In 2 Kings 13, Elisha the Prophet instructs Joash, King of Israel, to take arrows and strike the ground with them as a prophetic act of destroying his enemy. We know that Joash acted accordingly but lacked the fervency that the prophet expected him to have. Because of this, the king did not see complete victory over his enemy.
We believe the Lord has given the Body of Christ some key “arrows of victory” that we can fervently use to “strike the ground” of the spiritual enemies of our day to see darkness dispelled and God’s kingdom established in the most unreached nations of the earth.
Prayer, Proclamation, Demonstration, & Transformation
Prayer and Intercession
One of the greatest weapons the Lord has given us is prayer, and it is through prayer and intercession that we advance the kingdom. The Apostle Paul said, “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-6)
“The prayers of God’s saints are the capital stock in heaven by which Christ carries on His great work upon earth.”
E.M Bounds
James the apostle’s testimony of the power of prayer was this, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months, it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.” (James 5:16-18)
The halls of church history are filled with the testimonies of the power of prayer and I believe this is where we must start when taking the kingdom of God to the nations.
Proclamation
The proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom has to be a primary goal of the Christian worker. Yes, we need to focus on the building up of the body of Christ in our local regions, but if we want to participate in “hastening the coming of the day of God”1 then we need to give ourselves to the work of proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom to every unreached nation. Jesus said the end won’t come until we do!
And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Matthew 24:14
The word used as nation many times in the New Testament is ethnos which often means tribe, nation, or people group.2 We so often think of a nation as a geographical country, but we need to understand that there are many nations (tribes/people groups) within a country and those nations are waiting to hear the good news of the gospel.3
Demonstration
In Mark 16:20 we see that along with the proclamation of the gospel, there was also a demonstration of the gospel. “And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.“
Acts 5:12, “many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles.“
In Acts 15:12 we read, “All the people kept silent, and they were listening to Barnabas and Paul as they were relating what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.“
“And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.“
Paul the Apostle – 1 Corinthians 2:3-5
This should be normative in our gospel preaching. It IS a part of the gospel of the kingdom. A weak toothless gospel 4 is not the gospel of the kingdom. A gospel that does not liberate the captive is not the gospel of the kingdom. A gospel that lacks a demonstration of the presence and power of God is not the gospel. “For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power“.5
Transformation
Transformation comes in the way of renewing our minds. The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Vine’s Expository Dictionary defines the word conformed as “to fashion or shape one thing like another.”
Knights in Shining Armor
Think of it like this, the medieval knights of the 14th century wore solid plate armor suits that had been “fashioned” or “shaped” into the form of a human body. This fashioning was accomplished by the use of a hammer and anvil. A sheet of iron and the continuous blows of a blacksmith shaped the armor. Dink, dink, dink – blow by blow the suit was produced over weeks or maybe even months.
Similarly, the enemy begins shaping and conforming us from the time we come out of our mother’s wombs. Each day we are surrounded by the enemy’s use of social media, news, arts, politics, the education systems of this world, etc. to shape us into the image that he [Satan] desires for us. It’s not until we come to Christ and are born again that we understand this. It’s only then that our eyes are opened and we begin to understand just how conformed to the image of the world we have become.
Transformation Through Discipleship
Transformation comes in the way of discipleship and discipleship should be at the core of all we do. As I’ve shared publically many times, the New Testament uses the word Christian 3 times but the word disciple is used 269 times. Clearly, the focus of NT Christianity is on being a disciple of Christ. It is the very commission of our Lord:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,”
Jesus – Matthew 28:19
It’s within discipleship that we find our identity as children of God, it’s where we learn: to become followers of Jesus, to be in relationship with the Body of Christ, to be obedient to Christ’s commands, to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord,” to bear fruit, to pray and prophecy and to be equipped in the gifts of the Spirit,6 and to become a disciple who makes disciples.
“Discipleship is the process of becoming who Jesus would be if he were you.”
Dallas Willard
- https://biblehub.com/2_peter/3-12.htm ↩︎
- https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g1484/esv/mgnt/0-1/ ↩︎
- Romans 10:14-15 ↩︎
- https://archive.askdrbrown.org/library/our-gospel-has-no-teeth ↩︎
- https://biblehub.com/esv/1_corinthians/4.htm ↩︎
- 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 ↩︎
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