Building a Kingdom Culture

By Jonathan Sansom

We live in a world whose culture trends against God and the principles of His word. It defines the essence of any society in behavior, beliefs, and character. When we consider the present culture of our nation, we see its reflection in our communities, our homes, and our lives, resulting in chaos, misery, and dysfunction. If we are not equipped and taught how to create a counterculture that is Kingdom, we are susceptible to being subjects to the culture of this world. This leads us in a life lived that rejects the benefits of God’s Kingdom and continues to anchor us to a world that denies God.

In this book, Pastor J takes you through a series of discoveries that will open your understanding to how you can create a Kingdom culture in your homes, communities, and nation. And he equips you with the tools to change your culture beginning with your own life and then that of your home, city, and country. The question is, do you have the courage and commitment to live counter to the norms of our present world to make a difference in the world?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Sansom
• Release date: Oct 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005714338

Jonathan Sansom

Pastor Jonathan Sansom is the Senior Pastor of Gateway City Church and founder of Pastor J Ministries. He has served in ministry for over twenty years. He is the oldest of nine children, and son of Charles and Lynn Sansom Jr. As a third-generation pastor, he has grown to love and value the local church as the sole proprietor of God’s plan for kingdom expansion in the earth.Before his birth, God spoke to his father and told him that he would have a son and to name him Jonathan David. Though there was a divine call upon Jonathan, in his early teen years there was an attempt to run from the ensuing call. But by God’s grace and mercy, at age fourteen, he embraced Christ through a Divine visitation.He now serves the body of Christ with a focus on adequately equipping the saints by the teaching, training and correction of the Word. He is compelled by a love for the church to see it once again gain its intended position in the earth as the government of God’s kingdom. Through prophetic encounters and revelatory insights by the Holy Spirit, God has anointed him to be an oracle of truth to the local church and believers in the present age.

Book preview

Building a

KINGDOM CULTURE

Jonathan Sansom

Copyright 2022, 2016 Jonathan Sansom

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the author. For permission requests, solicit the author via the link below.

Pastor J Ministries

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Defining a Kingdom Culture in a Secular World

Chapter 2: Living a Drama-Free Life

Chapter 3: Victory as a State of Being

Chapter 4: Leaving a Life of Worry for a Life of Worship

Chapter 5: Prayer that Produces Results

Chapter 6: Faith, Prayer, and Power

Chapter 7: Prayers that Shift the Atmosphere

Chapter 8: How the Word Will Change Your World

Chapter 9: Temptation is not Sin

Chapter 10: F + R + D = God’s Formula for Fulfillment

Introduction

It's amazing that when the enemy knows that there is a word that will threaten him he does everything he can to make sure that that word either is not spoken, or we are not in a position to hear and receive that word. It encourages me because it must mean that there is definitely something in what God has put in my spirit to share that haunts him. He must be haunted by the idea and reality of what will occur when God's people get ahold of this and really begin to apply it.

This book will define what a Kingdom Culture is in a secular world. The church talks a lot about being used by God to bring about change. The purpose in God's heart when it comes to His people is that we're used by Him to usher a change in the world. Think about it for a second: Jesus' whole mission was to change the world. We may not be Jesus, but the same spirit that conquered the grave lives in you and me. The spirit of God is in us.

Jesus went to the cross, the grave, and then rolled the stone away and rose from the grave. He is living even to this day, but He did not leave us without a mission. He gave us a mission that we know as the Commission, and that is to go into all the earth and change it by making disciples of Jesus Christ, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to do everything that He has commanded us to do. We have been called to usher change.

Here is a tragedy that is our reality at this moment: the church has failed in its mission to bring the right kind of change, so what we have before us is the change of secularism that has completely altered the earth in which we live. As God's people we talk about change, we promote change, we talk about life change, we talk about change, change, change, change. There's no question that change is needed. Politicians run campaigns on change. Churches run programs on change. Preachers preach messages on change. However, we're not doing a whole lot of changing. One of the reasons for this is that we really don't understand the principles of change.

One of the few absolutes (I call them the eternal absolutes) is the law of change. Change is an absolute. Change is going to occur whether you want it to or not. It does not ask for your permission and it is not waiting on you; it is happening. Although you and I do not have the pleasure of dictating change or when it occurs, we do have the authority and ability to determine what kind of change occurs.

However, if we are unskilled and ill-equipped, if we lack understanding and knowledge as to what and how change occurs, then we'll never be successful in doing it. We can sit in church every Sunday from now until Jesus returns, we can preach about it and we can sing about it and we can shout about it and we can applause about it, but we will never see it happen until we begin to apply the correct principles of change. We need to do so with commitment, diligence, and resolve.

There are three prevailing cultures in the earth: the World Culture, the Religious Culture, and the Kingdom Culture. We were introduced The Kingdom Culture by Jesus Christ. When Jesus came, He came with a mission to introduce the world to the Kingdom and present a new culture identified as the Kingdom Culture.

