Kingdom 101: Reconcile People to God

Summary

The Wake-Up Call: "Kingdom 101 – Reconcile People to God"

Host: Dan Wilt (with guest JD Walt)
Date: June 30, 2026
Theme: The Transformative Call to Reconciliation in Christ

---

Episode Overview

This episode centers on the foundational Christian mission of reconciliation—both to God and to one another—drawing from 2 Corinthians 5:18-19. Host Dan Wilt and guest JD Walt delve into what it means to participate in Christ’s ministry of reconciliation, stressing the importance of prayer, living as peacemakers, and viewing every act of ministry through the lens of drawing people back into relationship with God.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Grand Story of Reconciliation

• Scripture Focus: 2 Corinthians 5:18-19

  "All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation…" (02:01)

• Reconciliation is described as central to the "all the things" ministry of Jesus.
• The episode opens with a story about a long-estranged father and son who are reconciled through the persistent prayer of an intercessor—a parallel to God’s reconciling work in Christ.

2. Participation in the Ministry of Reconciliation

• Prayer as Primary: Listeners are reminded that prayer is both the beginning and most essential aspect of this ministry.

  “Prayer is not the only thing we do... but it is the most important thing we do, it is the first thing we do.” (06:44)

• The calling to be "apprentices of Jesus" is highlighted: Christians are to step into a "breaching world" and work to mend relationships.

3. The Church’s Counter-Cultural Witness

• Early Church Example: Baptism breaks social barriers—a wealthy woman and a servant girl become sisters in Christ, overturning Roman cultural narratives (05:17).
• Reconciliation in Christ takes precedence over societal divisions and prejudices.

4. The Secret Place of Intercession

• Much of the work in reconciliation is done “in the secret place”—persistent, faith-filled prayer for estranged people and relationships (05:53).
• Believers are encouraged to “hold on to the hem of Jesus’ garment” until breakthrough comes (06:22).

5. Practical Activation

• Daily Practice: Listeners are invited to look for real-world opportunities to “bridge a gap” between God and people, or between people themselves.
  • “Be the peacemaker… in private, in your intercession, and in public.” (07:21)
• Travailing in prayer—commitment to pray until reconciliation is realized, regardless of how long it takes.

---

Conversation Highlight: Dan Wilt & JD Walt

(Begins at 08:08)

The Larger Vision

• JD Walt uses an image: “It’s almost like you took us off the ground today… there’s a bigger picture going on here.” (08:44)
• They emphasize that the goal isn’t just patching up life’s problems, but addressing “the problem underneath the problems,” which is alienation from God (09:07).

The Urgency of Reconciliation

• Scripture Emphasis: 2 Corinthians 5:20

  "We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God." (09:59)

• Christ’s miracles and ministry always radiate this deeper cry for reconciliation.

  "When he's washing feet, when he's healing blind eyes, when he's pardoning a sinner... he's radiating, 'be reconciled to God.'" – JD Walt (10:14)

• Christ’s help with temporary needs points to the invitation to eternal restoration.

Memorable Quote Exchange

• JD Walt: “Church, he paid a debt he did not owe.”
• Congregation (as repeated): “Because we owed a debt we could not pay.” (12:05)

  “Can I reconcile your checkbook here? Because I want to reconcile your life to God. Because that’s the thing that will endure forever.” – JD Walt (12:21)

Spiritual Gifts & Their True Purpose

• Dan Wilt frames healings and encouragement as means, not the end:

  "We’re seeing not just the thing that needs to happen… we're seeing through it to that person's reconciliation with God." (13:27)

• Every act of ministry should point to the ultimate reconciliation in Christ.

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• "We’re not their savior, but we are an ambassador in that moment of ‘be reconciled to God.’" – Dan Wilt (13:44)
• "That will start the whole fountain flowing in you." – JD Walt (13:49)
• “Good on you for calling us back to the main thing here.” – JD Walt (13:49)
• Worship moment with the song "Gratitude," emphasizing a heart of praise as fitting response to reconciliation (14:38).

