Eros or the Kingdom of God

from

VISION 2 ADVANCE

"Kingdom reality in the marketplace and everyday life"

Advancing through Transformed Lives and Authentic Relationships

[publishing ministry of Robert and Joyce Ricciardelli]

The Eros Shift

I tell you most solemnly that anyone who chooses a life of sin is trapped in a dead-end life and is, in fact, a slave.-Jesus

The manner in which the eros prison works in the life of every believer is a very serious issue. As a brand new Christian, we start our journey on the Agape Road, but we can miss the road on either side-religious or worldly. Our objective is to get on the Agape Road and stay on it even when our journey is unpredictable or uneven because Jesus is leading us to a place of intimacy with the Father. When we move off this main road, for whatever reason, we find ourselves heading toward an eros prison. We deviate from the Agape Road by pursuing something we love more than God.

All movement off the Agape Road starts with a choice made in the area of conflict. This is where the Agape Road intersects with alternate roads. When we go off to the left in religious or legalistic behavior, we are trying to please God with our own human efforts, attempting to improve on all that God has given us. When we go off to the right in worldly behavior, we believe there is something up there that God has been withholding from us and are determined to get it. We quickly discover that neither of these deviations yields what we thought. After finding ourselves at a dead end, traveling in ever tightening circles, we recognize that our life is out of whack. Anger, criticism, and anxiety are some of the fruits of this cyclical behavior. Believers and non-believers alike find themselves trapped in these dead-end prisons.

While teaching this theme in various prisons and substance abuse programs, I began to see the fruit of this cyclical behavior in the lives of those men and women. Their focus was on their struggle with substance abuse or their remaining time in the penitentiary, but I could see more deeply into the spiritual reasons they were there. Somewhere along the journey, they chose an alternate road and found themselves in an eros prison with bars stronger than iron--built gradually, not overnight. Prisons with concrete walls and steel bars are nothing compared to the emotional and spiritual ones so many of us discover within ourselves. The longer we remain in these prisons, the further we spiral down, ending up alone, mean, and full of rage. The eros prison is the consummate prison that causes us to think that it may be easier to run, hide, and shift blame than face ourselves and God.

QUESTIONS & THOUGHTS
• Have you ever thought God was withholding something from you and went up the worldly road to find it? What was the result?
• In what ways have you tried to please God with your own human efforts? What was the result?
• Are there areas of your life where anger, criticism, and anxiety surface? If so, you may need to take a serious look at the issues because you are heading down a dead-end road.

Living Without Mixture

By Ron McGatlin www.openheaven.com

Coming out of our traditional boxes does not assure us of moving into real kingdom living any more than emptying a storeroom of outdated goods fills it with fresh new supplies. However, emptying the storeroom must precede refilling it with fresh goods.

Living as a mature son of God in His kingdom lifestyle involves serious loss and great gain. Another way to say it is that it involves experiencing death and resurrection life. The season of our storeroom of beliefs and practices being emptied is sometimes referred to as a time in the wilderness. As our familiar paradigm of life is disappearing, the landscape of our hearts and lives may be as a barren wasteland for a season.

When Moses led the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt on a journey toward freedom and the provisions of God, they desired to return to the familiar bondage where at least they had tasty food to eat. When they reached the place in their wilderness journey where it was time to cross over into the new paradigm of life, they received a bad report of fear and unbelief and rebelled against the way of God. They chose to turn back and eventually died in the wilderness having never experienced the Promised Land. Our promised land is the lifestyle of the kingdom of God on earth.

Turning Back

When my children were young we would take extended vacations in the Rocky Mountains traveling from one campground to another in a four-wheel-drive vehicle pulling a small travel trailer. We would spend a few days to a week in an area taking in all the sights and fishing the streams, and then move on to another area to explore. After we had left a campground and were on the road to the next place, my youngest son would always say, "Daddy I want to go back to where we were." In his immature thinking he believed that it was better to be back at the campground with its familiar surroundings than to be in that vehicle driving through sometimes high and narrow mountainous roads going someplace he had not been before and did not know about.

The Body of Christ is breaking camp, packing up, and on the road to a place we have not been before. What we and the saints before us have sought and only dreamed about is now before us in this season.

Fear Not. Do Not Fear.

Do not believe the bad reports coming against the pure, holy kingdom of God potential now available for those who will seek it with their whole hearts. Do not consider the past years of religious training and ways of life of our past encampment. Much of our recent past experience was without the full reality of Holy Spirit's guidance and provision. It was a mixture of freshly received Holy Spirit guidance and traditional religious forms and teachings that stopped short of the reality of the kingdom of God at hand now on earth.

One of the enemy's most effective stratagems is to run ahead of a new move of God with a perversion of the real truth that is coming forth from God. This has been very effective in creating fear of the manifesting kingdom of God on earth now and the preparation of mature sons of God. His strategy includes counterfeiting the freshly revealed truth and adding evil fleshly concepts into it. He then confirms his teachings with bad theology by twisting the written word. The error is soon discovered and the teaching discredited.

