An important question for us to answer as we come into the days of the Kingdom is why we have this block in our natures or in our personalities that we are not able to freely receive the gifts He is giving us. God has already done all that He needs to do through Christ to give us everything pertaining to life and godliness in His Kingdom—and yet we seem to be incapable of just reaching out our hands and receiving from Him all that He has for us.

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Show Notes:

The Father is seeking to give us all things—and all that He did in and through Christ was with this purpose of giving us all things.

Yet, part of the reason we are not able to receive from God is that we recognize all that He has gone through to provide these gifts. Christ paid such a heavy cost to purchase these things for us—salvation, the Kingdom, the blessings—and now He wants to just give them to us. When someone tries to give you something of great value, it can be hard to receive because you recognize the price they paid, and you know there is no way you could have ever obtained it on your own.

But God desires to make us partakers of His divine nature and escape the corruption that is in the world—and part of this corruption is related to our refusal to receive the life that He freely seeks to give to us. So, we must receive the Kingdom without any reluctance or unwillingness if we are going to walk into the days of the Kingdom.

Whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all. There is no other way to get the Kingdom other than to freely receive it with a great dose of thankfulness. God has prepared a Kingdom to give to us and He says it is ours and He looks for us to enter it by simply receiving it from Him.

Key Verses:

• Romans 8:31–32. “If God is for us, who is against us?”
• Matthew 23:37. “How often I wanted to gather your children together.”
• John 5:39–40. “You search the Scriptures … it is these that testify about Me.”
• 2 Corinthians 6:11–13. “But you are restrained in your own affections.”
• Romans 8:27–30. “God causes all things to work together for good.”
• Galatians 4:2–4. “When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son.”
  
• 2 Peter: 1:2-4 “For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises”
• Luke 1:31–33. “And the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.”
• Daniel 7:18. “The saints of the Highest One will … possess the kingdom forever.”
• Luke 12:31–32. “Your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom.”
• Luke 18:16–17. “For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”
• Mark 10:13–16. “For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”
• John 16:23–24. “If you ask the Father for anything … He will give it to you.”
• Ephesians 2:8–10. “By grace you have been saved … and that not of yourselves.”

Quotes:

• “Christ had to receive the Kingdom. He did not work for it. He was given the Kingdom and He had to be brought to the place where He was willingly able to receive it from the Father. And so, as He had to receive the Kingdom and could not work in order to gain it, we also must rid ourselves of all reluctance and unwillingness to just simply receive the gift that He is wanting to give us.”
• “We need to seek more love. The Father first loved us so that we could love Him back. If we are able to completely open up to the tremendous love that He has for us, then we will find our hearts open to receiving all that He has done for us.”
• “Our works are prepared for us by God before we ever arrived on this Earth. Works are simply the walking out of His gift and His will in our lives. We must remember that all that happens is by the gift of God into our lives.”

Takeaways:

1. Yeshua (Jesus) identified the unwillingness of mankind to simply receive what God wanted to provide—and so we must confess and admit that this unwillingness exists within us.
2. Paul also identified the same reluctance to receive in the hearts of the Corinthians—and we must see this reluctance in ourselves.
3. Let us get rid of this issue in our lives. We must crucify the nature in us that is unwilling and refuses to receive by the grace of God all that the Father is giving to us through Christ.
4. The Kingdom will be given to us—but only if we have a pure, childlike openness to receive it.