Quote: Kings operate by inheritance

“If we are going to advance the Kingdom of God, we must think as kings.  Kings don’t sell their time, knowledge, or investments; they operate by inheritance.” – by Jonathan Welton

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Motivations for rewarding and intimate God-times…

1.   My ‘God-times’ must NOT be seen as a duty… (dutiful activity will eventually wear me out and fizzle out).  I want to give Him much more than just ‘duty’.

2.   Because His love is SO good… and because He loves me SO well, I’m learning to love Him more deeply… and love being with Him.

3.   Experiencing life with Him and in Him makes me appreciate our relationship and want to pursue it even more purposefully… at all times.

4.   I don’t like what my life gravitates to when I don’t spend time with Him; unfeeling, cold, stressed, powerless and frenetic… but I am always renewed and empowered when I spend more time with Him.  I love being in His presence.

5.   Life is very pressing and urgent… not always predictable and normal… so I carve out time at any time… middle of day, middle of night, in my back yard, on my park path, in the car…

6.   I watch and listen for those subtle home-sick-like stirrings which ‘pull’ my heart toward Him… I can’t and don’t want to ignore them… I must get away with HIM.

7.   My time with Him will not be contrived, forced or formal… it will be conversational, confident, easy and natural… as a friend with a friend.

8.   My God-times have been changing from formal duty to organic relationship… and morphing into a posture that is more in keeping with how He sees me.

9.   Only by Grace He’s declared me righteous… and He’s given me awesome favor and authority.  I’m learning to embrace my righteousness and walk in my favor rightly and effectively… commensurate with my kingly status and position in Him.

10.  No more do I see myself as a beggar begging for a handout or breakthrough… I see myself as a royal king seated in the Heavenlies with my brother, Jesus… learning how to prophesy and release Heaven’s environs and realities down into earthly situations… taking proactive responsibility for the ‘kingdom’ which God has given me.

11.  As a king, I must rule… I don’t want to ever abdicate my status when He loves me so much… believes in me so much… and wants to share all that He is with me.  His thoughts and plans for me are so good… so exciting… and much better than I ever thought!

12.  And yet as a child/son I always find my ‘home’ resting in His arms… my Refuge and Rock… my Identity and Source.  I love my hang-out times with… my Daddy.

— MLH

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Intercession: From faithless beggar petitions to confident kingly prophetic declarations

I believe that what we have always called intercessory type prayer is beginning to change from plaintiff prayer to kingly prayer… from beggar posture to royal posture.  From earth originated prayer to Heaven originated prayer (where we’re seated).  From a faithless desperate petition to a confident faith-filled prophetic declaration. 

For several years, I’ve asked my mind to notify me whenever I find myself asking for something in prayer.  I then determine whether I already know God’s heart on this matter.  If I don’t, then I continue to ask e.g. “if any man lacks wisdom let him ask of God who gives….”   But if I already know what God’s heart is on the matter then (for me) it isn’t appropriate to ask, I must now assume my kingly role of co-ruling with Jesus.  I must speak (from Heaven) to earth… prophesying Father’s heart into the matter.

One doesn’t need to assume any responsibility when we just ‘throw up’ a beggar petition before Heaven… we’ll just let God sort it out… no need for maturity here.  Babies ask for anything and everything… mommies and daddies sort it all out.  But as we mature, we must assume more and more responsibility about what kind of prayer we’re praying.  Jesus said it this way, “I can do nothing apart from my Father”.  He didn’t pray anything without finding Father’s will first… He then assumed His kingly role of releasing Father’s will… “Be healed”; “Rise up”; “Storm be still”, etc.  No plaintiff / beggar prayers here.

Yes, there are a few occasions where Jesus prayed ‘asking prayers’… in the Garden “Father, if it be Thy will… never-the-less Thy will be done”… He needed to know for sure.  And at Lazarus’ tomb (John 11:41-44) he prayed our old type of prayers ONLY so that people would know by who’s power he raised Lazarus from the dead… “Father I thank you that You hear me….” But after he prayed a prayer to get everyone ‘on page’ with Him, He then prayed a Jesus prayer, commanding with a “loud voice”, “Lazarus come forth!”  The reality is that once we know Father’s will, then we’re invited to assume our co-heir position of co-ruling with Jesus from Heaven to earth.

