For Patricia

I want you to imagine something. You are walking in the North Pole, into an icy wind, darkness all around you. You are bone tired, hungry and the cold has settled in your bones. You are nearly at the end of your rope. You are still walking because you can see a small light in the distance and it represents everything you so desperately need – safety, warmth, food, peace, rest. You are only  holding on because of that little light. Every agonising step brings you closer.

Then suddenly you become aware of a person walking next to you. It is as if he has been there all the time but you were not aware of his presence. You are enveloped in a cloud of warmth and security. Then he speaks and he warns you of a crevasse that is hidden in the ice. You change course and you can feel his satisfaction. You have just been obedient and it saved your life.

He offers you something to eat and as you take it and taste it you realise that what you are eating is a part of him – he gave you of his flesh to eat and just as you want to vomit, you realise that it is right – that is the way it should be. You are satisfied and the hunger is gone. Then he gives you something to drink and you realise it is his blood. You shudder but you know that you have to do it. This is the only way to survive. You take his cupped hand and drink from it and your eyes open further. It is as if a light is swtiched on in front of you and you can see another crevasse gaping before your feet.

You look to him with grattitude and all you can see in the darkness is the reflection of the semi light on his beautiful teeth and the glint in his eye. It is as if his eyes glow in the dark with something and as you look closer; you know, you just know that they glow with love.

And you know that you are going to make it to the little light because you have found the companion who had always been there with you but whom you have never seen. You feel the warmth of his love holding the cold at bay. You know that you can count on his flesh and his blood to sustain you and you know that he will give you light and instructions to save you from falling.

You have just discovered the kingdom of God.

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The gospel of the kingdom.

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. (Mat 24:14)

 

We have preached various gospels. We have preached a ‘gospel of salvation’, a ‘gospel of grace’, a ‘social gospel’ and others but the ‘gospel of the kingdom’ is now being brought to the attention of all who are seeking first to live in that kingdom. We have had extensive discussions about the kingdom in this forum and I believe it is what we should talk about at this stage because it is end-time revelation. We will still talk about it a lot.

I felt to emphasize again the relational angle of the kingdom because we are now growing in thinking patterns about the kingdom and if we lose the relational angle we have lost the central theme. Some of this could be repetitive but if we are not walking in the truth then we have not heard it properly and every word we can hear or read that will strengthen the revelation of the truth is beneficial.

Can any of us say that we are walking in the truth about the kingdom? If we are then it should be seen in our lives and we are not hearing many rumours about the manifestations of the kingdom taking place in our country – yet. So I felt this is pertinent and that we still need more light from different perspectives on this subject until we see the power of the life of Jesus really coming through our lives and changing the landscape we live in.

 

1.    The kingdom refers to the rule of God. This we all know by now but I thought this perspective is fresh:

a)    Dallas Willard said: “Every last one of us has a ‘kingdom’ – or a ‘queendom’ or a government – a realm that is uniquely our own, where our choice determines what happens. We are made to ‘have dominion’ within an appropriate domain of reality. This is the core of the likeness and the image of God in us and is the basis of the destiny for which we were formed.

Our kingdom is simply the range of our effective will”.

b)    “Now God’s own ‘kingdom’ or ‘rule’, is the range of His effective will, where what He wants done is done. The person of God himself and the action of his will are the organizing principles of his kingdom, but everything that obeys those principles whether by nature or by choice, is within his kingdom.”

c)     “It existed from the moment of creation and will never end (Ps. 145:13, Dan. 7:14) It can not be shaken (Hebr. 12:27) and is totally good. It has never been in trouble and never will be. It is not something that human beings produce or, ultimately, can hinder. We do have an invitation to be part of it but if we refuse we only hurt ourselves.”

d)    “Accordingly, the kingdom of God is not essentially a social or political reality at all. Indeed, the social and political realm, along with the individual heart is the only place in all of creation where the kingdom of God or his effective will is currently permitted to be absent. That realm is the ‘on earth’ of the Lord’s Prayer that is opposed to the ‘in heaven’ where God’s will is, simply, done.”

 

2.    From this foundation we can deduce a couple of thoughts

a)    If the kingdom is the rule of God then it can not be separated from God himself. His rule and his will are one. As many of us have found out with our children, we need to be present to see that our will is done and that our kingdom is established. My thoughts determine what I want and if I express those thoughts as my will, they determine the extent of my kingdom. I can not rule without communicating my thoughts. My speech determines the extent of my rule for without expressing myself no one will know what I want.  

