A Transformation of Love by David VanCronkite

The Kingdom of God is not another subject to add to our religious studies. It is the paramount centrality of God’s message through Jesus to all mankind. Jesus is far more than savior. He is Emanuel, God with us and within us. He is King of His Father’s Kingdom.

All of life is decided by what you decide about the Kingdom of God.

I have learned that if the Kingdom of God is anything-and it is everything-it is relational and supernatural. All of life is decided by whether we believe God is a Father who desires relationship with us and, therefore, desires us to have relationship with our neighbor. All of life is decided by whether we believe that this Kingdom is a place of supernatural lifestyle or just a part of the religious language system of man. All of life is decided by whether we believe in a Kingdom on earth that is from another realm or choose to follow the kingdoms of man, systems created by and for man to rule over man.

Praying a prayer and then joining a church or para-church ministry has become the objective of spiritual life, the focal point of Christianity in our era. It seems like few who claim to follow Jesus know of this mysterious, relational, supernatural Kingdom or that Jesus said His purpose for coming was to proclaim the Kingdom of His Father, the only unshakeable foundation we will ever be offered on earth. And it’s ours for the taking.

We miss the point of the great battle of wills between Jesus and Lucifer as Jesus came out of the desert to begin His walk among men. The Book says Lucifer tried to tempt Him with all the splendor of the kingdoms of the world, including, no doubt, a religious Kingdom alternative. Jesus said no to every last one of them because He was inaugurating the most amazing Kingdom the universe has ever witnessed.

The Kingdom of God implies an awe of a big, big God.

The Kingdom is the story of a Father who sent a Son to model the ultimate Father-Son relationship that we are to imitate and enter into a totally supernatural realm that is unexplainable by the rationale of men. It implies that God is love because it’s a totally relational environment.

It’s all about faith, not apologetics. By faith we are impregnated with the Seed of God, and our hearts are changed. We are transformed from the inside out into imitators of a Father and His Son. So simple, but we make it so religious. So God dependent, yet we make it so man dependent.

God will plant the Seed supernaturally and He will mature the Seed supernaturally. Day and night the Seed is growing. Day and night we are maturing on the inside to the place where a transformation becomes obvious. We begin to change. Suddenly we are compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and merciful; we walk in truth and are covenantally faithful and yes, even forgive all wrongs. God is with us in the neighborhood because He is in us and we become the neighbor.

Until the Kingdom is central to our being, there is little for the King to reign over.

An agape transformation will never occur until we individually become re-centered on what Jesus was centered on–the Kingdom of God now at hand. “A King with no Kingdom cannot protect his people,” I have heard said. I would agree.

This cosmic Kingdom created and then individually conferred on all of us who desire to change kingdoms and live under the reign of this ineffable God is the hope of our journey into an agape transformation. It only takes the faith of a child and the power of the “I believe, I believe” in a supernatural realm on earth that has come from above. It is so simple and freeing that theologians stumble over it, denominations avoid it, the religious systems cannot afford to proclaim it, except as a watered down, re-defined add-on to the business of institutional church.

For an agape transformation to become a reality, it must be based upon the truth of the Kingdom of God now at hand. It must be an individually received truth that comes from faith, and that by grace, one person at a time.

So come Holy Spirit! Come with a transformation that creates in each of us an ever-growing desire for the demonstration of Jesus’ great prayer, “Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”