Disclaimer:  This growth process into our kingly role has nothing to do with grasping to be a ‘big dog’; it has nothing to do with being arrogant, pompous or presumptuous; it has nothing to do with just spouting out memorized Scripture; it has nothing to do with ‘grunting’ harder to get more righteous and more spiritual.  NO!  A thousand times, No.

It has to do with simply believing the truth about who we are… kings and priests unto our God, and co-heirs with Jesus… whatever is true of Him is true of us… and whatever He’s been called to do is what we’ve been called to do.  It has to do with debunking the devil’s lies and myths that we were poor mortals waiting for death to set us free, make us righteous, glorify us, etc…    The devil would love to keep us in a powerless state until death, which would in effect make death our savior.  Many of us have believed that Jesus couldn’t make us righteous in this life.  We would need Jesus plus our death, then we could be righteous.  Wow, when we put it like this, it just sounds awful, doesn’t it?

I imagine this is going to take several years for the body of Christ to catch on, but the fact is, it has already started… we’ve already begun to enter the Kingdom Age and it’s a great time for us kings to assume our roles.

Liberation revelation is coming… it’s here.  We’re embracing and learning.  More, Lord!!!!

— MLH

Luke 18’s Unjust Judge… God or Satan?

Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart, saying: “There was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man.  Now there was a widow in that city; and she came to him, saying, ‘Get justice for me from my adversary.’  And he would not for a while; but afterward he said within himself, ‘Though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.’”  Then the Lord said, “Hear what the unjust judge said.” — Luke 18:1-6

Widow perspective

The prevailing opinion has been that we should liken ourselves to the widow… and that we should plead with the unjust judge (who represented God) until He relented because our unceasing persistence wore Him down.   I think we mostly believed this perspective because we were taught it… and because we didn’t see God as a gracious and benevolent God.  We mostly saw Him as austere, hard of hearing and not that fond of us because of our sinfulness (how could He ever even look on sin).  And the fact that we didn’t receive answers to our petitions as fast as we would like, only fueled our erroneous perspective.  In this perspective God’s delay seems to confirm that He’s fairly determined to not give us anything… and that He’s not even aware of our petty needs because He’s so preoccupied with more important things.

Break it down

1. Our old perspective says that we’re the widow (who in the old Hebrew culture had no rights, whatsoever)… but this can’t be accurate because we know that we’re the Bride of Christ.

2. We’ve believed that the unjust judge was God… but this can’t be true for several reasons.  Twice Jesus emphasizes that the judge did not “fear God nor regard man”… which makes it impossible for this to represent our God.

3. Another erroneous perspective says that God is strongly disinterested and even resistant to us… which is antithetical to everything we know about God’s big benevolent heart toward us.

So why did we ever believe this diabolic perspective?

Satan, the unjust judge!

Now if we just think about it for a moment, who would want us to have this distorted and diminished perspective of God?  Could it be the one who hates you and me… and hates God?  Could it be Satan?  Well, of course it is!  You see, he has perpetrated another lie on us.  He’s accomplished the degradation of God in our eyes exactly as he did with Eve when he asked, “Did God say…” causing Eve to doubt God’s good intentions toward her… and eventually leading her to being deceived.  Satan’s intention was to redefine God into his image and deceive us, too.  Satan has never stopped this ploy throughout all of history.  He’s a master at undermining God’s goodness.  You see if he can’t get us to blatantly sin, then he’ll get us to believe a lie about God which will weaken our confidence, security and faith in God.  Satan wants us to see ourselves as victims (the widow), rather than “more than conquerors through Him who loves us” and as those who have been duly authorized with Heavenly authority to speak into any terra firma situation which may be resisting God’s Kingdom in our lives.

It works like this: when we buy into the perspective of a disinterested and resistant God, we gravitate to the begging mode.  There is no faith in the begging mode and of course, “whatever is not of faith is sin”.  Then our begging mode leads to whining and reciting all our ills to our unjust-judge-god that Satan has created for us.  Satan’s smile and pleasure increases as we focus on (‘worship’) the problems more than the Problem Solver… and we lose sight of our authority to be the co-problem-solvers.  At this point, Satan has now successfully voided our effectiveness with God because “according to your faith be it unto you” and since we believe that He is disinterested and apathetic, any real faith we may have in God is now nearly nil.  Doesn’t this just sound awful when we lay it out in front of us like this?  Guess who wins in this scenario?  The perpetrator of the lie… Satan, of course.  He’s the unjust judge!  He hopes we won’t grasp Jesus’ exposé of Satan’s kingdom in these first 6 verses, because the truth is that all of Satan’s subjects are widow-like… having no rights… and are the focus of his hate.  He just hoped that we (like Eve) would fall for his lie and worship him.