So if you enter my kingdom you are entering me as expressed by my communicated will. Teachers have a kingdom in their class, fathers in their homes, mothers within their families, employers in their businesses and those who operate within the sphere where the will of a person is done, operate within the kingdom of that person.

b)    In the Old Testament, the people thought that entrance into the kingdom depended on keeping laws and working hard at being good. They were wrong because God, knowing that they would fail in keeping his law, gave them a system of sacrifices to cover their failure so that from the beginning the actual mode of entrance was faith in the goodness and grace of a God who said he will accept the sacrifices. The truth of this is clear from the life of Abraham and David who did not trust in their goodness but in the character of God.

As Israel lost contact with the living God they progressively lost the truth about faith and grace and the keeping of the law without mistakes became the way to enter into the rule of God. That produced the Pharisees who were seeking for eternal life in the Scriptures but refused to come to him.  (Jn. 5:39-40) 

c)     Jesus came in the flesh and fulfilled the requirements of the law to publicly, physically restore the truth about faith and grace and expose the inadequacy of the law. “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Rom 8:3-4)

Because of his presence, the requirement to enter into the kingdom was clearly portrayed in a person. Relationship to him became the key to entrance. You still needed faith to believe in the power of the sacrifice and in the grace and the love of God who would accept the sacrifice, but now the concept became visible. In stead of it being just written word, the way became physical and relational. You had to know the person to be able to enter into the bliss of life in another kingdom. You could ignore the requirements set by the Pharisees. The requirement of grace and faith was all you needed and it was presented to you in the form of a relationship with a person of flesh and blood. Jesus illustrated that repeatedly but the scene with the prostitute who broke the alabaster box on his feet is probably the most graphic.

d)    Jesus said about John the Baptist that he was the greatest born of a woman but even the least in this new kingdom was greater than he. It is because the least in the new kingdom can walk hand in hand with Jesus and can feel the life of Jesus flow through him. John was great but he could not enter into the kingdom. The life of Jesus could not flow from his innermost being because Jesus could not live inside him. He could not live by the life of Another.

All that changed with the advent of the age of the Spirit. Now the kingdom suffers violence and the violent can enter by force. This does not refer in my mind to physical violence; it refers to the violence that must be done to our understanding before we will desire entrance and relationship above effort and performance.

The break with effort is so radical that it requires a violent clash with grace and faith and only those who are willing to allow their minds to suffer violence will be able to turn around (repent) and receive the gift that was there all the time (at hand) for them to receive through faith and grace.

e)    God is not an absentee landlord – he is ‘with us’. Paul said, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17). This means that to enter into his kingdom means to enter into him. Entering into him implies relationship because he has revealed himself as a person. We can not separate God from his kingdom and try to extend the kingdom by our actions as if it is a business or a region. We can only enter deeper into God and get others to do the same. In that way we extend the awareness of his person and through that the ability to live in him. that is why Jesus cried out: “Come to me all who labour and are heavily laden and I will give you rest”.

f)     When Jesus said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”, he was referring to the rule or the will of God that has come within our reach in his own person. He was referring to ‘Immanuel, God with us’. That does not mean that the kingdom only came into existence when he came. It does not mean that the rule of God was not available before that, that God himself was not around. It means that something changed with the coming of Jesus and that the rule of God or God became accessible.

Dallas Willard uses the analogy of electricity to explain this. When he was growing up on a farm they had no electricity. One day electricity became available for that area and the government came to the farmers and told them, “Repent for electricity is at hand”. Electricity was not a new thing – it had been there for a long time, but now it has become available for the people of that district. They needed to change their mode of thinking and embrace the new truth before they would go to the trouble and spend the money to obtain the gadgets that would manifest the power of electricity. They needed to repent from their old ways and embrace the new way that was offered to them before they could have light.

g)    Like electricity the kingdom does not ‘come with observation’ as Jesus said. It is invisible. It is all around us but we are not aware of it, just like God. It is only as we are willing to allow Him to change our thinking (repent) and we receive the revelation of the Spirit that we become more aware of the unseen. If we know Jesus then the kingdom is also within us, and we also become aware of its immediacy by revelation. Paul says it is near us, on our lips – it is the word of faith (Rom. 10). It remains unseen until we have enough trust in Papa’s love, faithfulness and desire to reveal it to us, to take a step in faith into the unknown and start to interact with that which has always been there.

