Many years ago, the Lord spoke to me, “You are not going to Pastor as you used to pastor. I don’t want you to build a church, I don’t want you to build a ministry, but I want you to ESTABLISH THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MEN’S HEARTS. Bring them to me!” That word changed everything in my life.
For me to obey the Lord, I had to pray Lord, I can’t bring anyone where I have not been. Please establish your kingdom reality as it really is “now” in me upon this Earth. Teach me your ways of your Kingdom.
It has been quite a change for me, and it required that all my old religious thinking and training had to be transformed into the truth of the Kingdom. Much of my religious understanding had to be removed from me and what was left had to be re understood in the true and deep wisdom of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus Teaches the Kingdom in Parables
In the parable of the sower Jesus teaches us “who can and who cannot” have the reality of His kingdom. His disciples asked why He taught in parables and He answered them, It is “to you” (those hungry for God and set apart) that the mysteries and secrets of his kingdom are given to impart, but to “them” (the religious, those who have eyes to see, but don’t see, and ears to hear, but don’t hear, and hearts to understand but don’t) he speaks to them in parables, less they turn and repent.
The kingdom of God reality has to be revealed in a heart ready and prepared to receive it and that will give God the good heart soil for it to grow in. This caused me to seek out the Lord much more on these truths and he led me to others that have that reality more fully in their lives and to learn from them as well. Those men and women of God further down the road helped me see and to continue on in the journey.
Every day our life is to become fuller with the pure holy love of God as we seek Him as our most vital need. We are to seek Him and the Kingdom first and foremost. The Lord sees the state of his church especially here in America and He shares His burden of intercession with those who can see and have the Kingdom of God burning in their hearts.
From Revival to Revolution
In a time of intercession the Lord told me not to pray for revival, and not even to use the term, but to pray for a “spiritual revolution” in the hearts of His people. Now, many years later I understand why?
That Revolution is the Manifestation of the Kingdom of God in God’s people. It is the answer to Jesus prayer found in John chapter 17:20-24
20 “I do not pray for these alone [it is not for their sake only that I make this request], but also for [all] those who [will ever] believe and trust in Me through their message, 21 that they all may be one; just as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, so that the world may believe [without any doubt] that You sent Me.
22 I have given to them the glory and honor which You have given Me, that they may be one, just as We are one; 23 I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected and completed into one, so that the world may know [without any doubt] that You sent Me, and [that You] have loved them, just as You have loved Me.
24 Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given to Me [as Your gift to Me], may be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, because You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”
Religious Systems
The religious system we all were trained under can never bring you to the receiving or reality of true Kingdom of God life in your heart. It can never make us one. It allows you to work for God on your terms and to seek him on your terms, but never really changes us into the fullness and maturity of life that God desires.
Matter of fact, I think the Lord allows religious systems to exist for one purpose, not to bring us kingdom life, but to show us how there is no life in religion. “I know your works…” Religious life may try to make you better people. It tries to make good church members, but those members have little or no reality of the Kingdom of God life that Jesus came for us to live in by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The power and glory of God that is to be seen in His temple is not there. His people may have a form of godliness in them, but it truly denies the power of God in reality of His kingdom. Why are there so little numbers of people who truly live a Spirit-filled and Spirit-led life manifesting the Kingdom of God wherever they go?
Kingdom versus Religion
So many ministers and people talk about the glory, and talk about the power, and even desire to have it, but they may never obtain it, because the character and quality of the Spirit life they seek is not in a religious system of church works or activities.
True Kingdom life is only found in the person of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit fully working in man’s heart. This is the commission of the Lord, “To establish the Kingdom of God in men’s hearts.” This is what true discipleship means, and Jesus asked us to make disciples in the nations. The kingdom of God is manifested in the hearts of all that truly find him.
Religion and the Babylonian church systems that infiltrated the church allows you to keep your life and serve God in your own efforts and time. In it, you can give God what you want to, when you want to, and you keep control over your life. You may be saved because of the free gift of Christ, but Christ’s Kingdom life is not in you to do the works he did, nor does it reflect the Glory of God as God would desire.
The gifts of the spirit may operate in some and even churches and ministries. They may even do big meetings and see many great things, but the true character and life in the Holy Spirit of God and His pure holy love is hardly seen.
The Lord said, “In the last of days, the heart of many of God’s people will wax cold.” Why? Because many will lose their first love and replace it with religious exercise and working harder for God thinking that in sacrifices and offerings God will receive them.
Many will try to build something for God. Many will try to build themselves a name. Many will try to build their towers that reach into heaven in their own strength. Many are deceived into building another Babel instead of God’s kingdom on Earth.
