The Kingdom of God!

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Chapter 28

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President Abraham Lincoln said this,

 

"We find ourselves," he said, "in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards to fertility of soil, extent of territory, and salutary of climate... We ... find ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or the establishment of them." Again, in his proclamation of April 30, 1863, for a Nation-wide day of fasting and prayer, this great president said: "It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God... and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. We have been the recipients of the choicest blessings of heaven."

I have shared with you many times that this great nation was raised up by God because of a promise He made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and to Joseph through his two son's Ephraim and Manasseh. Our God is faithful to His word and watches over it to perform it. There are so many prophecies in the Old Testament and the New Testament that are meant for the time we are living in! The one that thrills me the most is from Num. 14:21-22,

 

" But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD.

 

We are living in a very tumultuous time in the history of the world and especially our nation! Darkness covers this great nation of ours and Satan and all of his evil spirits have infiltrated our society and are having a hay day. So much so that they think they have won this nation and they no longer have to hide in the shadows behind masks but are coming openly out of the closet and parading their evil intents in the open and the world is readily accepting them. Isaiah 60:3, (NKJV)

 

" For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people; but the Lord will arise over you, and His glory will be seen upon you."

 

Just take a look at all of the new TV programing and see how boldly they are attacking our moral standards. I won't even go into the political realm and all of its corruption. However, I would warn you, there is coming an explosion in that realm that is going to shake our nation and the world!

 

The American church is going to experience a clashing of swords between the religious spirit and the Holy Spirit and this will ignite a vigorous debate about the role of the church in politics. The subject will shift when it is seen that the issue really is the churches role in law, media, economics, education, justice and government. Are we called to make disciples in nations or of nations?

 

The Great commission that Jesus gave to the Church in Matt. 28:19 declares,

 

" Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations!"

 

 

Peter said in 1 Pet. 4:17, (NKJV)

 

" For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God;"

 

No longer can we sit back and leave the commission of the Gospel to the nations to be carried out by others! Jesus said a very alarming statement in Rev. 3:15-19, (NKJV)

 

"I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. Because you say, 'I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing'and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore, be zealous and repent." 

 

If you are not on fire for the Kingdom of God this should make your knees tremble! Get on your knees and repent and get involved in the Kingdom of God! You know! Jesus didn't say that you couldn't seek other things in life! He just said, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness! Your righteousness is filthy rags in the Lord's sight. Seek His righteousness which is freely given to you by faith! Stop trying to change your life and learn to be led by the Holy Spirit of the Lord which dwells within you! Learn to be sensitive to His leading and He will lead you into all truths. There is only one requirement for this; Are you willing to apply the truth when He reveals it to you or are you going to resist the truth like Saul of Tarsas?

 

If you don't know how to be led by the Spirit of the Lord get into a church where the Spirit is moving and have someone teach you how to hear the Lord's voice. Take a crash course on being led by the Spirit. Last week I shared with you about a family that was singing in the night clubs that I ask to come and play music for me. When they came, I assigned one of my elders to go to their home and disciple them! They are now some of the greatest friends that I have and are like my own family! Listen, that is what the Kingdom of God is all about! Jesus said that He came to seek and save the lost!

 

Listen, everyone is not called to be a leader of the magnitude of a Billie Graham or the hundreds of missionaries that have gone throughout the world to preach the Gospel! Most Christians overlook the importance that the Apostle Paul wrote about in 1 Cor. 12:12-19 about the body of Christ.

 

"For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body,whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member but many.

 

" If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body," is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be?

 

The important thing for us to do is to be led by the Holy Spirit that lives within us! If we don't learn to be led by the Spirit, we will go through life doing our own thing! The secret to being led by the Spirit is first to know what the Bible teaches us about God's will. The Spirit will reveal the word to us as we meditate on it and if we will practice what the word says He will direct our footsteps. There must be a desire in our hearts to know the Lord and to order our lives according to His word.

 

If you were placed in this spiritual body as a foot; you will not fit if you try to be an arm or a hand. You will only fit as a foot and a foot has an important function if the body is to be whole. You may not be called to be an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher! But you are essential to the health of the body and you were designed to function there! The key to your success in the body of Christ is to be led by the Spirit of the Lord.

