Let Your Internal Reality Change Your External Circumstances

Living Inside Out (2)

Mark 4:35-41

Jesus had perfect peace inside, and His focus was on this internal reality rather than the storm outside. That’s why He did not panic like His disciples did.

When facing difficult circumstances we can choose to remain at ease connected to God’s Kingdom or we can act according to what we see and feel. As children of God, His Kingdom is within us (Luke 17:21). If God is with us, we will surely make it to the other side. To choose to live according to what we see and feel is to ignore the invisible and invincible Kingdom inside.

Jesus’ disciples allowed themselves to be overwhelmed by the storm. They saw, they felt, they thought about it and they decided that it could be fatal. Before they approached Jesus their hearts were already gripped with fear. Fear is something tangible, it’s something real. But this reality is inside, not outside. So what actually happened to the disciples?

The storm had moved from outside their body to inside their soul.

We have to guard what we have, because there is a thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10). If we are not careful, he will steal our peace. Then, like the disciples, we would have let what’s outside affect what’s inside.

Jesus lived the other way round. He would not let the outside affect the inside. I have read the passage in Mark many times, but every time I thought it comical that Jesus could keep on sleeping in that kind of condition. Apart from the fact that it’s because He lived in Shalom peace, I believe Jesus also wanted to teach us something by his sleeping. He was effectively saying this: shut the external conditions out of your system. Ignore them. Of course, Jesus could laugh heartily and He could weep at what He saw. He lived like a normal man. Even so, He was never fazed or intimidated by unfavorable external circumstances.

But there’s more to it. Inside Jesus there’s no storm, but He did have a lot of peace. His Kingdom is peace. He carried it in great measure and He could release it to the world around Him. What He had not he could not give but what He had He could give. He released His Shalom peace into the outside world. Just as the disciples’ fear was tangible, His peace was also tangible and of superior reality. The storm had to cease. Jesus then rebuked His disciples; obviously He meant that they could have done what He did. So, in whatever storm you find yourself in, do what Jesus did:

Let your internal reality change your external circumstances.


Scripture Link: BibleGateway.com

Hunger after His Kingdom

Hunger after His Kingdom (7)

If, after reading my last post, you are still not convinced of God’s will concerning your health, consider the following incident recorded in Matthew 8 right after the Sermon on the Mount.

When He had come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. And behold, a leper came and worshiped Him, saying, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” Then Jesus put out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. (Matt 8:1-3, NKJV)

This passage again expressed God’s will regarding the matter. Most have no problem recognizing that God has the power to heal, but too many have doubt as to His willingness to heal. The above passage should settle the case once for all. In telling the leper that He was willing to heal him, Jesus is telling all who would come before Him that He is willing to heal them, or else He wouldn’t be the Jesus who is the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb 13:8). Today, to say “If you are willing” in prayer may sound pious, but it is actually blatant unbelief. Make up your mind and believe what Jesus says: “I am willing; be healed.”

Having satisfied ourselves, let us look at the passage from another point of view. The incident happened immediately after Jesus preached the Sermon. In fact, Jesus was demonstrating what He preached. According to the Apostle Paul, the best preaching is not one with eloquence of speech or human wisdom, but with the demonstration of power and of the Spirit (1 Cor 2:4-5). Paul must have learned from the Lord Jesus Himself. In the Sermon, Jesus stroked the fire in His audience; He wanted them to hunger and thirst for God’s Kingdom. He told them that all their desires and needs shall be fulfilled when the Kingdom had come on them. And here came the leper, perhaps himself had his desire and hunger aroused, so much so that he risked the exasperation of many coming through the crowd to where Jesus was. Lepers were not allowed in a crowd. They had to go about shouting “unclean”. But he became the perfect subject for Jesus demonstrating the Kingdom. Jesus laid His hand on him; He touched him. His Kingdom came on the leper. There is no leprosy in His Kingdom. The reality of the Kingdom was made manifest.

What Jesus did and what He preached cannot be separated. That is why we can say His actions before and after the Sermon (that is, His actions in Matt 4 and Matt 8) gives us the context for the Sermon. His actions addressed the needs and desires of the people, so His Sermon must addressed the same. I don’t know about you, but I find this approach easiest to understand Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7). It is clear this is what Jesus wanted to tell His audience, and to tell us:

Hunger after His Kingdom, and all that you hunger after shall be filled.    

