KINGDOM

Move…Move…what?

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images-7Considering a move – From time to time there comes a moment when we see that repositioning is required to advance all we hold dear.   A new job, a new home all to do with taking steps forward and making a difference although possibly for many it is about their own lives.    Some today are discovering they are in the wrong job, enduring permanent frustration.    The greater part of everyone’s (awaken) day is spent at work, so what I do, my job choice is important.   You will never influence people effectively if you are unhappy, unfulfilled and feeling undervalued.

“Well”, you say “what do I switch to?”.   It does not matter, as along as you occupy the ground that affords its greatest opportunity for influencing people and situations towards righteousness and justice in your time, as you seek to pursue Godlikeness.

You might be a social worker, teacher, engineer, IT, dinner lady, secretary or mother and father, it really does not matter what it is, others of you might be a driver, refuse collector, postman, newspaper deliverer or a student, it does not make a difference  as long as whatever you do, you are committed to it.   Position yourself in life where there is an opportunity to extend the Kingdom, and be happy.   I find more people just survive in work as they have not aligned who they are in their passion with what they do, (that may be another topic we may look at that some other time)

In thinking about changing what I do, we have to face the broader issue of our priorities.   We are to seek the Kingdom first, making it our first thought in life and making it foremost.    If we are to exercise influence for the Kingdom we must be governed by the Kingdom not the  local currency.

Some have come to the realisation ‘I need to relocate’, my home, flat.. is in cosy-ville, comfort-town, settled settlement where nothing is happening.   Nothing about it sharpens you any more.   You are in a rut, with no more sense of challenge.   but you have been around there so long that you don’t even recognise an open door when you see one.   Start to think actively about relocating!    Some live in places where they are really struggling to believe God for anything, it starts with being unable to believe for little things that we push aside, then before we see it they are not stretching to believe for anything.   it is time to reposition yourself along side men and women who are believing beyond, bigger and have a wider reach.    Some live where there are too many relatives taking a bite of your time and not allowing a reaching wider.

Some are too close to other people’s responsibilities.   If you were to move, you would be amazed how people could take up for themselves what they have been dumping on you.

I can hear some saying do you know the condition of the economy, the housing or job market, well what about believing God in all that, tapping into the life of God and going out to live that life….

Here is a challenge some are in a church that is too large for you.   it has 100’s and some 1000’s like you…you are just one in a long line, O yes its progressive, the music the programmes, the facilities but it’s not radical, cost but no challenge you know this week to week what goes on.   but we are to fill the earth with Jesus, Kingdom communities, we are to enlarge the family of God, we are to GO… constantly.   Lets make families, God-families, filling the earth with the family of God in every street, village, town and city by going rather than staying.

Ask yourself ‘Am I in the right work. right place, amongst the right church/people?”  determine to do whatever may be necessary to play your part to the full in touching and changing the world.   Jesus said that the grace and anointing was to do something (Luke 4:18) to set freedom first.

Be what you are, men and women, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters brothers and sisters, people of God, children of God the ecclesia.

 

Position Yourself…careful

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images-7We must position ourselves carefully to exercise influence. 

Positioning means us saying ‘Let’s get where the action cannot be missed’.   Let’s position ourselves to get involved with this generation.   Position ourselves to be the incarnate body of Christ in our street, work place, education world and homes.

We redeem men by the proclamation of the Christ and his gospel: we influence society by being salt in the street, world.  Both are essential, and often our ‘salt’ is the necessary forerunner to our proclamation.

I recently visited a township in South Africa where the conditions were so dire, the filth and squalor, the heartache, pain, poverty and hunger were indescribable.   This seen is repeated world-wide, its experienced on very continent, in the back streets of Brazil, on the roads of India, in the aftermath of every war, even in areas of the so-called developed world, some time son our doorsteps.     You can’t simple preach, ‘repent of your sins and you’ll be saved for heaven’ and walk away from a place like that with no sense of further responsibility.    God is concerned with people’s social conditions as well as with their souls’ destiny.  True, eternal destiny is paramount, but this doesn’t mean God has no concern for our social conditions.

