God's Kingdom

[NoahK]

Christ tells us to seek first the kingdom of heaven (a kingdom of righteousness). So how have you sought righteousness in your life?

 

[Hidden In Him]

Christ tells us to seek first the kingdom of heaven (a kingdom of righteousness). So how have you sought righteousness in your life?

Nice question.

For the first... thirty years I continually drew closer to Him through intensive study of His word, which I believe is still the principle means He intends for His children. But then He gave me the ability to interpret dreams, and I began seeking Him to understand what He was saying on that level as well, and hear His voice prophetically. So now I devote myself to hearing Him both ways. I still let the Holy Spirit continue to teach me through His word, and I let Him reveal things to me prophetically through visions and dreams, and through the messages He speaks through others who have prophetic gifts and/ or receive dreams.

That would be my answer.

Good thread. Never a bad thing to meditate on how we are each drawing closer to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Hidden

 

[Hopeful 2]

Christ tells us to seek first the kingdom of heaven (a kingdom of righteousness). So how have you sought righteousness in your life?

I repented of sin first. That made me a non-sinner.
Then I had all my past sins washed away at my baptism in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. That made me clean.
For that, God gave me the gift of the Holy Ghost. That helps me with every decision.
I have what I sought after !
Praise be to God !

 

[Tenchi]

Christ tells us to seek first the kingdom of heaven (a kingdom of righteousness). So how have you sought righteousness in your life?

Righteousness is, ultimately, a Person: Jesus Christ. I am "clothed" in his perfect righteousness through trust in him as my Saviour and submission to him as my Lord (Romans 10:9-10; Galatians 3:27; Romans 13:14). In response to my trusting in, and yielding to, Christ, the Holy Spirit takes up residence within me (Titus 3:5; 1 John 4:13; Romans 8:9-14; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20). It's in the Person of the Holy Spirit that I am clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus, that I am placed "in him" spiritually, and thereby fully justified and sanctified before God, the Father.

But, though I'm declared perfectly righteous by God because I've been "clothed" in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, in my daily living I'm not at all perfect. Really, no one knows what perfect righteousness is. We can look at Jesus in the Gospels and see something of what it is, but there is much more to his righteous perfection than these accounts can describe to us. Anyway, God brings my daily mundane condition into increasing alignment with my spiritual position in Jesus Christ as I live consistently and persistently in conscious, explicit submission to Him. Only as I do this, can I expect God to fulfill His promises to transform me, making more and more like His Son.

Whenever I'm not submitted to God, I am a rebel, you see. And God will not fill rebels with all that He is, transforming them in the process. No, instead, God is the opponent of His children who move out from under His will and way in pursuit of their own will and way (James 4:5-7; 1 Peter 5:5-6).

The problem for many Christians is that, though they are out from under God's control, pursuing their own line, they don't feel like God's become their Opponent. No, instead, they actually think that they can carry on unsubmitted to Him, watching crap on t.v., reading crap in books and magazines, listening to crap in music, maintaining crap attitudes, thoughts, desires and fantasies, and then arrive at church on Sunday morning, maybe teach a children's Sunday School class and later sing praises to God in the worship service.

They feel okay with God, you see, and this is the primary basis on which they assess if things between them and God are actually okay. But whatever they might feel (or not feel) when they are watching garbage on Netflix, or on their favorite porn website, or in a music video; whatever the may or may not feel when they hate and despise their spouse, or neighbor, or co-worker; whatever sense of peace they may have as they cheat on their mate, or entertain themselves with a horror movie full of gore and demonism, or gossip nastily about their pastor, God says that He will not regard, or listen, to anyone - His child, or not - who wilfully indulges in wickedness (Psalms 66:18; Isaiah 59:2; 1 Peter 3:10-12).

A Christian's conscience can become blunted and even seared (1 Timothy 4:2; Romans 1:18-32), they can grieve the Holy Spirit and quench his convicting pressure (Ephesians 4:30; 1 Thessalonians 5:19) and not feel anything at all as they "walk in darkness." They can be "near death" spiritually, like the church at Sardis was, but think they are full of spiritual life; like the church at Laodicea, they can feel comfortable and complacent, needing nothing, and have no idea they are "wretched, poor, blind and naked" (Revelation 2-3); they can "profess that they know God but in works deny Him, being abominable, and disobedient and to very good work reprobate" (Titus 1:16); they can be like those of whom the apostle wrote:

Romans 10:2-3
2 For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge.
3 For not knowing about God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.

It's always, then, intensely interesting to me to listen to fellow believers talk about what they think a righteous life is and how it is attained. Unfortunately, in my experience, most of what I hear is self-effort, fleshly labor, establishing righteousness on the basis of one's own determination, one's own will power and work.

But we can only work out what God has first worked in:

Philippians 2:12-13
12 So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling;
13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

Without Christ, without God, we can do NOTHING (John 15:4-5). In one's flesh, in one's self-effort, there "dwells no good thing" (Romans 7:18). He who has begun in the Spirit but thinks to carry on in the power of fleshly self-effort is, Paul says, "so foolish" (Galatians 3:1-3).

 

[NoahK]

I repented of sin first. That made me a non-sinner.
Then I had all my past sins washed away at my baptism in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. That made me clean.
For that, God gave me the gift of the Holy Ghost. That helps me with every decision.
I have what I sought after !
Praise be to God !

Can't find my conversation to reply to your recent post about repenting of sin. So am posting my reply to you here.

Matthew 18:22
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

My view is that if Christ told His disciples this, then God is able to forgive us our sin forever when we sincerely repent of our sin through Christ's intercession because God knows we are weak and in spite of best intentions we will at any given point in our lives sin.

 

[Hopeful 2]

Can't find my conversation to reply to your recent post about repenting of sin. So am posting my reply to you here.

Matthew 18:22
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

My view is that if Christ told His disciples this, then God is able to forgive us our sin forever when we sincerely repent of our sin through Christ's intercession because God knows we are weak and in spite of best intentions we will at any given point in our lives sin.

Nobody reborn of God's seed is weak.
If folks sin against us, we are to forgive them without end.
But we in Christ don't sin.

 

[NoahK]

Nobody reborn of God's seed is weak.
If folks sin against us, we are to forgive them without end.
But we in Christ don't sin.

Whenever we don't love others as Christ commanded that's sin.

 

[Hopeful 2]

Whenever we don't love others as Christ commanded that's sin.

I agree.
Isn't it wonderful that God says..."There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." (1 Cor 10:13)
We won't ever be in a place where we can't obey Him.