Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Jesus invited a lost world to become citizens of a sphere of spiritual experience called the Kingdom of God. Here, they would enjoy the privileges and responsibilities of knowing the King. Through the parables that Jesus taught, and these parables are earthly stories with a heavenly meaning, we'll discover what this rich life in the Kingdom is all about.

The Kingdom of God is a big subject. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God is a spiritual reality. A spiritual reality is just as real as a physical reality. You can't see it, you can't put it under a microscope, but actually, it's even more real than a material reality. Material things will pass away, but spiritual things will never pass away. When you talk about spiritual things, it's a little hard to get a handle on them because we like to touch and feel and see so that we can really understand we human creatures that we are.

Jesus taught right at the beginning of His ministry that He had come to be King of that Kingdom of spiritual reality in people's lives. The Kingdom of God, first of all, is a present reality, He said. "The Kingdom of God is near you," He said. John the Baptist had been preaching, "The King is coming, the King is coming." When Jesus came, he pointed Him out and then he got himself put in prison for his trouble. As soon as John the Baptist was put in prison, in Mark 1, it says that Jesus began His public ministry. The very first sermon that He preached is recorded for you in Mark chapter one. He said, "The Kingdom of God is among you. The Kingdom of God is near you."

What did He mean? He meant, "I'm the King, and I'm here, so the Kingdom of God is among you. Where I am, there the Kingdom is. The time has come, so you repent and listen to the good news." That was His first sermon. At the end of His life, as He came into Jerusalem on that donkey, if you remember, what were people calling out? "Hosanna, Hosanna." Where were they getting all that from? "Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord." They were getting it from the prophets, where we were told that the King, the coming King of this spiritual Kingdom that can be experienced, this sphere of spiritual experience in human nature, the King would come riding on a donkey into the holy city, Jerusalem.

That was prophecy. That was history written in advance. Jesus fulfilled that prophecy when He came into Jerusalem. That's why we call it Palm Sunday. Everybody took those palms and welcomed the King into the city. The Kingdom of God was a big subject when Jesus was around. If you count up how many times He tells stories and parables and metaphors and similes about the Kingdom of God, it is more than any other subject that He talked about. There are more sermons Jesus preached about the Kingdom of God than anything else He preached. It was a present reality because He was physically present in a Jewish body in an area of the world called the Middle East for 33 years.

Secondly, the Kingdom of God is a future reality. There will be a coming Kingdom. He taught His disciples to pray, "Pray, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done as in heaven so on earth." There is a Kingdom in heaven. Jesus is the King of that Kingdom. There is a coming Kingdom when every knee will bow and every tongue will confess, whether they want to or not, that Jesus Christ is King. He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and you can read all about that in the Book of Revelation and many, many other places as well. This sphere of experience called the Kingdom of God is anywhere that Jesus is King. It will be in the future. As Jesus said when He was on earth, it was near them, among them.

One day, Jesus stood before Pilate when He was just about to be crucified. Pilate had quite a talk with Him. It's John chapter 18. Let's have a look at that for a minute. Jesus has been arrested. If you look in verse 33.

Guest (Male): Pilate goes back inside the palace after talking to the enemies of Jesus, summons Jesus, and asks Him, "Are you the King of the Jews?"

"Is that your own idea?" Jesus asked. "Or did others talk to you about me?"

"Do you think I'm a Jew?" Pilate replied. "It was your people, your chief priests, who handed you over to me. What is it you've done?"

Jesus said, "My Kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my Kingdom is from another place."

"You are a king then," said Pilate.

Jesus answered, "You're right in saying I'm a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, born to be King, and for this I came into the world to testify to the truth."

Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. "What is truth?" Pilate asks. Then he goes out and says, "I find no fault with this man."

Jill Briscoe: In fact, Pilate instructed the people who were putting the crosses up to write in three languages so everybody would get the message: "This is the King of the Jews." Of course, the Pharisees and the leaders of the people were furious. They came to him and said, "Take that down. We don't want that hanging over his head. If you want to write something, put 'He claimed to be King of the Jews'."

