Author: kdorway

Look! The Kingdom of God!

The Kingdom is here, in the midst of you – inside of you.

Meditation Thought: “…behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” (Luke 17:21)

Behold: Look. Notice. Observe! The Kingdom is here, in the midst of you – inside of you. The Kingdom is not outside of you and outside of others and near all of you – it is within each, and it is as a magnetic force drawing all together. As the parts of the Body of Christ are more closely brought to one another, so are they able to more capably affect healing and superb performance in one another.

Never fear to draw near to anyone – for it is the Kingdom within each which seeks to bring you to a person. Even though this may not be recognized by the other – yet – you can know the Truth and it makes you free to move everywhere without fear, and in confidence and joy and anticipation and hope and sure knowledge, in wisdom, and with love. Is this state of being not a perfect description of “The Kingdom”?

Inherited Character Traits

Character is an expression of the attitude of the mind and the spirit – and that attitude exists for every aspect of life.

Meditation Thought: ““Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” (Luke 16:10)

Your character is made of a solid piece: no matter what circumstances penetrate it, the consistency is the same. It is either love – or selfish, honest or dishonest, giving or taking, thoughtful or unkind, perceptive or obtuse. But the fact that it is of a consistency does not indicate that the consistency is unchangeable.

The enlightenment by the Spirit, the teaching by the Word, the response to the Father’s proffered love, all can totally change the character.

And this is the significance of Jesus’ walk upon the earth: the living Example of the perfect character. The perfect character is available to anyone who seeks it: who is willing to die to self and live in Christ. The two become homogeneous – the Christ character replaces the believer’s character, yet each spirit and personality remains unique in expressing Christ’s character.

As parents’ traits are reflected in their children in a common manner – and yet each child remains unique, so each believer reflects the Father’s traits through the inheritance passed from Father to Jesus to believer. The difference is that physical traits are passed along by genes, and spiritual traits are passed along by the spirit. Only when we recognize that we are both physical and spiritual, can we have the traits of the Spirit of God passed along into our spirit fully: it takes our cooperation to express the spiritual genes to any great degree, whereas physical traits are more evident without our consciousness of them.

Character is an expression of the attitude of the mind and the spirit – and that attitude exists for every aspect of life, whether it is of great influence or of little consequence.

Therefore, if we are to become fully expressive as children of God, we must seek to reflect the Father’s attitude toward all of life.

Only through the mind of Christ and the Spirit of Christ being infused into our mind and spirit is it possible to reflect the Father’s attitude, and thus express in our character His character.

Giving Poured Out

You can have the desires of your heart, which are peace and joy, by your own decision to do so.

Meditation Thought: “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:13-14)

Giving is a pouring out, taking pleasure in spreading joy. Thus you can have constant pleasure, for it is possible always to give, whereas you cannot control receiving. If you find pleasure only in receiving, you limit your pleasure greatly – and you limit the pleasure released in the world even more.

You can have the desires of your heart, which are peace and joy, by your own decision to do so: the price is to surrender pride to unselfish love, and sin to righteousness through the thinking of others and acting in their behalf.

Authority Within

You do not know, as the Spirit knows, what is in their minds and their hearts.

Meditation Thought: “…do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” (Luke 12: 11,12)

Prepare your mind and your heart attitude through diligent study of the Word, and worship and prayer that the way is open for the Holy Spirit to flow freely and unceasingly throughout every part of you: spirit, mind, body. In this way can the Spirit direct you how or what you are to answer.

The authorities of the world, though they know it not, have no authority over one who is filled with the Spirit. And you do not know, as the Spirit knows, what is in their minds and their hearts. Therefore, the Spirit must have full control of you in order that the Father’s will may be done to the glory of the Father, for working good for you and for giving opportunity to the authorities to come to the Father.

Falter not in hours or days, when life seems hard and stale,
But ingest the glory of the Word,
Transforming mind, and giving hope:
When the peaks and valleys come,
Then the Spirit follows each contour, great and small,
Aiding you, guiding you, protecting you.
For the Word in your mind has released the Spirit in your heart,
And the Spirit reveals to you the mystery, the glory –
And the unfailing sweetness of the Father’s love.

Justice for None

It is impossible to do justice to one, or injustice to one, except as the “one” is defined as you and me.

Meditation Thought: ““Woe to you… who have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.” (Luke 11:52)

You who desire to be God, who seek to bow to none, but have others bow to you – beware! For you have not created the heavens and the earth, nor can you know what is in another’s heart.

You scorned the key that was offered to you that you might unlock the door leading to new knowledge, an awakening of wisdom. You declare your own misguided wisdom so loudly that you cannot hear the good news; you cannot hear the beating of your own heart, let alone the beating of another’s heart.

You are enamored of the satin and velvet which pleases your sense of touch as it not only clothes you in self-importance, but insulates you from the touch of those who seek to reach you that you might aid in their rescue.

You have not loved your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself, but you have loved yourself with all your heart and all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and loved your neighbor not at all.

