Kris Vallotton • Sep 20, 2019

7 Biblical Reasons the Church Should Be Cultural Leaders


It troubles me that many people who claim to be Christians live with limited, powerless, finite thinking. How is this even possible? I mean, how do people who claim to have the Creator of the Universe living inside of them, the mind of Christ thinking through them, and the Spirit of God influencing the world around them even have the nerve to think small? I’d propose that we believers don’t have permission to live with limited mindsets as that would be a waste of our heavenly inheritance!


We have a mandate to make earth like heaven and to disciple nations, so it’s time we begin to bring heaven to earth! We’re called to transform the world in such a way that when they see our good works they will glorify our Father in heaven.

A NEW GENERATION OF CULTURE SHAPERS IS RISING



I’m baffled by the fact that some of the greatest thinkers in the world are often godless, humanist, self-centered, self-absorbed atheists! This is an open indictment against the Body of Christ.  The world today is facing some of its biggest challenges yet — the cultural side effects of a fatherless generation run rampant — and the global Church has an opportunity to stand up and be the light to even the darkest situations. I believe the Lord is raising up strategic Kingdom leaders who can think like heaven to bring solutions to humanity’s greatest problems. I see a company of light-thinkers coming to the forefront of the world’s stage to shape culture




Futurists : Prophetic visionaries who with divine foresight and inspired insights peer into the future as it was meant to be , to direct society towards their noble purpose and timeless promise.




Solutionaries : People who bring wisdom, knowledge, experience and skill to pressing challenges in an effort to create positive change in our communities .




Cultural Architects : Leaders who shape culture and inspire collective reasoning that helps to create healthy, happy, safe and prosperous communities for the generations to come.




Kairos Conductors : Those who know the times and the appropriate action , act or attitude is in the times.




EXPANDING YOUR PERSPECTIVE TO MATCH HEAVEN




There are profound advantages that we, followers of Jesus, have over those who have yet to experience His transforming power. But it should suffice to say that the most creative, inventive, ingenious, imaginative, inspired, brilliant, resourceful, innovative, advanced ideas should be flowing from the sons and daughters of God!




If you’re not yet convinced of your role in God’s plan to demonstrate this on the earth, let’s consider the distinct advantage you have as a born-again believer:




1. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit ; consequently, the God who envisioned everything and spoke the world(s) into existence lives inside of us. (See 1 Corinthians 6:19)




2. You have access to the gift of wisdom , which is one of the nine supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit listed in the book of 1 Corinthians. Think of it like the wisdom of King Solomon on steroids. (See 1 Corinthians 12:8.)




3. You have the mind of Christ, which means you think like God. We are His divine think tank! (1 Corinthians 2:6-16) The Apostle Paul points out in these verses that what was a mystery to God’s Old Testament people is actually revealed to us because we think like God! Read it for yourselves, “We have received the Spirit of God who knows the mind of God.” Therefore since the same Spirit lives in us who lived/lives in Jesus we actually think like God. Do you want to know what God is thinking; what are you thinking? When you are right with God you think His thoughts! The Old Testament prophet went on to ask,  “WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD…?”  The great apostle Paul replied, we do! “We have the mind of Christ!” The mind of Christ is your X-factor, your secret weapon …  But to activate your heavenly advantage you must lose the compliant, religious rule keeper, black and white mindset so you can journey out into the world of mystery, miracles, and divine mayhem. We have become predictable, boring, vanilla, uninspired people. Yet our Founder is a radical fore-thinking activist, who in three short years, altered the course of human history. Jesus transformed the way the world viewed God, money, nature, religion and kingdom life etc.




4. You are a “new creation” born again into the kingdom of God. The word “new” here means “prototype” – something never before created. (See 2 Corinthians 5:17.) We are the first creatures to live on earth and in heaven simultaneously . Our head isn’t stuck in the clouds; it’s positioned in heavenly places.




5. You are endowed with “the manifold wisdom of God” by which the Lord reveals the mysteries of the kingdom “through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.” The Greek word translated “manifold” here means multicolored or multidimensional. Jesus has granted us multidimensional wisdom…the ability to understand challenging situations from every conceivable perspective and from every imaginable realm. (See Ephesians 3:1-10)




6. You are seated in heavenly places with Christ. Think about it like this; Jesus said to the Apostle John “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things.” (See Revelation 4:1) In other words, our heavenly seat gives us insight into the future. There are so many ramifications to our raptured status that it makes my brain explode with possibility! Maybe it’s easier to illustrate by thinking of what it would be like if we lived in 1850 and we got invited to “Come up here” for a look at the world in 2019. In this exalted position we would see televisions, computers, cars and planes etc.…a world much different than our own current condition. What an amazing advantage this would give us as business people or inventors! Or how about if we were invited to view the future of medicine from 1810. We would see polio, smallpox, tuberculosis, leprosy, (to name just a few), that plagued our generation completely eradicated in the future! This is isn’t a pipe dream or science fiction, this is our reality…our advantage…our right of passage.




7. Friendship with God is your game-changer advantage. Jesus put it like this: “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. (John 15:15) When we transition from slavery to friendship with God, (by keeping His commandments), we are suddenly introduced into a realm of revelation that only Jesus walked in. We have access to “all things” that were revealed to Jesus.




THINK DIFFERENT



When the first-century Corinthian church was struggling with jealousy and strife the apostle Paul rebuked them by reminding them that they were behaving like “mere men.” (See 1 Corinthians 3:3.) We are not just humans! We are alive in the Spirit, sons and daughters of the God of the universe, endowed with wisdom, commissioned with power, and given authority to make a profound difference in the world. It’s past time that we rise to our high call in Christ Jesus and start thinking like royalty!



As children of God, we should be some of the most original thinkers and culture transformers on the earth. We believe in the impossible, therefore we can count on miracles to happen to us and through us. We live by faith (Romans 1:17), not by facts, which means that the truths we choose to believe sometimes override the facts that we face in life. Faith says there is nothing impossible with God (Luke 1:37). In other words, everything is possible with God! What would happen if we really lived with an “anything is possible” attitude? The world could call us crazy and they may vilify us, but they won’t be able to ignore us.



How do you think in a way that brings heaven to earth? How do you see the Church stepping up to think outside of the box and bring clarity and wisdom to the world’s greatest challenges? Let me know in the comments below!

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