The Gospel of the Kingdom of God-Part II- Spirit versus Flesh

I promised to do a five week series on the Kingdom of God.  With a heart full of intent to do so, I faced hefty challenges over the last three weeks that I allowed to keep me from completing my weekly goal. However, during that time I developed a new charge to push ahead and accomplish all that God has commanded of me.  This battle of the spirit versus the flesh is the topic of the second part of this series.  My "absence" from this blog for the last few weeks will serve as one example that can be used to demonstrate this topic.

Man is a three part being: spirit, soul and body.  Your spirit is who you truly are. God is a spirit and, with His Word, He made you to be like Him (Hebrews 11:3).  Your soul includes your emotions and mental capacity to store and recall information, make decisions and direct your body. Your body gives you ability to act out and manifest in the earth realm (including the waters and skies that we see) the decisions of your soul.

What we see, our bodies or flesh, is the least part of our being.  The body is a suit that houses the spirit so we can function here on earth.  If you were to go into a different atmosphere (the moon for example) you would need a different suit, what we call a space suit, to function there.  The same is true if you want, as a human, to live in the sea.  You would need a suit with greater functionality than our current diving suits to contain your spirit in that environment.  God placed us in the earth to dwell while walking in relationship with Him.  Since humans are not the only beings on earth, God charged us to further subdue, have dominion over the other things (not each other) in the earth and to multiply.  God rules over all, the heavens and the earth.  Under His leadership and hand, we are, as mankind in our multiple varieties, to have rule over the earth.  We are spirits as God is a spirit.

In part I, we spoke of how our communication with God must be done Spirit to spirit, in the eternal realm (John 4:24).  Time is a convention God created for earth and all His creation.  He does not live in it nor is He bound by it.  Time lives in and is controlled by Him.  Therefore, everything that will ever be already is.

We are reconciled back into right relationship with God through the Spirit of Jesus Christ.  The physical blood that He shed for our redemption pardons the sins committed in and through our bodies so we have a right, through the righteousness of that blood sacrifice, to be reconciled.  Our faith in Christ is what justifies our claim to sonship through Christ.

The enemy fights to keep us from coming into reconciliation.  But once we are in that place of right relationship, having accepted who we are, children of the Most High God, the enemy fights to disengage us from our rightful place in the Kingdom.  How does he do it? In the one way that he can; through our flesh.  He engages in deceit, manipulation and lies to get you to forget or never come into the full knowledge of who you are in God through Christ.  He attacks our minds with thoughts of the flesh including circumstances, relationship issues, financial woes, physical ailments and any other stresses that cause us to focus on what's happening in the flesh so that we forget who we are in the Spirit.

But if we stay mindful of who we are in the spirit, the realm where nothing is impossible but all things are possible, none of the enemy's tactics against us would work.  Rather, we would continually unsettle and overthrow him and his demons.  You see, we have no need to fear the devil.  He fears us because he knows how powerful we are through Christ.  He fights us with distractions to keep us from knowing it.

I encourage you to walk in the spirit not in the flesh (Galatians 5: 16-18).  Remember who you are; a spirit that is a child of the true and living God with all the power, rights and privileges of sonship.  As you maintain this Kingdom perspective you will be positioned to bring the Kingdom of God into existence in the earth so that it overtakes the kingdom of this world.

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