Conia [00:00:05]:
Well, all right. Are you excited? I’m excited. You gotta be excited when we’re talking about instructions that we get from heaven through the Word, and we are continuing in the series that I started a few weeks back on being citizens of heaven, what does that mean? And that that makes us ambassadors of heaven. And we went through all of that. And if you haven’t gotten that down deep in your spirit, go back and listen to it again and again until you figure it out. And then we want to talk about what does it mean? How do I behave? How do I walk this out? You keep telling me, take my authority, walk it out. Well, how do I do that? Is really the next question that people ask, or at least it runs through my head, is how do I actually do that? And I’m so glad you asked, because it is all in the Word. The Word, the Word, the Word.
Conia [00:01:06]:
It is all right here in the Word for us to partake of. So we’re going to look today on what does it mean to represent heaven? Well, how do we walk that out? So. So citizen of heaven and ambassador for the kingdom here in the earth, how do we do that? Okay, you ready? Are you excited? I’m excited. You should be excited. Let’s get excited. Okay. So to represent heaven well, means to reflect the character, the love, the truth, and the power. Don’t forget the power, the Dunamis.
Conia [00:01:47]:
And if you haven’t heard Brother Copeland talk about Dunamos, you need to go back and listen to him because he lays it out for you. He lays it out for you. It’s power, the power of God in everything that we do. So it’s the character, the love, the truth, and the power of God that we reflect in everything that we do as citizens of heaven. And the Bible is an instruction book for us. Old Testament, New Testament. You can’t have one without the other. They coexist together.
Conia [00:02:20]:
One points to the other. The Old Testament points to the New Testament. The New Testament hearkens back to the Old Testament. Don’t let anybody try to tell you that you can separate the two of them, because you cannot. They are. They are inextricably intertwined. Okay? So make sure that you know that, because when you know that, that unlocks lots of heaven’s mysteries there. So first thing that we’re going to talk about is walking in love.
Conia [00:02:50]:
And our scripture, for this One is Ephesians 5:1:2. Therefore, be imitators of God as dear children and walk in love as Christ also has loved us and given himself for for us, Christ was the example. God gave us Christ. So we could see exactly how we’re supposed to do this. And so as the example, Christ walked in love. So love is the currency of heaven. We might have gold here. We might have dollars or euros or.
Conia [00:03:31]:
I don’t know, do they still have rubles? What’s. What’s Russian currency? Is that rubles still? I’m behind on that. We may have pesos. You could have all kinds of currency here in the earth, but the currency of heaven is love. It’s not tangible. It is spiritual currency, and that is love. So to represent heaven, well, we love sacrificially, we forgive freely, and we live with compassion. Okay? So that’s three elements of that loving.
Conia [00:04:09]:
So loving sacrificially means giving of yourself for someone else, okay? And then forgiving freely, which means you don’t hold back. That forgiveness, that love, that forgiveness for someone else is also for you. Never forget that, that, that forgiveness. If you are in unforgiveness, you’re not even supposed to come into the temple. You’re not even supposed to offer your tithe if you are walking in unforgiveness. So walking in unforgiveness limits you from everything else of God. Keep that in mind. And living with compassion.
Conia [00:04:50]:
And when we live with compassion, that does not mean we condone, but it does mean that we understand the human angst. We understand the things that come against us as humans and the temptations that come against us as human. So we need to live with compassion for those who have not come into the kingdom of God and those who have. So the second thing that we want to talk about in how do I represent heaven? Well, how do I walk that out? How do I function in that, is to bear the fruit of the Spirit. And so remembering what the fruit of the Spirit is helps you to bear that fruit. So Galatians 5:22. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. That’s the fruit of the Spirit.
Conia [00:06:01]:
That’s the fruit of the love in you. When you walk in love, you will bear this fruit of the spirit because you are an ambassador for heaven. Because you are a citizen of heaven, you have the capacity to do this. Jesus in you is the capacity to walk out these fruits of the spirit. I’m going to recite them again for you because I don’t think that you can actually hear these too often. Love, joy, joy is pure. It’s different from happiness. I think you can be unhappy the moment and still be in joy.
Conia [00:06:52]:
It’s kind of an odd way to think about that. But your joy is in the Lord. Your unhappiness is in your circumstance or your happiness is in your circumstance. So keep that in mind. Peace. We talked about peace last time. Peace is so important. The peace that you have speaks to everyone around you.
