Dr. Jim Richards

God needs you to be you. God wants you – your personality, sense of humor, and life experiences. He wants you to be the righteous version of that. You’re not trying to become something new – you have already become something new. God says, “I have made you unique. There are things you can do that nobody else can do. If you will just walk with Me and learn how to live your uniqueness in connection with Me, learning to be who you are in Jesus and always having a heart seeking to walk My path, then you will multiply and increase in every way, and My grace will work in you and bring it to pass.”

The good news of the message of the kingdom of God is that nobody outside you is in control of your life. One of the most destructive beliefs in the world spiritually is that God is in control of everything. Jews incorporated their pagan beliefs in with what God said. The moment you become fearful or unwilling to make decisions about the quality of your life, now you have succumbed to being a victim. The golden thread through all the teachings of Jesus is the thread of personal responsibility. Every one of Jesus’ parables teaches us to make choices that will always guarantee a good outcome.

The message of the Kingdom is what Jesus has done for us and whether we believe His teachings. My first priority after being born again is to seek the Kingdom and His righteousness. Jesus’ whole message was about how to enter the Kingdom of God and experience the resources of heaven. When Jesus taught the principles of the Kingdom, He was not telling us how to be born again. He was telling us that if we want to live in righteousness, this is what it looks like. When we take His yoke – accepting His teachings, making Him Lord, and applying the Word of God in love – we will find rest.

When we are born again, it is only then that we have the capability of perceiving there is a kingdom of God. In John 3:3, Jesus makes a distinction between being born again and being able to perceive there is a kingdom of God. What is it that opens our eyes? Jesus’ ministry and teachings were about the kingdom of God and lost people cannot perceive this internal realm. The Kingdom is an environment where individuals willfully submit to the Lordship of Jesus and personally connect with God in their heart, whereby they experience the resources of heaven.

God's goal is that we live in the Kingdom with such an incredible quality of life that we influence and touch the lives of others. We fall short of how good God is when holding to our own reality; therefore, we can’t go through that portal of our heart and enter this realm where we realize all the resources of God are right here for us. If God's goal is not our goal then we will never hit that target. When you make this your goal: “I am going to live in this Kingdom realm and enjoy the goodness of God and then pour that out on the world around me,” then that path you walk will take you ultimately to use the keys of the Kingdom and find everything you need.

We did get an operator’s manual in the Bible, but because people don’t trust what God said, they struggle to work a plan. Jesus taught us everything we need to know to have life at its best, and He taught us the keys of the Kingdom – the operating system for a believer who intends to have the abundant life. Jesus said, “Those who hear my words and put them into practice will be the one who builds his life on the rock” (Mt. 7:24). When we apply any of the Word by walking in love, we will be in harmony with the Lord Jesus Christ. The challenge of every believer is this: do I believe Jesus the Son of God emptied Himself and became a man in every way like as me?

Planet Earth becomes a place of death or life based on the entire collective beliefs and expectations of the people who live here. What is happening in our nation is the last big push to overthrow true civil justice and to establish a socialist government where the government’s word replaces God’s morals, values, and standards. It is not God bringing the downfall – it is iniquity bringing it. A constitutional Republic with freedoms will only work as long as people adhere to the morals and the values that Jesus taught. God is just and fair to everyone, but every man shall be equally responsible and face the same standard of justice.

No matter how bad the wickedness is on Planet Earth, God will always move to recover, redeem, and protect us. God will always try to get us out of this mess we have gotten ourselves in. And even when the world reaches such wickedness that it is on the brink of destruction, He will show up and give us 1,000 years of peace and goodness. When we are standing before God and know we don’t deserve something, He does whatever goodness He does anyway. God's goodness always goes beyond because God is more generous than we deserve and expect. (1 Cor. 2:9)

Isaiah 30:18 says, “For the Lord is a God of justice." As we see a lack of justice, the foundations of the earth are becoming unstable. To the degree that man abandons justice based on righteousness, mercy, and truth, to that degree, the very pillars of all foundations of the earth are being shaken. Without mercy and truth, there is no justice! God is incredibly merciful but He is also incredibly just and that justice has an accountability side to it. If we take truth apart from mercy, it will turn into legalism. If we take mercy apart from truth, it will turn into liberalism and no accountability. Turn your heart to God and rule your life based on the justice of God’s Word by walking in love and applying truth mercifully and in love.

The world today presents a version of justice that is totally contradictory to the Word of God, and Christians are accepting that because they don’t know what true justice is. We often ask, “What is fair?” We must decide if man is more just than God. If we don’t believe God is fair, we’ll never trust Him and more than likely, we have been indoctrinated by religion or by Luciferianism. Isaiah 30:18 says, The Lord is a God of justice, and one of the things God says about His goodness is that He is just. Once Jesus becomes the focal point of interpretation of God, we will be overwhelmed at how good God is.