Without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebr. 11) so as our eternal lives started with a gift of faith, by grace (Eph.2), so this revelation will only come through a gift of faith. The only pre-requisite to receive gifts is desire because desire causes requests to bubble from our mouths and that is the only thing Papa requires.

h)    He died for us while we were still sinners so he does not require perfection or good moral behaviour before he gives us the gift of faith to receive the presents he has for us. He just requires desire and a desire that leads to asking and seeking. (Whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved        Rom. 10). This desire also comes by grace. When we are first saved we have much desire – that is given so that we can continue to ask not so that we can continue to become more holy. Religion destroys that and causes us to want to work for the revelation of the kingdom, but desire and asking is the way God ordained for it to come to us. He gave us all we need from the beginning so that we can ask, not so that we can live perfect lives.

i)      So, the kingdom is not a place, nor is it a state of mind or being, nor a system of governance. It is a person and entrance into it is depending on conversation and relationship. The potential to enter into this relationship has been a gift and the power to penetrate deeply into it is also a gift – a gift of faith that comes by grace.

That is why Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you”. The kingdom should be sought as we will seek for a hidden treasure or for a precious pearl. In the same way as we are called in Prov. 2 to call out for wisdom, lift up our voice for understanding, are we called to knock and keep on knocking, seek and keep on seeking, ask and keep on asking until we receive the revelation. And the revelation is nothing but a revelation of a person, of his love, of his nearness – his being at hand. It is just our mindset that has to change. We have to change by grace and through faith into lovers, into wild, passionate lovers of Jesus.

That is how we enter deeper into the kingdom.

j)     What shall we do then? We shall talk to Jesus and to Papa. We shall talk with them form an understanding of our own inability to enter into anything good without their help. From an understanding of the inadequacy of our own lives and a deep desire to live their kind of life. From a deep knowledge that only faith can bring that they want us to enter and that it is their good pleasure to give us the kingdom. It revolves around conversation and conversation revolves around communication.

The Christian walk is about fellowship, about parties, about conversations over a cup of tea or a lunch, about asking for presents and about the willingness to keep on doing that for the rest of our lives – that is probably why it is so much easier for the ladies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Kingdom of God

We have been talking on another forum about the purpose of the Kingdom and I felt it may be good to post this here and see what the reaction is to it. Any takers?When we ask the question, “what is the purpose of the kingdom?” then we must be careful not to ask it from the perspective that the kingdom is a tool God uses to accomplish something on the earth or in this age. It is not separate from God like creation is separate from Him. It is a powerful force that does accomplish much but it is not like a spade that God uses to dig a hole so that He can plant a tree.In my opinion the kingdom is God Himself.

We have established that the kingdom is the reign of God. That means that it manifests wherever His will is done. If the kingdom is His will then it can not be distinguished from His person. The kingdom is in my opinion the manifestation of the supremacy of the will of God. The sign to creation that God’s will is more powerful than anything else. It is a manifestation of the person of God. It will come to a conclusion in the rule of Christ in the end when ‘all things are in Him’. When His will is being done then He is manifested and then we are truly ‘in Him’.

This in my opinion has some implications.

1.    It means that the ultimate purpose of the kingdom can not be divorced from God’s person. The kingdom must be a manifestation of the glory of God and of His character and person. Wherever the kingdom is in place, God’s glory will be seen and He will be manifested. The ultimate purpose of all things is to glorify God. When the kingdom manifests then the person of God manifests and that is His glory. The kingdom is the manifestation of God to the principalities and powers. Creation is the stage on which this manifestation is happening. We are the players on the stage but we have one goal – to manifest God. The manifestation in the natural of an invisible Being, of all His attributes and His character is called the kingdom of God. It is the “doxa” of God, His glory and the knowledge of it (experientially) will fill the earth as “the waters cover the sea”.

