Jesus answered, "My
kingdom is not of this world." —John 18:36
“The great enemy of the Lord
Jesus Christ today is the idea of practical work that has no basis in the New
Testament but comes from the systems of the world. This work insists upon
endless energy and activities, but no private life with God. The emphasis is
put on the wrong thing. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God does not come with
observation….For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20-21). It
is a hidden, obscure thing. An active Christian worker too often lives to be
seen by others, while it is the innermost, personal area that reveals the power
of a person’s life.[…] The central point of the kingdom of Jesus Christ is a
personal relationship with Him, not public usefulness to others.[…] You have no
idea of where or how God is going to engineer your future circumstances, and no
knowledge of what stress and strain is going to be placed on you…..” CHAMBERS
Perhaps one of the most difficult
things for us Christians is to live in the awareness of our spiritual nature. We know about the Spirit in us. We know about salvation through Jesus and His
place at the right hand of the Father (Acts
7:55-56; Romans 8:34; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 1:3; Hebrews 8:1;
Hebrews 10:12; Hebrews 12:2; 1 Peter 3:22; Revelation 3:21; Matthew 22:44; Acts
2:33), yeah that’s right there are a lot of references to that! We know those things but we do not really
live with an awareness of them. When the
Messiah came, Israel was looking for an
earthly king who would free them from their enemies. Someone who would do what they wanted
done. Just like before when they asked
Samuel for a king, they were not focused on the eternal but the temporal. (1 Samuel 8:4-5)
My point is that it is the
nature of our flesh to focus on the natural.
Jesus said His kingdom was not natural.
Because the natural man cannot understand the spiritual (1 Corinthians 2:14) everything is understood
in the context of the natural. So it is
misinterpreted. Misunderstood.
Misguided. The people trying to understand
are mistaken. All too often that is true
for Christians as well. We are so focused
on the natural that we trivialize the spiritual to the point of insignificance. And we miss Jesus. Please do not treat your spiritual nature as
if it was some parenthetical – oh by the way – aspect of your life. Christian,
it is who you are – it is what we should look to primarily, not as an afterthought. Have you ever said “Maybe we should pray”? There is no maybe about it. Turning to the Lord should be our first
resort not our last. ELGIN
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