Just what is the Kingdom of God?

Wednesday's Musings   December 18, 2013 Tonight we were watching an "inspirational movie" and I really appreciated much of the movie as it showed a new believer trusting God through his daily activities after turning his life over to the Lord.    I am so thankful, however, that the Holy Spirit often moves even when we humans distort the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.    In the movie the pastor very clearly preached the reason to accept the Lord was to "go to heaven."   While the rest of the movie held some good stuff which I mentioned above, I just cringed when I heard the "heaven" thing preached as if that was the Gospel that Jesus Christ preached and which was the Gospel that Paul and the early Christians preached.  Maybe I have just come to understand a wee bit about the Kingdom of God and letting God rule and change me and realize heaven and hell while realities aren't the promise that we have in Christ, but rather Eternal Life IN Christ, and an eternal relationship with Our Father, and being seated together with Him in heavenly places. I do have the hope of the Resurrection because the Resurrected One and I are One. So little is known about what the Kingdom of God is, that it seems even the world doesn't know what Christians mean when they talk about the Kingdom of God. In the Duck Dynasty' member's  comment recently which is creating quite a stir,  about those who won't enter the Kingdom of God, I wonder how many Christians understand that it doesn't mean they aren't Christians.. Rather it means  they haven't yet entered that relationship where the Lord God is King and his rule reigns in their lives.  Living in the Kingdom of God is different from that first step of being "born again." It certainly doesn't need to take 50 years or more as in my case, but this is the day when a much fuller preaching and teaching of the Kingdom of God is going forth.   It doesn't mean we don't talk about heaven, but it sure changes how we talk about heaven. I remember sitting next to a lady in church who just twinkles since she yielded her life to the Lord, but her #1 goal and purpose is to "go to heaven."  How shocked many will be when they find out that while we are here, we are being prepared and equipped to judge angels and nations "here on the earth" in the day to come.   There is so much difference between just being born again and entering into the Kingdom of God.  I was born again and God never left me or forsook me, but I hadn't entered into the Kingdom of God.  I  had head knowledge of being seated with Christ in heavenly places and being accepted in the beloved...but the understanding of what those things were not   yet a part of my thinking. I wasn't yet renewed in the spirit of my mind as relates to that understanding of the Lord God.  I can't really even tell you what it took for that to take place or exactlywhen but it has been in progress for a period of time as I have begun to "see" who I am in Christ and who Christ is in me.  It has changed almost everything about what I think and how I look at things and how I see people today.  If I am accepted in my Beloved and seated with Him, then that is the good news to extend to everyone....the blood of my Jesus was shed once for ALL.  What freedom to change, what freedom to be loved, what freedom to love others as Christ lives within us and empowers us and changes us into His image!! May we begin to preach forth the message of God breaking into this world which was announced by the angels to the shepherds of Bethlehem, those shepherds who were tending the sheep whose lambs were to be used for the sacrifices in the temple not many miles away,   May we be empowered with boldness to extend that message of Peace and Goodwill to ALL MEN because the Saviour was born that night, God became incarnate in that little babe born at the "tower of the flock"  wrapped in swaddling cloths just like the lambs born there were wrapped so as to not be bruised and blemished causing them to be rejected as sacrificial lambs.   Our Jesus, Our Sacrificial Lamb was born where all the lambs were born for the temple sacrifices.  He was born, entered into this sinful world, to become the sacrifice that would free us from the bondage of sin, so we could be reconciled to our Father, our spirits joined once again to the Spirit of God in eternal fellowship!  What a Christmas message and a message for every day.   This world is dying not hearing that they have been reconciled to the Lord God. He isn't angry with them; the price of their sin has been pain. We can love and be loved of the Father God. No other religion in the world calls God Father, much less Abba/Daddy.   What awesome Good News!   Daddy loves you and will chase you down to your last breath in order to convince you that He has paid for your sin with the blood and body of his own beloved Son Jesus!   What a Gospel, what Good News...what an Evangel....the same as the angels brought that night in the fields of Bethlehem....good news...a Saviour is born.... Meri