Building for the Kingdom
Seek first.
Putting a total priority on seeking the Kingdom involves many thoughts. Jesus declared that the Kingdom of God is within you. You are filled with God’s Kingdom. Jesus said we should pray that God’s will is done on earth as it is in Heaven—God’s ‘physical’ Kingdom. The plan God had all along, starting in the Garden of Eden, was to produce Heaven on Earth. It was His way of sharing the glory of His presence with His children. Heaven is where He resides; Earth is where He multiplies.
You are designed to pull down from Heaven the will of God. You are to establish His Kingdom on Earth. As a Christian have the eternal capacity to work with God, receive His promises and act out His plan for our lives.
Jesus said, “Occupy until I come.” We are an occupying force with an assignment and a charge. We are to go into all the world. We are to take the message of the Kingdom of Heaven wherever we go. We are to carry the Kingdom—its principles, its outworkings, and its results—to a world that desperately needs Jesus.
I have a problem with Christians whose main focus is to listen to teaching and preaching. Do I think it’s wrong to listen to good faith-filled preaching? No! Of course not! We need the Word preached into us. We need impartation, inspiration, and motivation—but we also need action. Faith is not just listening. Faith is not just hearing. Faith goes beyond what it hears and starts to build.
Faith comes by hearing. Faith enters your internal guidance system through teaching and preaching. That is why it is important. The anointing is primarily caught and grabbed by the hearer of the Word. The Word is what must be sown in our hearts to produce fruit.
Fruit is meant for other people—not the tree, not the branch it grows on. Jesus wants us to bear fruit. That fruit—the fruit we produce by hearing the Word—glorifies the Father. Jesus wants us to be connected to Him, as He is the vine. Jesus is the Word. When you hear the Word, you are hearing Jesus. Faith comes as you connect your hearing to Jesus. The fruit that we bear includes, faithfulness, love, joy, peace and patience. These are the characteristics of Christians that are building the Kingdom of God for those around them.
Jesus also said that if you love me, you will do what I say. When you are in a love relationship with Jesus, He becomes your Lord, so you obey what He says. In your obedience, you act on what is said. You act on what He says because faith has arrived. When the taxi arrives at your door to take you to the airport for your holiday, you must get in.
Back to Christians who focus on listening. You and I need to realize that there comes a point in learning when you need to do. One issue is that the education system in the West has developed factual learning rather than experimental learning. We learn facts to remember for a test, but they have no value to us after we have passed. Historical facts mean nothing in the global scheme unless you want to win the pub quiz or become a historian.
Listening and remembering the Bible does not build the Kingdom. It does not activate the vision God wants you to see. It does not engage the mission required. You can be the most trained soldier with the best equipment, but having never seen combat, your skills are dormant. You will never know how you react under fire. A soldier who completes training must go into battle to find out if the training works. Failure can have a high cost, but success only comes when you face what is in front of you on the battlefield.
It is the same in the Kingdom. You cannot live off a message you heard. You have to engage your faith with what you heard and put it into action. Faith is action. Faith is moving under instruction. Faith is moving forward with all the training you have and testing to see if you really believe it. Failure is predictable. You will make mistakes, but obedience with mistakes is better than staying perfect without moving. Faith listens, hears and obeys. Faith takes the step of obedience and does what it is told!
A story I heard from a man of God:
He had eight boys when he was a young married man. They had one rule: The boys must clean their shoes before bed. This was back in the day when cleaning shoes included rags, polish, and oils. This meant that once the boys cleaned their shoes, he had to clean them again! They got polish everywhere—behind their ears, on the floor, and on their clothes. What was his point?
The children obeyed. It was not perfect obedience. It was not clean obedience. It was heart obedience. Heart obedience beats perfect obedience every time.
When we set out to build the Kingdom of God, we can be halted by fear. We want to be perfect. We don’t want to miss it. We must learn to take what God has told us and act on it. That is faith. Whether it is a scripture verse or a leading of our spirit, we must start to move on what we hear. Sitting down to listen is great, but don’t get stuck there. Abraham heard once and moved lands. He heard once and went off to sacrifice his only son. Jesus went to the cross through obedience. He heard God and went with the plan.
It is time for you to make some moves. It is time for you to stop thinking that going to church is enough. Respond to what God is saying to you today. Energize your faith by getting out of the boat like Peter did. He wasn’t perfect; he sank. He looked at the waves and felt the wind but got out onto the water. He walked on water and was immediately rescued by Jesus when things went wrong.
God has you. God is on your side. Now start building the Kingdom like the true leader and believer God created you to be.
