Kingdom Reign With Daniel Ikuenobe
Hi! It’s always a pleasure to have you visit our blog. We are excited to share kingdom truths with you today. Welcome!
The essence of all things is the reign of God, unfortunately we haven’t come to the full realization of this.
What is the Kingdom of God?
The kingdom of God is the kingly dominion of God. If you speak of kingdoms, there is the king and there is the domain.
Many times we ask ourselves what is the essence of life? We think that it is meat and drink like scripture says. But it is righteousness peace and joy. It’s not about you.
In my line of work, I interact with the secular, i recall when i was working with a multinational consulting firm and you find it’s easier to preach to Nigerians who at least beleove in something. But then you meet people who don’t even believe in the existence of God.
You need more faith to not believe in God than to believe in Him, quite frankly. Let’s talk about it from the argument, they say that matter and anti-matter, i.e entity and non-entity had a fight and out of it came nothing. How do you come up with that?
But for us who follow God, we have a witness from scriptures;
In the begiming, God. Genesis 1:1
Time is only an interruption of eternity.
At the center of Einstein’s framework for all of his findings and theories was the fundamental assumption that God does not throw dice, which means nothing happens by chance.
If creation is by intelligent design, then it means there is an intelligent designer. If you question that, I question your capacity to intelligently critique your environment or the world you live in.
Rev 11:16-; He shall reign forever and ever and the next verse says therefore, we will reign forever.
Luke 16:16; If we are not making progress in the Kingdom, it’s because we are not pressing.
The gate of hell doesn’t have the capacity to withstand your advance.
So it starts with the kingdom of God.
Matthew 6:9,10; When you begin to pray, you pray God’s prayer. Do you know God has a prayer? The Holy Spirit makes groaning for us which cannot be uttered. Romans 8:26. You don’t even the capacity in yourself to pray aright and for your prayer to be powerful, you need to pray what He is praying.
And God’s prayer is that His kingdom come and His will be done. Every time God’s will is being effected, His kingdom is reigning.
His kingdom comes when His will is being effected.
It’s all about God, like I said. He is Alpha and Omega.
So what is the kingdom of God like? Let’s run through scriptures to see.
Luke 13:18-21; How God expands His kingdom is in the form of seed and many times you undermine this seed.
Jesus said if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the Kingdom of God has come. Luke 11:20
So if you see the finger and the spirit of God, you see where God’s rule and influence and power is effected.
So in Matthew 6, we see the prinicple of seed and leaven, so even though it’s the smallest, it becomes the biggest.
I’d like to point out three things;
I’d like to focus more on the mysteries of the kingdom as I share.
Matthew 13:2-11;
To him who has, if you understand, you have the capacity to have more but the one who has these things but does not see it becomes w2ven more confused. So the knowledge of the mysteries is key.
Verse 15&16; Seeing, hearing and understanding precedes the healing.
We must constantly pray to the Lord as we spend time studying the word and praying for understanding because when you don’t have understanding, you lose quite a lot.
I’ve shared before on how to do battle with what you hear. If you see my notes during service, you won’t think it’s the same thing that was preached because as i hear, I’m interpreting, shifting, making decisions and aligning.
That’s how to war with the word or else you are a passive hearer.
You hear and make decisions as you are hearing the word. That is how to take instructions from the word of God.
Scripture says in 2 Timothy 3:16 that, “The word of God is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”
Whatever you hear will be challenged. So as you hear it, go pack the soil and plant it and ensure that it does not die.
Many times when the word comes, it makes you uncomfortable, you are faced with the path of pruning which is quite painful.
Matthew 13:24; So the initial parable we looked at was referring to seed, this talks about human beings. I
You see in every church, we have tares and we have wheat. You have to decide which one you are. And interestingly, we all look alike, so much so it’s dangerous to try to separate at the initial stage from what you can see physically. People are on different levels.
Now how was he able to separate the wheat from the harvest?
During the harvest, the wheat becomes gold brown and bowed while the tares become dark, ugly and stand erect.
Self-righteousness.
Maximised in yourself. In any way.
During the harvest, it becomes clear the character of your heart.