2.    God has decided to manifest His person – in my opinion that is one and probably the most important reason why He created. He has done this manifestation in various ways through the ages beginning with creation. Even in the fall, judgment and grace manifest one thing: this is what God is like. Without sin there would be no manifestation of His righteous judgement and without judgement there would be no manifestation of His attribute of grace. Because that is what He has decided to do, we can know that the manifestation of the supremacy of His will in this creation will not be dependant on a weak and sinful human race but on Him. This means that the kingdom WILL come independent of what we see around us. Every knee WILL bow to His will. People WILL enter and grow in the kingdom because He WILL manifest His glory.

3.    Because the kingdom represents the will of God, every manifestation of the kingdom will be a manifestation of the otherness and the beauty of God. It will be a manifestation of the unseen into the seen. Derek Morphew calls it a ‘breaking in’ of the unseen. If we want to talk in terms of time then it is the breaking in of the age to come into this age. If in terms of miracles, it is the breaking in of the spiritual realm into the physical. If in terms of sanctification, it is the breaking in of the “new man” into the “old man”.

4.    In the Old Testament there were a couple of times representative of this principle. Think about God’s intervention through judgment in Noah’s time and through grace in saving Noah and his family. Think about God intervening in choosing Abraham to be His covenant man of faith and the birth of Isaac. The relationship between God and Israel became a window on God’s character as He broke in consistently in the form of judgment and blessing. The picture of the reign of David and the time of Solomon is a beautiful manifestation of the physical effects of kingdom reign. Peace, abundance, wisdom, prosperity were the trademarks of the reign of God through His chosen ones. Each of these a picture of what happens when God’s will supersedes earthly laws and the desires and plans of humans.

5.    The New Testament starts with the most powerful manifestation of the kingdom as God reveals Himself in the form of a man and manifests His person to us through the attributes of a man. Jesus becomes the final covenant man that brings the rule of God to earth (the kingdom is at hand). He both shows us what it looks like when a man obeys God completely and what God’s person is like by doing His will perfectly. (Hebr 1: 1-3). The disciples continue to live like Jesus did and we see the effects of that in the Acts of the Apostles.From the first physical break-in in the person of Jesus, the kingdom now breaks into individual lives through redemption and the work of the Holy Spirit and then spreads like Daniel’s stone through sanctification in the lives of those who want to obey and are willing to learn obedience.

6.    The Church is a manifestation of the kingdom. Therefore it can be called the Body of Jesus. The break in of the kingdom produce people who desire to live as servants of one another in intimate relationship and to know God and so the church is formed. The church then becomes the vehicle through which God manifests Himself as they operate in obedience to His will and shows forth to creation the character of God (just like Jesus did).

7.    Because the kingdom and God can not be separated, entering and growing in the kingdom remains a sovereign work of God who calls us and places us ‘in Christ’ or in the kingdom. Jesus then becomes for us ‘wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption’ – that ‘no flesh may glory in His presence’ (1Cor 1:29-31). The prerequisite for entering the kingdom or growing in kingdom life is not standards of spirituality or rules. Life in the kingdom is designed to change us. It is in our interaction with the kingdom (with God through Jesus) that we become more obedient and humble. Entrance is not dependent on the very things that should be produced by that interaction.Although the pre-requisite for growth is humility and obedience, it is the obedience of Jesus and His humility that is the standard and we can’t achieve that standard. We just need to die and let the life of Jesus come forth.Peter wrote that we have received all things that pertain to life and godliness. He also said that we have received all the promises we need to enable us to escape the ‘corruption that is in the world through lust’ and become ‘partakers of the divine nature’. Then he said, because of these things that were given to us, we must apply all diligence to exercise our faith in order to develop a whole list of other attributes that can be seen as pre-requisites for growth in the kingdom (1 Pet.1:5-11 see AV). This is where it starts. Entering the kingdom and growing in kingdom life is to enter into God and grow in the knowledge of Him, so in my opinion it does not depend on our works but depends on our faith. And the only work we should be doing is to exercise our faith so that we can believe the promises and believe that all things we need to live this kingdom life were already given to us in Jesus. So an ‘abundant entrance will be supplied’ to us into the kingdom (2 Pet.1:11) as we progressively live the life of Jesus and not our own.

