I ended my last post indicating that we have to connect with the government of God in order to fully understand the role of the Ekklesia in the earth today. In this post, I want to explore God’s government and in the process hopefully shed light on the functioning of the Ekklesia in everyday life.
To recap; Jesus could have used any word in Matt 16:18 to describe how His kingdom was going to come, but He chose a word associated with a form of government that was prevalent in His day, “Ekklesia“. I know that this might not sit well with many readers of this post, but the kingdom of God is governmental in nature, not religious.
With that in mind, let’s look at the words of Jesus in Matt 4:17 “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”. Jesus was, in essence, saying that the reason for people to repent was not because they had sinned but rather because of His right and authority to rule or govern over individual lives, over cities and over our nations was coming and had indeed come with the advent of His kingdom. Jesus brought with Him, His government!
And it is this government and governing principle that He said He would build in Matthew 16:18. The Passion translates it this way “I give you the name Peter, a stone. And this truth of who I am will be the bedrock foundation on which I will build my church-my legislative assembly“. What an amazing translation! Let’s open this up a bit.
Firstly, the truth of who Christ is will be the bedrock or foundation for the Ekklesia or the government of Christ to function effectively in the earth. It is not the church activities that we religiously engage in, or the meetings that we attend or even the tightly held doctrines that we hold dear that empowers the Ekklesia to take the gates; it is who Christ is and specifically, who Christ is in us that allows the realm of heaven to effect change on the earth.
In Colossians 1:27, we are told that “…Christ in us is the hope of Glory”. One could make many points about this scripture, but I want to explore it from the original intent that God had for mankind when were made in Genesis. When God made mankind, He said “let us make man (and by implication woman) in our image”. Mankind was given something of the nature of God that didn’t just reflect who God was but actually mirrored it.
This thought that we contain the image of God is a whole series on it’s own, but for the focus of this post I want to draw out the following: one of the characteristics of God is that He is not constrained to either Heaven or Earth or to the unseen and seen realm. God is both connected to Heaven and to Earth and functions within both realms. This is important in understanding that when He created us, we were created as creatures who being in His likeness, bridge and function from both the seen and unseen realms.
Written in another way, we are created to and supposed to bridge both the heavenly and earthly realms in our daily lives. Man was never created to go to heaven, but rather to live from heaven and to allow this to fashion the earth and what we see in it today.
This was God’s original intent for us; let the unseen create and fashion what is in the seen.
Hebrews 11:1 sheds light on this principle by stating, “…so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible”. In other words, what is seen in the visible was made from things that are not visible. The unseen fashions the seen!
Secondly, the heavenly or unseen legislative assembly is where the government of God originates from. The Ekklesia lives and operates from this place of collective legislation. The authority of this assembly is available to us as sons and daughters and is to be released in our lives on earth.
It is my observation that as individuals, families, cities and nations, we have (amongst many others) the following ways in which God releases His government through us to affect the present and seen realm in a practical way;
- Desires
- Calling‘s
- Anointing’s
- Cultural understandings
- Inheritance ‘s
- Relationships,
- Spiritual laws
- Answered prayers
- Gifts and talents
Our role as the Ekklesia is to allow the Christ within us to tap into each of the above and then be obedient in the practical steps that the Holy Spirit leads us in.
Some questions we could be asking ourselves around the above could include; What do you desire? What relationships do you have that you know is not because of your charming personality or warm demeanour? Have you ever noticed that you have more success in terms of answered prayer with a specific prayer topic than others? Do you just have a knack to understand business or to raise finances? Are children drawn to you or you to them? Do you find you just have to open the bible and you understand (while the rest of us have to read and read and just for good measure, read a passage again to even begin to understand!) or maybe the same with a business book. Do you get angry and wish you had a say when you see corruption or inept policy by the politicians ruling your nation?
The answer to these questions (and others like them) could highlight how God wants to position you to participate in His Ekklesia.
I will expand on this in the next post but I want to finish off with the following thoughts; for some to engage in the legislative assembly might mean interceding every day for a nation, a person, a family; for another the engagement may be to lead a country as the President; for another it might be to lead a community of believers as a shepherd; for another it might be to lead your family; for another to educate and teach; for another to create and start businesses; for another to draw and create.
There are different gifts, desires, calls, understandings, inheritance’s, relationships, prayers and anointing’s amongst us and as we allow the Christ within us to tap into them, we begin to flow together in the Legislative Authority that resides within His Ekklesia.
Till next time.
Ant
living from Eternity 