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I would like to share with you something that happened to me while I was in college. I have alluded to my experience in blog number five entitled “The Outpouring” but what I wish to share now is related to a recent awareness that came to me pertaining to my particular college experience. My experience relates to a happening founded in the One-Hundredth Psalm of the Bible. As a child, I memorized this psalm and I can still quote it to this day. I memorized the psalm out of the King James Bible translation. 

Within this psalm we find the following directions. “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.” For the life of me, I cannot find or think of the book I was reading that presented the possibilities for following these directions. What I do recall, however, indicated that if one sought to investigate these directions life would never be the same. This experience occurred over forty-two years ago. When I knelt down beside my dormitory bed and began first to offer thanksgiving to God and then began to offer praise, the sensation I spoke of in blog five (The Outpouring) began to be felt in my diaphragm and before long radiated throughout my entire being.

What I wish to share with those reading this blog entry pertains to an awareness that has been hidden in plain sight. The revelation of what I have discovered is profoundly simple. Entering into his gates and courts with thanksgiving and praise on the surface seems fairly harmless. Most of the time we just read the words as though they are just that, words. It may never occur to us to actually investigate such directions. In the gospel of Luke chapter 17 and verse 21 Jesus is recorded to indicate where the kingdom of God is located. In essence Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is within us.

As I have pondered my college experience related to the physical and spiritual happening that morning in my dorm room, I have become aware of the following. When I sought to follow the directions laid out in Psalm 100, I actually entered the Kingdom of God and that Kingdom was and is within me. I believe that is why I felt the sensation in my diaphragm and why the experience was so spiritually overwhelming. It was a spiritual experience that overflowed into my physical body. The Kingdom is a spiritual place of awareness. It is the “treasure” God places in earthen vessels. If you have never entered this place, I encourage you to investigate because this Kingdom IS within you!