Brainwashed For The Kingdom
By Robert Ricciardelli
www.vision2advance.com


Worldview Matters! Especially to those who are called to manifest the glory of our God upon the earth. The concern many have for the body of Christ is that we sometimes have saved souls but a corrupted mindset regarding the Kingdom. Jesus came to establish His Kingdom on this earth as it is in heaven. He has given us the keys and the authority to use them on this earth NOW, and not for a later date. It is amazing how songs like the old hymn, "I'll Fly Away" reflect the way of thinking of God's dormant Kingdom builders. This is the mindset many Christians have regarding this world and that is to fly the coop in one swift moment because it ain't looking too good down here.

The non-Kingdom mindset leads believers to these thoughts, "We need to just hang on a little while longer because Jesus is going to come and rescue us and we are going to leave this God forsaken earth and be done with this planet". "I just have to hold on until that trumpet blasts leading those in Christ to fly and the rest of the world to fry". This is a mindset that is looking to escape because they only see a world that continues to get worse, and have relinquished any hope to transform people and nations for the glory of God. Those in this frame of mind tend to become inward and guarded and believe they are to stay away, for the most part, from non-Christians relationally, unless they are evangelizing them. We as Christians sometimes are so full of fear that we cannot begin to fight or impact others as ambassadors to the Kingdom.  

The Kingdom mindset says this, "I know I am saved by grace and it is a wonderful beginning and legal entry point into the dynamics of the Kingdom of God." "As a child of God, I now have the full authority to bind and loose here on earth, knowing by the will of God, it will be stamped with His heavenly approval." "I am here to know my God and in Him I live and move and have my being. As I seek His Kingdom and His righteousness, transformation towards His likeness will give me opportunity to be an agent of Kingdom transformation for others". "I know that all that I face on this earth is part of my training to reign with Him on this earth one day."

The Kingdom mindset knows that we are coming back to this earth to reign one day and in the mean time, while we have breath and the Spirit of life within us, we will live each day to magnify His Kingdom and reduce the Kingdom of darkness. As I read the end of the Book, this earth really is going to be our home one day. Heaven itself then becomes a temporary dwelling, because we know one day, we are all coming back to a new earth to rule with Him. Knowing this, we now have our purpose, to build His Kingdom and continue to be more and more like Him. If we know that all the challenges and enemies we face are part of our testing and training to be like Him, we should never fall into despair and slothfulness regarding the Kingdom.   

Dennis Peacocke speaks to this mindset with the following,

As I have said over the years, one of our greatest problems in the Church today is that we have "saved souls" but "secularized brains". In other words, we've been saved out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, but Egypt remains within us by the way we think politically, socially, and culturally. Yes we reject sexual sin, drunkenness, theft and the "big sins", but we remain trapped in the world's left-right political games, the capitalism/socialism economic paradigm, and a host of unexamined cultural attitudes we all caught in our secular education and upbringing.

Unless we "Wash our Brains" and rid ourselves of the counter-Kingdom content that fills our minds, how can we be effective ambassadors as "salt and light" to a fallen world? Without a redeemed and applied Biblical worldview, believers will continue to sporadically and nominally affect the world. Focused on heaven and not the Kingdom, believers leave God's earth to the world-system to manage its resources and control its people.

We either are too self-absorbed to care about the culture's captivity and the people's oppression, or we don't see the fundamental differences between the world-system and the Kingdom of God clearly enough to know how to strategically engage the transformation process. Because of these bondages, both world evangelism and church reformation dramatically suffer.

For this reason and more, we as a ministry and others like our friend Dennis Peacocke, www.gostrategic.org , must forge ahead in a committed effort to spread a Biblical Worldview. But before we can spread, we need to be diligent to be trained by the Master for all He as assigned for us to accomplish upon this earth to the glory of the King through His Kingdom in Jesus name. Amen