The Kingdom of God

Kris said something during the conference that took me a while to figure out exactly what He was saying. He said: “All the Church is in the Kingdom, but all of the Kingdom isn’t in the Church.” I really had to think about that statement before I finally got it. What he was saying is that the Kingdom of God is much bigger than the Church. That makes so much sense, and everyone of us would probably agree. But we really don’t act like it.

You see, we all think that the Kingdom is complete in the Church. Too many of us have treated the Church as the Kingdom. The traditional religious systems have fostered this over many years. Come to church. Join the Church. By preaching just the gospel of Salvation instead of the gospel of the Kingdom, we have shortchanged believers, and kept the church from reaching her true potential. We have said all you have to do is pray a prayer and join the church. That’s not what Jesus said. In the great commission at the end of Matthew, He told us to go and do everything that He had done. To make disciples, teaching them to do all that He had done. That includes healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons and preaching the gospel of the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of God is to bring light into the darkness. It’s to bring heaven down into our situations on the earth. We are to call it down. We are to release the presence of God into each situation that we come into. So how do we do this? I believe one of the first and most important steps is to recognize that we are called to release the presence of God in every situation of our life. We must cast out fear, and embrace faith. Fear and Faith cannot coexist in the same situation, One will prevail, and that one is the one that you feed.

So, if you feed your faith with intimacy and embracing His love, the faith will increase. When faith increases, fear has no choice but to flee. But if we continue to focus on the negatives and allow the fear to grow in our hearts, then faith will fade as the fear grows. It’s like the Indian Chief who told the missionary that he had two big dogs, an black one and a white one. The black one represented all the bad things he was capable of doing, and the white one represented all the good deeds. The missionary asked the Chief which dog was the strongest and would prevail in a fight. The chief answered calmly, whichever one I feed. So true.

Which are you feeding, fear or faith. For me, watching or listening to too much TV news feeds my fear. All the news is built to feed fear. That’s how shows get their ratings. So I don’t watch nearly as much as I used to watch. I feed my faith by reading the word, and listening to worship music. I have to choose daily which I am going to feed. It’s sometimes a hard choice, but when I make it. I know what I am doing. I choose to release the Kingdom wherever I go. Am I religious? I hope not, no I know that I am not. I want people to understand my relationship with Papa, not anything about my religion.

We can all carry and release the Kingdom of God. It’s not about church and a building. It’s about relationship with God and with each other. So tomorrow as we go out, why don’t we all choose to press into His presence and release the Kingdom through out the earth?