We must not bow down or buy-in to the paradigm of verses 1–6.  This paradigm is the M.O. and tactic of Satan’s regime… it’s his protocol… it’s what NOT to do!  This paradigm is NOT for us!

The Contrast

So now that Jesus has just exposed Satan’s tactics, listen to the contrast Jesus gives of the M.O. of the Kingdom in the next two verses.

And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them?  I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” — Luke 18:7, 8

Here Jesus contrasts the old perspective of the widow (verses 1-6) with a new perspective of our position with God… here He calls us “His own elect” – not widow.  The contrast is that if a beggar widow could extract some kind of response out of hate-filled Satan, how much more will our Loving God “speedily” avenge us.  You see, the contrast is 180 degrees polarized.  It’s as opposite as it gets.  And in the last sentence of verse 8, Jesus makes the point so relevant and personal.  Each time Jesus “comes” to you and I, will He find our hearts in the faith-less-widow-mode motivated by sheer desperation and pain begging the unjust judge (Satan) for some relief from his oppression… or motivated by the faith-filled, in-love heart of a Bride who is confidently assured that we are the apple of our Father’s eye and whose delight it is to give us the Kingdom?

Conclusion

We’re choosing to embrace the latter perspective thus circumventing the pain and curse that Adam and Eve experienced.  We believe that God is really good and has a full heart to quickly respond.  Never again will we equate ourselves with the widow who had no rights or favor such that we stoop to begging for a morsel from the lessor god who Satan intended to create in our eyes.  O, he thought he had us… but we’re breaking free into the favored and royal status of kings unto our God… kings who sit on the Throne with Christ as co-reigners with Him… NOW.

Can you say… God is not an unjust judge… and I am not a widow.  Say… I am the highly favored Bride of Christ and a duly authorized and empowered king unto my God who has been honored to co-reign with Him.

— MLH

 

If good works can’t make a sinner righteous, can ‘bad’ works make a saint unrighteous?

This question rattles the very core of our belief system.  Our religious response to the first part is solid and automatic (we’ve preached it hard and heavy), but because of our culture, experience and emotions we may feel unable or unsure as to how to answer the latter part. But it boils down to this: If we couldn’t get good enough to even COME to God, how could do we ever think that our goodness could KEEP us in God?  So the short version of this great news is: Our righteous status with God is not based on our merit… it’s on Jesus merit… His righteousness alone.

Scripture goes so far as to say that “we ARE the righteousness of God in Christ” (see II Cor 5:21).  I wonder if my head and heart really heard this astounding news… my righteousness is the same as God’s.  It’s not something that we can ever earn.  It’s called the “righteousness of God” because Jesus is the One who kept the law and He gave us His righteousness.  This is so liberating, so easy and so light!

Let’s see how Grace is afforded to us.

Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Also through Him, we have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, (Rms 5:1, 2)

For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)  ¹⁸ Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.  ¹⁹ For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.  ²⁰ Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:  ²¹ That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.  (Rms 5:17-21)

Did you notice that we have been declared righteous?  We didn’t get just a little bit of righteousness… that we could somehow lose if we aren’t very careful.  And we didn’t get just a little bit more righteous.   Rather, in the same manner that a judge gives the verdict and declares a person innocent, so God has declared us righteous based on Jesus’ obedience and merit alone.  My mind has trouble with this (because I’ve been so sin and law conscious) but now I believe that God’s heart is so good… even better than I now know, so I choose to let my heart feast on this finest of fare.

This is the crux of the message of Grace.  It’s obviously not a license to sin (see Rms 6:1); rather, the Grace message gives permission to take a radical leap into the incomparable love of God.  This liberating revelation will propel us into the glorious adventure of becoming kings on this earth. No more insecure ‘beggar type’ Christians hoping to not make God mad at us… and hoping to extract another morsel from Him.  No way!  Now we’re confidently exploring the expanses of His love and the stunning destiny awaiting us.

So take a ride on the ‘wild side’… just take God at His Word.  He’s never lied before and this is what He says, “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed… even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference.” (see Rms 3:21-22).  If you in Christ, you ARE righteous!

More on this topic: Rms 10:3, Phil 3:9, Rms 5:17, Eph 2:8

— MLH