Kingdom Alignment Releases Kingdom Authority by Wolfgang Simson

How many people who call themselves Christian today can be found playing outside the Kingdom, the governmental framework of God, because they neither respect nor obey his official rules?  We would recognize them quickly by an absence of blessing. No fruit that lasts, no multiplication, and no world impact (Gen1.22, 28).

With God’s blessing, obeying the rules and respecting the blueprints of God for life, church, sex, money and power, we will see a return of fruitfulness, multiplication and a movement that quickly covers the entire globe. This will be a movement of authentic, divine power. But this will happen only if we are not only loved and graced – but also blessed.

And the blessing (Hebrew barakah, meaning knee) of the King requires that we are the kneeling subjects of the King. The essence of the Kingdom of God is the domain of his uncontested rule. And why would anyone do such a thing, kneeling in front of a king, voluntarily, freely, out of his own choice, without being forced with a gun to his head? The answer is a simple as it is powerful. Love! God loves us; we are invited to love him back. We then fall hopelessly and madly in love with the family of the King, our new family, with one another. And together we love the world, in self-sacrificial service, and do anything that it takes to introduce them to our King. Just like God modeled it for us.

Whoever finds a king becomes his legal subject. Such a person from now on respects the King, his values and principles – the kind of justice that is valid before him, his righteousness and his kingdom-law – as top priority in life (Mt 6,33).

Nothing can compete any longer with the role that Jesus the King now plays in a new royal subject’s life. And in a world where everyone screams for our loyalty –patriotism, religion, tradition, clans, money, supermarkets, power, fun, political doctrines, tithe-collecting churches, systems and gurus of all kinds – a person that is loyal to Jesus as King sticks out like a fish swimming against the tide. Such a loyalty leads to legitimacy. Why? Because only tested and proven loyalty leads to legitimacy. Loyalty that does not stand up when challenged is cheap.

Nobody gives a driver’s license to a 15 year old simply because he can drive a car real fast. The teenager has to demonstrate that he can handle the car and the traffic well, and even more that he knows the traffic rules and actually abides by them. In Europe, driving license is issued only when one is 18 and with that he can now officially and legitimately drive a car. He had very much the ability, the power, to drive a car before, but now he has the license to exercise this power and ability in an official, legal, recognized way.

In the same way that weapons don’t belong into the hands of untrained children, the awakening of sexual ability during teenage years does not automatically mean that teenagers are allowed to practice sexuality if they want with whom they want whenever they want. It is just like with a driver’s license: there is a driver’s license for sex. This license is officially awarded by the society, including the own parents, after proving that a person is able to handle sexuality in a disciplined and responsible way – and not wild, out of bounds and with purely selfish motives. This driver’s license is called marriage. Sexuality without this license trespasses God’s creational order and borders. It hurts blossoming life like trampling on flowers before they bloom, and pays a horrendous price.

Kingdom Alignment

The same is true for charismata, the charismatic gifts of God, given to every child of God through the Holy Spirit. Charisma requires character; and truly precious gifts call for a proper way of handling them. The more powerful something is that God is placing into our hands, the more maturity we will need not to create an unhealthy disaster, but to be good stewards of God’s grace and use his gifts according to the directives of the King.

Power (Greek dunamis) in God’s kingdom is not just ability (charisma) to actually do something („I can heal, therefore I heal; I can evangelize, therefore I evangelize“), but always official power (exousia), legitimate power, power that is bound to the King, aligned to his Kingdom and therefore licensed, endorsed power. Mere abilities that are naively exercised without official license and endorsement, quickly become the foundation of misused, robbed, assumed power, usurped power that inevitable leads to the establishment of self-centered, human empires, precisely because they don’t care for God’s Kingdom law.

Such power, applied in ignorance or even defiance of God’s rule that does not care about the directives of the King, is essential theft. It is illegitimate power that does not find God’s backing. If such power becomes self-aware and therefore corrupt, it will inevitably try to back up itself, prove itself, or force itself on others, even if this means the twisting of arms and manipulation of other people.