This causes believers to be paranoid of anything that sounds like the exposed perverted teachings. Dutiful theologians develop dreadful teachings regarding the perverted false teaching proffered by the enemy. When the true revelation of the kingdom of God and the maturing sons of God come forth from the true apostles and prophets of God many people run from it in fear. The dreadful teachings become like the bad report of the giants in the Promised Land that caused the children of Israel to turn back to their wilderness wanderings and fail to enter the land.

Many who have experienced life in the Spirit in the past are in danger of turning back to the religious wasteland of denying the pure and holy lifestyle of the kingdom of God. Flee from the temptation to get back in the box by returning to bondage where the tasty food is prepared to keep you as immature children under tutors forever. Always learning and never coming to the truth (2 Tim 3:8).

God is now preparing a generation of mature sons (not gender specific) to lead His people into the freedom of the real kingdom of God lifestyle. The promised land of the New Jerusalem patterns of life is before us. Lift up your eyes and look up, for the City of God is descending from heaven as the Spirit is pouring the life of Christ into maturing sons. We no longer are bound to live in mixtures of godliness along with our fallen world ways of the old man inherited from Adam's nature.

We can now live without mixtures of darkness and disorder created by trying to religiously repair and improve our own lives. No longer need we excuse our lack of power over sin, flesh, and the devil. We are free to grow up unto our Father as emptied vessels that are filled with the life of Father God and Christ Jesus in the Holy Spirit. The kingdom of God is before us. The time of our maturing has come. We are maturing personally and corporately. We are maturing personally as grown sons released by the Father [and] no longer under tutors (Gal 3 & 4). We are collectively maturing into the purified Body of Christ becoming the desire of God's heart as a purified holy Bride.

But alas, why are some of the fathers who were once Spirit-led leaders unwilling to abandon their past camp where the fire has gone out and move with the Spirit? The Spirit has moved on, and they are left behind without the Spirit's empowerment. Having lost the guidance and discernment of the Holy Spirit, they are vulnerable to turning back to following powerless, religious ways led by rules and concepts.

We cannot live in the Kingdom of God lifestyle without being saturated in the Spirit of God and filled with His presence, His love, His power, and His wisdom. And we cannot be filled with fresh new things until we empty ourselves of the past. The truth is that many of us who were used as leaders in the past were yet mixture. In the past age of an immature church, God allowed greater tolerance as He always does for children under tutors. However, as the Body is maturing into the purity of kingdom, the tolerance or "wiggle room" is gone. There shall nothing enter in[to] New Jerusalem that defiles (Rev 21:27).

Here is a paradox: we were once useable as leaders in the old system when the Holy Spirit empowerment and guidance was freshly returning to grow up the church. But now, in the new paradigm, we may become as false leaders. We were leaders with mixture who were used in the past. But now, if mixture remains in us, we are as false leaders in the new kingdom paradigm.

In the past the Spirit was with leaders even while there was mixture, but now, in the kingdom preparation season, the Spirit's guidance is pulling away from those with mixture and no longer guiding them. Without the guidance and discernment of the Holy Spirit, they will return to the old style of human devised leadership. Thus, those who have not, even what they have will be taken away (Mat 13:12).

Mixture of religious form and practice is not allowed in the fullness of the kingdom. False leaders are those who lead using Bible words without the true guidance and empowerment of the Spirit. Flee union with leaders who are not following the Spirit. Draw near to God in the Spirit and you will move onward into the kingdom lifestyle. You will not be left behind to die in a wilderness of despair having never fully known the kingdom of God lifestyle in this life. It is Christ who lives in us and not our own lives. It is the Spirit of God that will lead and guide into the kingdom life, not the strong-willed religionist with many plans and schemes to make life under him look like the kingdom of God.

Keep on pursuing love. It never fails

and His kingdom never ends.

There are three potential responses to the call to transition to the kingdom of God lifestyle.

The first and best choice is to quickly and willingly lay down our past religious and fallen world ways and allow the Spirit of God to refill us with His new kingdom ways and understandings. This is the most painless way to transition. I am not sure that I have ever known anyone who has really done it this way. Perhaps there has been and will be those who were never religious or worldly, and the first gospel they hear includes the gospel of the kingdom.

The second response involves those who will eventually transition but will suffer through severe adversities and tribulation taking them through fresh brokenness and humility. In this process they will be emptied of their mixture of the past and embrace the fresh guidance of the Spirit into the new paradigm of the kingdom of God lifestyle. Most of us may require some serious tribulations to get through this process. Not everyone will be willing to endure the process.

Acts 14:22: …."We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God."

The third response is to refuse to transition. This is a very sad thing, but many fathers of the previous move of God are not emptying themselves of the past and, therefore, are unable to move on in the guidance of the Spirit into the new paradigm of kingdom living now. Some will be taken home simply because their earthly job is done and their usefulness has passed. If they remained to continue on without transitioning, they would become a deterrent to what God is now doing.

Again referencing the children of Israel and their journey through the wilderness to the Promised Land, all of the previous fathers who had come out of Egypt died in the wilderness never entering the land except Joshua and Caleb. Even Moses only saw the land from a distance. It was their sons who crossed over and possessed the promised provision of God in the new paradigm.

And again as I wrote earlier in this article, God is now preparing a generation of mature sons (not gender specific) to lead His people into the freedom of the real kingdom of God lifestyle.

Keep on pursuing love. It never fails

and His kingdom never ends.

AMEN !