Who is in control? You or God?

Today I laid in my bed until around 10am when my daughter Josie called. What a great conversation we had…and great prayers.

It was so good when I was praying; it started out kind of feeling on the surface, but then I felt myself going deeper and I knew that God was listening to every word that I spoke. We prayed for Michael, Josie and then about the future. We talked more about the future and about ‘pre-destiny’ vs. a ‘changeable destiny’.

I wish I would have recorded what I said, because it was so good and so God! Something about pre-destiny being dangerous because we become depressed and apathetic. A Christian that believes this way does nothing but wait for ‘rapture’. She said something about God being in control and I said that God is in control, but part of His being in control was (and is) giving us control. He gave us dominion over the earth. There is not a ‘set’ destiny that will happen no matter what we do. We are a part of the design. He gave us free will. We need to use our free will to ‘possess the Kingdom’ through prayer, our words, our deeds and our thoughts. Jesus already won the battle; we just need to possess what He won. We do that by using our free will, taking captive every thought and making it obedient to Christ. Using our thoughts and words as if we are creating with them.

Jesus said, ‘the Kingdom of God is within you (or among you)’. It starts with us, inside us as we surrender ourselves to His Spirit. That is why we have to ‘believe with our heart and confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord’ to be saved. What is ‘saved’? To be saved from the Kingdom of darkness, this is a life without God. A life trapped in the confines of this world and it’s way of thinking and perceiving…a life (and mind) directed by fear instead of faith, hope and love.

The freedoms of our world shrink as we are directed by fear. We think we are making a good change by controlling things so we don’t get hurt, but we really create a box for ourselves. We get temporary relief from the change, but then we become trapped by our own obsession. It’s like our whole nation has OCD and is ‘obsessing’ and ‘compulsing’ because of a need to avoid pain. As we continue to create ‘checks’ and ‘balances’ to avoid pain, we shrink our world and put ourselves in a prison of fear that gets smaller and smaller. The only way out is to face our fears head on and allow the unlimitedness of God’s Spirit to direct our lives.

The good news is that Jesus made a way for us. He already overcame this world, so with Him we can overcome as well. The more we surrender to Him and His Spirit he changes us from the inside out. The old has passed away and all things become new in Him. Abide in Him and He will abide in you. You are forgiven. There is a new promise, a new covenant (contract). The Old Testament said; ‘don’t touch a Leper or you will become ‘unclean’’, but the New Testament says, ‘touch a Leper and he will become ‘clean’. The new covenant is not about laws and rules, it’s about walking in His Spirit, possessing the Kingdom through relationship, prayer, and bringing that Kingdom to earth.