8.    All through history there is a clear battle of the kingdoms. The Devil does not want man to know what God is really like. His task is to oppose the revelation of God and therefore he withstands the manifestations of the kingdom of God. Jesus said that the kingdom suffers violence but the violent take it by force (Matt 11:12). And we can see that right through history. We find ourselves in a battle. We want to do the will of God (Paul at the end of Rom.7). We know that doing His will is why we are here but obedience is something that even the Son had to learn through suffering (Hebr. 5). Israel had to learn obedience in the wilderness through being humbled, being hungry and then being fed with manna – a bread they did not know, a manifestation of the unseen into the seen (Deut. 8:2-3) The goal of that was that He might MAKE them know that man shall not live by bread alone but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. It is hard to enter the kingdom because of this truth. Entering is by becoming obedient and becoming obedient is through suffering. It is significant that the first temptation Jesus faced in the wilderness was to use His powers to still His need. He was able to do that but He had to wait on the word of His Father. His direct quote from Deut 8, proves that He understood the principle of becoming obedient through suffering and that by that time He was perfect in His obedience and ready to manifest the kingdom rule of His Father. He went on from there and manifested the kingdom perfectly.

9.    The one thing we can do to facilitate the process is to seek fellowship with God in Jesus. If we enter into the kingdom, we enter into a person so we need to build relationship. We do this by prayer and whatever means we can find to be with Him. Paul said, “but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone. “ (Rom 9:31-32)It is not a battle of works. Paul said to Tim, “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold of eternal life.” (1Tim 6)  It is a fight of faith. Although the kingdom suffers violence and we are in a constant state of warfare, the struggle is not to improve our works to attain a standard. It is a battle of faith and it is a process of laying hold of the kingdom through struggle and through suffering. In the end it is a journey on which we learn obedience and how to live only by every word that proceed from the mouth of our Father.

10.  In my opinion, the next couple of years will be about growing faith and that will happen when we ask for it. It will be about growing in the release of the life of Jesus from our hearts. That will happen as we pray. The break in of the kingdom has always been a sovereign event that was preceded by an act of intercession. It will not be different in the years to come. We are going to see more manifestations of the person of God but it will not be because we have performed but because we have prayed. And even the advent of a time of prayer will be because he has ordained it for this time and because He works it in our hearts to pray by His grace because it is to the praise of His glory.     

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The Kingdom

Someone wrote me the other day and I think my answer may be relevant. Here is his musing on the kingdom: 

Even as I think about stuff this morning, its odd. We lost the intensity of what the kingdom brings in the ‘already’ after Constantine. Then it sort of came back, especially in revivals, and the third-wave… Now, a generation of believers – youth to 30 somethings – seem oblivious or ambivalent to God’s kingdom power … all the while desiring to change their world. How ironic is that. The one thing that can make a difference – the in-breaking of God’s kingdom – is a mere whisper in the minds of today’s Christian. Dear Lord, help us to spread your kingdom’s message.

I’ve been reading Derek’s book, Breakthrough. Its awesome. I’ve also been reading Ladd’s book The Presence of the Future for the third time. If only the reality of kingdom life can be a reality in all believer’s lives – our world would be blessed!

I agreed with him and answered:

For me it is all about walking with Jesus and being able to see what He is doing by faith and doing the same. It is the way He walked with His Father and the results were amazing. I am all for the principles of kingdom power but I have seen too many people go for the power and forget about the kingdom. The kingdom becomes a means to an end and not an end in itself as Jesus wants it to be – seek first the kingdom and then the other things will be added to that, not seek the kingdom to get the other things. Not to seek the Kingdom as in numerically first but as in hierarchical first. The kingdom as far as I am concerned is the complete fulfillment of the promise because it is the presence of a Person and the ability to interact with that Person. All other things flow out of that and the relationship never becomes a means to get the things. So if you have the kingdom then the other things you want (including signs and wonders) can or can not come – it does not matter anymore whether they come because you have the kingdom. Evangelism becomes the task if inviting people into the kingdom by introducing my Friend to them. If He wants to use a miracle to introduce himself then it is cool, but if He wants to use my silent suffering and meekness under pressure and apparent lack to do that then that is cool too. The satisfaction we are called to walk in is never a satisfaction of doing but one of being – being reconciled or in relationship with the most incredible Person in the universe – Jesus, our friend. We need faith for this walk, and faith is a gift from a benevolent Friend not payment for services rendered.

Kingdom power and miracles do sell books though! Suffering and dying to self don’t.

That is the gospel ala Stephan J

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