Even Jesus had to prove his loyalty towards God. When he was „led into the desert, full of the Holy Spirit“(Lk 4:1), he was challenged by Lucifer in three crucial tests. Why did Jesus pass all those tests with such high honors? Because he did not argue and act in his own best interests and simply used his amazing abilities (power) just because he had them at his fingertips. He demonstrated a much more powerful truth: that he is under orders, evident by him referring back again and again to a law that is above him: it is written!

Jesus throws it into whoever finds a king becomes his legal subject. Such a person from now on respects the King, his values and principles – the kind of justice that is valid before him, his righteousness and his kingdom-law – as top priority in life (Mt 6,33). Nothing can compete any longer with the role that Jesus the King now plays in a new royal subject’s life. And in a world where everyone screams for our loyalty –patriotism, religion, tradition, clans, money, supermarkets, power, fun, political doctrines, tithe-collecting churches, systems and gurus of all kinds – a person that is loyal to Jesus as King sticks out like a fish swimming against the tide. Such a loyalty leads to legitimacy. Why? Because only tested and proven loyalty leads to legitimacy. Loyalty that does not stand up when challenged is cheap.

Power (Greek dynamis) in God’s kingdom is not just ability (charisma) to actually do something („I can heal, therefore I heal; I can evangelize, therefore I evangelize“), but always official power (exousia), legitimate power, power that is bound to the King, aligned to his Kingdom and therefore licensed, endorsed power.

Mere abilities that are naively exercised without official license and endorsement, quickly become the foundation of misused, robbed, assumed power, usurped power that inevitable leads to the establishment of self-centered, human empires, precisely because they don’t care for God’s Kingdom law. Such power, applied in ignorance or even defiance of God’s rule that does not care about the directives of the King, is essential theft. It is illegitimate power that does not find God’s backing. If such power becomes self-aware and therefore corrupt, it will inevitably try to back up itself, prove itself, or force itself on others, even if this means the twisting of arms and manipulation of other people.

Even Jesus had to prove his loyalty towards God. When he was „led into the desert, full of the Holy Spirit“ (Lk 4:1), he was challenged by Lucifer in three crucial tests. Why did Jesus pass all those tests with such high honors? Because he did not argue and act in his own best interests and simply used his amazing abilities (power) just because he had them at his fingertips. He demonstrated a much more powerful truth: that he is under orders, evident by him referring back again and again to a law that is above him: it is written! Jesus throws it into Satan’s face like a bomb that he, other than Satan himself, is still voluntarily very much bound by God’s word.

He is the intentional subject of an objective codex that God has established, and therefore Jesus cannot and will not act in his own best interest, purely selfish and subjectively concerned with “what’s in it for me”. He demonstrates both to God and the devil: “Your will, not mine, be done!” This totally robs the devil of any chance to handle Jesus, so that he had to shake his head in utter frustration and sneak away.

But this is only one part of the story: before his father in heaven, Jesus had just passed the tests of his loyalty, and therefore he is handed the license, given the official nod to – from now on – use his charismatic gifts, his God-given powers, in an authorized and official way that Satan has no chance to object. Jesus returns from the desert as someone given exousia, authorized power to perform dynamis: powerful signs and wonders. The desert was his graduation. From now on he is not only “full of the Holy Spirit” (full of abilities and possibilities), but he has been given official license (exousia) to use these abilities in accordance and in personal synchronization with his father (John 5:19.20; 8:38) on a day-to-day basis.

Does it not strike you that this moment is exactly the time when the ministry of Jesus is transformed, the power is “switched on” and literally the supernatural sparks fly? If Jesus needed such a legitimization of his own loyalty as the Son of God, will we be able to do without? The solution to the amazing power crisis of great segments of Christianity is not a lack of the power of the Holy Spirit or a lack of gifts, but a lack of authentication, of license that has to do with our shortcoming in legal Kingdom existence.

