Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing with you A series on “the Priority Rest” for successful kingdom living.
There are seven First things that Jesus taught in the book of Matthew that are absolutely

-changing,

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-giving, and destiny pointing.

Mt. 6:33 First seek the Kingdom Priorities
Mt. 5:24-25 First be reconciled to your brother Relationships
Mt. 7:4-5 First remove the log from your own eye Attitudes
Mt. 12:29 First bind the strong man Your Authority
Mt. 23: 26 First cleanse the inside Your inner world
Mt. 22:36-38 First the greatest command Your heart w/His
Mt. 28:1 First day of the week His Body

“A KINGDOM AGENDA”

Malachi 4:5-6 (NIV)
5 “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes.
6 He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.”
Malachi 4:5-6 (MSG)
5 “But also look ahead: I’m sending Elijah the prophet to clear the way for the Big Day of God—the decisive Judgment Day!
6 He will convince parents to look after their children and children to look up to their parents. If they refuse, I’ll come and put the land under a curse.”

God has

and is

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men and women from the church into the community! However, before we can become the kind of people that God is looking for and is looking to bless… there has to be a PRIORITY RESET.

The church today is growing in the number of churchgoers… but God is calling for

people.

• Listen there is a growing number of people

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  the doors of church buildings but many are in church suffering from what is called the “loser’s limp.”

• You understand…the loser’s limp is what happens when a ballplayer is supposed to catch the pass that is thrown in his direction and because he misjudges the ball and

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  the pass and he doesn’t want anyone to know that he blew it because of his own mistake, he falls down and gets up limping.

• It’s when the runner is going to get

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  in the 100 meters or the 200 meters and see that even though he should be winning because he is favorite to win…he is getting dusted so he comes up limping with a sudden muscle pull or cramp.

• A loser’s limp is a way of camouflaging failure.

• And saints of God, there are too many Christians who are camouflaging our

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  to be men of the kingdom!

• PEOPLE commonly allow excuses to get in the way of truth. “If it were not for the way I was raised,” or “Well, my father left my mother,” or “Everybody else was doing it so…” or “If it weren’t for this woman I got.” But the fact is whatever excuses there may be for failing to fulfill one’s agenda, in God’s Kingdom, it still does not get the job done!

You need to understand, that this message is not a “player – hater message.

I want to help

you to be all that God has called you to be and become. You make not be all that you want to be right now, but if you do the right things at the right time, you will be in alignment with fulfilling God’s call on your life.

I come to encourage you to

and challenge yourself to live up to your calling and destiny. God’s kingdom is desperately short of Kingdom-minded people.
We must understand that throughout the Bible, whenever Satan wanted to destroy civilization and attempt to stop the plan of God’s Kingdom, he went after the seed.

Our challenge is that just like the weather was the other day… hot and the next day chilly.

• There is a chilly spiritual climate that has

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  over so many Believers today.

• In other words talking and telling others but little to no self- application.

• A lot of smoke but not enough hate to start a fire/little substance.

• And that describes the situation we are facing in the church today…when it comes to Kingdom living.

o But (TBTG) it does not have to be that way. God has an exciting, challenging, and fulfilling Kingdom Agenda for His people.

o A real God focus… that you can live out.

God is seeking

men women who see God’s vision for his life, takes on Godly virtues and values, and as a result experiences Kingdom Victory!
1) KINGDOM PEOPLE HAS KINGDOM FOCUS/VISION

God is always looking for men whose hearts are

toward Him. The prophet Samuel told King Saul in 1 Samuel 13:14, “The Lord has sought out for Himself a man after His own heart.” In the days of Jeremiah the weeping prophet, his cry was that “There was no man who could be found faithful to the Lord.” God told Jeremiah to roam through the streets of Jerusalem and find just one man, “Who does justice, who seeks truth.”

Then God promised that if Jeremiah could find just one man, God promised that He would pardon the people and refrain the hand of their enemies. But Jeremiah could not find one man of justice and truth among the poor or the rich (Jeremiah 5:1 – 5). In Ezekiel 22:30 God says, that He was looking for a man to “Stand in the gap and make up the hedge for the city – but He found none.”

God has always been

, looking for faithful men. There are plenty of people, but what God wants is a person after His own heart. He wants people who have a vision of what God can do through him as he yields to the Kingdom’s agenda. He wants a man who will

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in the virtues and values of the Kingdom and who will trust Him for victory in every area of life.

Now, what is the Kingdom Agenda that God has given men? Well, let’s look at in Genesis 1:26, “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Now God included the woman in this too because the term “man” here is the term for mankind, not just the male. But then Adam will be given the headship in his relationship with Eve so that he is to be the servant-leader carrying out the Kingdom Agenda.

Now, this is a HUGE

! God wants man to rule and dominate the entire earth on His behalf, as His Kingdom representative. The vision God gave Adam was a worldwide vision; its dimensions were staggering. Adam, along with Eve, was not only to rule over the earth, but he was to bear and reproduce the image of God on the earth.

Now that is a Kingdom Sized FOCUS/Vision…that is bigger than any one man can pull off by himself.

• In other words God gave Adam something that was much larger than himself.
• God was allowing Adam the
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  to get in on what (God) was going to do and all Adam had to do was to see the big picture and follow God.