We are to be ‘Restorers of streets to live in’ (Isaiah 58) and we must not divide images-13our world into social and salvation, our theology into liberal or evangelical, one after the soul and the other after the transformation of society.   One view looking through one eye and saying ‘don’t get side tracked into a social gospel it’s the souls that need saving and the other looking through the other eye ‘but what about saving them?’

Jesus shows us he had two eyes open, as the Son of Abraham he wanted to redeem mankind, as the Son of David he wanted mankind’s world to be an ordered and just society.

It is right to bring God’s saving grace and correct to transform society.

We must position ourselves to do both.

No longer ignoring the deepening plight and worsening social conditions of our world, while protesting we are concentrating on saving their souls, continents and countries need more than a soul-gospel.    We cannot close our eyes to the growing number of homeless building their cardboard cities on our own doorsteps as well as in distant lands, which is our responsibility, let me explain.

One of the early characteristics of the community of the King, in the words of Jesus that an apostolic community, the church as it should be apostolic,  was to be focused in being established where they where local ‘…wait in Jerusalem until the Spirit comes…’, then to have a four focus at one time beyond the local.   This focus I suggest was a command to work on four areas at any time, being the living life church of Christ, ‘…God into all the earth…Jerusalem…Judea…Samaria… and utter most past of the earth…’, we are to be local, regional, national and international in focus, in our actions, message, pray and work of faith.   We cannot close our eyes to our world and end up local minded only or even the a fool with our eyes in the ends of the earth, holding these four focuses will prevent foolish eyes for us.

We have a voice, a gospel to restore our world to the Fathers first thought in creation, beginning with the restoration of the soul to the image and likeness of God.   Therefore  where am I, where are we hitting the streets of our world to create a ‘….street to live in…’ and a people who are able to live in a street with a Godlikeness pursuit?

Too Much for Some

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images-12If we keep putting things off we will never achieve anything  – ‘But surely churches, communities with an all out kind of commitment are bound to loose people?’

How can we expect to bring Godlikeness to bear to in our street, workplace, family if we do not find in our hearts a desire to be given to the cause of Christ.   A community that asks for commitment to bring Christ to our world, to be Godlikeness where we live is a good thing is it not?

A community such as this will likely become a challenge for the comfortable and half-hearted, but the community will fill up with the those who are looking for authentic faith, an adventure in life, who are wanting a God who engages people, the needy, the hurting who need help and an encounter with Christ.     Our aim should always be to embrace all, empowering all to be ‘all out’ for the will of the Father, yet reality has to be faced, some will just decide to be the comfortable.    Never mind if some stay comfortable, let us shout loudly ‘not me’, it is necessary that you and I commit ourselves totally to this radical mission of ours, of Christ, to the Fathers will.     To be the Godlike people of God in our generation.   Committed to bring God’s domain, God’s order to all creation, committed to transform our worlds, one life, one house, one street at a time.    Not committed to sit all day and achieve nothing but transform, change my environment, beginning with that which is right in front of us daily.   When we are totally committed we don’t waste time on the little blips, the minutiae that cross the screen of our lives, making the small things major we crowd out the important.   When fully given to this cause the little things will stay little, the big things of life will draw and fill our lives.    As we commit its amazing how this commitment re-scales our world, enabling us to know what is important and necessary rather than stay around in the shallows of life, engaged with the minutiae.

Communities with this kind of commitment you may not see around you but why not images-13start with where you are, be a committed person to create a committed community.   These communities are authentic, what the world is waiting for, they are not self-serving or self-centred but are given, willing to live a poured out, being a drink offering, as Jesus lived a poured out life for the cause of the Father, it’s for us to be poured out for our streets and the Father’s cause.

Find them, these communities, ecclesia’s, churches they are Christ Centred, not programme centred or even worship centred, neither event centred, conference focused all these they may participate with but guaranteed it will flow from a Centred Life On Christ and Christ’s Cause, which is the Fathers desire and the Holy Spirit‘s commitment.

Let it never be too much for us to be committed, let us find a place and pour ourselves out!    Committed to Christ communities, committed to Kingdom communities, committed to Christ and his ecclesia, his church.

 

Our Time…

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“And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days. 

