There are so many messages out there about salvation, repentance, producing good works, and having faith in God—all wonderful teachings from God’s precious holy written Word—but isn’t it interesting that when it was time for Jesus to choose his disciples, His first demonstration of kingdom power was to teach on the law of abundance and how to take a harvest (Luke 5:3-7). In fact, the catch of fish that Peter caught was so large it tore his nets and he needed the help of James and John to take in the catch. It also says in the same passage that the boats began to sink from the heavy load. Out of the many things Jesus could have used as an invitation to follow Him; He chose the message of abundance and then He followed the message with an extraordinary act of abundance.

The message of the kingdom encompasses abundance. Abundant life, abundant resources, abundant health, abundant grace, abundant power, abundant peace and so many other things too numerous to name. And out of all the things Jesus could have done to compel these young men to follow Him, it was an act of abundance that spoke to their hearts. The scripture says that amazement had seized Peter after the massive catch of fish (Luke 5:9). It was this act of abundance that caused Peter to repent for questioning the Lord’s command to cast his nets into the water after he had already endured a long night of effort to produce a catch yielding zero results.

The point is this; if we want to catch fish then we need to speak to people about God’s abundance.

When Jesus showed up in Peter’s boat, He didn’t point out Peter’s flaws, He spoke to Peter and His friends about the greatness of God and the abundance of the kingdom of God to meet every need; heal every heart; and change every life—in abundance. The message of God’s abundant goodness was more than enough to convict Peter of His sin. He certainly didn’t need Jesus to point out his faults; therefore, it is important for us to speak abundance into the lives of those God brings to us for comfort, for healing, for deliverance. We need to talk about how big our God is and share with the world that what He did for Peter and James and John, He can do for them and for their situation. All things are possible for anyone who chooses to believe (Mark 9:23).

God wants to show up in power for the lost in a big way and He especially wants to show up in abundance for His chosen ones. Does this mean we neglect to teach others about the need for repentance, or salvation, or blessing God with good works? Of course not, but when we need to capture the hearts of those God is seeking to bless. We need to go big with our messaging. Our testimony of God’s goodness should manifest amazement in the eyes and ears of the hearer. Yes, there will be times when we are to approach some in gentleness and with great caution, perhaps even treating them with kid gloves; but for the most part, we must be exuding the power of God in our personal lives and sharing what we know with others about the GREATNESS of God’s abundance. Abundant living! Abundant health! Abundant blessings! Abundant love! It is written in the good Book, “What no eye has seen, [and] no ear has heard, and no human heart has conceived—God has prepared these things for those who love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Woohoo! So the next time you have an opportunity to testify the love of Jesus to another soul, saved or unsaved, think about proclaiming the abundance of God to them and using examples from your own life that confirm His deep desire to amaze us with His goodness. I bet you’ll catch a lot more fish when you do.

At What You Will™, we spend a lot of time covering kingdom principles that produce dynamic results. We teach Biblical concepts that show others how to take hold of God’s very best for daily living. By walking out the Word, we can all achieve powerful results for every situation. Right now, God is shifting things in the realm of the spirit, and He is compelling this ministry to expand our teaching to include dynamic results that shift culture and not only one’s personal sphere of influence. God is not only calling us to impact our families, but to impact our neighborhoods, our cities and even the nations. He is calling us to shift mindsets and to prepare the way for a manifestation of His glory that can only come through His people. It is time for us to be seated at the head of the table on the world’s stage. It is not His will that we continue to drink the dregs from the bottom of the cup.

What does it mean to shift culture?

Shifting culture means debunking demonic mindsets that keep governments, neighborhoods and families in a state of economic and spiritual bondage to strongholds of poverty, drug abuse, gender confusion, hopelessness, disease and fear to name a few. These strongholds can only be broken through kingdom principles found in God’s Word. A successful shift in culture is established when kingdom-based principles become the norm in a society and not the exception. As Christian’s, when we shift culture, we are correcting the way God is perceived in the earth by those who do not know Him. Kingdom living should be so contagious in a society that people outside the fellowship of God are compelled to acquire the “God-kind” of life they see us living. When the people in our spheres of influence can consistently see that the principles we apply to daily living really do work, they will seek out any means possible to understand who our God is and how they can come to know Him personally.

So how do we shift culture?

