ABIDING IN HIS LOVE

“But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  This is a most stunning claim! If God loved us this much while we were still sinners, He surely loves us now, and has loved us every moment of our sin soaked life. Repentance, confession, our foreordained good works, ministry, literally everything we do as Kingdom people cannot and will never merit the Father’s love – worthiness is simply impossible with inestimable love. The love of God is the foundation of who and what we are in Christ... all we are and do, irrespective of our not quite transformed nature. We can get caught up in doing things for God, including waging the good fight of faith against our fleshly nature, and fail to do the most important thing of all... receive and remain in our Father’s love – abide in His love. Some will say God does not look upon us when our garments are stained and spotted with sin, that God does not love what He sees – that our sin grieves Him. But we must remember, we are not our sin. And, just as surely as God in His justice hates our sin, He loves us – we are not our sin! Our loving Daddy sees in us the righteousness of His Beloved Son which we wear like a cloak, and His heart overflows with love. Submission to the Lordship of Christ and death to our fleshly nature are inevitable to those who will to continue God’s walk of faith, for this is God’s Eternal Purpose... our transformation into perfect beings for His perfect re-creation, the new heaven and new earth. The pathway home will be difficult – dying hurts – and Self will not go quietly. But we must never forget our lofty, beautiful heavenly calling in Christ Jesus: “Be imitators of God, as beloved children.” We don’t imitate God to become His children... We imitate God because we are His children, dearly-loved... sin nature and all.

(Rom. 5:8; Eph. 5:1)

WE ARE NOT OUR SIN

KINGDOM LIFE

Kingdom is the King’s domain, His dominion, realm of rule. Life in the Kingdom of God/Heaven is a radically different lifestyle that is centered in an intimate interactive relationship with God and Jesus.  Kingdom children are “born again”, gennao anothen, literally begotten from above by the Holy Spirit of God: The Holy Spirit is the midwife who birth’s believers into the Kingdom - submerging them into the body of Christ. In a way the phrase “Kingdom of God” is a pregnant metaphor, birthing a way of life Jesus demonstrated for us.  This life will be extraordinary and full to overflowing in many ways: “I alone came in order that they (i.e., read “we”) might be possessing life, and that they (we) might be possessing it in superabundance”. And this is Eternal Life: It means to know You, to experience You in intimate relationship, the only true and real God, and to likewise know and experience Jesus Christ whom you have sent (Jn. 17:3).  So “Eternal Life” is having an intimate interactive relationship with God and His son Jesus, and a kingdom is an interactive relationship between a king and his subjects. Eternal life is Kingdom life.

Kingdom life is supernatural life, a new kind of life that fully physical and fully spiritual: The “Living Water” of God’s Kingdom is water that’s alive, not stagnant, but life-giving: “If you knew, (intuitively), the gift of God (Christ) ..., you would ask Him (Christ) and He would give you living water - water that is alive” (John 4:10). Here “living water” is the Holy Spirit which flows out of the heart of believers “like rivers of living water” (Jn. 7:37-39).  In the Old Testament God is called a “fountain of living water” (Jer. 2:13, 17:13, SOS 4:15), and this same fountain of living water will flow in Heaven (Rev. 7:17, Zech. 14:8). The Greek tense in these passages denotes continuous action: This living water is continuous, unfailing and eternal, “gushing” up into everlasting life, eternal life (i.e., John 17:3), into an extraordinary life lived to the full - a superabundant life. 

Life in the Kingdom of God is life in the here and now where the Holy Spirit gushes forth from within manifesting Christ and His Kingdom in every aspect of the saint’s life. Saints should “leak” the Holy Spirit everywhere they go. When the Kingdom of God invades our circumstances the word “impossible” deconstructs, it melts and evaporates, and its tyranny over us ends. Kingdom life gives meaning and purpose to an otherwise meaningless, self-centered existence. Our life should be an intimate interactive relationship with God, our Father - reconciled to God and reconciled to one another - so that our entire life is a beautiful symphony, the music of God’s Kingdom.

The Kingdom of God is all about how we live our daily lives - our way of life. When Christianity sees itself as a belief system, a formula or set of rules and rituals, instead of a way of life, it loses the “Kingdom Magic” and becomes just another religion. This simple concept defines the tension between the words “religious” and “spiritual”, in their common usage today.  “Religious” speaks of people who believe in God but not the Kingdom of God.  “Spiritual” speaks of living in a dynamic interactive relationship with God as a 24/7 way of life: This lifestyle births God’s agape love within which reciprocates love back to God and to others.  “Spiritual” is relational, “religious” isn’t. Spiritual people are Kingdom people.

SUPERABUNDANT LIFE

EMPTY VESSELS

There are only two choices, two masters, two domains from which we live life, the Law and Grace; there is no third way called Self... Self is simply a pretender to the throne of our heart. We all begin life under the Law, born enslaved, indentured to the powers of darkness through the fall. The power of the Law is two-fold: The Law defines sin as sin, without the Law there is no sin, and the law demands perfection, complete and total compliance, which only God can satisfy. The Law sets an impossible standard then condemns man for being unable to attain to it, enslaving us to failure. Unrighteousness, sin, reigns and controls our life focusing on appeasing Self which sits on the throne of our heart. Co-crucification releases us from the Law and sin’s dominion, allowing us to choose our master, and co-resurrection seats us (spiritually) in the heavenlies with our Lord awaiting The Gathering when we will receive our new glorified bodies and fly home. Continual yielding to either domain brings bondage and enslavement. We are either slaves of sin or slaves of God, but slaves none the less. Said another way we are empty vessels that can only release that which is put into us. God wants to fill us with His Spirit as Kingdom children destined to dwell with Him forever... just how long is forever? Satan wants to fill us with his spirit... the spirit of this world, to enslave us to the passions and lusts of Self, our fleshly nature, condemning us to eternal damnation with him. Some people will choose, and some will choose by not choosing, but there is no escaping... everyone will make a choice.

“CHOOSE FOR YOURSELVES THIS DAY WHOM YOU WILL SERVE”