---

Important Timestamps

• 02:01 – Opening scripture and theme introduction
• 05:17 – Early church example of reconciliation cutting across social divisions
• 06:22 – The “secret place” as the root of reconciliation work
• 07:21 – Challenge to live as peacemakers in both public and private
• 08:08 – Begin conversation with JD Walt
• 09:59 – Urgency of Paul’s appeal: "Be reconciled to God"
• 12:05 – Memorable church call-and-response on the debt paid by Christ
• 13:27 – Seeing through acts of ministry to their deeper purpose
• 14:38 – Worship moment with the song "Gratitude"

---

Takeaways & Guidance for Listeners

• Pray for Reconciliation: Start in prayer, believing God can mend what cannot be mended by human means.
• Act as a Peacemaker: Be ready to bridge divides in real-world situations.
• Maintain Perspective: Every act of service or ministry should be viewed through the lens of reconciliation to God—the “main thing.”
• Persist: Prayer for reconciliation may require days, years, or even decades. Perseverance is key.

---

Tone & Language

• Practical yet deeply spiritual; urgent, compassionate, gently corrective.
• Focused on grounding listeners in scriptural truth while empowering daily practice.

---

Summary:
If you missed this episode, you missed a clear, strong call to center your spiritual life on God’s great work of reconciliation—first in the secret place of prayer, then in daily life as Jesus’ apprentice and peacemaker. The episode provided memorable stories, scriptural urgency, and practical guidance: pray first, act in love, and always remember the gospel’s reconciling heart.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Sower Nation Today is Tuesday, June 30th in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm Dan Wilt and this is your wake up call. Today we're going to be sharing together on a topic that I believe is really part of the grand story of the Gospel and what it means for us to participate in in the all the things ministry of Jesus in the area of reconciliation. And John David JD Walt is going to be joining me at the end of today's entry, so you can look forward to that. But for now, let's turn our hearts toward Jesus as we begin our meeting with Him. He has many, many good things to share with you with me today in this time. Wake up sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Let's pray our prayer of consecration as we begin today's meeting with Jesus. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, our entry today is titled Kingdom 101 reconcile people to God. And our passage is from 2nd Corinthians 5:18 to 19 hear the word of the Lord. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation, the Word of the Lord. Consider this. The man and his son had not spoken in many, many years. The wall between them seemed to be impenetrable until an intercessor in their family decided enough was enough. She prayed for reconciliation. And one day, after years of prayer, it happened. God reconciles us and the world to himself in Christ. Then we lead others into that reconciliation with God and with one another. Jesus went about reconciling people to God. Sometimes he did it through a miracle and the person came to faith in Jesus. At other times, he simply spoke in ways that drew the listener to want the kind of intimacy with God that Jesus clearly had. We live in a world of breaches, breaches of relationship, breaches of trust, breaches of confidence. The apprentices of Jesus step into the middle of this breaching world with a message that brings people closer, closer to God through Christ and brings people closer to one another at the same time. In the early church, in a baptismal service, one could Find a wealthy woman celebrating the baptism of a servant girl in Christ. They were sisters. That relationship they shared in Jesus held authority over every cultural narrative that existed in in the Roman world about the blessing of the rich and the cursing of the poor. To be about all the things that Jesus was and is about is to be about reconciling people to God and one another. A profound miracle can occur when a person takes hold of the hem of Jesus garment in the secret place and won't let go until they see a child come back to faith or a broken relationship mended. As we look to faithfully walk with Jesus in doing all the things he has commissioned us to do with him, we must take hold of the reality that much of that work will be done in the secret place. We have the ministry of reconciliation and we carry it out. And as a people of prayer, let's pray these words together. Lord Jesus, I take up the ministry of reconciliation. You have given with given me and I stay with it in prayer. I ask you to reconcile wayward hearts to you, to heal the sick that they may turn to you, and to repair broken relationships with those who have lost the ability to repair them themselves. In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. So here are our journal prompts for today. Write down a prayer for reconciliation with God and others. For a person that is on your heart. Pray without fear, with full trust that God will do what he promises to do to reconcile hearts to his own. Pray with confidence. Bring faith to the table. Trust, trust, trust as you pray from that place of believing that God will accomplish what concerns us and will accomplish what concerns his great desires for that person, for that individual. Or God may even call you to intercede for larger groups of people. This is a day where there are breaches everywhere. Pray for, for reconciliation, and then of course, be agents of reconciliation. But today I wanted to emphasize a point of praying for reconciliation and letting that. That softening of the ground in prayer. Then as you get into situations, as you get into moments and you see the Father doing something, you then enter into it as an agent of reconciliation. So that's how the church moves forward in the world. Prayer is not the only thing we do, we say, but it is. The most important thing we do is the first thing we do. All right? Our activation for today is this. Today, as a minister of reconciliation, look for an opportunity to bridge a gap between someone and God, or someone and another person. Be the peacemaker. Think of the Beatitudes. Blessed are the peacemakers. Be the peacemaker. In private in your intercession and in public, be the peacemaker that Jesus has invited you to be. And always travail in prayer until you see breakthrough, whether it takes days or months, years or decades, travail, stay in there, hold on to the hem of Jesus garment until you see what you believe he wants to see occur in that person and that relationship. All right, well, here we are. And I am looking forward now to this conversation with JD let's turn to it now. John David. Here we are.