Pilate says, "What I've written, I've written." He was just about fed up with them. So it was left. Jesus was the King. He spoke of the Kingdom of God being the place where He was, because He's the King of the Kingdom, then, when He was on earth for those 33 years. But He also spoke about a future reality: "My Kingdom is not of this world."

You remember the story of the two men that were crucified with Jesus, the two thieves. Remember what happened? One of them started reviling Jesus and cursing Him and all the rest of it. The other one said, "Hey, we better be careful what we say. we deserve to be crucified. This man has done nothing wrong." He turns to Jesus and says, "Remember me when you come into your Kingdom." That little phrase makes a lot of people believe that perhaps that thief had been around one of Jesus' meetings.

How could he possibly have known about the Kingdom of God and all of those things? Why would he have said that? It does make one curious to know why he turned to Jesus. Was it something he saw in the way Jesus was dying, or had he heard Him speak? Had he heard Jesus say, "The Kingdom of God is near you and I'm the King"? Had he seen people healed? Had he seen Lazarus raised from the dead? We have absolutely no idea. We do know he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into my Kingdom." At that point, Jesus turned to him and said, "Today you'll be with me in paradise."

I think the thief must have been wonderfully surprised to find himself in the Kingdom of heaven that very same day. The future Kingdom is after death. After death, when everything's wrapped up, there will only be the Kingdom of God. There will not be the kingdom of this world anymore. Jesus said there was a future reality to the Kingdom of God, and He also said there was a present reality to the Kingdom of God. He also said there was a spiritual reality for those of us that live since He died and before He comes because the King is coming to wrap it all up. In Luke 17, He addressed some of the people that were asking about this.

Guest (Male): Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God does not come visibly, nor will people say 'Here it is' or 'There it is' because the Kingdom of God is within you." Then He said to His disciples, "The time's coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. Men will tell you, 'There he is,' 'Here he is.' Don't go running after them. For the Son of Man in His day, His day being the second coming day, will be like the lightning which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first He must suffer many things and be rejected."

Jill Briscoe: The Kingdom of God is within you. The Kingdom of God was among them because the King was there. The Kingdom of God is coming. Today, we shall be with Him in paradise when our time comes to face death and go through that door. Of course, the King of kings and Lord of lords will reign forever and ever in His coming and final Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is a spiritual reality for you and I now. There's a children's chorus that says, "May the flag fly high in the castle of my soul when the King is in residence there." I love that chorus. "May the flag fly high in the castle of my heart when the King is in residence there."

The Kingdom of God can be within us. That's our present reality. The Kingdom of God is anywhere, it's the sphere of spiritual experience where Christ is King. How does the King get into residence in the castle so that we can put up the flag and say, "Hey, the King is in residence"? How does He get in? You let down the drawbridge. There comes a point where the drawbridge, which represents your will, is let down over that chasm that separates you from Jesus. You welcome Him into your life.

When He comes in, He does not come in to sit just inside the door. He comes to sit on the throne, so you have to get off it. Self is on the throne before Jesus ever comes into the life, and you enthrone Jesus. We sing that beautiful, beautiful chorus, "I see you, Lord, high and lifted up on the throne of my life." You put down the drawbridge and you ask Him in, not only to be resident, but to be President. Not only to be resident, but to be President. Jesus said once, "Why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not the things that I say?" We invite the Lord Jesus Christ to be our Savior, King Jesus to come and do what He wants to do in His Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is within you.

Right at the beginning, I want to ask a few questions here. Have you let down the drawbridge? Is He in? Has there come a moment where you realize that you've been running your life and what you need to do is to welcome the King? The Kingdom of God is within you. Now, the Kingdom of God is within me. Is the Kingdom of God within you? The only reason the Kingdom of God is in me is that one day I let down that drawbridge and I invited Him to come to the throne of my life and my heart where He rightly belongs.

