Outside In or Inside Out
Prophetic Encouragement for the Coming Season
By Ron McGatlin
Life in this world can be a significant challenge for everyone including Christians. Much of the world is now approaching a season of potentially grave danger of being overcome by traumatic experiences of lifestyle changes.
Our loving Heavenly Father will provide all that we need to not only make it through difficulties but, He will also prepare us to carry His provision to the people around us in the time of troubles. God’s love, power, peace and joy can fill us with life, even in the darkest times.
Some extreme questions will emerge in the minds and hearts of multitudes that will come face to face with deep issues of life at a level of reality that they may have never before experienced. The deepest rudimental foundations of their lives may be in danger of crumbling.
Many hearts will fail as their strength and trust become liquefied in the flames of burning wood, hay and stubble (Luke 21:6) (1Cor 3:12). Much of what gave life to the people will prove to be fragile, unstable and unsubstantial as the beating of the storms of worldwide corrective judgment tests every aspect of life and being (Mat 7 24:27).
Questions arising will be more basic and fundamental to life than our previously trusted answers can reach or satisfy. Our pat answers will be exposed as trite and without the reality of core foundational substance.
Why am I really here? Really! What is my purpose and why is everything like it is now? What is the purpose for this whole world? Why does the whole mess even exist? Where is God in all this and why is it not better? Is God who I really thought He was? Why should I try to go on when everything seems to be against me, and all that I thought was good is gone?
These and many other questions of this nature may seem very foreign to many of us now at this moment. We could possibly even judge anyone who has such thoughts as being unbelieving and doubters of God. We might think of them as faithless and weak to have such questions. However, that is from where things are today and not from where people will be when the quality of life and the lifestyle of the present disappears and in its place a very different quality of natural life takes over in spite of our efforts to keep it from happening.
For many, strife and dissention will sour relationships as blame and guilt arise from the pain of loss of quality lifestyle. Need, will become greed, as there is not enough where there had been plenty, in the past. Fighting, rioting and taking from others will create chaos and even more loss among the people. Depression will rob the people of productivity and the dark becomes darker. The loss of the games and entertainment that became a major source of life for many will cause major frustration to many that live, in part, from the outside in.
There will be those who will not falter and will be unscathed by the changes in lifestyle. These will continue, even in the time of darkness and loss of quality lifestyle to be strong in their hearts and filled with love, peace and power to help others to come to the same place of peace in the storms of change.
What Makes the Difference?
It is not whether they believe in Jesus as savior or joined a church. It is not there Christian status or if they have stored up provisions or not. Many Christian church goers and ministers alongside the un-churched will not be able to stand in this time. The scripture will come to pass about what some will say to Jesus, that they have preached in His name and done many miracles in His name yet they will not be included with those who can live in real righteousness, peace and joy in this coming season of worldwide adjustments (Mat 7: 21-23).
Those who are dependent on external circumstances for a sense of wellbeing of life will fail. Those who depend upon receiving life from the outside into their hearts will fail. Those who have had a life of plenty and leisure, those who have grown to depend on good things and many pleasurable stimulations will not make it. Those who have become dependent for life from their ministry, their relationships with friends and family, those who depend on stimulation from socializing for life, whether electronically or in person, will not make it. All who depend upon something in this world as their life source will fall unless they are changed to a whole different reality of inner life source.
We Must Live from the INSIDE OUT!
Certainly relationship with friends and family are good. Good food and comfortable houses and even dependable transportation are all good. However, they are not where our lives are to come from.
The source of our lives is within us. Christ Jesus and Father God abiding in us by the Spirit of God is the source of your life and mine individually and our lives corporately. The real kingdom of God really is within us with all of its righteousness, peace and joy that flow through the love of God within us. This is living the kingdom lifestyle in the Spirit (Luke 17:21).
Whether externally we are abased or abounding does NOT take away our life or give us life (Phil 4:11-13). When our lifestyle changes from the most to the least it will not destroy us. We will be strengthened within even more to reach out to those around us who are going through the strong changes from a long season of national blessings to a time of national chaos and lack.
Some of us have been and are yet being prepared for this time of helping to prepare and support those who suffer the sudden changes of loss of lifestyle in the season to come.
Through the Storms into the Kingdom
We all must go through many tribulations in entering the real kingdom of God (Acts 14:22). As long as we are receiving some of our life source from outside rather than from inside, we will face more difficult times of being changed. We must become completely sufficient in receiving life from within and then flowing it out to others.
The key thing to realize here is that the Lord is with us all the way. Like the disciples when Jesus spoke let us go to the other side of the sea and a great storm arose, the journey was not about the storm but going to the other side. God will be with us through this great storm and we will be on the other side, which is the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven (Mat 8:18-27).
Some who have invested their lives in other things such as the riches of this world will look to suicide to end their frustration and deep depression of a wasted life as they see all they had worked for and lived for dissolving before their eyes. Faithfull kingdom people who have the life of God in them will be ready to point them to “the Way” – Christ Jesus and His real kingdom now on earth. Many will come to the reality of God and His kingdom within and begin truly living from the inside out.
It is the Christ of the resurrection that abides within us to manifest His life and the glory of His kingdom within us. Christ in us is the hope of glory (Col 1:27).
Col 3:1-4: If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall manifest, then shall you also appear with him in glory.
Beyond the cleansing judgments that remove the tares and all that exalts itself against God the fullness of the kingdom of God shall flow from the Christ in His people to fill the whole earth with His glory.
Keep on pursuing love. It never fails
and His kingdom never ends.
Ron McGatlin
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