[A]

John David Jingleheimer Schmidt. His name is my name too.

[B]

That's right. So we're talking about reconciling people to God as Kingdom 101 and what the goal is here. We've talked about hearing God's voice. We've talked about getting activated in spiritual gifts, in discernment, and also just being used by Jesus to do all the things that he wants to do through us. And we keep coming back to, he's the one doing this. Well, what he is best at is reconciling people to himself.

[A]

Yes. Dan, thanks for. It's almost like you, you took us off the ground today. We all got in the hot air balloon together and we just drifted up and we're like, we're just not trying to go around the world putting band aids and fixing things. There's a bigger picture going on here.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I mean, everybody we help, they're gonna die. And we've gotta keep doing the good because there's a bigger work happening in all the works. You've said it today. It's called reconciliation. We're trying to help people be reconciled to God. That's the fundamental. That's the problem underneath the problems. Yep, correct.

[B]

Yep. That's right.

[A]

And I love. In Second Corinthians, you know, you hit on Second Corinthians 5, 18 and 19. My favorite, of course, is verse 20 where he's. Paul is saying, he's talking to people. We implore you.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

On Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. We implore you. He's so urgent with that. And that's what he wants coming like out of us. That's what he is himself radiating. When he's washing feet, when he's healing blind eyes, when he's pardoning a sinner, when he's healing a mother in law, he's radiating, be reconciled to God. I am so happy. It's like he's saying, I'm so happy to be helping you all with all of these temporal situations that are causing you pain and Suffering and heartache. But can I tell you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm going for something bigger.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm imploring you be reconciled to God.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is to say, be. Receive grace.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

God. And then. And then he finishes the. The chapter. God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. He's like, all these things that I'm helping with and I'm working on and that you're doing too. You're doing all the things now you're really dealing with a lot of symptoms of the bigger sickness. And the bigger sickness is that people are far from God.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

They're not reckons there's. They're carrying debt. Yep. I say to my church all the time, I'm like, church, he paid a debt he did not owe. And then you know what they'll say back? Because we owed a debt we could not pay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He paid a debt he did not. Oh, because we owed a debt we could not pay. It's like, can I reconcile your checkbook here? Can I reconcile your bank account here? Because I want to reconcile your life to God. Because that's the thing that will endure forever.

[B]

That's right. And every act of the Spirit's ministry is to reconcile someone to God. And I think one of the ways that we get stuck in sort of the power Pentecost orientation, which I think, again, we agree love is leading this whole thing and it contextualizes these moments of power. Sometimes we get stuck seeing at the thing instead of through it. And that's why we come to people in the gentleness and humility of Jesus with compassion. We minister to them. We're the love of God to them in that moment. Because we're seeing not just the thing that needs to happen, the healing, the miracle, the encouragement that whatever it is, we're seeing through it to that person's reconciliation with God.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

We know we can't even that moment. We're not their savior, we're not their. But we are an ambassador in that moment of be reconciled to God.

[A]

That's.

[B]

That will start the whole fountain flowing in you.

[A]

That's good. That's so good, Dan. Well put. Good, good on you for calling us back to the main thing here.

[B]

Well, good times together. Let's. Let's worship together in singing. And thanks again, JD for jumping in. So today we're just going to sing the chorus of a contemporary worship song called Gratitude. It's not in your hymnal, but let's worship with it together?

[C]

So I throw up my hands? I praise you again and again? So that I have is a hallelujah? Hallelujah? I know it's not much that I'm nothing else fit for a king? Except for a heart singing. I throw up my hands? I praise you again and again? So that I have is a hallelujah? Hallelujah? And I know it's not much that I'm nothing else fit for a king? Except for a heart singing Alleluia? Alleluia.

[B]

Amen. Well, as the scripture says, be reconciled to God. And now let's move into the world as those who see people, who care about them. We take them in prayer before God in the secret place, and then we look for opportunities to help bridge that gap, to help reconcile people to God and reconcile people to one another. It's the work, it's the mission of the church to partner with Jesus in what he is doing to reconcile all people to himself. All right, let's get our seeds together, and I'll see you on the field for the awakening. I'm Dan.