When I think of the Kingdom of God, it is the sphere of spiritual experience that I can enjoy here and now on the way to the Kingdom of God when I die. There's a grand assurance about that that we'll also talk about later. In this word of God, there is much, much teaching about the Kingdom of God, and much of it is in Matthew's Gospel where Jesus began to use parables to get His point about life in the Kingdom across. This Kingdom where riches, spiritual riches, can be enjoyed. Why did He use parables? That's a question many, many people asked, and even the disciples asked it.

Guest (Male): He'd been telling the story of the sower. The disciples in verse 10 come to Him and ask, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?"

He said, "The knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom of heaven has been given to you but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, he will have an abundance. Whoever doesn't have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in parables: though seeing they do not see, though hearing they do not hear or understand." Then He uses the prophecy of the Isaiah that talks about people's hearts being hard and eyes being blind. "Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn or be converted and I would heal them. Blessed are your eyes because they do see, your ears because they hear."

Jill Briscoe: You might say that doesn't explain to me why He spoke in parables. It seems that He was being rather mean, making it difficult, hiding the truths that would help people come into this wonderful sphere of spiritual experience so they could really know God. Basically speaking, it is a little bit difficult to understand, but Jesus only began to use parables after He was rejected by the leaders of His people. That's the only time He began to use parable and metaphor.

When the leaders rejected Him, He used stories, parables, similes, and metaphors to communicate the truth. Jesus said, secondly, that these parables would be understood by those with faith or that were coming to faith, that were searching, that were seeking, that had hearts that said, "I really want to find some hidden spiritual treasures for myself." But it would remain obscure to unbelievers. It would remain obscure to unbelievers.

These earthly stories with a heavenly meaning used familiar images: leaven, sheep, bridesmaids, publicans, wheat, tares, lost coins. The parables had to do with God's working in human history and the human heart. They were parables of the Kingdom of God. They had truths hidden within them that Jesus wanted people to search for, to dig for, to look for. Why? He wants us to be sincere. He wants us to show a little bit of effort, not indifference. If He had left His treasure lying on the top of that field that the man was digging in, it would have been trampled underfoot. He hid it in order that people might search with all their hearts. He said, "You'll find me when you look for me and search for me with all your heart."

He wants us to be serious about the search for spiritual reality. He came to reveal secrets of spiritual reality to those who really wanted to find them. He says, "I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world." Then He says to His disciples, "Blessed are your eyes because they see them. Father, I thank you you revealed them unto these babes and you've hidden them from people that are too clever for their own good, ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth." People that really don't want to find God because if they do find God, they'd have to obey God.

I remember talking to a student years and years ago and in the end, my husband said to him, we were both arguing with him, "If you really believed this, would you come to Christ?"

He said, "I can't believe."

Stuart said, "No, I think it's that you won't believe because if you have to believe, if you do come to believe, your behavior will have to change and you really don't want to change your behavior. You might say you're asking a lot of questions, but you're not really seeking at all because you have this feeling that if you do find, the King will be King and that means change in your life."

So Jesus hid the secrets of this life of spiritual reality in His teaching, in His parables. But the good news is He says those of you that have faith, those of you that count yourself seekers after Jesus, Jesus lovers, Jesus knowers, He will reveal them to you. He'll show you where to dig. He'll show you where the treasure is. Yes, He will. God didn't leave His treasured things lying around on top of the soil to be trampled underfoot and ignored. He buried it and then He called us human beings to seek it, to search for it with all our hearts. When we do find Jesus as a spiritual reality in our lives, it is a real spiritual find.

I want to look at the very first of these parables in Matthew 13. I've given you a hint of what it is. If you turn to verse 44. There are two little parables, parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl.

Guest (Male): "The Kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all that he had and bought that field. Again, the Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he finds one of great value, he goes away and sells everything and buys it."

