Here is the revelation that is shaping my life today – you can be in the kingdom of God but not living a kingdom life.
1 Corinthians 3:1-2 NLT
[1] Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in Christ. [2] I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready.
Observation
It is possible to be forgiven and a child of God, be part of the family, in the Kingdom, but not be ready to receive the fullness of the Kingdom. My citizenship is fully completed and kept secure in the work of Jesus, it is never questioned or in doubt from God’s perspective. I may question it, but He never does. In the Kingdom through Jesus plus nothing forever, is God’s stance. But my citizen life is an ongoing unfolding process of walking with Holy Spirit into the shaping and framing truth of the Kingdom. It’s being healed, freed, and separated from the world, this is what becoming Holy is. I am made perfectly right in Jesus and I am being made holy.
The ways of the Kingdom of God will always clash, conflict, with the ways of the world, they turn the world on its head and sound like foolishness to worldly people. The beauty, freedom, and power of the Kingdom is not covered by wisdom that must somehow be understood. It’s foolishness to the wise that must be simply embraced by faith. You don’t become wiser, you become more faith-filled in grasping the simplicity of the beauty of all that is offered. The kingdom does not come as I become a learner of its ways, it comes as I become loved by the King and encounter His glory.
I am responsible for my walking into the fullness of the life of the kingdom that is already mine. God holds nothing back. You do not earn more rights as you become mature, rather you discover the rights that are already yours since your rebirth into the Kingdom. All citizens have the same rights, some citizens exercise them. You do not mature and then get the keys, you mature and see you already had them.
Application
Don’t stay drinking milk when there is a feast of life laid before you. Walk intimately with God, in His love, that your encounters will release the beauty of the kingdom that is not accessible through intellect wisdom. Be foolish enough to be loved as I am and then I will see the magnificence of the Kingdom.
Response
Thank you for inviting me into maturity of kingdom life through the foolishness of being loved. I see why you say that we need to become like children in order to inherit the fullness of the kingdom. Thank you that you offer all of your kingdom to me from entry, thank you that I do not earn further life, but I discover it’s laid before me. I am a blessed man to not have to perform but to be loved into its fullness.
Meditation
Meditation truth – Love lifts me up to see the Kingdom.
Consider:
What parts of my story still belong to the world?
Am I allowing love to mature me?
JOURNEY DEEPER