What about you? Has God called you to something that is far too big for you to accomplish on your own apart from His power? If so…congratulations! You have been chosen and given a Kingdom Vision!

You are a special, peculiar set

man of God! You see a lot of people are satisfied just to put in their eight hours, collect a paycheck, and go home and do it all over again the next day.

• God gave Adam a job, but He gave him a job so he could

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  a higher goal, a kingdom agenda.

• Vision is the ability to see beyond the immediate and the visible. It is being able to see the big picture and the preferable future that God has planned for you.

• A Kingdom vision is a view of life that is

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  and far bigger than just getting by day-by-day.

• A Kingdom vision is God’s calling that allows you to make an

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  for eternity while you are here in time making history.

• A Kingdom vision is God’s calling that motivates you to impact your home for His glory, to impact your job, to impact your children’s lives, to impact your marriage, to

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  your community, and to impact your church… all for His Glory, that His Kingdom may come on earth as it is in heaven!

So listen… God has called us to something that is bigger than life itself. If you are going to be a man of the Kingdom – then you must first allow God to develop a Kingdom vision in your life.

Now the Holy Record is filled with stories of Kingdom men…but none, in my opinion, stands out any more than Stephen. His story is recorded for us in Acts chapters 6 and 7. Let’s look at this Kingdom man and glean from him what God

from us as Kingdom men.
Stephen had a Kingdom Vision, he understood his calling in light of history and what God had already been doing in the life of Israel and what God was going to do to bring His plan and purposes to fulfillment.

• In Acts 7 Stephen reviewed the history of Israel and pointed out the big picture of God to those who were his accusers. He spoke with such authority and power until the bible says, “They were cut to their heart.” Notice chapter 7:51 – 54…Stephen could speak with such boldness because He understood the big picture, the vision of God’s Kingdom. He understood that he was not created simply to have a job, have a family, and make money and die…but live, make a
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  for the kingdom of God and then die.

2) LIVING KINGDOM VIRTUES AND VALUES

A KINGDOM FOCUS PERSON HAS KINGDOM VIRTUES AND VALUES

Look at the

and the values of Stephen, a man of the Kingdom. Acts 6:3 and the following shows us that the one word that emphasizes Stephen’s life is the word fullness. He was “full of the faith,” “full of the Holy Spirit,” “full of wisdom,” and “full of power.”

• In the Scriptures when you see the term “full of” it means, “to be controlled by.”

The compelling

of a Kingdom Believer is that something and someone other than himself controls him! Faith, wisdom, power, and ultimately the Holy Spirit controls a Kingdom man.

• He is a God-controlled man,
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  to the Holy Spirit, who seeks to follow God while leading people into the Kingdom of God.

A. Full of Faith – meaning that Stephan was “

.” Listen you cannot be a kingdom man and not be dependable. Can God depend on you, can the church depend on you, can your wife and children depend on you, and can those on your job depend on you? A Kingdom man is dependable and that makes an impact on the lives of others.

B. Full of Wisdom - meaning that Stephan was “able to

what he knew.” Wisdom is the ability to apply that you learn. He had learned the Word of God, and the grace of God and had the ability to apply it.

C. Full of Power – meaning that Stephan was a man who believed in and

the miracle-working power of God through his life. He was not ashamed of God using him and manifesting Himself in strange and usual ways in order to draw people to Christ.

D. Full of the Holy Spirit – the anointing of Christ was evident in Stephan’s life. He was able to

with the same authority and the Holy Spirit lead him to even speak as Christ spoke in his death.

A KINGDOM MAN HAS VICTORY

3) A KINGDOM MAN HAS KINGDOM VICTORY

Listen, as a Kingdom person, if you are going to experience kingdom victory it is a must that you do

keep your eyes on the challenges of life… not on the pressure of this world… not on the enemies of your mission… but on the glory of God.

The only way to

plenty of kingdom victories is to focus on the King of Glory.

Notice Stephan’s words in 7:2, “And he said, Brethren and fathers, listen: The God of glory…” and then in 7:55 it says of him, “But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into the heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

• In verse 56 he said, “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”

Listen, God is looking for some

like Stephan. Who can see the vision of the Kingdom and then will walk in the virtues and values of the Kingdom?

• God is looking for people of the Kingdom who understand that nothing can
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  them from their victory in the Kingdom.

Therefore God is calling you and me who will be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. God wants those who are willing to

when others fall away…

• Those who will be filled with the Holy Spirit and unashamed to be counted in the number of the saints!

• People will declare the WOG in season and out of season…when folks want to hear it and when they don’t want to hear it.

• Those that will

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  first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

Do we have anybody in the house willing to shift into a greater realm of FOCUS? God, I need the rest!

God is looking for some Kingdom Men…who know that even if they persecute you they cannot

you.

• Even if they lie on you…truth crushed to earth will rise again.

• Even if they scandalize your name… you realize that there is another name…

• That other name is not Mohammed, it is not Buhhda…Farrakhan, not Trump, not Bush, or Kerry…

• but there is a King…He is the King of Glory and Stephan saw Him…

Stephan lived as a man of the Kingdom in such a way that Jesus…did sit down and receive Him in glory – Jesus stood up and gave Stephan…a standing ovation.

Well, will you so

as a Kingdom Man in life and in death…in defeat and in victory…will you so live in such a way as to have Jesus standing up – cheering you on… welcoming you into His Kingdom?