Jill Briscoe: The field is the world and the treasure is that sphere of spiritual experience where God is King. Basically, He's saying there is a calling to find this. God calls human beings to find it. We're going to talk a little bit about what that call is. There is a sense of pulling toward. There is a sense of, "I'm missing something." There is a sense of as we search for Jesus, a sort of affirmation: "Yes, I'm on the right track. Yes, this is truth. This is the truth, the true truth. This is what I was made for."

I met a lady down at a meeting I was taking who told me that she had been dragged to a meeting I had taken 13 years ago. She had not wanted to go, but a friend had literally dragged her there and bribed her to get her there. She listened to me with great cynicism. I had three messages that day and she stayed for all three messages. She said during the second message, something began to happen within her. It was a sort of pulling, a calling, and it was also an affirmation: "Yes, this woman is speaking the truth. This is true, this is true."

She was into all sorts of things searching and seeking for the true truth, but she said there was a ring of truth about what I was saying. It wasn't what I was saying, it was what I was telling her the Bible was saying. She said she began to get this inner call, this inner pull, this inner, "Yes, this is right." She's now heading up a women's ministry in a large church, actually. It was interesting for her to tell me that, especially when I knew I was going to speak to you about this.

There's a wonderful book by a theologian called Os Guinness and it's called "The Calling." I'd recommend it to you. It'll stretch you, but I recommend it to you. It's about finding and fulfilling the central purpose of your life. In it he says, "All across the West today people are seeking a deeper sense of individual purpose. They're asking 'Who am I? What am I supposed to be doing? Where am I going? Where have I come from?' Those that seem to have everything, have done everything and achieved everything are asking openly 'Is this all there is?' Deep down inside they feel they've missed something important. There's a little voice calling them, but to what? To who? Where? When? Why?" Actually, it's an internal search for the treasure in the field.

Guinness says, "How do you define this call? Simply put, the call is the idea that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we have, and everything we do is invested with a dynamism and devotion because it's done as a response to His summons." In other words, the two words of Jesus "Follow me" change the world as millions since have risen up to follow His call. What he's saying is there is this King of the Kingdom and there is a Kingdom of God. There is a sphere of spiritual reality and experience God wants you to enjoy. His Holy Spirit is calling you to it, is inviting you to it, and the sense of that is almost like a magnet that you can't resist.

When we respond to the call, we find the true truth. We say, "Yes, sounds true. It's got a ring of truth in the middle of all this other stuff I'm hearing this way and that way, all the stuff I'm reading. This sounds true, this sounds real." When Jesus was here, He called people to leave everything to follow Him, to discover this sphere of spiritual experience called knowing Him, discovering His riches. People did. They put this call before the call to marriage and family, work and ambition, dreams and aspirations.

You remember in Luke when Jesus, after saying, "I've come to preach the Kingdom of God," started to collect His disciples. He goes down by the Sea of Galilee and he sees Peter there mending his nets. All the crowd are there because they want Him to heal and teach them. He looks along and he sees that he's going to get very wet because they're pushing him into the sea. He says to Peter, "I want your boat." Peter says, "You can have my boat." He stops mending his nets and Jesus and Peter get in the boat.

The Kingdom of God is within you. It's a wonderful picture to me of that little boat and Peter and Jesus inside it, the King and Peter. Then Jesus says, "Push out from the shore," and they do and Jesus addresses the crowd on the shore. That's a marvelous picture of what God wants us to be and to do today. That little boat is a picture of our lives. He wants to get into it and He wants to address the crowd on our shore, and our life needs to become a living pulpit out of which Jesus addresses our particular crowd.

There are lots of pictures in this, but basically, Jesus said to Peter, He began to be the King, He began to tell him what to do. He began to tell him where to fish. Even though Peter didn't want to, He said, "Go over there and you'll catch some fish."

Peter said, "We've been over there and we haven't caught any fish."

Jesus said, "Go over there."

