Kingdom Building 2.0

We all know what adversity is, but here is the definition anyway. Adversity is a universal human experience that involves difficult life challenges, trauma, loss, or chronic stress. 

What I am about to say, may not be what we have been told, God did not ever send adversity or trials or bring suffering into our lives. God corrects His people out of fatherly love to guide, train, and restore them and transform rather than to inflict wrath or punishment. God doesn’t put cancer on people because they were bad or sinned. Many times, we bring stuff into our lives. Examples: we get involved with the wrong people, we take a highly stressful job, our priorities are messed up, and we make bad lifestyle decisions (smoke 3 packs a day), however some of what we go through is not of our doing: sickness or loss of a loved one, rebellious kids, an accident that is not your fault.

Let’s get one thing straight, God does not put this stuff on us, but God will use the tough things we go through to bring us into a unity with him, and he will love us and give us strength along the way.
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The meeting focused on overcoming fear through faith and the understanding of God's unconditional love. Richard and Jim discussed the biblical origins of fear, tracing it back to Adam and Eve's fall in the Garden of Eden, and argued that fear arises when trust in God is replaced by trust in oneself. They shared personal reflections on tribulation, citing Romans 8:28 and the life of Paul to illustrate that all things work together for good and that God's grace is sufficient in weakness. The conversation addressed different types of fear, including clinical phobias, psychological fears, and the fear of death or hell, framing these as states of mind rather than permanent conditions. They emphasized that perfect love casts out all fear and that recognizing one's oneness with God is the key to freedom. Jim shared a poem about the "Garden of God" within and encouraged listeners to rely on prayer and praise to rise above adversity. Richard highlighted the importance of questioning traditional religious doctrines that use fear as a tool, asserting that God's love is unconditional and that Christ's work has already set people free from the bondage of fear.

The meeting focused on overcoming fear through faith and the understanding of God's unconditional love. Richard and Jim discussed the biblical origins of fear, tracing it back to Adam and Eve's fall in the Garden of Eden, and argued that fear arises when trust in God is replaced by trust in oneself. They shared personal reflections on tribulation, citing Romans 8:28 and the life of Paul to illustrate that all things work together for good and that God's grace is sufficient in weakness. The conversation addressed different types of fear, including clinical phobias, psychological fears, and the fear of death or hell, framing these as states of mind rather than permanent conditions. They emphasized that perfect love casts out all fear and that recognizing one's oneness with God is the key to freedom. Jim shared a poem about the "Garden of God" within and encouraged listeners to rely on prayer and praise to rise above adversity. Richard highlighted the importance of questioning traditional religious doctrines that use fear as a tool, asserting that God's love is unconditional and that Christ's work has already set people free from the bondage of fear.

This resurrection life is a life of freedom; not a life filled with shame, guilt and not a life thinking you are not good enough.
The power of the resurrection is the Christ. "I am the resurrection, and the life" (John 11:25). This resurrection is not of the future, "but has now been manifested by . . . our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light" (II Tim. 1:10).

The resurrection is the lifting up of the whole man into the Christ consciousness. The whole man is spirit, soul, and body.
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God is unconditional love. 

Early on, I was taught the God is love but Doctrine. God is love but if you don’t do exactly what the preachers say, you could be dammed eternally, or God is going to turn away from you because you sinned and he can’t look upon sin. How about this one, you were born into sin and you spend your whole life trying to be a better person to gain God’s favor and go to heaven.

What if the most hidden thing Jesus ever taught had nothing to do with sin? What if it was about who you really are and how much he loves you?

1John 4 :17 By living in God, love has been brought to its full expression in us so that we may fearlessly face the day of judgment, because all that Jesus now is, so are we in this world. 18 Love never brings fear, for fear is always related to punishment. But love’s perfection drives the fear of punishment far from our hearts.

(Love provides us with no reason to fear the future or to fear punishment from God)

Uncovering 3 Hidden Truths

What is truth? Jesus made it clear. He said, “I am the truth. Truth is not determined by personal feelings or what makes someone feel comfortable. Truth does not change based on majority vote or popular opinion. For the first 100 years after Jesus, the church didn’t look anything like it does today. There were dozens of communities, different gospels, different teachers, different ideas about who Jesus was and what he came to do. Where do we go to find the truth?
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Like we said last week, whenever Jesus speaks of power, it is almost never external, we are to focus on the unseen, internal power of God. When it was external, like calming the storms, it had an inner, spiritual. and eternal meaning.
The path to awareness lies through inner stillness, silence and direct communion with the Christ in us.

Jesus practiced spiritual power when he would retreat from the people and spend time alone with Father God. If we would withdrawal and do the same before making any decisive acts, we would always make better decisions. 
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There is an expression "to awaken a sleeping giant". It means provoking a quiet, peaceful, or passive power that has massive hidden strength, causing it to react with overwhelming force. That is what happens in us when we are awakened to the Christ within. We are going to discuss today what that looks like.

1Cor 4:20 Mirror The Kingdom of God (the dominion of the Christ life) is about an empowered life and not just a matter of quoting your favorite teacher or scriptures.

Being what the church refers to a “born again” experience doesn’t necessarily mean that the sleeping giant is awakened. It is a good starting point. I believe that true awakening occurs when we divest ourselves of rituals, doctrines and traditions and begin to have an intimate relationship seeing him face to face or spirit to spirit. Am I saying that you can’t have an awakening with the power within if you go to church? No. I am saying that when Jesus becomes more important to you than your pastor and the church you belong to and God becomes your one and only focus, then we begin to really see that knowing him and ourselves better is the most important thing in this life and the result of that is love. Like Jesus said, love God and love your neighbor as yourself. 1 John 3:2 says, when you see him as I am, you will be like him.

1 John 3:2 Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is.

Where does he appear? In us. Verse 1 in the Mirror says The performance based systems of this world just cannot see this!
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We Have Christlike Strength
 
Life can bog you down. It can be difficult at times.

We have all heard the scripture, I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me.

Phil 4:13 I can do all things [which He has called me to do] through Him who strengthens and empowers me [to fulfill His purpose—I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency; I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him who infuses me with inner strength and confident peace.]

Poetic Pause Pt 5 - Living Life in the NOW!
The presence of God is always present.
God says that the present moment is where He lives, where we find His grace, and where we must place our focus instead of worrying about tomorrow
The word "now" relates to eternity by shifting our view from time as a long line to a timeless point. Eternity is not just an endless amount of future time. It is the complete absence of time, where past, present, and future exist all at once. In spiritual and philosophical thought, "now" is the small window where humans touch that timeless reality.