Only a surrendered heart can have a renewed mind. The disposition of your heart comes before the transformation of your mind.
Matthew 13:31-35.
All of us are God-in-training and for you to truly be good, you must be good by choice. It means that you have the capacity for bad but you chose good. If you don’t have the capacity for bad, then you’re not truly good.
Out of God flows goodness, it comes from His belly, so out of your belly must flow the all-goodness. It has to come from within.
The kingdom of God begins in your hearts and there are choices you are currently making, to the left or to the right.
We keep making these choices everyday.
What are the two ways we keep deciding? The way of men and the way of God. When you choose your own way you are declaring independence and all God wants is for you to willingly choose Him.
It says, a willing sacrifice, sacrifice means to decimate, to cut in pieces. The difference is that you are a living one; essentially, you’ve become a living-dead man.
Look what Paul said in Galatians 2:20.
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
So you are willingly killing yourself, you are reducing and He is increasing. When you think a thought or feel a feeling or speak a word, it becomes the thought, feeling and word of God.
And then you can say the Kingdom of God has begun from your heart. From there, it spreads to your life and it begins to spread to your work, your relationships etc.
You start a business, it is an extension of the kingdom of God because it is the rule of God. That’s how to make progress in God’s kingdom.
Matthew 13:33-52;
There are several other parables that speak of the mysteries of the kingdom.
Has the parable of the wedding banquet ever confused you? It used to confuse me. You sent out invites, they were declined, then you went to the highways and invited every Tom, Dick & Harry, then someone comes and you send him away because he doesn’t have the right garment. How now?
But then i started to study Bible exegesis and I found that the hosts always provides the garments so when you come to the banquet, you put on the garment.
So at the table of the host, there is no Greek or Jew, no poor or rich, so that guy looked at the provision, despised it and came with his own garment. It was an insult to the host.
I would also like to read Genesis 18:19 as we consider the secrets of the kingdom and how to access it.
We can interprete this as the fact that the basis on which the agenda of God was revealed to Abraham was the disposition of His heart.
I Corinthians 2:4-16;
Romans 12:1-2
Psalm 110:1-3; God is seated until your enemies are made your footstool. How does the Lord rule? He rules by us.
When He stretches forth His strong sceptre, He’s referring to you.
Romans 5:17; We can interprete this scritpure to mean;
He rules by us, we reign by Him.
It is by Him that we reign. Scripture says by Him, princes reign.
God has called us as priests and kings to rule in this life by Him. The essence is for the extension of His kingdom but it starts from our hearts.
Here are key facts to take home:
■That we must spend time in the place of prayer and the word and we must make the necessary shifts as we spend these times.
■Your constant consideration is saying, “Lord, your kingdom reigns, your will reigns.
And these begins with your experience of righteousness, peace and joy.
■What is righteousness?
Righteousness is right-standing, right-living and right-feeling.
-Right standing is our understanding of what Christ has down for us on the cross and what happens is, as the work crystallizes in your heart and dawns on you, it begins to show in your life.
As you feel righteous, your shoulders square.
You need to constantly do a righteousness audit in your office. When guilt comes, your shoulder goes down and it affects your capacity to reign.
Kings have righteous energy.
■ Second, is peace. Philippians 4:6,7
If e dey worry you, pray. Every time you are anxious, the anointing is compromised.
Anxiety is negative apprehension and positive anticipation. When you are anxious, you tend to want to move too quickly but scripture says, “….in your patience, possess your soul.”
■Can I tell you how believers operate constantly in Joy?
When you study God’s word and you are praying the elements of it, your vision begins to align. At some point in your praying, you lay hold on it, it dawns on you that you have it and it’s not by shouting. When it dawns on you that you’ve received it, it births forth joy and you burst forth in praise.
In your natural environment, it doesn’t look like it, but you know that you’ve received it. But you have to press deep.
God’s kingdom is constantly expanding but it starts here, in your heart.
There has to be an enlargement of your soul.
Thank you for reading. Please spend protracted time in the place of prayer, as you do, you will receive heightened sense of sight, hearing and understanding to amplify the kingdom of God in your space.
