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Posted: 10/30/2013 at 12:45pm
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Next Step into Practical Kingdom Reality
By Ron McGatlin
Spiritually transitioning from the church system way of life into kingdom reality is a work of the Spirit that has been accomplished, at least in part, in a forerunner group of willing volunteers in many parts of the world.
A larger and more practical transition of practical daily life and function is before us. Many believers are currently sensing in their spirits that life is changing in many facets. They also sense that the fresh new kingdom way of life from heaven is becoming tangible in their spirits.
However, the big question is, how does this fresh life of inner love, righteousness, peace, and joy that is in us by the Holy Spirit become practical daily life?
What is the kingdom way of job or business – how do relationships and worship gatherings function – how are things of our lives affected such as finances, education, child rearing, entertainment, transportation, and other more basic things like food, water, clothing, shelter, transportation – and what about rapidly increasing severe persecution of Christians and rapidly increasing tyrannical governments and oppressive police states?
In this major transition toward kingdom reality in an unstable world, how do we function today and in the future – how or what should we change or do this week and this month and the next months and years: 2014 through 2020 and beyond? One thing seems absolutely certain: there are major changes now happening that will continue to increase in intensity in the near future.
To attempt to fully define and describe all of the practical answers to these questions would be mind-boggling if not impossible. These are highly complex situations with many facets, much too complicated for human minds to consider. However, the entire sum of the complex issues boiled down to their deepest roots and origin are profoundly simple.
Mankind has largely left the one true God and His way of life on Planet Earth. This situation must be corrected and is now in the process of being corrected.
Knowing the basic rudimental facts of what is going on can help us fit into what God is doing more circumspectly. However, there is only one source of direction that will enable us to specifically know our part in what is happening in our world. For decades the Spirit of God has been calling for His people to move into a position to hear His direction more clearly and move more quickly to align with what God is speaking to each of us. We may have heard God’s trumpeters proclaiming this word and may have, to some degree, made some effort to reposition ourselves to hear and obey the Holy Spirit’s leading. We simply must be in position to hear and move quickly with God’s personal leading for our lives.
Following religious patterns or someone else’s God-given pattern for themselves might not be the way for each of us to go. We need to live by the Spirit and walk in the Spirit to hear clearly and obey God’s leading for ourselves. As we all do this, things seem to just fall into place. When the need comes the provision is there. It is like floating down a peaceful stream, no need to do a lot of paddling. We just steer the boat as we are carried by the current. When we come to a place of need, whatever is needed appears on the bank and we simply steer over to it and receive it. This is opposed to furiously paddling upstream against the current of God’s flow and striving to meet needs in our lives that soon become desperate and cause serious frustration.
If we yet lack the spiritual life maturity to hear God but are truly seeking to grow up in Him, God will provide someone who does hear well for us to temporarily follow as a mentor or leader. For our confirmation while growing in hearing God for ourselves, God may provide others with prophetic gifting to help in confirming what God is speaking to us.
There is such wonderful agreement as we flow together side by side each hearing and obeying the same Spirit that coordinates all the activity of the Body. It is the furthest thing from each person going his own way according to his own mind. Every member fits in its place and does its part as directed and empowered by the Head, Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit.
Knowing biblical kingdom principles and observing spiritual trends of what God is doing in general give us roads to hear on and some general direction. However, we each know our part and where to connect with others by communing with God and following His direction.
Some Observable Current General Trends
Over the past century or so and especially in recent decades God has been restoring to His people more of what the first century disciples experienced with Jesus, along with an increased hunger for more intimate relationship with God, Spirit to spirit. He has restored works of the Holy Spirit and an increased awareness of His presence among and within His people.
For the most part, the church systems that have served to bring many people to Christ Jesus as Savior and have preserved the Bible for centuries have not been able to flow with the changing depth of personal intimacy with God. This has hindered personal spiritual growth of individuals in hearing and obeying the leadership of God by the Holy Spirit for themselves. The religious patterns and structures that were useful in the past became a hindrance and inadvertently may have blocked many as they were seeking to move into the restored place of intimately communing with God and being led and empowered by God through His Holy Spirit.
Many people just did not fit the patterns any longer and could not continue trying to walk in them. Large numbers of people have felt as if they were in a wilderness situation apart from the past church system relationships that they once so enjoyed. Many were left to only have intimate fellowship with God in the Spirit and to only connect with others of like mind long distance through the internet. OpenHeaven.com was and is a part of connecting and encouraging kingdom people through the internet. Throughout this season there have been strong desires in many of the people to connect and fellowship with people like themselves in their own area. That has been limited in the past either in quantity or quality simply because there have been so few people with a depth of kingdom of God experience and walk.
More Kingdom People
In the past several years the number of people moving into a greater depth of kingdom of God experience and understanding has greatly increased. Small clusters of kingdom-seeking people have developed, and more are developing. They are mostly meeting in homes without hired professional leadership and expensive building costs.
Now the small clusters are beginning to connect regionally as individuals travel to other groups within a day’s drive. This brings great encouragement and increased opportunity for serving one another with the spiritual gifts that are within each cluster.
God is raising up apostolically gifted men to assist in encouraging local clusters and connecting them with other clusters regionally. (These gifted workers are not establishing the clusters under themselves or as their network.) They are simply part of the Spirit-led function of encouraging and connecting the kingdom of God people. As long as the internet is available to us, it will be a part of this work. When it is no longer available, these mobile apostolically gifted servants connecting clusters will be even more vital as a means of connecting the clusters of kingdom people.
Everyone in the kingdom is at the same level with God. There are no elite or class levels; all have a part in the kingdom. There are those who are more mature and those who are less mature, but there are no hierarchies of men ruling over men. Leaders are simply further down the road or gifted for serving by supplying spiritual oversight.
This informal and ground level Spirit connection of clusters of kingdom brothers and sisters will prove extremely valuable in the unstable environment of failing economies, corrupt governments, general chaos and lack through the world-cleansing judgment period. Each kingdom person, family, and cluster will hear and obey their specific direction for supplying their part to the cluster and between clusters.
The kingdom of God people will arise after the cleansing judgments to rule and reign with Christ in His kingdom. The mostly hidden clusters will produce the surviving kingdom of God people that will arise after the cleansing judgments are finished to replenish the earth in the brightness of the glorious kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
Matthew 13:36-43: Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.”
He answered and said to them: “He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!
Brethren, we are alive in this season and part of this scripture being fulfilled. The good seeds (sons of the kingdom) are planted and growing rapidly. The tares (sons of the wicked one) are also planted in the same field and growing very rapidly. The gathering of the tares and the burning fire (cleansing judgment) is beginning. After the fire, then the sons of the kingdom will shine forth in brightness of the kingdom of our Father.
Hear and obey.
If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit - Rom 5:25.
Live in the Spirit, Walk in the Spirit,
Ron McGatlin
archive.openheaven.com
basileia@earthlink.net
Edited by News Room on 10/31/2013 at 6:04pm
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Topic: NEXT STEP INTO PRACTICAL KINGDOM REALITY