Peter did, very reluctantly. In fact, he said in Luke 5, "Because you say so. Oh, all right, because you say so." He went and he let down his net, singular. Of course his net broke. Jesus told him to let down his nets, plural. Silly man. However, he did let down one net and there were so many fish it broke and he was in real trouble and I'm sure he had to spend a week mending his net. But you see, the King was in residence in that little boat. The Kingdom of God is within you. He called His disciples and He said, "Follow me." At the end of that marvelous chapter in Luke chapter five, it says they left everything and followed Him. What did they leave? They left their families, they left Galilee, he left all his ambitions and dreams and hopes, his little business, his fishing business. He left his partnership. He was in partnership with James and John, they left theirs as well. They left their father in the boat, he left his wife in the house and his mother-in-law and who knows how many children, if any children, and he followed Jesus. He left everything and followed Him.

In Jesus' day, that's what He asked for. Fiodor Dostoevsky, I can't say this man's name but you know who he is, Dostoevsky, this is how he put it: "The secret of man's being is not only to live but to live for something definite." You living for something definite? Half the problem with people is they're not living for anything definite, so indefinite. Kierkegaard put it this way: "The goal is to find the idea for which I can live and die for." That's the goal. Have you found a goal to live and die for? People don't live and die for goals anymore.

I stayed with a woman and a man in Paris who had a goal. She worked for the secret service during the Second World War. He won the highest honor for being in the French Resistance. It was one of the most fascinating four days Stuart and I have ever spent in anybody's home in our lives. We listened to stories of how men and women had a goal to live and die for, and they did live and die. These two nearly died. They happened to live through hell behind Gestapo barracks. But they did it because they had a living goal. As I listened to them I thought they were so young in those days, they were in their 20s and they represent so many, many, many young people in those days who had a goal, who lived for something definite. It wasn't a spiritual goal, but it was a high and holy goal. They gave up their freedom that others may have their freedom. They had a goal.

When I look in my own heart, I realize that this call to follow Him, this call to allow Him to be King in the Kingdom of my life is a serious thing. It is a call to have a goal, to live for something definite, something that's worth living for and something that's worth dying for. I'm not talking about a call to the priesthood or the call to missionary work. I'm talking about the call of God's Spirit to enter the Kingdom of God and discover His kingship in our lives. It does go beyond the call, you say, "I've got a call, a high and holy one, it's a call to family, it's a call to marriage, it's a call to vocation." It's the call to prosperity, it's the call to fame or achievement. It's a call to something good or it's a call to something frivolous, but I do have a call.

But what about the call to know God through Christ? Jesus said that should be the highest call, superseding any other great call of life. When He called the disciples, they physically had to do that. We don't always have to do that. We have to do it internally. We have to respond internally whether He ever asks us to do it physically as they did. When we do that, amazingly, we find the treasure in the field. You notice the man with great joy found the treasure. The devil has a lie: He says you'll never smile again if you make Jesus King of your castle, if you ever give Him permission to tell you what to do with your little boat as you go through life. It is a spiritual find and responding to the call means you re-order your priorities in order to enjoy fully the Kingdom of God.

Remember the rich young ruler, he came to Jesus. Jesus looked right into his heart and He saw a good man and He said, "You just lack one thing. Those things that you own have got a grip on you. You do not have things, things have you, and you need to just get that priority straightened out. So why don't you just give it all away to the poor and come and follow me."

It says the young man went away sad. He kept his riches, but he went away sad. I've often shared how my dad was a rich man and bought a castle at one point in his life. He was king of his castle. I remember my mom saying to me one day, "Just take this drink to your dad and cheer him up." I remember standing with that drink in my hand looking at my dad by the fire in this incredibly beautiful manor house in the Lake District in England thinking, "What's he needing cheering up for? Why is he so miserable?" Watching his body language just sitting there by that great big gorgeous fireplace thinking, "I don't understand this." Of course I didn't know the King. It really put me on inquiry because my dad had everything that he wanted. He had his own castle and he was king of his castle and it wasn't enough. There was something missing, for a man's life does not consist in the things that he possesses, says the Bible. I can testify to that from my own experience.

