The Kingdom of God is Like...

Matthew 13:44-46. It's incredible how easy it is, just by reading Matthew 13, to identify if we belong to God's kingdom or not. Even if Jesus is speaking in parables and comparing the kingdom of heaven to something else, He makes it very clear that there's the "before and after", there's the "sold all and bought it", there's the "lose my life to gain the eternal one". I remember when this happened to me, about 11 years ago, i found this treasure called "the kingdom of God", literally speaking, i gave up on everything to follow Jesus Christ. We can see through this parable that the people will only be willing to "sell everything" (lose their lives) if they consider the kingdom of God to be more valuable than what they have. Through these parables Jesus makes it very clear who will enter in the kingdom of God and who won't, just confirming what He said in Matthew 16:25. In the parable of the sower Jesus compares the ground with the heart, the seed with the Word of God, the birds with demons and says that the condition of the ground will determine if there will be a crop and the amount of it. In the parable of the wheat and the tares, Jesus explains that along with the wheat (children of God) it will grow the tare (children of the devil) and it's not up to us to "uproot" them, because we can "uproot" the wheat also, meaning, in the church there are the children of God and the children of the devil and only God knows who's who, because they "look" the same! In the parable of the mustard seed, Jesus talks about the "growth" of the "seed", saying that even if it is the smallest seed, in the "proper" ground it will grow so much that it will became a tree. In the parable of the leaven, Jesus is saying that the "purpose" of the kingdom is to grow or to expand, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5:6. In the parable of the dragnet, Jesus is saying that at the end of the age, the angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire. I know it's not "politically" correct, even inside the church, to say that there are wicked people in the church, because it might offend some (the wicked ones). Of course we have to draw the line between "being politically correct" and "speaking the truth" (in love), since it was Jesus who said that the wicked and the just are growing together and one day God will separate them. Jesus point in these parables is to show us the condition of our hearts, if we consider God's Kingdom to be more valuable than ours, if God's Kingdom is "growing" in our hearts and if we are God's children or the children of the devil.