Greetings;
Today I am writing from Bellingham where it appears spring has arrived. I have now mowed my lawn twice, flowers are blooming, and the trees are beginning to bud. I am claiming this spring season in the natural and in the Spirit for the people of God. It is important that we focus on the life that God brings to us in order for us to impact the world we live in in a life-changing way.
God is at work in our hearts through His internal, eternal kingdom of life and peace in Christ. We are born to be loved by Him and when we receive a revelation of His love for us we cannot help but love Him and all that He loves. We are being transformed from the kingdoms of self to the kingdom of our Lord and Christ by His anointing within our hearts. It is a testimony of His great love for us. Although the kingdom of God is an internal kingdom, it affects all that we do in life. If Christ is in our hearts, our lives should be filled with expressions, works, and endeavors that give life to others. The kingdom of God within us is expressed through acts of love for God and for His children.
The outward influence of the kingdom of God within our hearts is made real through a partnership of faith, hope, and love. Love is the foundation, hope is the inspiration, and faith is the facilitation of the internal kingdom of life through external expressions of that life. He loves us as we are, but His love empowers us to change to become as He is. As we become as He is, we are inspired to give life to the world. We become empowered to live for the Father’s will and for the future generations of His family in the earth. This is the fruit of Christ within our hearts.
Love inspires true hope and hope inspires faith. What is a proper perspective in finding our hope? Our hope cannot merely be in the things that God does or the promises that He makes to us. Our hope cannot be in beginnings and endings, since we don’t always know which we need in our lives. Our hope must be in the One who gives beginnings and endings. Who really knows what they need?
Revelation 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “ who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
When we put our hope in God our hearts are clear to hear what He says to our hearts. When we lay down our preconceived ideas as to what He should do in our lives and we simply trust who He is in our lives, we hear Him clearly. When we hear Him in our hearts we become inspired in our actions. Our actions become those of faith and our worlds are changed through a partnership of His voice in our hearts and the actions in lives. This is the testimony of that foreshadowed in the history of God and the men and women of faith who led to the day of God’s kingdom being implemented in our hearts.
Hebrews 11:1-3 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
The book of Hebrews is a wonderful book! It was likely written sometime between A.D. 64 and A.D. 68. This was only a few years prior to the destruction of Jerusalem (Tabernacles of A.D. 70). This book was written to a group of people who called themselves Jews. The writer was adamant to address them as Hebrews, a term that had not been used for centuries in regard to the Jewish people. The issue at hand was the true convent of Abraham. The Aaronic Covenant could not supersede the Melchizedek Order. The last days of Israel was at hand, so the eternal days of the Melchizedek Covenant could be made known to the nations of the world. The very source of the Hebrew people was the voice of God. That voice was the same voice that spoke to Abraham and was now speaking to the nation at hand. The voice of the Son had come in the last days of the nation of Israel to reveal the eternal day of Christ as the reality for all true Hebrews in Christ.
Hebrews 1:1-4 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
The writer of Hebrews was clearly communicating a last days that was at hand for his letter’s recipients. He was putting this last days era in the context of the already given Son of God, Jesus Christ. It was not a last days thousands of years in the future, but a last days for a nation at the time.
The kingdom of God is an internal force of love and life upon the human heart that is the testimony of intimacy with God in Christ. The administration of the law was an external influence upon the human soul and was limited to the instruction of words and the voice of a prophet. The administration of grace is an internal influence that brings about true change of the hearts and minds of men. It is not administration of mere accountability to God. It is an administration of intimate and powerful relationship with Him. It is an unshakeable testimony of God in the human heart.
Hebrews 12:25-27 See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.” Now this, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.
The voice of God within our hearts is a more sure voice than a covenant of remembering what He has said in the past or the discipline of keeping to rules that He has established for us to follow. The writer of Hebrews was admonishing the Jewish people to remember that they were meant to be Hebrew people and it was time to the intimate voice of God within their hearts that empowers children of God to be children of faith. This is the power of the kingdom of God for each and everyone of us. External things can be removed, but the internal realities of the kingdom of God in our hearts is enough to frame a world of love, hope, and faith in any environment we find ourselves. The kingdom of God is not just a promise for us in heaven to come, but also for heaven coming into our world in increasing measures as we respond to the internal voice of the One who loves us in all things. We must let the shakable things be removed so we can become the unshakeable people empowered by His love.
Hebrews 12:28-29 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
Thank you again
Amen, great word !!