Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
As leaders, we are called to lead people in knowing God and knowing who they are as sons and daughters of God. We are planters, waterers, builders, and other terms that apply to the edification, exhortation, encouragement, comfort and strengthening of the family of God. We are called to labor for the purposes of the kingdom of God in the lives of those we are called to lead. The kingdom of God is the kingdom of our Lord and Christ – Jesus. It is a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit within the hearts of those who receive it. It is an internal kingdom that transforms the external expressions of the kingdoms of our lives and thus our kingdoms become kingdoms of our Lord and Christ. The external expressions of our lives are the outward evidence of the focus of our hearts and minds. The kingdom of God working in us is seen in the expressions of our kingdoms to this world. The unshakable kingdom God increasingly affects the shaking kingdoms of our world. What is the unshakable kingdom? Is it only the kingdom to come or is there a measure of the unshakeable kingdom in our lives today?
Hebrews 12:25 See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven. 26 And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.” 27 This expression, “Yet once more,” denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. 28 Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; 29 for our God is a consuming fire.
God is speaking to us in our spirits. This is the source of our faith and the empowerment of our obedience to God in all things. It is more powerful that the external voices in our world. It is the internal voice of the unshakeable kingdom of God. It is the internal voice that empowers internal changes in our lives. It is like leaven in the loaf of bread that fills it from the inside out. It is the germination of the seed of faith that becomes a growing tree. It is the brightness of the internal light that grows brighter and brighter every day. It is the testimony of the good work begun by God in our hearts that will be completed. As leaders, we embrace this truth; and we lead others into becoming increasingly stable in all their ways by the power of the kingdom of God working in their hearts. God is a consuming fire, and He is purifying our lives by consuming what can be consumed and refining all that reveals His glory in our lives. The kingdom of God is a greater kingdom than the kingdoms of this world and it is by the working of the internal kingdom of God in our hearts that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God.
The unshakable kingdom is who we are, not what we do. Who we are determines how we do every ‘what to do’ in life. Moses had to encounter the God of fire in the bush. He had to become consumed with the passion, zeal, and purpose of God in His heart. He needed an encounter with God as his God. He needed to know that there was no separation between him and God. He needed to know that God and he lived together in all things. Moses needed a transformation by the life-giving God of heaven to lead God’s people into that same encounter in life. The deliverance of Israel from Egypt was more about becoming the testimony of the children of God upon the earth than about being freed from Egypt. Being freed from a life of sin is only the invitation to become an expression of God’s life-giving people upon the earth. God wants us to become heaven powered from within. When we are empowered from within, we can do all things without. As leaders, we must be empowered from within, and we must lead others in being empowered by the kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit in all things. By this, we can be unshakeable people of God in a shaking world, and we will shine as a light of truth and hope. We can be the light of Day into the darkness of the night!
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
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