1 - INTRODUCTION to KINGDOM LIFE

THE PURPOSE AND NECESSITY OF THIS STUDY

Regardless of our culture and nationality, all men and women experience conflict in life. These conflicts begin at birth and continue to death.

1. Parents want the baby to sleep, but the baby wants to eat,

2. Children fight on the playground over a swing or toy,

3. Teenagers want something that conflicts with their parents’ plans,

4. Young adults see politics differently than the previous generation,

5. Husbands and wives find themselves moving in different directions,

6. Employees and business owners disagree on how the business should operate,

7. The church continues to disagree about who God is, and

8. All of us question, from time to time, God’s plan for particular aspects of our lives.

Conflict is life-long and for the most part, we understand conflict as being external. That life is mostly about how external conditions, people, and moralities conflict with our desires.

There are also internal conflicts. We experience personal identity conflicts, self-efficacy conflicts, opposing personal desires, internal emotional conflicts, and conflicts of the past interfering with our faith in the future.

Russ Whitfield asks the question: “So what causes conflict, and is there an answer to it?” He answers with: “The Bible says that the source of all of our conflict is rooted in our conflict with God. Our desire to put ourselves first instead of God creates problems when we bump into other people who put themselves first too.” He concludes with: “…what is stunning is that God’s response is not to withdraw and allow us to consume ourselves - He actually launches his grand plan of “conflict resolution”.

GOD’S PLAN FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION

We believe that Jesus first came to settle our main conflict, which is our conflict with God. None of us can honestly proclaim that we do not have conflicts with God. We may try to reframe the conflict as anything other than a direct conflict with God, but sin is sin, and none of us can say we do not sin. Jesus fulfilled the law and took our conflict with God on Himself, so we might have everlasting life.

Jesus, The Prince of Peace, lived to show us how to resolve conflict with God and with each other. Jesus, who was in agreement with His Father had to take our place in a conflict in which He did not create or participate. Even as Jesus was showing them how to adjust from conflict, the disciples often misunderstood Jesus and quarreled over the most mundane issues. Jesus also had to experience the conflict created by the world’s disbelief and hatred. Jesus demonstrated and taught about conflict resolution and settled the conflict of the law by loving us enough to stand in our place.  He provided for the delivery of the word and asked His Father to send the Holy Spirit to help us through life. The Lords plan also included the establishment of the Church.

What an amazing plan for conflict resolution God provided to man!

The Church

Acts 2:42 (KJV) And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

The church has a major role in helping to resolve conflict, but it is not the active component of change. According to Acts 2:42, the purpose of the church is to teach biblical truth, provide for the fellowship of assembly, observe the Lord’s Supper, and pray (including worship). Change happens as each of us gets closer and closer to God in relationship (spiritual-formation) and as we strive to be like Jesus (Emulation). The local church is neither the moderator nor the mediator of conflict, but in addition to its purpose, it is capable of coaching an mentoring people to engage God in the adjustment process.

The Church of Jesus Christ, which embodies the NOW kingdom of God, is the supporting body of believers who accept Jesus as their King, exult Him, and seek to think like Him. They know Jesus as the Peacemaker as described in Ephesians 2:14-22. The people of the NOW kingdom seek to emulate the Peacemaker to become peacemakers themselves. In Matthew 5:9 we hear Jesus say: “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”  In the kingdom of God, His followers seek to be a part of the correction of disunity in the kingdom (church) and are therefore capable of helping each other with their common conditions of conflict.

We will discuss all of this in the coming lessons.

As we just acknowledged, the biggest conflict the “Prince of Peace”, came to earth to end, is the conflict that exists between man and God. This is a continuous problem and it us Jesus’ desire to reestablish our place in the everlasting kingdom of God. Breaking up this conflict between man and God is not easy.

There is obviously much enmity between the sinner and God. God cannot accept our sin - and man cannot help but sin. Therefore, the conflict between the sinner and God seems unresolvable. There is nothing that man can do about sin, and there is nothing God the Father will do to abandon what He identifies as jealousy.

Exodus 20:3-5 (ESV)“You shall have no other gods before me.”  “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, . . .” 

Regarding God’s jealousy Allan Redpath (commentator) says:

“God’s jealousy is love in action. He refuses to share the human heart with any rival, not because He is selfish and wants us all for Himself, but because He knows that upon that loyalty to Him depends our very moral life… God is not jealous of us: He is jealous for us.”

