Life | Love | Freedom

Changing your mind

Identifying the goal (call it purpose, end game, what God desire for everyone) of life helps me. Previously, I've seen the goal as:

1. Getting myself & others saved and going to heaven
2. Eliminating suffering, hardship & pain on earth
3. Promoting love, peace, freedom & acceptance on earth

The problems I see with my previous life goals are:

1. The kingdom of God is now, not in the future (i.e. heaven is a present reality).
2. The elimination of suffering and/or the promotion of love are outcomes of the goal not the goal itself.

The goal as I see it now is:

Experiencing the kingdom of God within my being every moment of my existence independent of circumstances.

Where I'm coming from...

Is it possible for us to experience the kingdom of God ( i.e. perfect peace, freedom and love) in the midst of adverse/good circumstances? Was Jesus experiencing perfect peace, freedom and love while being whipped, spit on and crucified? How about when Jesus was eating a meal with his disciples and others?

What is experiencing the kingdom of god dependent upon? What stops us from being at peace, being free, being accepted, loved, content, etc? Do our circumstances control our ability to experience those things or is there some outside force or power that controls whether or not we experience those things?

Or...do we control whether we experience the kingdom of god? Is it our choice? I'm realizing the answer is YES!

What keeps us from experiencing the kingdom of god is depending on something other than the present reality of god within as everything we need for life and godliness. And fear is an indication we have such a misplaced dependency. For example...

If we depend on our physical appearance for self-worth/identity then we would fear circumstances that alter our physical appearance in some way that we see as less desirable or of less worth.

However, if we decide we have perfect self worth/identity no matter our physical appearance, we've changed our mind about depending on our physical appearance as a source of identity (that's real repentance). Changing our mind about what to depend on is the key to the kingdom. Try it.

To experience the kingdom of god (perfect love, acceptance, peace freedom, etc) every moment of our existence we depend solely on the reality that we already have everything we need for life & godliness, the perfect life of God as our life, Christ as our life. When we become aware of and dependent upon that reality... that we lack nothing, the kingdom becomes our reality.

So, let's choose to live in that reality :)

Life | Love | Freedom

Rick

posted by Rick @ 5:26 AM