We shift culture by taking authority over the spheres of influence that are overrun by the demonic. Some of those spheres are entertainment and media, arts and music, education and medicine, politics and religion. It is our job as ambassadors of the Kingdom to lay the groundwork for the manifestation of God’s power in the earth. God is looking for a builder whose maker is the Lord Jesus. The Scripture teaches us that we are one with Jesus just as He is one with the Father. We are commissioned to be Christ in the earth; therefore, it is up to us to build a foundation of righteous influence in our communities. Coupled with a dynamic manifestation of God’s power, the world will not be able to discredit the evidence that living the “God-kind” of life produces for those who live their life for Him.

We are commissioned to manifest the love of God, the power of God, and the mercy of God in our homes, our churches and our marketplaces. God is looking to inhabit spheres of influence through us so we can take regions for His glory. He said, “…be it on earth as it is in Heaven”. This is a command. If this isn’t a directive from God the Father, then why is it in the Book?

Revelation 5:10 …and hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.

1. We rule and reign on the earth through the power and leading of Holy Spirit. God has fully equipped us to be kings and priests on this earth (Revelation 1:6). He has given us as the Body of Christ, dominion over the devil and his demonic platforms in the spirit (Luke 16:19).

2. Whatever you bind on earth WILL be bound in heaven (Matthew 18:18) and the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds (2 Corinthians 10:4).

Notice that the word “heaven” in Matthew 18:18 isn’t capitalized? Jesus is speaking of the realm of the spirit—the second heaven where spiritual warfare takes place. There is no need to bind and loose anything in Heaven itself because there is no darkness in Heaven that needs to be bound.

3. Life on earth should resemble the kingdom of Heaven and there is no darkness in that kingdom. God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:17). There is no fear in Heaven. Heaven-culture is peaceful, lovely, captivating, and joyful. Our lives here on earth should represent the same spiritual qualities.

Jesus has given us authority to tread on scorpions and to have power over ALL the power of the enemy (Luke 16:19). He expects us to be His representatives on the earth. Yes, we are called to shift culture by ministering to a hurting and broken world, but we are also called to disciple those we retrieve from the clutches of darkness. It is our responsibility to preach the Kingdom and encourage those we disciple to do the same in their own spheres of influence. The Scripture says, “Whoever therefore shall break one of the least of these commandments and shall teach others to do so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:19). We are called to be great; therefore, we are to teach kingdom principles to everyone.

4. We make declarations and decrees over our families, our neighborhoods, our jobs, our governing bodies. Jesus said we can have whatsoever we desire when we pray (Mark 11:24). In Heaven, no one goes without anything. Mansions are filled with God’s best. The streets are paved with gold; the bed of the Crystal Sea is covered in rubies, diamonds, emeralds and other precious stones. There is absolutely no lack in Heaven. People eat, drink, dance, enjoy and share everything they have with one another and live in a culture of unity. The Body of Christ is called to live together in unity under the anointing of the Son and we must do more than preach this truth, we have to live it and live it like they do in Heaven.

Even as He is, so are we in this world (1 John 4:17). Jesus didn’t leave us comfortless and without resources. He sent us the Holy Spirit of God to assist us, guide us, direct us and empower us to do the will of the Father. And lest we forget, He has overcome the world (John 16:33) and we are joint-heirs with Him in this life, not just the next.

We are to call those things that are not as though they were (Romans 4:17). If we know that Jesus has called us to kingdom living then we need to declare and decree those things that produce kingdom living. The Bible says we are to call those things that are not as though they were [already done]. We can safely surmise from this scripture that we shift culture by speaking to it. Jesus said we have not because we ask not. Well, now it is time to ask; to declare; to decree; and to expect that what we are confessing is going to come to pass!

Why we need to shift culture for God.

Jesus is coming back for a glorified Body; and saint’s, He cannot come back while we are warring among ourselves (1 Corinthians 3:3; 1 Corinthians 11:18). We have got to find a place of agreement and shifting darkened mindsets from ignorance to the goodness of the Father is an easy thing for all of us in the Body of Christ to agree upon. Jesus made it quite plain when He said in the Word that the world would know Him by our love for one another. Are we there yet?

There are hundreds and hundreds of denominations in the world today; each denomination teaching and preaching something slightly different than another. Some preach repentance from dead works but have no manifestation of Holy Spirit in their congregations. Their parishioners are sick and poor and many are dying early. Then there are other denominations that teach on the gifts of the Holy Spirit and on the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but they live in bondage to hatred, jealousy and backbiting. Praying in tongues and casting out devils doesn’t make one spiritually mature. Even people who move in more than one of the nine gifts of the Spirit can be carnally-minded.

