Upward and Onward!

I love that the Kingdom is all about transformation. Everything about the Kingdom is a forward progression. That is why the enemy fights so hard to cause us to step down, fall back, or give up.

Paul tells us in 2 Cor.3:18 that we "are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory". Pause and think about the ramifications of this promise. It's not just that we are being transformed into His likeness, but it is with ever-increasing glory. Wow! We have a promise of accelerated glory coming into our lives as we are transformed.

I have been aware of an accelerated growth process in my own life and many other believers around me in the last 5 years. The ever-increasing glory is evident all around us!

Part of the ever-increasing glory process is being tested in those areas where we have experienced grace and transformation in our thinking and lives. Graham Cooke says that "we must know the difference between our training ground and our proving ground". I recently experienced proving in some areas that had always been areas of weakness for me. There was much fear, shame, and doubt attached to these former patterns. I went into the battle with shaky footing, afraid that I would fail as I had done in the past.

As I looked around for the weapons that He had given me in my season of training, I found that He had taught me first of all about His goodness. This for me is the operations base for my battles. It is the foundation of everything....He is a good God! All of our thinking, plans, and battle strategies must flow out of this foundational fact. I believe it is the area that Satan attacks more than any other, because he gains an incredible foothold when we began to doubt God's goodness. Our faith flows out of knowing that He is good.

The second weapon that I had received in training was learning that I am the King's daughter. I am a princess! Beginning to know and understand the vast implications of being royalty totally changes our mindset and the way we operate in our lives. The King's kids have unlimited access and authority that we have just begun to tap into. Again, Satan's strategy is to keep us from discovering who we are. He is a liar, and the Father of Lies, and we cannot believe anything he says.

The third weapon that I had been given in training is the power of declarations and the power of words. God created the world by speaking things into existence. We have been made in His image and our "speaking" is very powerful and important. The Father has been teaching me to become more and more aware of my confessions or words. God works through the power of agreement, and so does the enemy. We must be careful in how we agree with him. I am learning that my thoughts and words must line up with the truth of God's word and my revelation of Him, and not what I seem to be experiencing in my reality. His reality is always greater than my reality.I love it that He is a God who "calls things that are not as though they were", and again, being made in His image, we are to do the same.

So we see that the Kingdom is full of overcoming, being renewed, transformation, reconciliation, pressing on, not shrinking back....all forward motion! We do, however have to make a choice. We can choose to go back to the old familiar patterns of defeat. Many times they even feel more comfortable. There is no faith required. It's easier to slip into fear or self pity or worry when the crunch comes. Faith and forward motion in the Kingdom requires rising up in our spirit man and using our new found spiritual muscles. We can say, "No!" and whack fear, self pity, and worry on the head with the weapon of God's goodness and our declarations of His favor and protection in our life.

As we are changed in "ever-increasing glory" the using of our weapons will become second nature. Actually, it becomes our true nature which is sons and daughters of our victorious warrior King!

We will all experience days in which it seems that we lose our footing and fall in battle. The writer of Hebrews tells us that "we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved". Gratefully, we have a compassionate Savior King who comes and picks us up, and brushes off our knees, straightens the crown He has placed on our head, and again reminds us of who we are and what we're made for, and off we go again ready to experience the sweetness and satisfaction of victory over our enemies.

"Let the saints rejoice in this honor and sing for joy on their beds.
May the praise of God be in their mouths and a double-edged sword in
their hands, to inflict vengeance on the nations and punishment on the
peoples, to bind their kings with fetters, their nobles with shackles
of iron, to carry out the sentence written against them. This is the
glory of all His saints." Psalms 149:5-9