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Posted: 05/05/2010 at 7:38am
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Our Time is Now
By Ron McGatlin
While breath and strength remains in our natural bodies we have the opportunity to be used of God to impact the world with the ways of heaven. We can connect and relate to God in heaven. At the same time we can connect with and relate to the people around us and touch the world with the grace, love, peace, and power from heaven.
Neither our ancestors nor any of the multitudes of people who have been alive on earth in generations before us have this opportunity now. Their time is past. When our time is past we, like them, will no longer have this opportunity.
Every person who has ever lived on earth has had some impact on the world. It may have been a significant impact or a very minuscule one. It also may have been a positive or a negative impact. Individually every person and collectively every tribe or nation through every generation of history has had some measure of impact on the world and on the generations to come after them.
Among the multitudes of significantly impacting lives two stand out above all others in their impact on mankind and the world. One is the first Adam in the Garden of Eden and the other is the “last Adam,” Christ Jesus. The first Adam’s decision caused the fall of all mankind and the world. The work of Christ Jesus provided and is providing the potential for full redemption and restoration for all mankind and the world. Both of these men, in their lifetime on earth, greatly impacted the lives of all to live after them.
There is no question that you and I will impact the people and the world around us. The question is will the net sum of our impact be positive or negative, and will it be significant or miniscule? If we seek to build our legacy or our kingdom, we may do some good things, but the final net sum of our life’s impact will be negative. Human effort to achieve our own goals apart from God will not impact the world positively. The thing that makes our life’s impact positive or negative is whether or not the ways of heaven have come to earth through it. Has the kingdom of God from heaven been advanced on earth by our lives, or has another kingdom been advanced by our lives?
Our Potential Destiny
I am convinced that most people on earth today have never lived to their God given potential in the spiritual realm. Only in recent decades has the spiritual kingdom of God begun to come clearly back into view.
Church systems without revelation of the at-hand kingdom of God developed beliefs that blocked or limited the kingdom of heaven potential in the people and subsequently in the world.
Only a couple of generations back Christians mostly suffered through this earthly life with only the hope of going to heaven when they died. There was no view of the at-hand kingdom and bringing the ways of God into this life. At least in the church systems that I experienced, there was no hope for this life or the world. The godly objective in life was to be saved and then try to take as many people with us into heaven as we could. This was called the gospel of salvation. For the most part living meagerly and not having worldly possessions was seen as godly.
There were other different church systems that sought through social efforts to make life better and more pleasant for people. This was referred to by some as the social gospel.
Also, in recent generations there have been church systems that sought to apply biblical truth to help themselves and others to be prosperous in worldly goods and finances. In these systems riches were sometimes unofficially seen as a measure of godliness. This was called by some the prosperity gospel.
All of these church system life-views and others have been used to veil the minds of people to the gospel of the kingdom which is the gospel that Jesus proclaimed and demonstrated.
The great potential of kingdom of heaven living is yet hidden by religious views in the hearts and minds of multitudes of Christians as well as the world. We have been cheated through philosophical traditions of men derived according to principles of the world and not according to Christ (Col 2:8).
Christ Jesus Is the KING and LORD of All.
Jesus is the embodied fullness of the Godhead.
Col 2:9-10: For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.
Col 1:15-20: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.
For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell,
and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.
THE HIDDEN MYSTERY OF THE AGES
THIS IS THE SAME CHRIST WHO DWELLS IN US NOW! This is the heart of the gospel of the kingdom – the good news of the rule and reign of God from heaven in a people on earth now -- Christ the creator in whom all things consist, the head of the body dwelling with us – in us now.
Col 1:26-29: The mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. To this end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily.
Paul wrote speaking of Christ Jesus: HIS WORKING WHICH WORKS IN ME MIGHTILY. Christ can work in us mightily now. This is the potential for the rule of God on earth – the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
This word has been again hidden through the generations of Christians that were cheated out of the potential of Christ who is preeminent over all things dwelling in His body – His temple – His people on earth to impact the world with the rule of God.
Incomplete or false teaching has stolen the faith of the people to know, believe, and thereby appropriate the great mystery of Christ working in us now to reach and impact the world with the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Col 2:2-3: That their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Christ is in the Father, and the Father is in Christ. The Father in Christ indwells us by the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit connects us with Christ on the throne and implants the Spirit of Christ abiding within us. Christ in us is not the hope of failure or the fear of the devil or the need to be subject to our flesh or subject to religious systems or ungodly secular systems of the world. Christ Jesus has overcome the world and the devil (Col 2:13-15).
Faith is the key to accessing and appropriating the life of Christ in us.
By a knowing kind of faith, the potential to the full stature of the life of Christ is available to us. If we have not heard it and have not believed it, we do not have it. Because we have been made to believe that we cannot have the fullness of Christ and full access to the Father through Christ, we do not walk in the potential that is available.
We do not believe because our hearts are filled with something else such as religious teachings or many idols on which we choose to set our affection. We trust in and are filled by other beliefs and activities that fill our heart and life. There must be a cleansing of what we have set our minds on and that we delight in apart from Christ Jesus: the way, the truth, and the life. We must die to our self-life and all idols. We must be raised into eternal life now and not allow ourselves to be cheated out of the life of God in us. We must experience the resurrection from the dead now as the resurrected Christ fills us by His Spirit.
Col 3:1-4: If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind (affection) on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears (manifests), then you also will appear with Him in glory.
Our true nature as sons of God is hidden in Christ. Seek the things from above. As we set our affection, our whole heart and mind on heavenly things, Christ will manifest His life in us, and our hidden true life of Christ will appear.
Jesus said only the person who loses his life will find it.
Mat 10:39-40: "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it. He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.
Keep on pursuing love. It never fails
and His kingdom never ends.
Ron McGatlin
archive.openheaven.com
basileia@earthlink.net
Edited by Ron McGatlin on 05/06/2010 at 7:27am
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Topic: OUR TIME IS NOW
That is only funny with someone who has never used tobacco at all. 