I lived in Malaysia for nine years, I am married to an African and I am American. I learned very quickly while living in Malaysia that going to visit another country is fun, but living in another country is work. My American culture was not identifiable to me when I lived in America, but when I married an African and lived in Malaysia my culture that felt so normal was now evident to me in ways I never saw before. The challenge I went through was my unwillingness to lay down my culture in order to live in another culture. Malaysia was not going to become American for me, so I had to either submit to their culture of live frustrated. Honestly, I lived frustrated for at least three of the nine years I lived there, because I did not want to conform to their culture.

I look back on this and laugh at my unwillingness to budge, for I created for myself unnecessary challenges, but once I surrendered to their culture I began to enjoy the people, the foods, the smells, the culture, I even enjoyed and benefited from that which used to frustrate me. The same is true in the kingdom of God, we try to bring our culture, American culture, African culture, Australian culture, Asian culture, European Culture, Canadian culture, into the kingdom of God and we get frustrated because God will not change His culture to fit us. If we are going to live in the kingdom we must submit to its culture. Once you do, you will enjoy the benefits of that culture. The kingdom culture is the best culture I have ever lived in by far, I hope you will submit to it and then you can benefit from it.

Proverbs 2:21-22 “For those who live right will remain in the land and those with integrity will endure here. But not the wicked they will be forced out and banned from this promised land, and those who deal in deceit will be plucked up like the weeds.” The Bible is filled with the culture of the kingdom, today in Proverbs we learn the kingdom is a culture of integrity. I love the kingdom culture because I have conformed to it.