Faith is a substance. Faith is a communicable dis-ease with the status quo. Faith makes a way where there seems to be no way, and calls those things that are not as though they are. Faith looks beyond the facts, and sees God’s Truth, what He has said. Faith hopes beyond all hope, and is righteousness to God.
When one hears a Word of the Kingdom and doesn’t understand it, the evil one comes and snatches it away. This is the word of the Kingdom. This is the Word of Faith, which we speak.
1 Corinthians 13:13 says that these three remain: faith, hope, and love. Hope is what we wait with expectancy to happen. Faith is the substance of that, now. We might hope for a piece of bread to eat, but Faith is to have the substance of that, despite my natural hand still being empty.
And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20
The question that comes around today in churches a lot is, How much authority does the believer have? As much as Jesus can trust you with.
All authority comes from God. God created government, stewardship, and the one authority structure that pertains to us everyone on the Earth today, the family. God delegates His authority, that is, He gives individuals the responsibility to manage certain things, and so much as they faithfully execute their duties, they are permitted to continue.
An entire oak tree is contained well within a tight, easy to carry package. It has it’s own leathery cover, and even a handy carrying cup attached to the top. You could, in fact, carry a hundred complete oak trees just in your pants pockets alone (assuming you’ve got big pockets). The only thing you need to add, in order to convert your easy to transport oak tree into an immovable pillar is some sunshine, a plot of dirt, some water, and a hundred years or so!
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, that when planted, it is the smallest of seeds, but when it grows, it becomes the largest of all garden plants, and the birds of the air make their nest in it.
If you would see the Kingdom, you must be born again. If you would enter into His life, His Word of life must come into you as a seed and begin to grow.
Everything starts small. It starts obscure. We do not despise the smallness, but we understand that everything which is planted, in its full time, grows to maturity.
From the yeast beginning with just a small bit for the entire dough, to the mustard seed which would grow, the life of the Spirit must begin very small, yet grow to its size.
The Kingdom of Heaven is the eternal reign and realm of God. It is not God, yet is inseparable from Him and His attributes. It is the perfect picture of government, as we understand such, in that it is perfectly just and righteous, perfectly merciful, humble, and powerful. Indeed all true human government derives itself from it.
We must not confuse the Kingdom with the church. The church is related to the Kingdom, and the Kingdom is related to the church, but we must not look at the outward expression of what we know as “church” and equate it with the Kingdom.
The more I read and understand the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:3-12, the happier I get. Hugely Happy. Ultra Happy. Maximumly Happy. Macro happy even, which is what the word translated “blessed” actually means, if you look it up. It doesn’t mean “blessed”. That would be eulegio. This is Macagredso… horribly transliterated, but… macro + agredso… macro meaning big, agredso meaning… well… HAPPY! Read more…
But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
Luke 11:20
We have lost sight of the Kingdom. Jesus came to set the captives free. We can prophesy, we can cast out demons in His name, we can do might works and miracles, but we have lost the Kingdom.
I am not waiting for another dispensation for some grandiose allotment of power and authority from heaven. Jesus declared sufficiently, after His passion and resurrection, that ALL authority in Heaven and Earth was His (Matthew 28:18). We are not waiting for God to flip a switch in heaven; He already did that. All we are waiting for is for the switch to be thrown in us.
The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
Matthew 6:22-23
The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Then watch out that the light in you is not darkness. If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, as when the lamp illumines you with its rays.
Luke 11:34-36
The teaching of the Kingdom is a simple thing. It is, actually, the smallest of all seeds, even though it produces the biggest plant.
You could put a whole lot of effort into studying the teachings of Jesus, and cataloging them, and indeed, many have, and many of these works have been profitable. However, whether they are understood and lived is an entirely different matter.
He spoke another parable to them, “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.”
Matthew 13:33
“It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.”
Luke 13:21
Yeast is an invisible, yet active agent, acting and working throughout an otherwise inert lump of dough. In various places in the Old Testament, it depicted the nature of evil within a body, either a single person or a group of people. Hence, the phrase, “A little leaven leavens the whole lump” was used to indicate much the same thing that a phrase like “one bad apple spoils the bunch” does.
The first few clauses of Matthew 5 are so amazingly profound, and directly simple. They are plain words that anyone with simple understanding can receive. But, they seem trivial until you realize they are the life of faith, they set the attitude for the whole Christian walk, and they make us very, VERY happy. Read more…
Faith is a substance. Faith is a communicable dis-ease with the status quo. Faith makes a way where there seems to be no way, and calls those things that are not as though they are. Faith looks beyond the facts, and sees God’s Truth, what He has said. Faith hopes beyond all hope, and is righteousness to God.
