Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:00 — 4.1MB)
What Kingdom Equity are you wasting? Kingdom Equity includes the good things—our gifts and abilities and skills and knowledge—as well as the hard things, the heartaches, the failures.
What part of your past—or your present—have you put in the category of “Not good” or “Not fair” or “Shameful” and therefore tried to hide it from others as well as yourself? Or you’ve let it sit there so long that bitter roots are growing in your heart and those bitter roots are causing trouble and defiling you and others. Or you’ve allowed yourself to live in the lie that God can’t really use you like he uses other people because of your past.
The thing about this kind of Kingdom Equity—the kind that is filled with sorrow and heartaches and failure—is that it’s very difficult to see how God can use it when we’re in the middle of it. It’s usually only in hindsight that we can say, as Joseph did, “God meant it to me for good.” So that means that when we’re in the middle, we have to walk by faith and not by sight. We have to decide if we’re really going to trust God or not—against our feelings and our emotions.
Some time ago I was suddenly faced with a situation that was potentially very harmful. And that situation was not resolved for almost an entire year. More than any other time in my life, my trust in God was tested. I had doubts; I certainly had fears; I wanted to run away and forget it all. My faith was tested. I wish I had come through better than I did; there were days that I did not have the victory. But in the end, by God’s grace, I came through as gold refined in the fire. I now have much more sympathy and empathy with those who are in the midst of a struggle than I ever had before. It’s Kingdom Equity that God allowed in my life, to be used for his glory.
When we allow God to use all his Kingdom Equity in us, it brings meaning to every aspect of our lives. Nothing is wasted, and we find that the pains and hurts of our lives can be used for good, as well as all that experience you’ve gained in your working world, the talents you developed when you were young, the skills you’ve added through your life. It’s all Kingdom Equity, and God is looking for a return on his investment in you.