Jesus was asked this question, too. And his reply’s were about being born again, or leaving all our worldly goods behind, or hating our family. Those answers can’t be understood at face value because they refer to spiritual experiences.
The Kingdom is a spiritual thing and getting there is a spiritual journey. Jesus’s answers describe an awakening that happens when we encounter the Spirit within. And it happens in varying degrees and experiences to everyone. We even call it intuition sometimes.
We have established that The Kingdom is within us and that we can find it when we look inside. It’s not part of our physical body. So, what else can there be inside us?
Well, I have put my hand on my chest and told someone, “You’re in my heart.” And I didn’t mean my heart muscle. It’s a metaphorical heart. A place where I hold everything and everyone I cherish. My true treasures.
We’ve all heard the story or seen the video of the shooter at a church in White Settlement, Texas, and the parishioners who took him down. I watched and read and I understand the sentiments and emotions. I have family in Texas who’s close to my heart.
Then I pondered my own personal defense. Would I have shot back? Probably, if I was carrying. Then why didn’t I go through training for a Concealed Weapon Permit years ago? After all, there’s a strong law enforcement presence in my family and they support it.
Some small, nagging hesitation had blocked me. And I never defined what it was. It wasn’t an anti-gun posture. Nothing political.
I grew up knowing Santa wasn’t real from a very young age. It had nothing to do with a church we attended. It was simple research in the encyclopedia. My parents had discovered there were lots of lies hidden behind common traditions and the general public didn’t know about them.
I didn’t grow up feeling denied the fantasies and fun that other children got. Those were clearly mainly about getting presents and stuff.
Instead, my parents instilled in me a kind of reverential respect for questioning everything and researching the truth. It’s a huge reason I’ve traveled a widely diverse path where there were no boundaries I couldn’t cross, and therefore I had no need to rebel against my parents. However, my journey puzzled older church folk, family, and childhood friends who have thought I’ve always rebelled against everything from God to basic common sense. Or even excused me simply as a mean-spirited thing.
Ahhh, yes! Father’s answers are always “yes”. The eternal “yes”. It rings throughout our internal Kingdom. And yet, we can’t hear it or receive it.
Oh, the overabundance of “no’s” we harbor inside our hearts, and in our doctrine’s, and deeply embedded in our subconscious minds. They are the only thing blocking our eternal “yes” from manifesting in our lives.
Yet we hold onto our “no’s” viciously, even ferociously, willing to fight to the death for the right to believe in “no”. Because it is safer. It is secured in locks and walls and fences. And it is vehemently upheld by every form of doctrine and translation.
Often statements like “You are dying” come from the analytical side of our brain. This is what mine said when I awoke this morning. He’s really good at adding 1 + 1 + 1 and coming up with a conclusion.
Dry sinus’s from the furnace blowing had given me a slight headache, my muscles were stiff from not moving all night, and my eyes were blurry. It was a bit slow going to the coffee pot. So, Analy’s lovely voice decided to add it all together and give me his conclusion. (“lovely” – yeah, sarcasm comes early too 🤣)
I’m going to call my analytical side “Analy” for the moment, just because my creative side is now awake and chuckling. Well, heck, I have to agree Analy’s a better name than Satan, which is another name Analy’s been called when his love-less controlling has taken his linear thinking too far into his monster abilities.
Many evil taskmasters exist in our lives as personal demons who simply come because we gave a place of rulership to the bigger kings. They taught us how to acquiese, so it became acceptable, even advisable.
Kings are ideologies we place on pedestals or thrones. And putting a king on a throne gives it a place of rulership in the kingdom of our life.
The other day, I mentioned 3 of these ideologies as the main ones I see in our current society. And I called them The Beast.
The book of Revelation says the Beast is “having seven heads and ten horns”. I don’t believe the numbers are as important as they are allegorical. Presenting a few leaders with slightly more branching off. Those branches are what I call personal demons. They stem from the main ideologies.
It’s a mindset we choose to acquire. And it places any man-made apparatus on a pedestal. On that pedestal, we give it respect and admiration, leadership and authority in our lives, and worst of all, we grant it our mostly unquestioning allegiance.
Think about that with blatant reasoning and honest eyes for a moment. Look around at how many we have created.
I saw this phrase on a meme today and the memories of living with an alcoholic flooded back to me. The face of Grace rose from those ashes and glared starkly from the past. Grace has a fuse in each human heart. Some are too long and some are too short, but none of them are like Jesus’s fuse. Only he had a Grace fuse with a solution tied to the end of it. One that actually works.
I remembered a discussion I had with Father God one day back then.
“Father, every day you ask me to love him. My alcoholic. And every day I tell you that I don’t. Then I surrender my will and my heart to yours because you do and you infuse me.
Explaining how to go into The Kingdom within is about as simple as explaining how to make love. I’m not kidding. And the greatest problem is describing the spontaneity in Love. Mankind has written poems and books about the surge of the heart, and the overwhelming ability of Love to take over and obliterate our mind.
And that is exactly how to go into The Kingdom. It is the epitome of Love, itself, living at the core of our being. And being in love with him is the only way to go there.
To begin, it’s important for me to schedule a bit of private time where I won’t be interrupted. Just like making love, the worst thing that can happen is to be interrupted in the middle of it. And it’s extremely difficult to pull my heart out and engage my mind again if interruption happens.
