The Inner Kingdom

This work is a revised and expanded version of a book that has appeared in several languages. It focuses on themes central to Eastern Christian worship and spiritual life. The first three chapters provide insights on death, bereavement and resurrection in Christ; and repentance. Chapters four and five invite the reader into the world of desert ascetics and hesychast monks. Combining schoarly rigor with practical counsels on prayer, Bishop Ware makes the wealth of this traditonal accessible to today's Christians. The next three chapters concern personal vocation, martyrdom, spiritual fatherhood and the strange path of the fool for Christ's sake. There follows brief essays on the theology of time and the spiritual purposes of higher education. The final chapters is a challenging discussion of Origen and SS Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac the Syrian and Silouan the Athonite, and in coversation with them asks, dare we hope for the salvation of all.

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." (Hoes 4:6) The lack of knowledge has been the limiting factor in the lives of saints for thousands of years. The knowledge of the power and might that God invested in the saints to overcome the world has perished from the earth on a grand scale, ever since the days that Christ and Acts of the Apostles. However, God is still waiting for those who are willing to demonstrate His glory mightily against the kingdom of darkness. This divine demonstration requires, from every believer, an extreme passion for the truth and the willingness to prove that all things are possible. Unfamiliar Brilliance of the Inner Kingdom will uncover the mystery and power of God's authority and dominion within the believer. Believers will not only believe all things are possible, they will be willing to demonstrate this belief with every degree of their souls. No stranger to the gospel of Christ, Pastor Steve Glenn, an ordained Pastor, has spent 16 years plus as the pastor of Infinite Visionary Training Center, emphasizing the significance of divine progress for all believers. Prior to starting the ministry, Pastor Glenn spent years researching the deeper knowledge of God, prayfully examining and evaluating many forms of religions and doctrines under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the word of God. An unyielding believer in the unimaginable power of God operating within the believer, Pastor Glenn provides the full gospel in order to empower and transform the mind, heart and soul of the believer for the work of God's kingdom.

This book was written as a revelation to unwrap the mystery of God's Kingdom ...a Kingdom we, as believers, should be living in NOW. Our 'completeness' in Christ will never be experienced outside the Kingdom. The 'Kingdom' is the foundation for our entire Christian experience. Jesus taught us to pray, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN". Jesus came to this planet not only to save mankind from its sins, but to proclaim God's Kingdom HERE ON THIS EARTH ...IN every believer. He made it quite clear when He said, "The Kingdom of God is WITHIN you" ...a Kingdom found and lived on the INSIDE. God tells us in His Word that it is given to every believer to know the "mysteries of the Kingdom". Jesus came to this planet to reveal God's most glorious Kingdom...a Kingdom that was meant to be lived and experienced right here ON THIS EARTH ...just as it is being lived and experienced in heaven. God's Kingdom is lived in the Spirit. It is found on the INSIDE ...and must be lived 'inside out'. Most every one of us is so mesmerized by the 'outside' world that we never think to look on the INSIDE. How glorious life can be once we step into God's beautiful Kingdom...and LIVE IT!

By showing how Jesus' teachings relate to our inner depths, this book guides us toward a more conscious and creative life. The Kingdom Within explores the significance of Jesus' teachings for our interior life -- that inner reality that Jesus called "the kingdom of God." It is Sanford's conviction that contemporary Christianity has overlooked this inner dimension of Jesus' teachings and so has lost touch with the human soul. Illustrated with case histories and dream material drawn from the author's work as a psychotherapist, The Kingdom Within examines such characteristics as extroversion and introversion, masculinity and femininity, thinking and feeling, and sensation and intuition to show how Jesus met the criteria of wholeness or fullness of personhood. Step by step, Sanford helps us to shed the outer mask, to eschew sin, which "means living in enslavement to what we don't know about ourselves," and to follow the road of consciousness, which leads to "a great treasure waiting only to be discovered."