As long as we believe we can play church or ministry any way we want it (which is improper in the Kingdom),and if we are not apostolic in the biblical sense that we are sent forth by God, but basically send us out ourselves, if our motives are driven by anything else than our loving obedience to the King, wishing to do as he pleases, the King will not command his presence. He will always love us and grace us, but as he is bound to his own word, he will not bless us. He will not regularly confirm his word with signs and wonders (Mk 16:20), because we are not really his authentic subjects, who are legitimately bound to the King. Our way of life, ministry and the way we “do church” in transgression of Kingdom law proves this for all to see (maybe with the exception of – us).

The problem therefore is not charisma, but exousia. If we fail our graduations, our very own desert-tests, again and again, it is because we basically rebel against God’s rule, act in our own best interests and do not abide by his principles. This is such a powerful transgression that it makes us illegal aliens in God’s Kingdom. In that case, no amount of begging, fasting, praying, singing, the laying on of countless hands or magic self-appointing – by “declaring and decreeing ourselves to be mighty miracle workers” – will do the trick.

Every human will be tested – Adam, Eve, Abraham, Moses, Josef, David, Peter, Paul -, so that David can write in his Psalm 139:“Search me, oh God, and know my heart, test me …”. But those that pass those tests, which are always tests of our loyalty to God, become legitimate. And a legitimate life, a life that does not speak or repeat hollow and cheap words, but has been tested in the fire, ultimately becomes authentic, and therefore convicting. Words can convince, but only a life backed up by God convicts.

Everything else will be religious hypocrisy, which the secular world despises, and rightly so. But when we live what we preach, it leads to authenticity. The whole world searches for genuineness, the real deal. And life in God’s Kingdom is very real, and therefore different from life in this world. It is authentic life, “abundant life”, a life in fullness (John 10), Life 2.0, not Life 1.0. As we can see with the example of Jesus, this does not describe a materially successful, secure, rich and healthy life that requires us to walk this earth eternally smiling as a part of a triumphant cult. It means a life that reaches its goal, fulfills its mission and purpose and is able to give life to others, because it is overflowing with life itself.

Such a life cannot remain hidden and invisible, because no one lives in a vacuum. It is tangible and authentic in the six main domains of life: family, education, communication, culture, business and politics. And these are exactly the six areas in which the power of God will become evident, and difficult to ignore for anyone.

Jesus said: If we don’t become like children, we cannot become part of the Kingdom of God. And if we are outside the Kingdom, outside God’s stadium, we can stand there with our religious songbooks, manuals, conference brochures and remain collecting visiting cards of as many Christian gurus that we had pray over us as long as we want. Nothing will change.

But if we dare become faceless nobodies, the loyal subjects of our King, that do as the King pleases; if we western renegades and hyper-individualists become again loyal and legitimate in the Kingdom and demonstrate the ability for individual and corporate obedience – which requires a true miracle of God, then we even might learn to do something entirely unthinkable. We will learn to swim in swarms like the fish that God created, and learn to fly in formation as every bird in God’s sky teaches us every  day. This is when the sky will be the limit of what such a “church under God” can and will do. This is the lesson that the children – the non-western, former mission fields – are today teaching their parents – the new contemporary western mission fields.

The church in the cultural West today will need to stoop down and humble itself to listen and learn what it’s children – the church in the non-West – is whispering back to them: obey your King, let go of your unholy individualism; return to be faceless (no)bodies attached to an incredible head – the King. And you, also, will be given exousia, legal power to lead an explosive life in all areas, business, politics, culture, arts, education and family included.

This is how you move from success to significance. It happens when nobodies, who have died to self and denied their ego, become true disciples of Jesus, He makes all of us fit into that very spot that the King has designed us to fill, and thus fulfill our lives’ mission. This is how our lives hit bulls eye like a straight arrow, how we will finish well, and eventually hear that priceless words from the mouth of the King himself, for which everything was worth it: “Well done, you faithful servant.”

Wolgang Simson

for full text: http://www.simsonwolfgang.de/power-bookchapterSIMSON.pdf