When we give attention to things that steal our attention to what is right, God becomes zealous against that distraction. He aggressively convicts us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, by the pursuit of our brothers and sisters in Christ (the Church), and by sobering us from the stimulations of sin through His word – remembered through Holy Spirit inspiration, given in direct reading, or proclaimed by the people of the church.

Zealous: showing great energy or enthusiasm [PASSION] in pursuit of a cause or objective.

God gets fired up when we replace our attention to what is good and right with alternative distractions. He is as jealous of our ability to give attention to what is good as a millionaire is to his stack of cash. He does not want to allow for even a hint of what does not do good for us.

Paul acknowledges this jealously in 2 Corinthians 11:2 when he expresses his desire for the church at Corinth to be seen by Jesus as still worthy of being the Lord’s bride. This is like the righteous jealousy a husband would have if another man was drawing his wife’s attention away from him. From the marriage standpoint, all attention belongs to the spouse.

When we are drawn away from God, we are willingly (not necessarily knowingly) taking attention away from that which God provides. We are knowingly taking our attention off that which is good and is proper and instead giving attention to sin. We are literally neglecting a holy relationship with God and replacing it with toxic friendships. In the case of the lost, they (like us all) begin life in a state of simple-neglect, literally not knowing they are in such a state, and will naturally progress toward a state of extreme-neglect.

When in a state of neglect, we are not of the mind to properly acknowledge gratefulness to God. Even the neglectful Christian shows little or no appreciation for God’s love, His provision, or His grace. Being so distracted, we lose sight of the joy and hope He provides – instead, we run the risk of become filled with hopelessness, depression, bitterness, and resentment, leading to the loss of faith. Our selfishness and personal dissatisfaction cause us to reach for even more of the stuff that dragged us into despair, hoping it can make us feel better.

Here is the scary thing: We do not get to full-blown depression, dissatisfaction, resentment, and hopelessness right away. The spiral downward can take months or even years. The longer the neglect exists, the more the conflict between us and God becomes a way of life.

The good news is that God the Father sent Jesus Christ to us as the way to end our conflict with God, settle our internal conflicts, and resolve our conflicts with each other.

THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS PROGRAM

To discover together the power of a Kingdom Perspective on Life.

OUR APPROACH TO THIS CLASS

Although this class is not a group therapy session, we will approach this program as a workshop. Our ministry is focused on the teaching of adjustment through kingdom thinking and maintenance through a kingdom lifestyle. It is our desire to share this biblically-based concept with you, as we also learn from you.

As we look at the various aspects of life on earth, we will, as a class, discuss the difficulties we have in remaining focused on the kingdom and how the distractions of the world affect each aspect of life.

We do best as Christians when we seek to notice when we are beginning to tilt away from God, so that God can bring us back to a healthy posture.

OUR APPROACH TO COUNSELING

As counselors, we use four primary approaches to correction. Kingdom Life Theology/Living Prayer Therapy (KLT/LPT), Solutions-Focused Therapy, Hope Therapy, and Choice Theory/Reality Therapy (CT/RT). We also use many of the common approaches to counseling, such as Narrative Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Emotive Therapy, and Behavioral Therapy. All of these approaches to counseling very neatly fit into a complete biblical perspective on correction from emotional, spiritual, relational, personal development, and mental health struggles.

1.  Kingdom-Life Theology/Living-Prayer Therapy (KT/LT)

I developed KT/LT as a foundational approach to therapy, which means it is the first approach applied to every counseling program. It stands on the reality that all adjustment happens as a result of God’s potential or actual influence on the person’s condition, and that He is the solution to their problem(s). It is not the same as Biblical Counseling, but it does rely on the Bible as well as communication with the triune God of heaven. Our ministry has applied Living-Prayer Therapy to hundreds of therapies and has seen excellent results in all areas of general adjustment, mental health, emotional distress, spiritual matters, and personal development coaching.

2.  Solutions Focused Therapy

Solutions Focused Therapy is primarily used in relationship rebuilding and Life Coaching, although it is useful in developing strategies for overcoming PTSD, recently experienced trauma, and grief. It is exactly as it sounds – it is a process of finding relative solutions to problems.

3.  Hope Therapy

Hope Therapy is a critical component of any adjustment strategy. Hope it the fuel that powers all efforts to change. Specifically, hope is founded on the true nature of God in change, which is to love us and move us to a place of rejoicing. In hope therapy, we seek to identify any glimmer of hope and ask God to help us expand on it.

