Firstly I want to ask you to read Matthew 4:17. Here we see Jesus beginning His earthly ministry preaching the gospel of the kingdom. He declares
“Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”
Now our natural thinking is that Jesus was immediately pointing out our sin. However consider something else. To repent also means to change your thinking or your mindset.

Jesus is proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven, God’s invading force on earth is now near because of what He is about to do. When man was originally created God pronounced power, authority and dominion over us ruling the earth on His behalf. We lost that as a result of Adam’s sin, but now Jesus, the last Adam is declaring that position is restored again in Him.

The kingdom of God carries all of His power and ability. For us it is a reflection on earth of what is enjoyed in heaven. It is everywhere that the rule and reign of God is present.

Furthermore we see Jesus in Luke 4:16-21 setting His stall out preaching the kingdom principles that He is carrying and will enforce. He is anointed to preach the gospel of the kingdom to the poor, to the sick, to those in bondage of any kind, to free those who are oppressed and to declare the year of the lord’s favour. He is bringing everything that heaven has and with powerful demonstrations of healings, miracles and blessing is showing us the level of kingdom living we should be enjoying here on earth if we follow after Him.
In short He is restoring the fulness of blessing to us that our Father God declared to us as he blessed mankind in the garden of Eden.

The problem is that many Christians are not living in the fulness of kingdom power in their own lives and so are not in a place to take the kingdom to the world in the same way Jesus did. You and I have to repent or change our thinking and begin to believe that we can live with kingdom power and ability flowing in us.

For almost a year now I have been hungering and thirsting for the presence and power of God to grow stronger in my life. I firmly believe that we must begin to walk with the demonstration power of God on our lives. So many times we live below God’s intentions for us and when push comes to shove we merely revert to living controlled by the world and its way of doing things.

We need to change but how do we do that?

Well, to begin with  Matthew 6:33 tells us to “seek first the kingdom and His righteousness”. The amplified defines righteousness there as “God’s way of doing and being right” We have to change our mindset and seek after God’s ways with all our heart and put him first place in our thinking and our actions. Then our expectation needs to rise up of what God will do in our lives when we truly believe what he says.

However we have to be serious about this. The Lord tells us to be holy as he is holy. We need to check ourselves out and ask ourselves, “are we really leading a holy life”?

Then in doing so  we have to change from the classic thinking on holiness as being a whole lot of things you don’t do and being legalistic about it. True holiness is all about how God lives Himself. It is an attribute of the Father. Ultimately it just is who God is. He is love and He is holy and He wants us to become holy because He wants us to be like Him and enjoy fulness of life as He does.

So I think we have some decisions to make in our lives this year. Will we carry on just as we have or will we allow the kingdom of God to have more of an impact on our lives so we are able to have more of an impact on the world with the message of the kingdom?

More next month.....