With so many voices in the church world and each one vying for acknowledgement (or for a personal endorsement from this group or that group) it can be a challenge to find principles we can all agree upon; but surely we can all agree upon creating Heaven-culture on the earth? The world needs Heavenly principles taught by the Body of Christ to live successfully and the church needs Heavenly principles in operation before it will ever see a rapture. Jesus said to preach the “Kingdom” and then He would return for His Bride. How in the world can Jesus come for a bride that looks like we do now? Currently, we are limited in our ability as a group to manifest His glory on a national and international scale because of the divisions still apparent in the Church. So until we clean up our own house and remove the disunity from within our own walls, the rapture isn’t coming anytime soon; so we might as well roll up our rapture rugs and get about the business of the Kingdom. It is time to take our places as king’s and priests unto our God so we can shake the gates of hell to its very core and TAKE dominion over darkness. We are called to subdue and dominate in this earth; Jesus made this clear in the Word.

Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God (Romans 8:14); so we must act like sons. How do we begin walking as sons of God?

1. We must be in right-standing with God.
2. We must be in constant fellowship with God.
3. We must be in the Word of God DAILY; taking His prescription for divine health and victorious living in these last days. How can we raise up anointed schools, anointed businesses and God-directed governments if we as a Body are slaves to bondage?
4. We must KNOW who we are in Christ Jesus; we are joint-heirs with God. We are His offspring and we are called to represent Him in the earth and to be people who walk in love towards others and manifest His plans and purposes for the world.
5. We are to annihilate the enemy with the Word of God and we are to work with God’s mighty warring Army, the host’s of Heaven to tear down demonic strongholds.
6. We are to take territory from the enemy through decrees and declarations; proclaiming God’s perfect will for our homeland, our families and our individual lives.
7. We are to live in an atmosphere of gratitude for God’s amazing love and His gift to us through Jesus Christ who has made us partakers of His wonderful grace.
8. We are to continue in the faith until He decides it is time for the trumpet to be blown and the saint’s are to be called home for life in the ever after—until then, we are to war against the demonic and glorify God with our daily walk.

The Church as a corporate body has failed to grasp exactly what God has been asking her to do since the days Jesus walked upon the earth. Jesus told us to take dominion. The commission to subdue the earth and take dominion first began with Adam and Eve in the garden, but even though they failed, their failure didn’t negate the will of God for this planet. Jesus Christ is the second Adam and He came to fulfill the plans and purposes of God, not to walk away from them—many individuals in the Body of Christ have done a disservice to the Kingdom of God by living life from the doctrines of the rapture and thus refusing to engage in kingdom principles that will advance kingdom living here on the earth. We are commanded in the Word of God to push back the darkness and to make way for the return of our King, the Lord Jesus. Jesus didn’t say to the disciples, preach the baptism of faith and I’ll return. He didn’t say, preach baptism from dead works then I’ll return. He didn’t say to His follower’s; “Preach the baptism of repentance so I can return”. He commanded them to preach the gospel of the KINGDOM. He said to preach the kingdom!

There is no baptism of faith in Heaven, we acquire that here. There is no baptism from dead works in Heaven; we learn to produce fruit from His Spirit right here. There is no baptism of repentance in Heaven; if you don’t repent here, you won’t even see a Heaven, much less be accepted by God. We are called to preach on the Kingdom of Heaven and Jesus has given us multiple examples of what Heaven looks like through the parables he gave to the disciples. Does this mean that we negate the call to repent? Do we extinguish the call to produce godly fruit from righteous living? Are we to abort the message of faith? Of course not! All of these teachings help us to sustain holy living, but we are to preach the Kingdom of God to a lost and dying world as He commanded us to and THEN He will come in the clouds on a white horse of glory and finally get us out of here! Therefore, it is imperative that we understand the Kingdom—how it operates—and how we use kingdom principles to produce dynamic results in daily living here, so we can teach others to do the same and shift culture.

We really enjoy our assignment to teach kingdom principles at What You Will™; but as much as we enjoy taking territory from the enemy and marking it for God’s purposes, just like the next person, we would like to get out of here and move onto our forever home with God in Heaven; but certain conditions have to be met before God is going to take us all out of here.

Dear children, preach the Kingdom.