Psalms 8:1, 31:1-4, 123:1-3, and 5:1-3

My Shepherd met me in His green pastures and laid me down in 1 Corinthians 3. The Mind of the Spirit engaged the spirit of my mind in verses 21-23:

1Corinthians 3:21 ¶ Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours;

1Corinthians 3:22 Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours;

1Corinthians 3:23 And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.

We have no reason to glory in men because “All things are [ours]” (1 Corinthians 3:21). Look at this: the ministers Christ gifted to us (Ephesians 4:8-14), the world, life and death, things present and things to come: All are ours, and we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.

Along the still waters, I remembered Jim Morrison singing “We want the world and we want it now” when I was about 15 years old (1966-1967). The hippies were doing their thing, Viet Nam was raging, Black Panthers were prowling, agitating for violent revolution against the Red, White, and Blue, and the American system.*

But all of this was background noise to me; disturbing, but they had very little political power at that time.

Anyway, when I heard Morrison scream, “We want the world, and we want it now,” I chuckled to myself; thought about how crazy this world would be if “He” got it—“faces come out of the rain, when your strange.”

About one year later I became a Christian, and I didn’t know it at the time, but on the day I received Christ, I got the world.

The world is ours! It’s ours because it’s His (Romans 8:17).

I wrote a book, God’s War: Why Christians Should Rule the World. I could have titled it, “Why Christians Will Rule the World” (“Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years” (Revelation 20:6).

“Oh, so, one day it will be ours?” No,  it’s ours now. You are a believer, right? Does your body belong to Christ now? Will it finally belong to Him when you are resurrected and given a body like His (Philippians 3:20-21)? Actually, it belongs to Him now even though He has not yet taken possession (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). We have a responsibility to “present” to Him our body (Romans 12:1-2).

The same thing is true with regard to the world, and these things are connected: the resurrection and our reign; and they are connected in the same way.

Your body belongs to Christ now, but now you are called to “present your body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God” as your “reasonable service” (Romans 12:1-2). At the resurrection, He will “redeem the purchased possession” (Ephesians 1:13-14),and transform this body into one like His own (Philippians 3;20-21; 1 Corinthians 15:51-58).

The world belongs to Christ now (Matthew 28:18; Ephesians 1:12-21; Revelation 1:5), but it must be surrendered to Him, like our body must be surrendered to Him. Satan and the children of disobedience use force and violence to take what belongs to us and turn it against us, and against Christ (Psalm 2; John 15:18).

In the valley, I prayed with thanksgiving for the sacrifice Jesus made for us, repented for all the times and ways I have failed to surrender my body to His use, and promised to continue by faith wrestling against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in high places (Ephesians 6:12-20; see 1:12-23).

Jesus made clear what must be done: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

At the table, He reaffirmed all we discussed in the prayer closet, and impressed on me the truth that, “without me, ye can do nothing” (John 15:5), and that, on the other hand, we “can do all things through Christ” (Philippians 4:13).

He anointed my head with His oil and filled my cup with the day’s portion, intermingled with sufficient grace to drink it. Goodness and mercy follows me as I followed Him into His harvest.

Praying for revival! 🙏

Going live right away!

https://rumble.com/v7i143w-shepherds-pasture-we-have-the-world-and-we-have-it-now.html

[*Gus Hall, General Secretary of the American Communist Party (a Marxist-Leninist, and friend to the Soviets), Angela Davis, a famous communist activist who helped foment the Black Liberation movement, Herbert Aptheker, a leading Communist Party “intellectual,” who reinterpreted American history from a Marxist (Atheist) point of view capitalizing on the Civil Rights movement to agitator the overthrow of America; William Patterson wrote We Charge Genocide, published at about the time I was born (1951),  advocated for violence against whites for “crimes against the blacks.” Sokely Carmichael popularized the slogan: Black Power, and began to advocate for violence toward the end of his career, was very active in voter registration drives. Huey Newton co-founded the Black Panther Party in Oakland, CA and advocated for revolutionary socialism, and praised Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Bobby Seale, another founding member of the Black Panthers, advocated for violence. Eldridge Cleaver, another famous Black nationalist who advocated for a Marxist violent takeover of America, and H. Rap Brown, a militant Black nationalist and advocate for overthrowing America. All of these formed the Black hates Whites mentality that continues to plague our nation.]