God's Kingdom Runs on Laws, Not Preferences

I'm excited to keep going in this series, because today I want to deal with something that trips a lot of people up: they want a relationship with God that's separate from how His Kingdom actually operates.

You can have your own opinion about gravity. You'll still hit the ground.

If I stood on a bench and announced I don't personally believe in gravity, and stepped off, I'd still hit the floor. My opinion doesn't change how the law works.

“The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground.”

Mark 4:26 (NKJV)

That's how the Kingdom operates. Not by us deciding we'd rather microwave a harvest than plant one. There are spiritual laws set in motion here, and we don't get to argue our way out of them just because we'd prefer a different system.

Don't wait on another miracle when you could just plant the seed.

Let's say I never planted anything, and I need to eat today, so I go out and pray for a miracle — and watermelons show up. Praise God for His goodness. But the moment I open that watermelon, I should be pulling the seeds out and planting them, so I'm not stuck begging for another miracle next season.

I love a miracle. But there's a better way to live than needing one every single day — living by the seed you've sown, harvesting consistently, instead of waiting on "boop, boop, boop" to happen again.

The thorns are still there — you just have to stop excusing them.

The Word was beginning to produce fruit in this ground. Then the thorns came up — the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, the desire for other things — and choked it out.

All of us have thorn bushes in our flesh. Not our spirit — our flesh. Instead of making excuses for them, deal with them. If money has too much of your attention, deal with it. If you're worried about something, deal with it. Don't say, "Well, everybody needs money" and leave it there.

Money lies to you. It tells you that if you had enough of it, you'd be fine no matter what God does or doesn't do. That's not true. We all need it to some degree — but it was never supposed to be your actual foundation.

Are you praying in faith, or praying in fear?

Here's something worth being honest about: how many times have you finished praying and still felt worried? That right there tells you something about what actually happened in that prayer.

I've been there — praying while scared, trying to believe, not being honest with myself that I wasn't actually believing. The cares of this world were choking the Word right out of my own mouth while I prayed it.

What should happen instead is you catch it in the moment: "Fear is working in me right now. Stop. I refuse to fear. I choose to believe. It is a lie that God's Word will not come to pass."

Then you keep that Word in front of your eyes and you stay there.

You only have to say it once.

I've heard people use the name of Jesus like it's an incantation — repeating it over and over out of fear instead of releasing it once in faith. That's not how it works. Released in faith, it only takes one time.

But faith doesn't show up out of nowhere. You have to sow into yourself what Scripture actually says about the power of that name, the same way you'd load a gun before you ever need to use it. Confidence in the name of Jesus comes from time spent in the Word, not from repeating a phrase you hope has bullets in it.

Every promise from God carries within it the power to deliver you. But you will choke that power right out if you won't deal with the thorn bush of worry. There is hope for you, even if worry has been your pattern for years. If God tells us not to worry, He also empowers us not to. That's a choice you can start making today.

Fight To Win.