{"id":663,"date":"2023-01-21T17:21:19","date_gmt":"2023-01-21T05:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/?p=663"},"modified":"2023-01-21T17:21:19","modified_gmt":"2023-01-21T05:21:19","slug":"priests-and-kings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/2023\/01\/21\/priests-and-kings\/","title":{"rendered":"Priests and Kings"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the past few weeks I’ve been reading the books of Judges and I & II Kings. It was interesting to be reminded that at no time was a priest crowned king, and conversely, no king ever served as a priest. The functions of the priest and the kings were very different. Kings ruled over the physical realm, for good but mostly for bad. Throughout the reign of kings in the Old Testament, we read how badly they got it wrong when they tried to make rules, live by decree, and seek vengeance or personal gain.<\/p>\n

Priests (and Prophets) represented the spiritual realm, and while they often had opportunities to speak into the lives of the kings, they never took the place of the kings.<\/p>\n

Jesus was where these two lines of authority came together. He focused the presence of God in physical leadership and spiritual authority, but it was so different from the historical norm that very few people recognized it. Jesus is the reigning Lion and the sacrificial Lamb, the one who holds the created world together and the one brings life to the spirit.<\/p>\n

This website is called Faith and Practice because our lives have spiritual and physical components and we need to integrate both into our lives in the way that Jesus exampled faith and practice in His life. Our inner priest worships God, and our inner king sets the habits of our life. I believe that God intends those two roles to work together to set in place spiritual practices that feed our faith journey.<\/p>\n

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During the past few weeks I’ve been reading the books of Judges and I & II Kings. It was interesting to be reminded that at no time was a priest crowned king, and conversely, no king ever served as a …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[48,50,49],"class_list":["post-663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-practice","tag-jesus","tag-king","tag-priest"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":677,"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663\/revisions\/677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}