What constitutes a culture, what goes into it, and how are we responsible for the makeup of the culture that we live in? Well, there are certain things that embody a culture and the types of cultures that are in the earth, including the culture that we as the people of God and the disciples of Jesus Christ have been given the Commission to preach and to establish. This is called the Kingdom Culture and the church has lost sight of what that is. We don’t really fully understand what it is. The term Kingdom Culture may even be a very unfamiliar term that many of us probably have no understanding about.

A culture is a blend of attitudes, values, and behaviors. What and who we choose to surround ourselves with influences the climate that produces these cultural traits in our lives. As disciples of Jesus Christ we must learn from Him what influences are necessary to create the kind of climate that properly nurtures the traits of a Kingdom Culture.

This is why I have been guided, I believe by the Holy Spirit, to write this book and address this topic in order to teach and bring some understanding as to what the Kingdom Culture is. It is my hope that this book will help us to rediscover who we really are as the people of God, the disciples of Jesus Christ.

Chapter 1

Defining a Kingdom Culture in a Secular World

A Kingdom Culture is a blend of Christ-like attitudes, biblical values, and Godly behaviors that create an environment which stimulates others to share and participate in the same attitudes, values, and behaviors.

~ Pastor Jonathan Sansom

We've been given a mandate to bring about a cultural change. In fact, we have been called upon to bring about a change in culture. In order to do this we’ve got to begin to change the way people think because culture is really the byproduct of a mindset that people have. Our minds and our way of thinking is what really shapes and molds the culture in which we live. God gives insight to the fact that values and behaviors are formed by the way we think when, in fact, what first needs renewing is our thinking. Only then will our values and behaviors also change.

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect His will really is. (Romans 12:2)

Any culture is a blend of attitudes, values, and behaviors. What sets a Kingdom Culture apart from any other culture is that it has Christ-like attitudes, biblical values, and Godly behaviors. But before you can build such a culture you must understand that a Kingdom Culture is something that you not only live in, but is something that you begin to promote in your community as a disciple of Jesus Christ by living it.

Jesus never would have given us the commission to change the world if it was an impossible mission. The reason Jesus left us the Great Commission is because it was a mission He knew was possible. He has given us everything we need to see to it that it can be accomplished through His Spirit, understanding, and knowledge of His word. But there are things we must learn to apply, and we must apply them diligently.

We often think about culture in terms of race, geography, art, or entertainment. These are the subcultures that we live in in our world, but there are three dominant cultures - what I call the Prevailing Cultures - that everything else fits underneath. They are very distinct and you need to be aware of them because a lot of us are living in the reality of at least one. In fact, you may want to be living in the reality of one when you are really living in the reality of another. These cultures are:

1. The World Culture

2. The Religious Culture

3. The Kingdom Culture

THE WORLD CULTURE

The first one I want to explain is the World Culture. Paul identifies the World Culture in this way:

You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else. (Ephesians 2:2-3)

Paul is beginning to draft a distinction between the World Culture (one that is engineered by sinful nature) and a Kingdom Culture. Sinful nature encompasses those things that our flesh craves and desires. Paul outlines what these difficult times are and what they look like. He tells Timothy:

You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. (2Timothy 3:1-4)

Here, Paul plainly describes the day in which we are living. If there was ever a question whether we’re living in the last days, Paul clearly answers it by his prophetic description. The evidence is clear. But what Paul is really identifying is the World Culture that we are all living in:

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. (1John 2:15-16)

The culture of this world is what Paul described in 2Timothy: a culture full of greed that leads to idolatry. It is a culture in which people have a love for money and are very narcissistic. In fact, I don't know if we've ever lived in a more narcissistic time as we do today. People are so full of themselves that they have no conscience when it comes to anybody or anything else.

We live in a day where people are ungrateful and feel entitled to everything. This is a time in which children are disobedient to parents. You might argue that children have always been disobedient to parents, but we live in a day where children now actually rule their parents. There’s a big difference.

In the World Culture people are reckless and they are quick to betray each other, their family, and their friends. If you don't believe me, just take five minutes and run through the news feed on Facebook and find out how many friends are betraying friends.

A World Culture is all about its pleasure. It either has no observance of God, or the observance of God that it does have is one that feeds to its self-promoting, puffed up, prideful, and self-loving ways. People who live in the World Culture have the following mindset: As long as God makes me feel better about myself or approves everything I do then He's God, but the moment He challenges me in what I think, say, or do, then He's not really a god that I observe.

This is a World Culture belief system. You have to be careful because a World Culture is very seductive; it paints and portrays an existence of carefree pleasures and unlimited happiness until it lures you in, and then you find yourself caught in the web of its death and destruction. You have to be very careful that you are not seduced and that you clearly understand and identify with wise eyes and discernment what the culture of this world is because it is out to destroy you and your purpose.

It doesn't take much to realize the prevalence of this culture in our world. It is not prejudice to color, background, economic status, or where we live. A World Culture has a mindset that is given to the passions, corruption, and sin of flesh.

We also have to be careful that we do not entertain this culture because once we bite into its attitudes, values, and behaviors, we have become a people who promote this culture, and that is in direct opposition to God. Even the Apostle John said that if you love this world and the things of this world, you do not have the love of the Father.

THE RELIGIOUS CULTURE

The second culture that I