25 “It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

images-9Acts 3:24-25

I’m not sure how long I have heard certain types of comments and messages going around the church, not only the church but in politics and society, messages on ‘times of transition’. I think I can truthfully say there has rarely been a year not hurt teams such as ‘days of transition’, ‘changing seasons’, and ‘new day’ and even the buzz term of today ‘paradigms shifts’. Why is it that every New Year we feel we’ve entered into the time of transition and without playing semantics I think a better summation of what has been taking place would be to say, we’ve been caught up in the purpose that his constant change therefore you feel you are in constant transition.

Unfortunately what is meant by transition often is to move from one fixed state of existence to another. Yet with great joy we experience something better than that. We are involved in the progressive and sure emergence of God’s kingdom in life and power in the progress towards maturity of the people.

In recent years it’s become popular paint on walls or to purchase planks with pithy sayings on, I came across one recently which stated, ‘if you only do things the way you have always done them, then you only get what you’ve always got’. Progress to the fullness of Christ, showing the Father that is, is only possible if we escape the fossilized influence of the status quo, of religious acceptance.

I believe we live in a generation that is calling out for Prophets who when they prophesy it’s not insipid prophesying passionate prophets.   Those in-home everything about their life his passion. What they hate they hate absolutely, what they love the love totally. What they do knows no half measure. There is an inch to their sword, conviction and their voice, men and women deeply moved by the spirit of God, men and women carry the burden can’t…Passion.

Over the years we have all recognise passionate preachers. The non-always held, you can be loud and not passionate, and you can be passionate and not allowed. But we could tell if their heart) in one memo from speaking we knew when there was passion inside them. The men and the women believe what they were saying, they believed they carried the word of God and love to such an extent they believe they were the most important person in the building at the moment, and what they were saying was the most important thing in the world at that moment…Passion.

And let me say they were not arrogant, they were not totally sure of themselves but they were sure of the God of the call and the word of the burden. That poured outness, giveness, their abandonment to thy God propelled them.

Passion by itself is not guarantee of truth, but also the passion instead. ‘The letter kills, it is the spirit that gives life’…Passion.

We could join with those 2 disciples that pass comment when they realise that Christ had walked on the Emmaus Road with them and say ‘ did not our heart burn inside this’ when they heard the word of God. We know very well that communicating with heart must be a way forward. There are so many able people to communicate information and do it with such creativity, you when I will be much the better from hearing them, but it also deliver their heart…Passion that captures us.

Should not the things of God, the interests of the creator, the seal of the Lord that will accomplish it be that which triggers and fires a passion?

Samuel and his successors were at the forefront of the purpose of God for their time, and brought to each and burning messages of God’s word. O Lord give us a fire back in words, not empty with no substance words, but words of revelation that carry a fire of heavens throne.They spoke to kings and rulers, who in turn put pressure on them to change their throne to change their message, to change their prophesy. Yet these prophets were 1st and foremost servants of God, and despite all pressures remained such. Political engineering  and electioneering in our day shawls politicians seeking to discover through opinion polls what the people want them to say on issues. When they find this they often change the emphasis opposition accordingly. We have politics of single issues. Not so all the prophets, they know the purpose, they know the heart of God and they press the issue. They are not politicians but prophets.  Men and women who love God and deeply loved the people of God, folding after Christ the great prophet who loved people.

These never measured themselves by people’s response to the word they carried. The fulfilling release they have is knowing that they’ve been the voice of God that time. The response of the word is an issue between people and their God. The prophet is to deliver what is known to be the word of God.

Think about it…your passion, your burden, your abandonment…

 

Change Why? it’s so Difficult…

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images-8Repentance, turning around, growing, maturing, taking on new ideas, new journeys, new ventures, what do they all have in common.   There is a thread that fixes these and other challenges of living together, it is called CHANGE.  If we are to move forward and live our Christian life to the full we must be able to embrace change, knowing it is imperative for us to understand the full elements of change.      Change brings about insecurity, emotionally.   I like the picture from the sporting world in the area of boxing; the unstable time for a boxer is when the boxer changes their stance it is an unstable moment; change brings instability, which we have to negotiate.   The church asks for change but very rarely helps us in the instability and emotional challenge of the change.      Wise people understand that lasting change requires them as individuals to change first before anything around them will change, in the same way influencers or leaders know if they change that which they are responsible for in their stewardship of people or organizations will also change.