It doesn’t matter where we start—what matters is the day we start over. God wants us to know what to expect from Him. Even if sin has hardened our heart, the moment we come to our senses we will remember the goodness of God and experience His tender mercies. No matter where we have been or how many mistakes we have made, our hope will be restored. God has paid an incredible price for us to have the best life imaginable. He has spent all of creation stooping down and reaching people in trouble, drawing them to Himself and His purposes and Divine life. We can say to God, “Today my eyes are open; I’m turning my heart to you and I accept your forgiveness and restoration; I have not believed it, but I am now.”

God gets the wrap for being mean and hateful, but the truth is that generation after generation He shows love and compassion to people. When God began to declare His name or His goodness to Moses, He started with compassion. In other words, God is filled with loving sympathy for human frailty, does not put people into situations of temptation, and eases the punishment of the guilty. The word “compassionate” is a concept of what happens in the heart of the person receiving compassion. But there is also this concept of compassion happening in the heart of the person who IS compassionate. God as being compassionate, based on the Hebrew word, means “to bend or to stoop in kindness to an inferior, to bestow favor, to implore, in other words, to call that person back to you.”

If we believed what religion told us, it would be impossible to believe that God is fair and just. Most Christians struggle with whether God is fair. If we say that God allowed something we are saying He could have stopped it but He didn’t. Religion teaches that killing our relative was the only way God could get to us and teach us something. But would we go to someone who arranged for the destruction of a loved one for comfort or grief counseling? We won’t go to the person bringing pain in our life to find solutions. We will hold a grudge against God or get angry with Him. Job 35:2 says, “Can a mortal be more righteous than God?"

Clearly, the Bible shows that society and culture influence us, but we are not to solve problems the way modern society dictates. Socialization is an important biblical principle to living in victory and making life work for us. But we are being socialized or programmed by messages developed into society that go against the Word of God. Jesus said to take His yoke, which is His Lordship and His interpretation and translation of the Word of God. We will then have the best God has to offer without selling out to the world.

The glory of God is the view, the reality, the opinion as God sees it. God has a view. His view is real. Our view is distorted by our emotions, limited understanding, and corrupt beliefs of the heart. I want to live in God’s reality; anything less than that is not God’s glory. So, if I want to live in His reality, but I am falling short of the glory of God, it means I am failing to perceive how good He is. The truth is that we already have everything that pertains to life and godliness. Quality of life is improved when we seek to harmonize or get in step with (walk in the spirit) with what God has already accomplished.

We won’t experience the goodness of God if we don’t believe the goodness of God! Just knowing about God is different than experiencing God with all of one’s capacity, according to the Greek word “know.” Scripture says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:8). Believing is in a continuum with experiencing. When we experience the goodness of God, our level and capacity to believe expand greatly. We will be like Him because we will see God as He is, but we won’t see Him as He is until we see how incredibly good He is.

There is a secret to transformation that lasts because it doesn’t require effort. The more time we spend in the presence of God, the quicker transformation will occur. Anything that requires effort, one day we are going to get tired of doing! Transformation takes place because we believe and perceive God as He really is. And to the degree that we see God as He is and abide in His presence and harmonize ourselves with His love, there is a synchronization that happens. A download of power and life transforms us effortlessly and by knowing the truth, we will not limit this transformation.

Redefining words is one of the most subtle and powerful tactics for twisting the truth. Most argumentative questions come to us because people have an agenda and a desperate need to be right. They try to convince themselves what they believe is the truth even though it does not produce peace in their lives. We have the right Scripture but like the rich young ruler, we interpret it with our own definition of who our neighbor is. That is a deceptive word that corrupts, and we don’t even know it. Recognizing this will help reduce conflict and stress and remove confusion in understanding the Bible.

The life we settle for is not the normal Christian life; experiencing God’s promises should be our normal. How do we get there? Jesus located the real need in the rich young ruler's life through questions. We need to be sure when having conversations with someone or reading the Bible that we understand the meanings of the words spoken or the words read. Words can create either a positive or negative image of God. Our perception of God and self are often “less than.” Always read the Bible from this perspective: since this is true, what manner of person should I be? Then apply these truths to your life.

When faced with a negative situation, your first response determines the path you walk and the process you take to get out of that situation. Is your first reaction to ask, “Why is this happening to me?” No matter what hits you or where it comes from, you must navigate in a way not to lose your footing in the battle through hesitation or inaction. You want to have a readiness of mind and to guard your heart in the gospel of peace which means this is your first reaction. Speak the Word of God into a situation and wait for the peace of God that passes understanding. If Job had known what we know, he never would have gone through all that.