The Kingdom: My Role

I think this pretty much sums up the definition of my role in the kingdom. As a follower of Christ, our role is to: Get up and Go. Preach. Heal the sick. Raise the dead. And drive out some demons.

Sounds cool to me!  But it doesn’t sounds like the activity of 99.9% of the church in America that I know. Hrmmm…. What’s wrong with this picture?

As I began to articulate what this verse has grown to mean to me, I see that my squad leader, Allison, already summed it up how I would’ve said it…

Notice that Jesus uses this as an action statement, as you go.  As I go in obedience these things start to happen… how often we are just sitting around waiting to get to heaven, when the reality is that we should be bringing heaven to earth.  It is how Jesus taught us to pray (Mt 6:10 “your kingdom come”).  The kingdom of heaven is near He repeats in Matthew 10, so as I go I should be bringing heaven.  And then Jesus further instructs us on how to bring heaven down: heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse, drive out demons!

Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said in John 14:12 that we’d do even greater things than he did while on earth.

So then why aren’t believers, myself included, living this out? Are we asleep? Is it because we don’t know our identity in Christ? Is it because we just don’t believe that we have the very power that raised Christ from the dead living in us that will empower us to operate in Christs’ authority and bring the Kingdom of heaven right down into someone’s life?

Bill Johnson explains in his book, The Supernatural Power of a Transformed Mind, that we get caught up in intellectual arguments, theories, emotional headtrips. We get enamored by our own talents and giftings – thinking we can direct our own course by using our gifts as we see fit. Although well intentioned, we become self-appointed in our commission, honestly believing we’re submitting to God when we’re really just carrying out our own agenda.

God’s purpose in saving me was to demonstrate the will of God on earth as it is in heaven. We are to transform this planet into a place radiant and saturated with Gods presence and power. This should be the thing that defines my life.

I’ve always struggled with the tendancy to earn favor through performance. “Show yourself useful by doing something” is usually my inner thought.  It makes me think I gain the favor of people and of course God must like it when I do good things for him, right? He’ll love me more when I’m good verses when I’m bad, right?

My tendency is to get over involved. I love doing and I feel good about myself at the end of the day when I’ve served someone else in need.  But at the heart of it is this thought that God will appreciate me much more when I’m busy serving him then when I’m not. My first couple of weeks in the Philippines turned into an inner struggle with this. There are so many opportunities to serve that I couldn’t settle myself into one ministry or area of need so I jumped into several.  Within a matter of 1 week I got busy tutoring kids at the school, loving on and spending hours with the kids in the Children’s home, visiting women at a local prison, prayed healing over a women with asthma in the prison who was later healed the next week, caring for and holding sick babies all through the night at the hospital, joined a local Filipino women’s Bible study, went on house visits in the community encouraging and praying over them, changed countless diapers in the nursery, and sanded and primed a room to be painted. I was busy doing these things and would watch my other team mates write blogs about all they were learning and thought to myself — I have nothing to write about.  Who has time to think?!  I felt like I had not accomplished anything similar to bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. I certainly didn’t feel like I had done anything extraordinary that would make someone think — I see God in her. I didn’t feel iike I was walking in the authority of Christ. All the things above were things I new I could do, so I did them. In my own strength. That’s when I realized — hrmmm, this is what it feels like when I’m home in the States… busy doing, and not enough time to think and dwell and really ask God — what He wants me to do and how He wants me to spend my day.

Bill Johnson goes on to explain that our tendency is to earn favor with God through performance. We think we gain God’s attention and love by doing right things when it actually creates a mindset that produces failure — the very things we’re determined not to do.

Others won’t be impacted by the kingdom of heaven through my performance, but they will be impacted by an internal life that has to be manifested in me. There’s something in me that has to get out to the nations. The focus is shifted from performance to gain God’s favor to just manifesting the transformed life in me.