God has always desired a people who would choose to walk with Him—to follow Him and to come into agreement with Himin the earth.

Generation after generation He has desired a people He could elevate to such a place that all the nations of the world would know they were the ones He had blessed.

But there has always been a problem. It existed in the Garden of Eden and was in the children of Israel in the wilderness. To a great extent, it’s in the Church today. The problem? Disobedient people.

Under the old covenant, the people had to be obedient by keeping the Law diligently, with their souls—their minds, wills and emotions.

Under the new covenant, we’re to keep God’s Word not only with our souls, but with our hearts (our spirits). It’s so much easier for us to be obedient to God than it was for them because we have a new heart, born again in the image and nature of God.

More than ever, we should be obedient to Him because now we don’t have to walk according to Old Testament law, but in newness of our born-again spirits. We’ve been reborn to be obedient.

While we’re here on the earth, we must do what we can for God. This includes being obedient and victorious in every area of our lives.

Jesus knew this when He was a man on the earth. He was raised among people who knew they had to obey the voice of God and keep His statutes. He learned what the prophets of God before Him had said, and began a walk of perfect obedience.

Gloria Copeland

Of course, if you want to sow into the
kingdom of God you must first be born again.
You do that simply by making Jesus the Lord
of your life.

You can read the Bible all day, and it won’t
make sense to you if you haven’t taken that
first step. The great kingdom truths it contains
will be hidden from you. Why? Because, as
Jesus said, “Except a man be born again, he
cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

A person who hasn’t been born again
simply cannot understand the way God
thinks. The ways of His kingdom are beyond
his grasp because he is in darkness.

A person who has been born again,
however, is translated into God’s kingdom.
He immediately has the ability to know and
walk in God’s ways. How much he does from
then on is up to him. The more he seeks after
God and His way of doing and being right,
the more of His power and dominion he’ll
enjoy. The more he renews his mind to God’s
Word—which is His way of thinking—and
changes his life in obedience to that Word,
the more he’ll see the kingdom of heaven
manifest in his life and the lives of those
around him.

The wonderful thing about the kingdom of
God is that you don’t have to be rich or smart
or talented to walk in it. Anyone can do it. All
you have to do is find out what God says and
act on it. When you do, blessings—heavenly
breakthroughs—will begin to happen.

So I want to encourage you to start
today investing more of yourself—your
time, thought and energy—into seeking the
kingdom of God. Determine in your heart to
change some areas in your life. Dig into the
Word more deeply and find out what God
says about those areas. Then start acting like
He does instead of like the world.

Heighten your awareness of the kingdom
of God. Become more and more kingdom-of-
God minded. Then get ready for the blessings
of heaven—the lavish, liberal-to-excess,
extravagant and over-abounding favors of the
kingdom of God—to break through on you!

Gloria Copeland