By Ryan Shaw
We are continuing to look at phase three of the Gospel of the Kingdom. We introduced a helpful five phase framework of the ‘Gospel of the Kingdom.’ Each phase includes many sub-truths necessary to rightly see Gospel transformation in a human life and community.
The third phase of the Gospel of the Kingdom – Those who enter the Kingdom receive all the benefits, blessings and privileges of our new inheritance.
It is through this phase that converts become disciples. We are born again from above in phase two, choosing a new path, receiving Jesus’ death and resurrection as our penalty before a holy God.
This is where many new believers remain often through no fault of their own but because others in the faith have not taught them rightly about growing into a mature disciple.
In phase three we begin the glorious journey of receiving into our circumstances and situations the benefits, blessings and privileges made available through the Kingdom of God. We experience them and make them our own.
We considered many initial truths of this phase in last week’s article. There are so many important points of truth in phase three, however, that more time is needed to consider further core elements of our inheritance.
As sons and daughters of the Kingdom, we possess spiritual authority to stand against every attack, plan, assignment and scheme of the evil one over our lives, circumstances, finances, relationships, property, families, workplaces, towns, cities and nations. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus we possess power with God and resist the evil one over the above areas.
We have been delivered from the power of inordinate fears related to the spirit world that once gripped and sidelined us. This is a huge reality for those coming to faith in Jesus out of animist and spiritist backgrounds.
This would include folk religion backgrounds connected to Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. This available deliverance must be laid hold of in each individual’s situation.
We have become fully pleasing to God no matter what our minds or emotions tell us. Because we have received new life from God through the work of Jesus, God delights in the relationship, with overflowing joy and pleasure toward us. He is not mad at us though we may continue to stumble along as we grow in becoming more like Him.
We are being made into the image of Christ, having His very life formed in us as we submit to Him. The eight beatitudes in Matthew 5 and the nine fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, consistently cultivated within, are the primary way we are formed into His image.
We have constant access to the throne of God in prayer because Jesus’ own righteousness has become ours. We experience greater answers to prayer as we align with His will in prayer and intercession.
We experience God as our defender, strong tower, mighty fortress, a very present help, the One who intervenes in our circumstances, orchestrates details to accomplish His will in and through our lives and who undertakes to bring forth His purposes among those submitted to Him.
The rule and reign of the great King, Jesus Christ, is in effect over our lives, families, workplaces, as we yield to His leadership and ways.
We are valued, have worth and possess restored dignity through experiencing God’s love for us – no matter our ethnicity, who has belittled or abused us. We experience restored honor as a child of the King, having all shame removed as Jesus took it upon Himself.
We are no longer our own but have been bought at the price of His blood, brought into His Kingdom, belonging to Him, for His glory and purpose alone. Our ambitions and desires surrendered to Him in exchange for the much more fulfilling and satisfying ambitions and desires of His own heart in our lives.
We are meant to know God in increasing measures through devoted time spent in His presence in personal prayer, worship, adoration while also reading His word under the guidance and leading of the Spirit, meditating, studying, praying it while applying its truth in circumstances.
Like Paul, we have the capacity to consistently be moving onward and upward in fellowship with the great King through encountering and experiencing God in His exhaustive glory on a regular basis. Additionally, we are growing in expectation of the growing glory God is releasing across the nations.
We have been saved, possessing assurance of eternal salvation, beginning to experience it in its initial manifestations now in this life, and forever living face to face in intimacy with the splendid and glorious King.
We are growing in knowing and discerning the will of God in His big picture global purposes as well as our individual family’s and personal lives. We are meant to know the will of God through progressive revelation and walk it out accordingly.
Our conduct is pleasing to the Lord and worthy of the Gospel. We honor Him with finances and material possessions, overcoming greed and covetousness; with our bodies, living obediently to His standards of sexuality – freeing us to enjoy sexuality to its fullest capacity in the confines of marriage between a man and woman.
As we walk obediently in God’s ways of handling finance He reveals Himself as the great provider and source of all physical sustenance – giving creative ideas and holy strategies to supply for needs while also having enough to sow into His global harvest.
Many believers are not living according to all these blessings provided as our free and always available inheritance. They are saved, yet are choosing to live in spiritual poverty, not living according to the glorious benefits freely supplied and meant for our full partaking in the Kingdom of God in this age.
){kind=link}