Conia [00:07:15]:
And you know, I think of somebody walking into a room who’s not in peace. And everyone knows, you know, when somebody walks into a room and they are not in peace. On the other hand, when somebody walks into a room and they are in great peace, you can see that on them as well. And both have an effect on the environment around them. Peace. So important. Long suffering. I don’t want to suffer and I certainly don’t want to do it long.
Conia [00:07:49]:
But Jesus in us allows us to be longsuffering to forgive over and over again. Kindness. Simple kindness. If you can’t be anything else, be kind. And that actually helps you generate the other gifts of the spirit. Each of these gifts of the spirit, they’re intertwined with one another. When you love well, you can be kind. When you’re long suffering, you can love well.
Conia [00:08:21]:
And it goes back and forth. All of these things are intertwined together. Kindness is something that every human craves. We all want someone to be kind to us. You don’t have to, you don’t have to provide everything for me. You don’t have to make me feel like I’m the most special person on the face of the earth. But you can be kind to me and I can be kind to you. Goodness.
Conia [00:09:00]:
Just good old fashioned goodness. Basic goodness. Faithfulness. We are so gratified when someone is faithful to us in all circumstances. And we are very much disenchanted, disillusioned and dejected when someone isn’t faithful to us. Faithfulness is super, super important to our well being. And here again, back to our peace. Gentleness.
Conia [00:09:40]:
You can be firm, but you can also still be gentle. Our grandson was here a couple weeks ago and you know, as a grandparent, you don’t want to necessarily harshly discipline your grandchild, but the expectation is absolutely still there for certain behaviors and certain manners. And so as, as he was misbehaving, I would look at him and raise my eyebrow and say, you want to try that again? So I was gentle in it. I was not mean, I wasn’t angry, I was gentle in my rebuke. But it still held firm that this is what we do and this is what we don’t. Do. We can be gentle and still be firm. So gentleness, one of those fruits of the Spirit.
Conia [00:10:37]:
And self control. Holy cannolis. Self control. You mean I can’t say that thing that I want to say? You mean I can’t eat that thing that I want to eat every single time? You mean I can’t go out and do that thing that I want to do that might hurt somebody else? No. Self control. That is here again, the last fruit of the Spirit that we were talking about in Galatians. So love, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. It’s important.
Conia [00:11:21]:
If you have a problem with any one of those, my recommendation is always to go and define them and then say, lord, I’m going to lay this at your feet. I have this issue with this and I don’t know how to go about it. And I promise you, he will absolutely show you how you can walk in this fruit of the Spirit. As an ambassador of the kingdom, you are to let your light shine. We don’t hide it under a bushel, right? And there’s a nursery school song that it’s called, Jesus Bids Us Shine. One of the kids CDs that my kids used to listen to in the car had this song on it, and it was Jesus bids us shine for him. And part of the verse says, you in your small corner and I in mine, and that’s a guiding force for me, that we are to shine right where we are, even if it’s in our small corner, and also only in the place that he’s told us to shine. So you don’t.
Conia [00:12:35]:
You want to make sure you’re shining, but you want to make sure that you’re not shining in the wrong place. So you in your small corner and I in mine. And if everyone shines where they are planted, then the whole world lights up. So let your light shine. Matthew 5:16. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. You should be shining in such a way that it’s obvious that it is God in you, and not just you. There’s a glow on you when God is in you.
Conia [00:13:17]:
And we’ve all seen people that walk in this glow. And we want to endeavor to walk in that light so much that people see it on us even as we walk by when the Spirit is on us. Brother Savelle tells a story about being in a service and Holy Spirit fell and and was just all over him. And so after the service, his wife was like you’re not driving. I’m driving because all that’s all over you. And I don’t even think you can function as a human right now. But they had to stop and get milk on the way home for the girls and kids were little, so you gotta. Yeah.
Conia [00:14:00]:
So he stops at a convenience store, and he’s still shining. He’s still just exuding this holy light. And he walk. Walks in, and the guy that’s standing there at the counter perusing through the unsavory magazine looks at him and says, okay, okay, I’ll put it away. And Brother Chevelle didn’t say anything to him, and it was just the light of God that was coming from him in such a way that it convicted this guy that he needed to put that mess away. So let your light shine. Let people see God through you. You want to speak words that edify, and Pastor David has all kinds of things about our words and how important our words are and how they’re containers and how they have power, and we speak things into being, and our mouth is crazy, crazy important.