Many will try to become something for God in His name but, in their own power, instead of God becoming something in them as true ambassadors of His Kingdom in His power. Yet it is to those people Jesus stands at the door in the church and is knocking so he can come in and says, “I know your works, they are even more now than when you started.” (That is the heart or motives of so much activity being done in the Christian church today in His name, build something for God.)
Kingdom Love in His Presence
Yet He is saying today, “Nevertheless I have this one charge against you, ‘you have deserted and abandoned your first love. Repent, and remember how far you have fallen, Or else I will come and remove your lamp stand from its place.”
The lamp stand represents the “presence of the Lord.” It represents true intimacy with God which, causes us to see Him and His kingdom in reality.
Today, the Lord is calling forth a people who will come out of the world and the religious “American dream church life” which is full of works for God, yet keeping your life as your own. It is the American dream church life that basically lives for all the world’s priorities mixed with God’s and is lukewarm and in danger of being spewed out of God’s mouth.
Prepared Kingdom People
God is searching for a people that want Him and true Kingdom of God life manifesting in them and through them above all else. There is a people in the Body of Christ that He is preparing who will “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,” so he can add all these things unto them.
He is searching for his “little flock” where he can say to them, “fear not little flock it is the Father’s pleasure to give you the Kingdom.” A people who will possess the keys to the Kingdom because the Kingdom of God is truly manifested in their lives as God desires, not by human reason or understanding.
Kingdom of God life is nothing, NOTHING, like this world in thought, action and in deed. Kingdom of God life is found in principle in the Sermon on the Mount. The whole teaching of the Kingdom of God in this sermon is not about works, but the “motives of the heart of why we do the work.” Without God’s love as the motive all that work will be burned up and we will be a clanging bell to the Lord as 1st Corinthians 13 teach us.
The Kingdom of God is pure holy love filling His people and the Glory of the Lord to be seen upon them which will transform life as we know it, this world as we know it, into the glorious Kingdom of God on Earth. In that love of His Kingdom we will love one another as He has loved us.
Jesus Taught about Kingdom of Heaven Available in this Life Now
In the Sermon on the Mount we are taught how and what to pray. Did you ever ponder on His words of that prayer and what they mean in light of His kingdom reality? “Our Father who art in heaven, hollowed be thy name, THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH [our lives) AS IT IS IN HEAVEN?”
Heaven is not just a place to go to, it is the reality of God’s Kingdom abundant life in us now! What did Jesus tell us to preach? What is our Gospel message to be? “The kingdom of salvation or the kingdom of the church is at hand? NO WAY! We are to preach the Kingdom of God is at hand and demonstrate its reality because it is at hand, right here, right now.’
The Gospel preached today in the church for the most part is full of man’s wisdom and ideas of what God wants and what His kingdom is. It often has become a watered down attempt to bring people to God or the church, and to many times the messages are full of error and deceptions of the enemy that puts God’s power and glory of His kingdom to the past or to the future, but doesn’t tell you the Kingdom of God is “NOW” at hand for us to possess.
This present religious Gospel has produced a sick and anemic church that has lost its first love for the most part and has opened itself to all the other things found in Rev 2 and 3.
Yet at the end of the age, Jesus is no longer speaking just to the churches as a whole, but to us as individuals. Matter of fact right now He is standing at the door of each of his saints heart. What is he doing?
Revelation 3 tell us: “15 ‘I know your deeds that you are neither cold [invigorating, refreshing) nor hot (healing, therapeutic); I wish that you were cold or hot. 16 So because you are lukewarm (spiritually useless), and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth [rejecting you with disgust].
17 Because you say, “I am rich, and have prospered and grown wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked [without hope and in great need],
18 I counsel you to buy from Me gold that has been heated red hot and refined by fire so that you may become truly rich; and white clothes [representing righteousness] to clothe yourself so that the shame of your nakedness will not be seen; and healing salve to put on your eyes so that you may see.
19 Those whom I [dearly and tenderly] love, I rebuke and discipline [showing them their faults and instructing them]; so be enthusiastic and repent [change your inner self—your old way of thinking, your sinful behavior—seek God’s will].
20 Behold, I stand at the door [of the church] and continually knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him (restore him), and he with Me.”
Do you hear the voice of the Spirit of God today? Do you hear the upward call to come out of the religious Babylonian life to enter and possess the true Kingdom life that is available right now for all who will believe?
Jesus is standing at the door of your heart right now. Let him in, and let him come and sup, (feed you with His true Kingdom life). Let him replace that which is dead and fading away with the real abundant life of His Kingdom that He has come to bring.
“21 He who overcomes [the world through believing that Jesus is the Son of God], I will grant to him [the privilege] to sit beside Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down beside My Father on His throne. 22 He who has an ear, let him hear and heed what the Spirit says to the churches.’”
Let us seek God. Let us return to our First love and do our first work! Let us seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness until all these things are added unto us! Amen!
Henry J Falcone
flameofire2010@me.com