Several weeks ago we were right in the middle of investigating the diagram that depicts how the Kingdom of God grows, which we call “The Ship of the Kingdom.” I suddenly felt a nudge (I believe from God) to change directions, so for the past three weeks I have temporarily interrupted our discussion of the Ship. I have left its emphasis on God’s law in His Kingdom through the family, church and civil government, and, instead sharpened the other edge of the Sword of…

It just dawned on me about three weeks ago that I have a “life verse!” I was shocked, because I have always arrogantly and condescendingly laughed at those who “live by emotionally clinging to verses that make them feel good.” Lo and behold I just discovered that “I are one!”  I was in Kinston, N.C., working for DuPont Chemical, the summer before I graduated from the University of Oklahoma. As a year-old Christian, I was enthusiastically reading the Bible and memorizing Scripture verses, using…

In today’s posting, I want to finish what we started last week; the spiritual history of humanity as incorporated by the Tale of Two Trees. We saw that those trees are, first, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, where mankind chose independence from God in Adam, and second, the cross upon which Jesus died, our Tree of Life! This second tree also includes the resurrection, making it the “cross event.” This is the “centerpiece of all…

Last week we left Adam in the Garden of Eden with explicit instructions from God: “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat (including the Tree of Life); but of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” And the LORD God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him…

The reality of the unlimited grace of God that we discussed last week is initially impossible for the human mind to grasp, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8, 9)  So, reading, study, and a Ph.D. from seminary will change what we think, but it can never change how we…

As I was preparing my next and final blog posting about the Ship of the Kingdom, I felt the Lord was prompting me to take a break from the Ship and focus on a verse that I mentioned in last week’s posting: “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).  When I first noticed this verse a couple of months ago, its significance hit me like a ton of bricks. The Law of God, received…

We have pulled up our anchors and set sail in our Ship of the Kingdom, as we travel inexorably  to our destination of seeing the Lord’s Prayer answered—“Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on the earth as it is in Heaven.” Last week, we looked at two biblical prophecies 300 years apart—one by David and one by Danel—both of which prophesied the very same momentous event! That event (pictured in the Ship of the Kingdom diagram below) was God the Father giving His…

The natural, spontaneous, unconscious (NSU) nature of the pursuit of our commission to rule over the earth has taken center stage in our discussions. However, it is important to realize that the result of that spontaneity will, ultimately and ironically, very naturally result in visible, definable structures. Periodically over the years, I have explored in these postings what I believe the Bible teaches those ruling structures to be. The following diagram of the concept of “sphere sovereignty” is a beautiful explanation of them that…

The church at Antioch, that we discussed last week, was truly an NSU (natural, spontaneous, unconscious) church that had no vision of changing the world. Their vision was to simply find a life in Antioch where they could live daily by faith, trusting their Heavenly Father for everything, just as they had learned in the church in Jerusalem after Pentecost. But “surprise, surprise,” they changed the world anyway! In a similar manner, right now, in places where we know litle about Christianity’s growth—China, Iran,…

When God sovereignly decides it is time for us to experience ”living by faith,” our Daddy gives us that experience. It is solely at His discretion.  We are always the object in the experience, never, in any way, the subject. He may or may not let us know what He is doing—I discovered what was happening to me years after my experience of His beginning to do it! It is exciting to look back and see what He has done in our lives and…