The topsy turvy kingdom

It is hard to run when you are walking on your hands! What a strange
thing to write. What I mean by this is that it is very difficult to move
fast in a world that is up-side-down. This would be very much like
walking on our hands in a normal world. It would be even harder if we
could use our legs but we had to run on the ceiling. Yet, actually, we
are living in a world that is topsy turvy. From a spiritual perspective, it
is completely inverted; it is up-side-down, and in-side-out, and back-to-
front!

Many years ago, some psychologists conducted an experiment with a

group of volunteers. They gave them each a special pair of spectacles
which turned everything they saw upside-down. The poor guinea pigs
had to wear these spectacles all the time. In a sense, the spectacles
turned them on their heads. I can imagine the confusion, frustration,
and physical discomfort they must have experienced. After many days,
something wonderful occurred. Their brains made the adjustment and
simply turned the visual inputs 180º. Suddenly their worlds were the
right way up again. Of course, you can guess what happened next. The
researchers took away their spectacles, and the world once again
turned upside-down!

In a figurative a sense, we are born with spiritual inversion contact

lenses. We don’t know we have them, and we have no idea that the
world we see is actually upside-down. Because we are born with these
lenses, we feel at ease and we operate reasonably well. Then, later in
life, we start to realise that things are not as they should be. We
become aware of a spiritual world, parallel to and interwoven with the
material world. We observe that this spiritual realm seems to operate
entirely differently to the world into which we were born. Our
discomfort becomes intense when the Holy Spirit regenerates us and
we are born again. As we read the Bible and learn to listen to the Holy
Spirit, we become painfully conscious of the differences between the
Kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. The values, principles,
and priorities of these two kingdoms are inverted in relation to each
other. For instance, in the Kingdom of God, victory is through surrender
not conquest. In the material realm, we live and then we die; in the
spiritual realm, we die in order that we may live. In the world, we focus
on getting, but in the Kingdom of God, we focus on giving. Jesus
teaches us to love our enemies instead of hating them. It is all so much
in contrast to the way the material world operates.

Enlightenment, in the Christian sense, is the experience of taking out

those spiritual contact lenses and perceiving the world as it really is.
Spiritual transformation is the process of adjusting to the new reality,
and learning to live differently. At first, it is disturbing and
disorientating, but after a time we are able to make the adjustment.
Our reality flip-flops, and we become conscious that we are walking the
right way up in a world that is upside-down. Jesus said, “My Kingdom is
not of this world…” (John 18:36). He also said that “the Kingdom of
God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say,
‘Here it is’, or ‘There it is’, because the Kingdom of God is within
(among) you.” (Luke 17:20-21)

The problem occurs when we still live as if the world is the right way
up; as though it were the same as the Kingdom of God. We try to apply
physical laws to spiritual realities – and we fall off the ceiling! We
attempt to apply business principles to church life, and we end up with
a church that looks, feels, and is … just like a business, not a church.

We need to realise that the principles of the Kingdom of God are very
different to the principles of the kingdoms of this world. We must also
acknowledge that our thinking needs to change radically, if we are to
operate successfully in the realm of the spirit

Finally, we need to commit to speaking and acting differently, and then

diligently practicing until the 1800 shift occurs. I have written a book in
an attempt to help us all to come down off our spiritual ceilings and
walk tall through the Kingdom of God – It’s called P3: Prayer, Power,
and Proclamation and you can obtain it at www.chrispy.co.za