What does theRighteousness of God mean in your life?

I awoke early this morning with God's word stirring in my heart. I was thinking of what the Righteousness of God means for my life.

God's righteousness represents the truth and reality of God's kingdom. The word righteousness was formally spelled "rightwiseness" which gives us a clearer understanding. It is the faithfulness and truthfulness of God, which is consistent to His own nature and promises.

Let me put it this way, righteousness is the full and complete measure of the revealed will of God. It quite literally could be defined, "As it should be".

We of course can look around at our world and see that things are not as they should be. It doesn't matter if it is our culture and society or our personal lives we know in fact that things are not working the way they should be.

For thousands of years from the time of Adam and Eve mankind has been disconnected from God and in fact lost the very power and ability to reflect the true purpose and nature of their creator. I am sure stories were told from one generation to the next about how their great, great, great grandparents lived before they chose to disconnect themselves from God and live independent of his life.

Some of the stories they heard must have been incredible of what it must have been like to live without limitation on an Earth that had no curse.

As generations passed I am sure memories became faint and even if they could remember the "as it should be" of God it could not be lived out or regained. To be honest, I don't think that they or we have any idea what life must have been like before the rebellion. Our frame of reference in regards to living life without limitation has become completely distorted by our own world view and experience.

Our outside world view contains and restricts us because it is based upon the beliefs of our experiences which are subjective. Instead of living a life of limitless possibilities we “learn” to live in limitation. The sad thing about this is that we accept this as normal without even realizing God’s full intention for our lives.

The distorted view point of Israel led them to believe that they could bring God's kingdom back to their lives through the keeping of the law. The law was only meant to show them and us the futility of trying to bring about the "as it should be" of God into the Earth and our lives independent of His life.

Jesus came to introduce to us a new and better way. In the sermon on the mount He spoke about the righteousness of God, he said "They that thirst and hunger for ‘the as it should be of God’ will in fact be filled"

He later refers in this same passage of scripture to the religious people of his time, the scribes and Pharisees who relied upon the law to bring about change through force, manipulation and coercion. Jesus said that “unless your righteousness exceeds their attempts to be righteousness, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

Grant it, the "as it should be" of God is nothing that can be had or compared to the self exertion of our own lives outside of the gift of righteousness that God gave to us through His Son Jesus Christ.

Keep in mind, we typically constrain and define God’s gift of righteousness as only effecting us within our spiritual lives. We should be careful not to limit God to just a spiritual effect, the "as it should be" should be something to grasp a hold of by faith for every area of our lives.

Bottom line... Don't limit God in His perfect provision for your life!