 

When we do this, the Lord will open doors for us to do things, we never thought about doing! I could write books, as I look back on my life about the times the Lord opened doors for me and presented me the opportunity of doing His will for my life. As with many kids, I didn't have any idea what I wanted to do in my life. I always wanted to be active in the Lord's work but I had determined that I didn't want to be in a leadership position in the Church. I did pray and told the Lord that I wanted His will to be done in my life.

 

I didn't want to be a song leader and yet I ended up leading the worship service at the Full Gospel Business Men's Chapter in Parkersburg for several years. I learned very early in my life to be a servant to others and allow the Spirit to open the doors He wanted me to go through! I then was asked to lead the worship service for the Jesus Festival in front of thousands. Over a period of eight years, at the festival, I must have baptized close to a thousand people.

 

I was approached by a Christian brother of mine who said that if I would be the pastor, he would build us a church building! I prayed about this and told him that I would. I have been a pastor now for forty-five years!

 

I was attending a service of a preacher friend of mine and he was talking about having ministered in Africa and the Lord spoke to me and said He wanted me to go to Africa. I said to Him, Ok! I will go, just open the doors for me. It wasn't two months later a preacher friend of mine from Christ For The Nations came to our church and when we took him out for dinner, he asked me to go to South Africa with the CFN group and teach on the Holy Spirit! I said Ok and I ended up going to South Africa three different times and also ministering in Europe.

 

I never would have dreamed that I would do any of these things. Rev. 21:12 says,

 

" "I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works."

 

Something that most Christians don't know about is that before you were born, God wrote a book on your life and what He would lead you to accomplish for the Kingdom of God! You were not put here on this earth just because your father and mother decided to have you. The Lord had a designed purpose for you to fulfill for the Kingdom of God.

 

Psalm 139: 16 tells us that each person has a book in Heaven!

 

" Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book, they all were written, The days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them."

 

God wrote down in a book the destiny and Kingdom purpose for each of our lives. God saw us in our fleshly form in the earth, before we ever existed. He saw our days. Not just the number of them but He saw the activities in them and what we would accomplish in our life. Our individual book is a written record of all that God planned for us in the Kingdom impact He has for our lives. The battle is to get what is in the book to manifest on the Earth.

 

Even Jesus had a book. Heb. 10:5-7 tells us that Jesus had a volume of the book that He came into the Earth to fulfill.

 

" "Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me.  In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, you had no pleasure.  Then I said, 'Behold, I have come' "In the volume of the book it is written of Me" To do Your will, O God."

 

There is a book in Heaven that chronicled what Kingdom purpose Jesus would fulfill in the Earth. Jesus came with a passion and a commitment to complete what had been written in the books of Heaven about Him. This is interesting because John said in John 1:14 that Jesus is the Word made flesh.

 

" "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

 

His physical birth allowed what was written in the book to be manifest in the flesh! Anything God ordained is first written in a book or scroll in Heaven. It must be sent out of Heaven and birthed into the Earth realm before it can become flesh. This is what happened to Jesus, but also to us and everything else that has ever been born into the earth realm!

 

When we are born into the Earth realm, we began the process of living out our Kingdom purpose as it was written in Heaven in our book. Paul said in Eph. 2:10,

 

" "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."

 

Notice that the works that we are to perform was written down and the works we are to do were planned beforehand! There are also books about churches, apostolic networks, businesses, ministries, cities, states, regions and nations. God has an intricate plan for all of His creation and He watches over His word to perform it! The Holy Spirit will reveal His plan for you as you are able to handle the revelation. That is why we must be a seeker of truth and an enforcer of the truth revealed to us!

 

What the Lord intends for you to do is birthed in your spirit and it takes the presence of the Holy Spirit to reveal it all to you. The only way we can fulfill the Lord's will for us in a book in Heaven, is to have a desire to do His will and allow ourselves to be led by His Spirit. This means that we must have the same attitude that Jesus had; Not my will but your will be done in my life! And this means that we must be born again!