Conia [00:14:58]:
So speaking words that edify is a huge part of. Of being an ambassador for the kingdom and how we behave that. Colossians 4, 6 is our reference verse for this one. Let your speech always be with grace seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one. So it’s grace with some flavor we can have flavor, that you may know how you ought to answer each one. When you speak in grace and you speak words that have good flavor to the recipient, then they’re going to be received well, and they’re going to edify the recipient. They’ll edify you, too. As I mean, my example with Brother Savelle, he was preaching, and that’s what brought the glory and the glow of God on him.
Conia [00:15:59]:
And so when we speak those words out, often you’ll hear a pastor saying, I’ve done it myself. I preached myself happy. And you do that when you speak those words. And so if you have to preach to yourself, do that. But your words also should be flavorful and graceful to those who are receiving them so that they edify those people. The words are powerful. Speak with grace, speak with wisdom, and above all, speak with truth. And then you can be sure that your words will be edifying to the hearer.
Conia [00:16:43]:
We have more. Are you ready for more? Can you handle more? I’m ready for more. Let’s. Let’s do some more. Let’s. Ready? Okay, Cool. As an ambassador, walking out your mission here in the earth means you need to walk and live worthy of the calling. You want to be so aware of the calling on your life that you can’t help but walk worthy it.
Conia [00:17:15]:
If you think of. In the military, certain ranks are bestowed upon people when they. They hit certain ranks. If you go in as a professional, you go in at a certain rank and not the lower rank. But you are expected to walk worthy of your rank. That’s why there’s conduct unbecoming an officer. Right? And that’s important. Officers are expected to have a level of conduct commiserate with their rank.
Conia [00:17:50]:
You, as an ambassador for the kingdom of heaven, are expected to walk in a way that represents the calling that God has on your life. So Ephesians 4 says, Walk worthy. Verse 1, Walk worthy of the calling with which you were called with all lowliness and gentleness. Here we go again, back to that fruit of the Spirit, long suffering, bearing with one another in love. That’s how you do it, that is being worthy of the calling. So we walk in humility and we walk in patience with our fellow man. Just because you have a higher rank does not mean you lord it over someone. You walk in that humility of that rank, that it is an honor and it is a responsibility that we carry out.
Conia [00:18:52]:
And then patience is so important. Just because we get something immediately doesn’t mean that our fellow man does. Sometimes they need some time, and being patient with them is a way of expressing love. Our conduct should match our calling, carrying heaven’s peace into every room. Here again, we know when somebody’s in peace and when they’re not is when they walk in that room. We absolutely know. So seek the kingdom first. Ah, if you’ve been in Thursday school, the very first class, we talked about seeking him and seeking the kingdom.
Conia [00:19:36]:
If you seek the kingdom first, you will find all kinds of good things along the way. And we talked about this in Thursday school, that when we talk about seeking the kingdom, it is not like hide and seek. It is not an Easter egg hunt. It is if you see him, you will find him. And when you seek the kingdom first, you’re going to find all the things that God wants to put in you. Not just things, but attributes that God will put in you as you’re seeking him along the way. So seeking that kingdom first. And Matthew 6:33 is the verse, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.
Conia [00:20:28]:
Physical things, yes, but also spiritual things, character things that are added unto you as you Seek God, because when your eyes are on him, you become like what you are looking at. You become like what you are around. You are what you surround yourself with. With. And so when we surround ourselves with God, when we put our focus on God, we become like Him. And as ambassadors of the kingdom, we are expected to always becoming closer and closer to him and becoming more and more like Him. Number seven is we are to act justly and humbly. Micah six, eight.
Conia [00:21:22]:
He has shown you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. Representing heaven means standing for justice in all things, but it also means to be humble, extend mercy. These are the attributes of God, folks. This is what he does. He is always merciful, but he is always just so, making sure that we walk in that humility. Here again, that doesn’t lord it over somebody, that we’re an ambassador of the kingdom and you should listen to us. That is not how God behaves. If you’re seeking first the kingdom, you will know that that is not the appropriate behavior of an ambassador of the kingdom.