I remember my mom coming to visit me in our little cottage and I remember her saying when she left very wistfully, "Jesus lives here, doesn't he, Jill?"

I said, "Yeah, He does, Mom." Very gently, as gently as I could, I said, "I'd rather live in my cottage with Jesus than in my castle without Him, Mom." I think she understood.

We have to reorganize our priorities if we are going to obey this calling of the Holy Spirit to make Him King of our castle. In Luke chapter nine, there were some people came to Jesus and said, "I'll follow you, I'll follow you!"

Jesus turned around and said, "Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but I don't have a branch to perch on." That's the importance of the word. He said, "You're not ready to follow me." He looked right into his heart and saw that it was all words. "These people honor me with their mouths but their heart is far from me," says the scripture.

Then another one came and Jesus said, "You follow me." He called him. He invited him like He had His other 12 disciples. Jesus said to another, "Follow me." That's the message. He said, "Certainly, but first excuse me for a couple of days, please, I have to make arrangements for my father's funeral."

Jesus refused. "First things first," He said. Even before your father's funeral? "Your business is life, not death. Life is urgent. Announce God's Kingdom." What comes first?

Then another said, "I'm ready to follow you, Master, but first excuse me while I get things straightened out at home." Things needed straightening out at home. Maybe his marriage wasn't very good. Maybe he had some debts to pay off. Jesus said, "No. Don't procrastinate. No backward looks. You can't put God's Kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day."

That message is the same. Jesus isn't here physically, but He is here spiritually. Actually, He's in my boat talking to you right now. He's telling you, "Seize the day. Get your priorities the right way round so that spiritual priorities are first in your life, absolutely first in your life." Easier said than done. As we do that, however, and we search for how to do that, He'll help us. We've got to ask the right questions, we've got to listen to the right answers. It's a big field. How do we know Jesus is the only way? How do we know that? How do we know that all these other people who are offering us advice, "Dig here, dig there, I've found spiritual treasure, here's a shovel, get to it." It's a big field and there are lots and lots of people telling us where the treasure is.

Yet it says in Colossians 2:2, if you want the full riches of complete understanding, in order to know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, then you need to make Him King of your castle. Then Paul adds, "I tell you this so no one may deceive you with high sounding arguments." I tell you this so people that say "Dig here in this religion, dig here in that" may not confuse you. There is no religion in the world that claims its founder was God, only Christianity. People are looking for salvation, people are looking for satisfaction, people are looking for assurance they'll know where they're going when they die. Christ is the only way. He's the King of the only Kingdom that there is after death. He is the ruler of this sphere of spiritual experience now and then. He's the only Savior.

How do we enter that Kingdom? We enter through humility. Jesus took a little child once in Matthew 18:3 and said, "If you want to enter the Kingdom of heaven, you have to humble yourself and become like this little child." It is a humbling thing to say "I've been wrong." It is a humbling thing to say "I've been digging in the wrong corner of the field." It is a humbling thing to say "I've spent most of my life looking for spiritual reality and you're telling me that I haven't even started looking in the right direction." It's humbling. It's got to be done.

When we visited the Holy Land in the Church of the Nativity, famous church, you've seen it, I'm sure, on postcards and you've heard about it. If those that have seen it, maybe you've seen it yourself and been there. There is a very, very tiny door that has been built down. The reason is that when the Turks came in those awful crusade days and all of that, the Turks came in and the commander was just taking city after city after city and he rode up on his horse to the Church of the Nativity to enter on his horse. But the people had built down the door and he not only had to dismount off his high horse, he had to bow his head to get in that church. He had to bow his head. Actually, you have to bow almost double to get in that door.

