We Go

"Things alter in the kingdom of God because God is the kingdom."

WE GO and God does the work. Being filled with Him, His Presence overflowing from us, we speak His Words, and He fills in the empty spaces. We lay hands on the sick, and whether it’s our faith or their faith, or some of ours and some of theirs, the mercy of God makes up where we fall short. But our footsteps, made under our physical strength, are only taken because we know He is in what we are doing, and nowhere in any of it is our ego involved. Even our intelligence is only used when God draws from it. We are not alone supernaturally. We are not in control in the Spirit but submit all we do to Him.

There is no wavering. We’re not guessing, taking a stab at it, or doing what seems right. We know what is right, and we know that when we say, “Jesus,” He works on our behalf because we are connected entirely to Him. Many people speak His name in the flesh, with their mind. He hears and He sees their need, but our words without Him in it are as nothing. Things alter in the kingdom of God because God is the kingdom. He should be all we think and do and observe and imitate. When His Spirit came to live in us, as His temple, when we accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior, He did not come simply to occupy space, but He is working. He fills our spirit man, He cleans and corrects our thinking – we must allow Him to do this and obey His loving instructions, and He heals and directs our physical bodies.

We usually stop Him at the spirit man and say the rest is ours. It isn’t. Jesus was that humble and that meek. He thought His Father’s words; He never sinned in thought. He did His Father’s works, never taking a step or a handhold that wasn’t instructed. When the Spirit led Him into the wilderness and required Him to fast, He obeyed without complaint. We allow ourselves the complaints. He called out the Pharisees and scribes for their hypocrisy because the Father needed it spoken and gave Him that instruction. We decide we should do the same, but our instructions are to love one another and to pray for all men (John 13:34; 1 Timothy 2:1). We have no excuse for judgment. Jesus was made Judge by the Father, and sent to earth to die for those men. He wanted them to repent and see Him for who He is.

Minister Alistair Begg has a fantastic sermon where He spoke truth about the thief on the cross. “How did he make it to Paradise?” he asks. The thief didn’t have to join any Bible study groups, be baptized, or make any public confessions. He didn’t know any of the steps of correct doctrine, nothing today’s church asks of people. The thief went to Paradise and is in heaven because Jesus said He could come.

LISTEN TO Alistair Begg preach this word.

Matthew 11:16 speaks it so clearly. Confronted for eating with sinners, Jesus said, “You are like children who make fun of those who sing a happy song and refuse to join in, then refuse to mourn a sad song, shaking your heads.” These are the behaviors of the world. Stand in the church building and call people names, and you aren’t like Jesus. Stand in the pulpit and defend your traditions, although they leave out the Spirit, and you have invited the devil inside. He is a fox, there to steal the chickens; a wolf, ready to blow the house down; a hyena, always mocking and laughing. He is anti-righteous. But here’s the thing – he’s wrong.

God wants all of me, all of you, all of the church. A bride doesn’t offer her husband her hand and refuse him her face, her lips, and her heart.

“How can I describe what the people living today are like? They are like children who sit around and find fault with one another. If one child plays a happy song, the others make fun and refuse to join in harmony. If the child plays a sad song, the others call them weak and refuse to mourn.” (Matthew 11:16-17, Remedy)

On a remote island, there’s an untouched tribe of native peoples who men have been expressly forbidden to speak to in the idea that their rights to their culture is higher than anything else. God loves cultures. He created them. Jesus is a Jew, but Jesus died for all men, Jew and Gentile, male and female. Just as we know genders as being God-created, we must know cultures as a beautiful thing God made. But our behavioral line is drawn at the worldly thinking that men must remain as they are and never know Jesus. No one should die and go to hell. The world protects individual rights, unwilling to offend anyone. But offenses will sometimes come. Not because we sought them out or deliberately created them, nor because we knew they happen and so shrug our shoulders; we don’t seek persecution or to be a persecutor. Instead, it is that we know how to respond to it, and that response is done in the Spirit, led of the Spirit, who is the power which gives us fruit: love, joy, and peace. We walk in favor with all men, and I guarantee you if someone would walk in His ways and seek His face for those native peoples, He will make a way where there isn’t one.

A minister was called to travel to a foreign country and so went to the airport and stood in line, without a dime to buy a ticket. He struck up a conversation with the man in front of him, and when asked, told where he was headed and why. The man, without faltering, said, “I’ll pay for your ticket.” That minister walked in the path God had for Him, and God had a man prepared to supply His need. If we’d get our head out of our pockets and into His Word, we’d see our lives grow. We don’t seek things for ourselves. We seek being in His will. Some are called to ordination, some are called to serve in the church, others are right where He needs them to be, minus degrees, and they prosper. The church must know both and accept all … Why? BECAUSE WE ARE WALKING IN THE SPIRIT, hearing His voice.

Jesus sought nothing for Himself. No comfort, no personal opinion, nothing to his taste, not even long life. When made fun of, He kept His gaze on the love of God and said nothing. He didn’t try to escape His death, but submitted Himself to it, knowing His life would satisfy all that was written, and His new life, His Resurrection, would make heaven available. Not just as a destination, but as the power of God to fill all people, in all places, with all of Him. And to this we are called. Not as infants, content to play at their parent’s feet, but as adults, grown up in the truth, filled with the truth, speaking the truth, every word, every action anointed by God’s presence who called us to be here.

“All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.” (Ephesians 1:20-23 MSG)

“If—as I’m certain is the case concerning what I’m about to say—any person among you appraises himself to be religious because he is outwardly observant of religious actions and desires, but he can’t control his tongue, this person has a distorted impression of himself in his heart. He may think he’s religious, but the fact that he can’t control his tongue shows that his so-called religion is empty, hollow, and vain.” (James 1:26 RIV)


----------
Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com