Conia [00:22:22]:
The closer you come to God, the more you experience his mercy, the more you’ll be able to give mercy to those around you, and the more you will know that justice needs to be carried out in all situations. And justice is actually an extension of love. That’s a whole other sermon. But justice is part of the way that God loves us. His mercy is part of the way he loves us. And our humility comes from us knowing that we need his mercy. We are not any better than anybody who has not yet received the gift that is God. And once they do, and once we are brothers and sisters, we still need to be humble and merciful.
Conia [00:23:16]:
So be holy in all you do. As an ambassador, you want to be holy in all you do. Is this possible? Eventually, but it takes a lot of practice. And you know what? We’re gonna stumble, we’re gonna trip. Even as ambassadors, we’re not gonna do it all the time. But thank God, goodness, there’s forgiveness. So be me holy in all that you do. That’s what we’re striving for.
Conia [00:23:44]:
First Peter 1:15. As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, be holy, for I am holy. We are striving to be holy in all that we do. And if we can look back on our day and go, and, you know, that was a moment of kind of unholiness, then God is working with us. And he’s saying, hey, there’s an opportunity to get better. But we want to strive to be holy in all that we do. And we need to ask ourselves, am I acting in a way that God considers holy? That is important. Okay, so that’s the next thing.
Conia [00:24:30]:
Be transformed by God’s Word. Be transformed. Romans 12:2. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed. How? How do we get by the renewing of the mind with God’s word, The Word, The Word, the Word, the Word, the Word. That’s why we. We don’t come to a message without the Word. The whole point is the Word.
Conia [00:25:01]:
For John, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So it’s got to be the Word that transforms us. It’s got to be Jesus in us. It has got to be us reading that word that transforms us as ambassadors for the kingdom in a way that exudes from us when we deal with our fellow earthlings and human beings. A heavenly representative thinks differently. The more your mind is renewed by God’s word, the more clearly you reflect heaven’s mindset and wisdom. It gets in you. It’s like marinating.
Conia [00:25:48]:
You know, somebody barbecues, they know all about marinating. And they can tell you about the sauces that you can marinate in, and they can tell you about the rubs and all the things. And so you want to be marinated in the Word so that that flavor gets in you and becomes part of you. Okay, and last one is to be a peacemaker. Matthew 5, 9. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Those who bring peace into families, communities, conflict, countries, they carry heaven’s signature. You’re a peace broker.
Conia [00:26:36]:
And as a peace broker, that is how you represent heaven, as a peace broker. So let’s go back over all these attributes, because I’ve already forgotten the first one. Maybe you have too. We’ll get the notes to you on these. To represent heaven well means to reflect the character, love, truth, and power of God. Embrace all those things. Go back to the ambassador talk that we had last week. So you want to walk in love.
Conia [00:27:16]:
You want to bear the fruit of the spirit? Let your light shine you in your small corner, and I in mine. Speak words that edify. Don’t speak words that don’t live worthy of the calling that God has placed on your life. Get up every morning and ask, am I living worthy of the calling? And move toward that. Seek the kingdom first. Act justly and humbly be holy in all you do. Be transformed by God’s word and be a peacemaker. That’s what it means to be an ambassador.
Conia [00:28:07]:
That’s what it means to be a citizen of heaven. We have a responsibility. God is always more and better. And as a result of God being more and better, we actually are always more and better. We get better at being ambassadors the more we practice, the more we are renewed, the more we steep in God’s word, the more we seek after him, the better we become at being that ambassador for the kingdom. But just because you’re not better at it yet does not mean that you don’t have an impact. Those people that God puts in your jurisdiction will have their ears tuned by God to. To hear from you.
Conia [00:28:56]:
Our job is to walk out what God tells us to do. We are not responsible for the outcome. We are responsible for what God has told us to do that generates the outcome. As a citizen, as an ambassador, walking these things out yields that message, yields the great commission of sharing the good news with all the earth. Father, thank you for this time today. Thank you, Lord, that you show us through your word everything that we need to know to walk out. The great commission, the calling that you have placed on our lives, to be a light unto those around us. We love you, Lord.
Conia [00:29:48]:
We praise you and we thank you in Jesus name. Amen. Pastor David’s coming. It’s going to close this out. Y’ all have a great week.