Your change won’t last, or disrupt your community, unless those around you personally embrace the change first, at least at some level.    Let us try to understand why most people initially resist change.

There are processes that must be engaged in to bring and complete any change, often these are actions and thought patterns that are hidden. If we are to be Gods Change agents it is necessary that we become aware of our minds and people’s thinking.    As we become more people aware we can devise ways of helping lasting change.

Here are some change blockers, hindrances we will have to deal with:

Assume the worst.      We are wired to pick up threats and negative possibilities around us more than the positive. Before you say “I’m not like that”, 2/3’s of the brain cells are in the flight-fight part of our brain, the amygdala, are wired to pick up on the negative (Hanson, 2010).  Generally people’s initial response to change comes from these emotional centers rather than from their thinking centers.

Knowledge gaps fill with fear instead of faith.  The insecurity and instability about change does cultivate fear. The less information that people have to fill in the knowledge gaps, the greater the fear, which in turn brings about resistance to any change.

No second chances to make a good first impression.       Neuroscientists have shown it to be true (Lount et al., 2008). Poorly introduced change will always start your change on the wrong footing.

Change is emotional.                 Just presenting facts without engaging positive and hopeful emotions will seldom move your forward.    A large number of people make decisions based on emotion.

I can’t handle it.                 Trying to create too much change too quickly can engage the brain’s fear center and cause people to resist, thus hindering change (Hemp, 2009).

“Old habits die-hard” We all have a tendency to return to where we have been or what we have known, they say, as we get older we default quicker to what we know.   How easy is it for us to think about other options.   We have set up habits and it’s a tug-of-war between the familiar and easy

The nearer the change the more resistant we become.      Peoples’ response to change, changes over time.   Introduce a change a year ahead and initially the benefits are seen, the options look good. The negatives such as more work, recruiting more people more time needed don’t seem very large at that point.    Neuroscientists have discovered that when the change is far away, the positives usually outweigh the negatives (Löw et al., 2008). However, the closer we think about the implications and the personal cost. Uninformed optimism gives way to informed pessimism.

Change is interpreted as a threat.             We are told the brain is organized around a fundamental principle—minimize threat-maximize reward—that results in either resistance or openness. Change perceived as a threat produces resistance. Change brings uncertainty and we don’t like it, well our brain does not like it.

when ever change is presented keep these insights in mind so you can work out a plan to Unknownovercome them.

The bible quotes “who builds a house without first counting the cost” the counting the cost is not to prevent but to be realistic in the demands that will be put upon us, Abraham “counted his body as good as dead yet believed God” when the promise of a son was made.   That is, he saw the impossibility, the change at the age he and Sarah was, yet believed a promise, believed God, a God word over the negative emotions of “you cannot be serious”.

We are to “set our eyes on the Christ”’ Paul encouraged us to forget what has happened and press on through to the gain.   There is something so strong in seeing what God has said in all our change and holding on when the insecurity of the change comes.

Find a friend in time of need, that when we are in that place find others who are not in their negative but who have worked through the change and talk, tell of your patterns of thought and walk together learning from others who have changed and are changing.

FUNDAMENTALLY DEVELOP A CULTURE OF CHANGE, readiness to change and a willingness to constantly embrace change, some times keep flexible in making changes in your life to keep change alive, change room layouts, move your desk, change decoration, change your habit patterns, change eating try something new, try something uncommon to you, do something that demands you to say ‘I don’t know how to do this’ or ‘what I am doing’, find a new sport all these and other ways of cultivating change help us to be change agents first to us then to those we touch.

Questions to ponder:

What have you seen in others that make them averse to change?

Who around me deals well with change?

How can I make the benefits of change be big in mind and experience constantly?

How can I build a reason for change that out weights the insecurity and instability I will feel, CHANGE is part of life, it is maturing, growing up and older it will not go away it will knock on the door of your life daily, LEARN TO EMBRACE IT.