The Coming of the Kingdom - Part II - The Strategy
Part II: The Strategy
Jesus told many stories (parables) about the Kingdom and the coming of the Kingdom. A really good devotional is to do a search in a concordance on Kingdom of Heaven in the Gospels and then read all the passages that are returned.
The strategy of seeing this Kingdom today involves two components: one male, one female.
Jesus describes the male part in:
And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. Matt 11:12-13 NKJV
And in Ephesians 6 we read ”Put on the while armor of God…”
Unfortunately, the concept here is often misread and we tend to add our own agendas to the reality. There IS a real war going on and we battle against a very powerful enemy that deceives, lies, and uses any method at his disposal to win the war. One of the major problems of the Church today is that most Christians don’t know there is a war going on. How many seminaries, for example, train pastors with a course on spiritual warfare? How many sermons have you heard preached on it?
When we started spiritually mapping my own city in the mid-eighties we didn’t know how many churches were here, church attendance, nothing! That’s like going into a war and not knowing how many soldiers you have, how well trained they are, and where they are located. In the secular world, you would fire a general that did that (ok, I could make a joke here, except it isn’t a joke).
What did Jesus mean? In Luke 9:2 he sent his disciples out:
Then He called His twelve disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases. He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.
Luke 9:1-2 NKJV
The Greek word here used for “power” is dunamis, and does NOT mean power to control or manipulate, but rather power to do. In other words, there is a spiritual gifting given to them to accomplish the healing and deliverance. The purpose of the gifting is to glorify God. In the healing the Kingdom comes.
Now take a moment and let’s look at the female component of the coming of the Kingdom.
For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.1 Thess 5:3 KJV
This is spoken of the Day of the Lord, an End-Time event fraught with theological discussion among the learned minds of today. In a more present sense, however, it refers to the birthing of the Kingdom even as the wars for the Kingdom are fought today. Peter Wager has noted (Prayer Shield) that among those prayer warriors and intercessors that stay closest to him as mentors, about 80% are women. He doesn’t know why this is true, but thinks it has something to do with the fact that women understand the birthing process better than men. And the coming of the Kingdom is also a birthing process.
For each of us, these two components of the Kingdom are very real and active. The Kingdom is coming today, but it involves love and healing. Jesus compared the coming of the Kingdom as requiring us to become as children – a strange mixture of humility, servanthood, and vulnerability. This coming is loaded with what we think are contradictions – the weak become strong, the servant become leader, the last becomes first, giving is receiving, dying is living, losing is finding, and poor is rich.. The result when the Kingdom comes is that God is glorified. It has nothing to do with glorifying us.