Urgency, hurriedness, rushing...and the Kingdom
by Teresa Grosz Dalton on Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 4:24pm
We in the church have gone so wrong in so many ways.
We have left our first love and the simplicity
of His Gospel. The urgency we have felt, because
of the "end time teachings" has made us skip
right past what God's intentions truly are for us.
We have been made to feel that we must RUSH
to declare the calamity that is about to come on
all men who do not repent and turn to God so that
they may avoid HELL. For YEARS now, they have lived
in this urgency and fear....am I doing enough,
have I told enough people, is their blood on my hands
...and on and on.
First I have to ask, WHERE did we get this from? Do
you realize that in the Garden of Eden,
GOD put 2 trees. We read nowhere that He paced anxiously
awaiting to see what choices would
be made by Adam and we don't see Him sitting Adam down
and saying, "Now Adam, this is serious
stuff. If you make a poor choice I have to put you out
of this beautiful Garden, you will be separated
from my presence as you know it now, you will live
only so many years and then die, you will have to
work by the sweat of your brow to get what you have
here and now freely, I will have to send my Son to fix
all of your poor choices and He will be beaten, mocked
and hung on a cross to die to FIX your poor choice." I'm
thinking that if He had had that conversation with Adam He would
have let us in on it. Without the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil being in the garden, without
a poor choice being in the Garden, the wonderful Garden
of Eden would have been a perfect prison.
God had no fear in giving Adam choices. He already had
the remedy ready waiting in the wings to cover
that if it happened. Likewise today there are good
choices and bad choices, but Jesus Christ,
Our Savior, died and paid the price for sin, past,
present and future. His work was SO complete
that God does not fear the evil that men do...He
weeps over it, but He waits...the Father waiting
for the prodigal son to return...all the while loving
His son and longing for the reunion with him.
The Bible says there is "no fear in love, perfect
love casts out fear". If that is true, then the opposite
is true. "There is no love in fear, fear casts out perfect love."
Now, on to my main point. Jesus said, "Seek first the
Kingdom of God and His righteousness and
all these things will be added to you." "Love the Lord
your God with all your heart, mind, soul and your
neighbor as yourself." (Notice you are to love yourself,
because you are made in the image of God
and you can't love anyone else who is made in the image
of God if you don't love you.) Jesus was
fully man on this earth and was baptized in the Holy Spirit,
we are fully men and are baptized in the
Holy Spirit...and are to do the works that Jesus did and even
greater works. We are to pray, "Your Kingdom come on earth
as it is in Heaven." The Kingdom of God is in our hearts and in our minds,
and what is in there will become what is around us...it
will overflow into the world around you and
change takes place to the glory of God! The goodness of
God brings men to repentance. When Jesus spoke of His death,
burial and resurrection, he called the disciples aside...
He never proclaimed all of that to the multitudes. You saw
Him walking in mercy, love and compassion to those around
Him and that is what we are to do.
If you believe that Jesus' work on the cross was COMPLETE,
you have to know that all men are unpunishable, all their
sin atoned for! We have to love men where they are, in
their sin, just like Jesus did..."while we were yet sinners
He died for us". See the person that Jesus loves in them, and
you will see people change, not by religion and religious
works, but by the love of God. When you operate in the gifts
of the Spirit, it has to be in the character of God, in His
love. Fear of men's sin makes us different people than what
God wants us to be in Him...it casts out our love for them
and in our minds entitles us to judge them and bring them
under condemnation for their sin. There is a huge difference
in condemnation and conviction of sin (and the Holy Spirit
will bring conviction, not us), and there is also a huge
difference in discipline (discipling) and punishment.
Jesus already took the punishment.
I say all of that to say that God wants all religion
stripped away from us, He wants us to understand that His
Son came with a government on His shoulders, not a religion.
It was the government of the Kingdom restored to us, and most
of all relationship with God restored. Everything else flows
out of those things...relationship and right standing!
Kingdom will manifest in us and around us and once
again we will have dominion on this earth...it's what
we were made for!
I beg of you, let's do what Jesus gave us to do and stop
trying to scare people into the Kingdom with
doom and gloom tactics! That may work for a season, but
you will soon look around and most of them
will be back out into the world. There is no fear in
the Kingdom of love!
Righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,
Teresa
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