WEDNESDAY WORD

ST MATT 11;12 "TAKE IT BY FORCE"

The kingdom of God suffers violence and the violence take it by force. For many years I avoided this verse because I didn't understand what Jesus was saying. My understanding of the kingdom of God couldn't associate this kingdom of love, peace, and goodwill with violence. Violence is negative and everything about the kingdom of God is positive.

Violence creates death and the kingdom creates life. I couldn't understand the correlation of violence and God's domain because I'd seen the effects of violence growing up in Cleveland, in the Hough community. And so I struggled with this concept. I struggled to comprehend these words, "The violent take it by force."

But one day illumination shined in my misunderstanding as I was reading a teaching article written by Pastor Jack Hayford. Pastor Hayford helped me to understand that the violence that Jesus was talking about was spiritual violence which is totally different from natural violence. Spiritual violence refers to energetically pursuing what God says is yours.

Spiritual violence is pressing through difficulties to gain what belongs to you. It is rising above obstacles to conquer what is trying to conquer you. It is overcoming pressures to declare victory.

Those who want to possess the kingdom of God, which is the benefits and possessions that God says is yours, have to violently pursue it because they are forces trying to keep you from possessing what is yours. The violence that you must engage in is not against the kingdom but it is against those spiritual forces who are trying to keep you out of the kingdom. 

Ephesians 6: 12 says, "FOR WE DO NOT WRESTLE AGAINST FLESH AND BLOOD BUT

 AGAINST PRINCIPALITIES, AGAINST POWERS, AGAINST POWERS, AGAINST THE RULERS OF THE DARKNESS OF THIS AGE, AGAINST SPIRITUAL HOSTS OF WICKEDNESS IN THE HEAVENLY PLACES." Natural violence is against people, spiritual violence is spiritual beings who desire to keep us from experiencing the kingdom of God and the abundant life that Jesus has promised us.          

Spiritual violence is an attitude that says no matter what I will never give up until I possess what belongs to me. 

This type of violence is expressed in prayer.

It is expressed in using the spiritual resources at our disposals; truth, righteousness, peace, faith, the Word of God to establish ourselves.

It is knowing how to bind what is holding you back and how to loose opportunities that will bless you.

It is knowing how to decree what God says will be established in your life.

It is recognizing the boundaries that God has set in your life and operating in those boundaries.

Fight the devil, the flesh and the world and take what God says is yours!

TAKE IT BY FORCE!