In the last post I looked at what it means for us to be citizens of a kingdom. We are there to serve the King and do his bidding. But we serve a loving and merciful King! Recently I did an extensive study through the NT to see what the good news of the Kingdom is. Here's a brief summary of the benefits we have by being in the Kingdom:
1. Our sins are forgiven:
If we
believe, turn (repent) from our sins and are baptized, we will be forgiven.
This brings us peace with God.
2. We've become a new creation
His laws are now written on our hearts so we don't live by a rule book but by his divine nature inside us.
3. Healing and
deliverance:
Jesus announced the good news of the
Kingdom to the poor and demonstrated it by healing every
kind of sickness and illness. He had authority over every demon. We have authority
over all the power of the enemy when we use the name of Jesus. We can see the captives set free. The Kingdom of God is not just fancy talk; it is living by
God's power!
4. We have eternal life:
Jesus died on the cross, so that everyone
who believes in him will have eternal life—in fact, has already passed from death to life. One day we will have resurrected, spiritual bodies, full of power.
5. The Holy
Spirit fills and empowers us:
The Holy
Spirit will never leave us but lives within us. He teaches us and leads us into all truth and testifies of Jesus. He will convict the world. He brings glory to Jesus
6. We have a relationship
with God:
God is our Father and we are his sons and
daughters. We are adopted into His
family. Eternal life
is knowing God and Jesus. We are now friends of Jesus rather than
servants.
7. Relationship with others:
As his body, we are family together
Now all of that is Good News!!
4 replies on “7 benefits of citizenship in the Kingdom”
Felicity
I have said before that (1) I really enjoy your blog and (2) I just don’t see miracles happening as much as might be suggested by your comments here, and by the New Testament. I really want to be true to God’s truth, as much as I can understand it, but I am still unsure. It seems that some people see miracles all the time and others don’t.
Trouble is, how to choose between various explanations:
1. It is my and others lack of faith that leads to us seeing few miracles.
2. Some people have the gifts of faith or healing, and they mistakenly urge the rest of us to do what we don’t have gifts for. (Perhaps it’s a bit like, if a church’s pastor has an evangelistic gift, he will press everyone else to be evangelists, even if their gifts lie elsewhere.)
3. Perhaps God is doing a new thing, teaching us to mature by not doing so many miracles (for parents, sometimes not helping their kids is necessary to help them to mature).
4. Perhaps God is doing something we can’t even begin to understand.
5. Perhaps our Biblical understanding is wrong.
I don’t know. I ponder, I ask God (sometimes) but I don’t have any answers so far.
God is so good, that if all our issues were only about us, and our growth, and his love, we would make lots of progress in the kingdom of God. However, we do have an enemy, the devil, and he is also the enemy of God.
He is the reason that Jesus had to die on a cross for us, to redeem us from his clutches when we were slaves to sin. He doesn’t let go easily, and still wants to deceive us about what is going on and about how to deal with it.
The best thing we can do is find people who are having a measure of success in a stand against the works of the devil (see Acts 10:38) and learn what they have learned, hear their testimonies, and seek the same growth in the kingdom from the Lord.
However, there is a difference between blessings and miracles. The short story is that blessings are forever and miracles are short term necessities. God does want us to be able to live in blessing and not require miracles all the time. The teaching site of http://www.awmi.net has good material on the subject.
God does teach us to live without miracles, when we live in blessing, because we don’t need them. It is our enemy that keeps us without miracles when we are in need of them. If the things God wants us to have were easily acquired, Jesus would not have suffered on the cross. Remember that. Carolyn
Carolyn,
Interesting thoughts! When we were in India recently, they told us that over 80% of their churches happen following the supernatural, but from then on, they place very little emphasis on the miraculous because otherwise people tend to place their dependence on that rather than on a relationship with the Lord (or as you say, the blessings).
UnklE,
I think many of us struggle with the dilemmas you pose when it comes to healing.
We have many friends in India who see a lot of healing, but it’s interesting when you question them further. One of our friends says he sees miracles all the time in the slums, but rarely when working with middle class people. Could it be that the fact that we have medicine readily available here in the West mean that we tend to rely on that rather than the Lord (ie we don’t have a desperate faith)?
Another thing they say is that although most of their churches start with the supernatural, from that point onwards they de-emphasize it. The reason for this is that if people expect God to work supernaturally all the time and in some situation he doesn’t, this causes people to lose their faith. So they would rather teach them about handling persecution etc.
We have a lot to learn…