You may think yourself significant or perhaps you think very little of yourself.  Regardless, you are special.  You are unique.  You have thoughts and experiences and emotions that you alone have.  No one else has lived your exact life.  No one else has breathed your exact breath.  You were created unique amongst all the billions of people and creatures and plants that have ever existed.  What does this mean?  Your life, all that makes you, you, all that is in your heart, soul, mind, and body, can be thought of as your kingdom.  Your own little domain, your own little kingdom with its various walls and defenses, with its own wisdom and secrets.  Your life is your kingdom. 

How do we know we have a kingdom?  How do we know that we have our own little domain?  One of the clearest ways to help us understand this is when things don’t go our way.  When you are stopped from doing something you want to do or from going where you want to go, how do you respond?  When someone accuses you of something you don’t think you did, how do you react?  When our plans, when our pride gets blocked, we are frustrated and even angry.  Our kingdom has suffered an attack, and we don’t like it. 

When anger and frustration come to the front of our minds and lives, we’re revealing that something or someone other than God is in charge. Now, any number of factors can drive the main thrust and governing of our kingdom.  We can allow lusts or addictions to drive us (selfishness).  We can let the decisions and actions of others be the key driving force in our lives (people pleasing).  We can let the allure of success and money be our guide (greed and pride).  We can even let the desire to do good, but with wrong intentions guide us.  These, and so much more can be what sits on the throne of our hearts in our kingdom.  As we begin to recognize what is behind our thoughts, intentions, and motivations, we realize that something is off.  We must then reckon with the reality that, before the end of our lives, my kingdom must fall.  Not fall to just anyone or anything, no.  Your defenses and secrets and soul must be breached and taken over by the very one who created us in the first place; your kingdom must fall to God.  We have usurped His reign and control.  We must surrender it back to Him, and in doing so, we will find “life to the full.”

You see, God, I believe, is the one who created all that we see and know.  Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.”  We are His and He created us.  He is the one who ultimately controls our future, and so it is to Him that each of our kingdoms need to come under control of.  It is only in Him that our lives can ever find true peace, security, and hope.  So, as we step back and look at our lives, at the motivations of our hearts, we must ask, who is truly at the helm of my kingdom?  What is driving me and motivating me?  Is God, and His kingdom truly what leads and affects my words and actions, or is it something else?  Has God fully infiltrated your kingdom?