Scripture Link: BibleGateway.com

Your Desire for Health & God's Will

Hunger after His Kingdom (6)

There cannot be a more basic need or desire than this – good health. And surely, there cannot be a greater blessing this side of eternity. For one simple reason: without good health we cannot enjoy any other blessing, no matter how much we are blessed. What good is it to have all the money in the world if you cannot eat what you like because of ill health? Or you need to lie on the sick bed perpetually? You simply cannot live life, not to say enjoy it. Sickness brings pain and suffering. It drains resources and eliminates peace from our lives. Most times, it is not only the sick who suffer, their loved ones also suffer along with them. Do you think it is God’s will for us to be sick?

Your answer to the above question is crucial; it determines whether you would be a candidate to experience divine healing and divine health. It may even be a life and death matter. Not long ago I heard of a testimony. Jane (not her real name) found herself given the death sentence by the doctor. Jane had cancer. The stomach was bloated as if she was pregnant. The doctor said there’s nothing more he could do. You can go home, he said. But she could not accept it. This cannot be my destiny, she said. Jane believed Jesus would not let her die like that; it’s His will that she be healed. So she refused to accept the report of the doctor and sought the Lord, and the Lord alone. Jane prayed, and she asked others to pray for her. She didn’t go for any further treatment. In a few months she was completely healed, completely well. Free of cancer. It has been more than a year now that Jane has lived in this divine health. What would happen if she had thought that it could be God’s will that she be sick? Many are defeated right at this point. Not Jane. You see, what we believe is truly important.

There are too many out there who are not sure of God’s will regarding this matter. Even church ministers. But Scripture is very clear about it. In the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus taught us how to pray. He has this to say praying about God’s Kingdom:

Your Kingdom come.

Your will be done

On earth as it is in heaven. (Matt 6:10, NKJV)

Jesus had been telling the crowd that they must seek God’s Kingdom, because in it they would find their needs met and their desires fulfilled. Pray earnestly “Your Kingdom Come”, He said. It is obvious that in His Kingdom He rules. God has full dominion – that is to say His will takes precedence. How does His will look like? Jesus gives us a specific answer: on earth as it is in heaven. In heaven, everything is in the most perfect state possible, full of God’s glory and beauty. There can be nothing broken and nothing lacking. Perfect peace and joy permeate all. When the Kingdom comes on us, only what’s allowed in heaven is allowed here; what’s not allowed in heaven is not allowed here. That is God’s will as spelt out by Jesus. Now, do you think sickness can be allowed in heaven?  

Therefore, you need have no doubt as to what is God’s will for you in this matter. It is just as you’ve desired.

Your Wealth Is Not in Your Income

Hunger after His Kingdom (5)

But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you …Matt 6:33, NKJV

“It’s all very good what you said about seeking His Kingdom and finding the wealth we desire in it. But can you be more specific and tell us what to do?”

In my last post I talked about our desire for wealth and finding its fulfillment in the Kingdom of God. I won’t be surprised if you were to ask the above question, as many have. We are used to being told what to do and what not to do. We find security in this, believing that when we have done what we are supposed to do we shall receive what we desire.  Even when the subject matter is the Kingdom of God, we still think in such terms.

But that is the Old Testament way: to work for God’s favor. The New Testament way is to know that we have God’s favor, then we work from that premise. If we cannot work (that is, all our works are futile that can do us no good) to achieve salvation, can we work to have His Kingdom? Certainly not. It is God’s favor to give us His Kingdom, and He is pleased to do so. So all that is left for us to do is to treasure, choose and seek this favor instead of trying to earn His rewards.

Let me tell you that this is by no means easy. There is a strong gravitation towards the other direction – to do something to earn God’s favor. It will be a big mistake to underestimate our tendency to do something in our quest for His Kingdom. We like to do something and to know that we can do something.  Like I say, we are so used to living like that. We need to have tangible steps to take to have the Kingdom. This is one reason why Jesus used such a strong word as “seek” for something that is readily accessible to the believer. You need to overcome your natural tendency to do something to possess His Kingdom. To put it bluntly, the kind of idea that says that you should serve God fervently and He will reward you with blessings is not “seeking His Kingdom”. It is not what Matt 6:33 means. This is at best Law and works, but His Kingdom is one of Grace and favor.

