August 18, 2013
Col 3:1-3 Set your mind on the things of Christ.
If Jesus lived a life of full dependence on God as man, the so can we. Paul said, “Set your heart on things above and then set your mind on things above where Christ is.”
Because you are raised with Christ, you have the ability to set your minds on things above. Also because you are dead (in Christ) you can also set your heart on things above. So immediately we know that our focus should be on heavenly and not earthly things.
The things of heaven are ours by right because we are sons of the King. The things of heaven are eternal and more real than the things on earth which are temporary. Paul in 2 Cor that what we see with our natural eyes does not last, so our hearts and minds and gaze must be on the unseen, for the natural is only fleeting and temporal. We are then driven to acquire temporal things rather than that which is eternal and our pursuit can be on things that last only a little while. However, what is eternal brings eternal joy and what is temporal, brings only temporary happiness.
Mtt 6:33 Seek first the kingdom of God. The eternal can release the things that we need in the temporal for my Father in heaven will provide. So stop worrying. If you want the stuff in the now, seek the stuff in the eternal. God does want to bless us, but He wants us to focus on Him first.
In kingdom living, we must first live from the perspective of the eternal, understanding what God wants for us and enjoying the present-ness of heaven. Haven is not something that we preach about at a funeral service or to be enjoyed when we get over yonder. Heaven is to be enjoyed now and if we believe that it is to be experienced only when we die, then we are not thing into the fulness of heaven. Wealth does not make one’s kingdom life successful, because if I am faithful to God and don’t have money, I can still be successful.
Jesus came to show us how to live this kingdom life and to show us that the kingdom of heaven is dynamic and powerful. He came to show us that we as the Church operate by different laws, not the laws of nature, earth or of the land. He had to operate by the laws of heaven to have aurhority over the laws of the earth. If we operate by natural laws only, we see a sick man as destined to die. How we talk, live and view things are affected by whether we live by kingdom principles.
W can’t live this kingdom life successfully by connecting with heaven once a week or once a month. 2 Cor 5:7 We live by faith not by sight and are to live by faith every moment of the day. Faith is powerful, that is why we must strengthen it in order to operate in a greater capacity.we heal, speak etc by the proportion of our faith, so we must attend things like prophetic classes so that our faith might grow.
Do not live by what you see, it is fleeting and is not real. 2 Cor 4:18 for we do not look at the things that are seen, but at the things which are not seen. . . Paul is calling on our kingdom people to focus on that which is not seen. We must train our spiritual eyes to see that which cannot be seen by our natural eyes. We can see what can’t be seen. If we make judgements on what we see and hear, judging them naturally, we will end up making decisions based on emotion.
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