place inside the kingdom because I was a registered guest at the hotel. The kingdom received me and gave me a key so that I could access what was mine. I now had authority to go in and out of that room at my leisure.

Now, after that trip, I had to leave New York and fly directly to Chicago before coming back to Dallas. When I got to Chicago, I went to another hotel. This hotel also authorized me to be there and gave me a key card. I put the key card in my pocket, grabbed my luggage, and took the elevator upstairs to the twentieth floor. I reached in my pocket, took out my key card and placed it in the lock. A red light came on. I tried the key again. Still, I only got a red light. Now I was evangelically ticked off. It is very irritating to go to the twentieth floor with a bunch of luggage and find out your key does not work! So I got on the elevator, went down to registration, and said, “This does not work.”

The front desk person apologized. “Oh I’m sorry. Let me give you a new key card.” As she took the key card and looked at it, she paused, then said, “I’m sorry, sir, but this key card doesn’t go to this hotel.”

I had put the New York key card in my pocket, and once I arrived in Chicago, I mistakenly took that key card out of my pocket to try to open the hotel door. I pulled out the wrong key card, trying to solve my problem in the new hotel. It wouldn’t work.

A lot of us come to church to get the right key, but then we take out the wrong key when we leave church. We try to use it and we hear a “click,” and all we get is a red light. It doesn’t work. People then go around saying, “God doesn’t work,” “Jesus doesn’t work,” “The Bible doesn’t work,” or “Christianity doesn’t work.” However, the problem is the key they are using. But if you don’t use a heavenly solution to solve your earthly problems, it won’t work.540

[Life, Fixing; Problems, Solutions to]

Matt. 16:17–20