“You ARE A Citizen!”

Written by: Pam Spinosi

“There are only three ways to work here: be a French citizen, obtain working papers–or marry a French man.” The French employer’s wit escaped me, but I could not argue with his conclusions:  I had no right to work in France. My weekly forage through the want ads of Le Monde yielded no results back then in my twenties when my long-time desire to live in France rose to the surface and forced me to push the odds.

I did later manage to live in two European countries where visas for English teachers were easier to obtain-but France, glutted with American tourists and visitors, was out of the question. That is, until I met someone who told me that I could have Italian citizenship through my grandparents. Thrilled, I contacted the nearest Italian Consulate and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Then I gathered all the paperwork I needed from
several states and Italy, submitted my application, and waited, clutching the verse I had received to give me hope:  “Ask of me, and I will give the nations as an inheritance for you.”

Gathering the documents took me six months, and it took the Italians six months to shuffle them. After about a year, I grew impatient and started bombarding the consulate with phone calls.  “No problem, Senora,” the lady on the phone reassured me, “We just have to do a few things…”

“Then I’ll be a citizen?” I interrupted.

“NO!” she corrected, “You are a citizen! Then you’ll have your passport!”

Her words struck relief in me. “I am a citizen!” I breathed.  Shortly after that, my priceless passport came in the mail. My key to Europe. With that, I could live in any of the fifteen (now twenty-five) countries of the European Union. When I heard her words, I knew I would get my passport; when I heard God’s word a year before, I knew I would go back to Europe.

Over ten years after my first efforts to go to France, I moved there and worked there for five years.

Contrary to the old saying, “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” God says, “My people perish for lack of knowledge.” Knowing something can alter your life! Not knowing something can keep you from blessing.

The funny thing is that I used to scramble to live in Europe, not knowing that I had every right to. I was born a European citizen! Not knowing kept me from my inheritance. My ignorance of the truth about my citizenship left me struggling and strategizing to get something that I already owned. Had I not discovered my inheritance, I would never have benefited from it. Just knowing it would not have been enough, either. I had to act on it.

The same principle applies to the Kingdom of God. Instead of striving to get something from God, we need to recognize that in Him we are something. Jesus said He was anointed to preach the Gospel, heal the brokenhearted, set the captives free. The Bible also says, “As He is, so are we in this world.” He said He is the light of the world; He also said we are. Jesus said we would do greater works than He did.

If we know that we are kings and priests to God, appointed to great works, anointed to be like Him, we will exert the boldness to act on that knowledge, and we will find ourselves able to do just what He did. We will draw on our inheritance as effortlessly as I whip out my EU passport and breeze through European checkpoints. I can get off a plane and land a job just as easily in Budapest as I can in Baltimore because I know that I am an EU citizen, and I know my rights as one. That is why and how I applied-and got-jobs in both the UK and France. I may not look like a European or even speak Italian, and even though I was born in Beckley, West Virginia, my Italian passport is honored everywhere I go. It affords me the legitimate privilege to do anything any other European can do.

You, too, have dual citizenship. You were born again with Kingdom citizenship. You didn’t earn it, and you are still working on learning the language, but you have all the rights and privileges of a citizen of the Kingdom. Once you really know that, you will be able to do the things you had previously only dreamed of-the impossibilities that are your birthright in Christ.