I always think about that every time I go through it and we all line up to get into that Church of the Nativity. I always think of Matthew 18:3, "Unless you become as a little child and humble yourself." You have to get off your high spiritual horse or your high horse thinking that you know you can find the way and all the rest, and you have to come to Jesus like a little child. You have to be born again because you cannot even see the Kingdom of God unless His Spirit comes into your heart. The Kingdom of God is within you when the King is within you. Makes perfect sense. That's what you've got to do. Know how worth finding it is. Paul says, "I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I've lost all things but I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ." He'd found the treasure in the field. It is a priceless, priceless treasure, priceless, priceless gain.

When you come into the Kingdom and you get to know the King, you renounce every other allegiance and you become a citizen of the Kingdom. I became a citizen of America and it was quite a wonderful experience. Now I'm a citizen. I have a little book called "A Welcome to USA Citizenship." It's a wonderful book and it tells me five qualities of a good citizen.

"A good citizen cherishes," and I'm going to change this, "Christian values, bases his actions on them. The good citizen practices Christian human relationships in the family, school, community and the larger scene. The good citizen recognizes social problems and has the will and the ability to work toward their solution. A good citizen is aware of and takes responsibility for meeting basic human needs. A good citizen possesses and uses his knowledge and skills in a Christian society."

When you become a citizen of heaven, the whole of your life's changed. You renounce every other allegiance to every other, as it says in that book, king or queen in my case, and you give your allegiance to the President who's resident. That's what happens when you become a good citizen. You're not born a citizen, you're born again a citizen, spiritually if you like. There are three privileges this book tells about. You have the right to vote, your opinion matters. You have the right of appeal. Paul says, "I'm a Roman citizen, I have the right to appeal to Caesar." We have the right to appeal to the King when we are accused. He is our judge. Thirdly, you have the right of ownership. You own property. You're allowed to own property when you become a citizen of the USA. When you become a citizen of heaven, you've got a mansion. You've got a mansion. One day, Jesus said to the disciples, "I'm going away. I'm going to prepare a place in the Kingdom for you. One of the streets of gold, a mansion, and then I'm going to come back and take you home. I'm going to come back and take you home." One day the King will come, the King of the Kingdom, to take us home to the Kingdom of heaven.

My main question to you is, are you in the Kingdom? Have you put the drawbridge down? Can you remember when you did? Maybe if you can't remember, you haven't. Maybe you'd like to. When I became a citizen of the United States, I needed somebody to help me, to teach me how to do that. I found somebody that had done it before me, a Laotian pastor, BT. I went to BT and I said, "BT, you became an American citizen years ago, didn't you?" And he said, "Yes, I did."

I said, "Would you help me to become an American citizen?" He laughed, he fell off his chair he was laughing so much. "What do you mean you want me to help you, Jill?"

I said, "Well, I don't know how to become an American citizen. You've done it, you've got the books. Where do I get the books? If I just came, would you go over the 50 questions I have to learn the answers to and would you help me with them?"

BT said he would. Because BT had become a citizen, he was able to help me become one too. I'm a citizen of heaven and I want to help you become one too. So why don't you pray with me? Perhaps if you want to ask the King of the Kingdom into your heart and you're not quite sure what to say, maybe you'd like to borrow my words. Maybe say something like this:

"O King Jesus, thank you for leaving your throne in heaven to come down to my world. To live your life and tell us about the Kingdom, how to get into it, how to enjoy it, how to live in it as a good citizen. Lord, I know that you've said the Kingdom of God is within me. I'm not quite sure if you're there. I've heard about you, I know about you, I know a lot about you, but I'm not quite sure and I'd like to make sure. So I let down the drawbridge of my life, and I invite you, King Jesus, to walk over it, to take your place and your rightful place on the throne of my heart. I pray that I may renounce all my allegiance to any other potentate, that I may bow my knees before you and serve you and pledge allegiance to you, be willing to fight for you, to make a difference in my world. Welcome, Lord Jesus, take your throne, and may I have you high and lifted up on the throne of my life from this point on. I ask it for your Kingdom's sake, Amen."