You have sought justice for one – and given justice to none: for the key you refused to use opened the door that would have revealed to you the truth: I am in you and you are in me: it matters not who is the ‘I’ and who is the ‘you’; you have been commanded to love one another, not as you supposed for the benefit of that person without, but for your own self within. What you perceived as you doing to another, were you doing to yourself. And you knew it not, for you refused to take the key that was offered to you and place it in your door to your heart’s secret place – the place where God dwells within, and waits for you to release Him to be the Light of your life, the whole Truth revealed, the Way shown.

He dwells in every heart, and thus what you do to another you do to God. Therefore it is impossible to do justice to one, or injustice to one, except as the “one” is defined as you and me – and God in both.

The Best Gift Ever!

You need only ask…

Meditation Thought: “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13)

You delight in giving your children what you can, but your heavenly Father is able to give a gift ranking above all other gifts: the gift of His love and power actually transferred to be implanted within His beloved children. You need only ask and you will receive.

Unfathomably Superior

The wold has so deluded us as to what will bring us joy that we must seek to know the truth of our own nature.

Meditation Thought:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27)

“Love God – neighbor-self – love everyone – how! By sacrificing to do good for another! Whether it be giving of our time, our emotions, our thoughts, or the work of our hands matters not – only that we are giving. For we are ‘programmed’ to have joy in helping, joy in a clear conscience, and joy in the ministries which flow back to us as a result of our giving.

The world has so deluded us as to what will bring us joy that we must seek to know the truth of our own nature. And when we begin to know the truth, what freedom and joy it brings! No longer do we have to grasp, to manipulate, to order others to do our bidding, or to be at the mercy of others for our satisfaction.

We find peace within ourselves – more accurately, peace within our God within ourselves. And it is almost as having frosting on the cake to discover that God who gives us peace within ourselves is also in everything, every place, at every time outside of ourselves too.

And the realization that brings us to a state beyond peace – a kind of ecstasy, a transporting of life being lived on both a higher plane and the human plane – is that our God is totally loving, totally powerful, always working for our good, and at the same time never violates our free choice, respecting us as a person: This Creator, unfathomably superior in every area to all He created, nevertheless chooses to yield to us, to our decisions. He responds to those decisions, but allows us the privilege and the dignity of doing our own thinking and acting.

Fear Banished

You cannot fully concentrate on two opposites at the same time: therefore, if you focus clearly on God and His revelations you cannot at the same time focus on fear.

Meditation Thought: ““Do not fear; only believe, and she will be well.” (Luke 8:50)

“Do not fear” – do not look to anything but God – then you shall observe nothing to fear! Believe in God, seek to know God and make Him intimately involved in your life.

You cannot fully concentrate on two opposites at the same time: therefore, if you focus clearly on God and His revelations you cannot at the same time focus on fear.

Your choice of focusing determines your present appraisal of your situation as well as determining future situations. For “they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)

The Paradox of Life & Joy

It is encased in the solid, protected container of love that we find courage to move into places we once feared.

Meditation Thought: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17)

The fullness of time brings the fullness of God: His Word fulfilled, His Will fulfilled, His Purposes fulfilled. The Creator must wait for the maturity of the created to fulfill the purposes of the creation – reflecting the meaning of life to both the creator and that created.

And so came the Word, the law, the grace, the truth all manifested in the flesh, that the meaning of life might be revealed fully to those who by choice and by faith, seek the light, seek the inner core as well as the outer surface, seek the unseen as well as the seen, seek the subtle as well as the obvious, seek to know with the heart as well as the mind, who seek God rather than be limited to being self-seeking.

For the paradox is true and to be understood: He who seeks to be last shall be first, he who gives of his life shall find his LIFE, and he whose purpose is to create happiness in the hearts of his fellow creatures, has happiness thrust into his own heart while his concentration is away from his heart.

JOY shall be his as he realizes the magnificence, the depth, the glory, the sweetness, the extent of the Father’s love for him – the lengths to which the Father will go to express that love with the show of the tiniest response to that love. The realization is awesome, fulfills the longing of the heart, bringing the ecstasy of long-awaited hopes and dreams being brought into reality; a confirmation of knowing what had only been sought.

It is encased in the solid, protected container of love that we find courage to move into places we once feared, where we once had no place, where we can now move effectively because we have the secret knowledge in our heart that whatever befalls us we are protected by love, insulated by it from undue hurt – we are equipped to do our task, and therefore confident as we move to do it: and this is the key to the task being brought to a successful conclusion (pleasing to the Father and the Son and the Spirit and the created).

Faith, hope and love responding to Love are the working of the Father’s will into all eternity; how can we refuse to be a part of that?!

Jackal, Ostrich or Chosen?

Behold, I am doing a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.

Meditation Thought: “Behold, I am doing a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.
 The wild beasts will honor me,
    the jackals and the ostriches,
for I give water in the wilderness,
    rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
     the people whom I formed for myself
that they might declare my praise.”

(Isaiah 43:19-21)

Jackals refers to deceitful people and ostriches to those who refuse to see the truth – but God’s righteousness and omnipotence will bring them to honor Him.

“Chosen people” – He would have all of His creation be His ‘chosen people’ – but some will not choose to be His chosen people and thus will forfeit that prerogative.