Abraham was a case in point. God promised him that his descendants would be as many as the stars in the sky. But after decades of waiting he didn’t even have a son because his wife Sarah was barren. So he tried to help God out by sleeping with the maid of his wife. He thought the child that resulted from this union would inherit God’s promise. He thought that by his own effort he could possess God’s Kingdom. But God said no. Abraham had to wait until he was a hundred years old and Sarah over ninety before she conceived and gave birth to Isaac – the one to inherit God’s promise. The Bible says that Abraham’s body was then as good as dead, so there’s no question it was God’s intervention that brought about a miracle. God is able to bring His Kingdom upon us without our help.

It’s plain and clear now that to “seek” His Kingdom is not so much our doing something as it is a changing of our mind. It is not about what we do, but how we think. Let’s take our desire for wealth for example. I believe the way of thinking that is in line with Kingdom principle is this: do not look to our income to supply what we need and desire. Instead, look to God. If God choose to use our income to supply what we want, that is fine. But if not, He must be free to use whatever means He likes. He is very creative and we cannot limit Him. Once we think like this we will not limit the source of our wealth to our income. (Remember, we said that wealth is not defined by the amount of money that we have, but the state of being whereby we have all our need met and more.) We will not rely on our income and work hard to maintain or increase it to obtain what we want. In fact we will find that we become open to opportunities and we are free to enjoy our work without having the pressure to squeeze everything out of it. We will be looking to God alone to supply what we want. We will find our wealth in His Kingdom.

He will supply. His name is Jehovah Jireh – God our Provider.

Photo Credit: Salvatore Vuono on FreeDigitalPhotos.net

His Kingdom and Your Desires

Hunger after His Kingdom (2)

Christianity has nothing to say to the person who is completely happy with the way things are.

-          John Eldredge, The Journey of Desire

If you open up a red letter Bible (those with Christ’s words printed in red) to the New Testament, you will soon come to the first large chunk of text in red: Matthew chapter 5 to chapter 7. You won’t miss it. This is a record of Jesus’ sermon which is known as the Sermon on the Mount. Straightaway you are given a good idea as to who Jesus has always wanted to speak to and what He has got to say. There is no ambiguity here.

Blessed are the poor… those who mourn…the meek…those who hunger and thirst for righteousness … and the list goes on (Mat 5:3-10). These were the kind of people Jesus was addressing then and the kind of people that even today He wants to speak to. One condition stands out among these people: all of them hunger and thirst for something and all of them want their needs met and their desires fulfilled.  They have Jesus’ primary attention, as you can see how He started His sermon focusing on them. In fact, before we come to Matthew chapter 5, we read in Matthew 4 that right at the start of His ministry Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people (Mat 4:23).  And right after the Sermon, we find in chapter 8 Jesus again healed all who were sick who came to Him (Mat 8:16). What was Jesus doing? He was fulfilling the needs and desires of everyone He met. What He preached correlates to what He did. From the passage leading up to the Sermon and from the passage after the Sermon we can establish the context of the Sermon, and like I say there can be no ambiguity who Jesus wanted to speak to. He always gives His attention to those who hunger and thirst.

So how can we qualify to have God’s attention? Simply come before Him with our needs and desires. In fact God can smell them miles away and He will come running towards us.

The next question is what He will say to those who hunger and thirst. Did Jesus tell these people to be content with their lot? Did He accuse them to be too desirous to be good? Some would have us believe that Jesus would talk like that; the problem is that we can’t see this in the Bible. For each and every need and desire that He identified in His audience, Jesus promised a solution and a breakthrough: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…they shall be comforted…they shall inherit the earth…they shall be filled…and so on. Jesus wants our desires fulfilled. 

Now we come to the most exciting part. Jesus said our desires shall be fulfilled, but did He tell us how they would come to us? Yes, you bet He did! It is by way of His Kingdom. Read Mat 5:3-10 carefully. You will notice that the specific solution stated for the first and last problem is the kingdom of heaven. It is like it envelops all the rest in between. This is the manner of preaching Jesus’ audience was used to. What Jesus means is this: all the solutions for the individual need raised are included in His Kingdom.  Once we have the Kingdom, we have the solutions, we have all we desire – they are all found in there. That’s why Jesus went about preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and He commanded His disciples to go preach the Gospel of the Kingdom, and commissioned us to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom.

It is simple and beautiful. If you are not convinced, you need look no further than this verse:

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. (Mat 6:33, NKJV)

Scripture Link: BibleGateway.com