4.  Choice Theory/Reality Therapy

CT/RT is what one might refer to as a secular theory and therapy approach, in that there is no actual mention of God by the Doctor who developed it. We use this approach because it best represents the reality of man’s responsibility to change and allows for the use of all biblical approaches to adjustment for the future. William Glasser believed that man has a personal choice, a personal responsibility, and is responsible for personal transformation rather than giving in to the idea that every problem is a mental health crisis. Glasser does not give any attention to God, but I believe that if he had been a Christian, he would have developed CT/RT just as it is. As a Christian counseling ministry, we add to CT/RT the imperative of God as both an outside and an inside influence.

THE WORK

As we look at our everyday lives and the struggles we face as humans stuck in a fallen world, we will work together to discover our best personal solutions to reduce the stress, confusion, and the conflicts we experience daily.  From a Christian Psychology perspective, we will actually be working in the areas of cognitive and behavioral health. As we work to understand how to behave more like Christ (behavioral), we will naturally adjust our way of thinking to more resemble how Christ thinks (cognitive). Christian Psychologists can argue that spiritual-formation is a process that is very similar to the Cognitive-Behavioral approach to correction.

OUR UNIQUE PERSPECTIVES

So, you are not surprised later in our presentations of ideas, you should probably know upfront about some of our unique perspectives on a few key subjects.

1.      Science

As a doctor of Pastoral Counseling (D.Min.) and a researcher, I believe in science, just as I believe in the Bible. However, I view science much differently than most scientists. I believe science is the study of God’s creation and that anything that science offers which conflicts with this belief is not science at all, but is a lie.

2.      Christian Worldview

In this program, we are going to spend most of our time developing our Kingdom Perspective on life, establishing a Kingdom Lifestyle, and adjusting to Kingdom Thinking. What we identify as the antagonist of kingdom thinking may surprise you. It is the concept of Christian worldview. The original use of the term worldview was intended to identify the existence of a personal philosophy on life. It explains the way the individual understands the world against the backdrop of that personal philosophy. It likely originates from the German word weltanschauung, which appeared in philosopher Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement. Kant’s book intended to teach the concept of “free-play” which is the idea that one's imagination can create understanding. I would suggest that understanding related to truth, reality, and morality should not be left to the imagination of the human mind.

Sigmund Freud would later define the term worldview as identifying “an intellectual construction which gives a unified solution of all the problems of our existence in virtue of a comprehensive hypothesis – a construction, therefore, in which no question is left open and everything in which we are interested finds a place.” Aside from the clear identification that truth is expected to be a construct of the one providing it, it is clear that there is nothing, necessarily, concrete in the development of such a philosophy. The necessity of proving every point in the originating hypothesis is implied, but still there is no identified regulating authority. This automatically provides room for confusion, and must, by the nature of its tendency to allow for relative moral positioning, make way for social conflict.

If one adds Christianity to their philosophy, they are indicating that their philosophy on life includes the truth of God and seems to validate the use of the term, Christian worldview. On the surface, this sounds like a good thing, but man must take caution when merging their respect for the world with the values of Christianity. Doing so is, as mentioned, the beginning of confusion, which is the commencement of generating disequilibrium in his relationship with the values of the Christian idea.

3.      Integrating Christian Beliefs in Our Understanding of Life in the world.

I rebuke the idea that it should be necessary to integrate God into the world! This idea seems to suggest that there is a life that is not of God, and we must seek to include Him in it. There is no such thing as secular except in the minds of the lost. Secular means: GOD NOT IN IT. There is nothing that God is not a part of, except the hearts of those who are in rebellion against Him. Instead, we must live a life based in the truth that God started life, guides our lives, and must be the first considerations in every aspect of life. There is no need to seek integration when God is already in it – whatever it may be.

4.      The Primary Importance and Value of Prayer.

As we go through this program, we are going to discuss prayer as it relates to our development, decision-making, and adjustment. But I do not want to neglect the most important prayer of them all. The most important prayer anyone will ever participate in is the one where we asked Jesus into our hearts as our Lord and Savior. After that, we believe that every word spoken to God is prayer and is both heard and reacted to by God.  Although God may not react as we desire, He is faithful to work in our lives in such a way as to bring us into a state of rejoicing. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-17 lay the foundation for this perspective.

NEXT

Moving forward we will discuss the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Heaven, the millennial kingdom, and the NOW kingdom – each from a strictly biblical perspective. As we do this, we will connect some dots, learn of God’s expectations for us today, and identify our place and purpose in the kingdom.