Fire On Your Head

Without giving a rigid model on Christian community and fellowship, I felt it would be good to emphasize some of the purposes of finding wisdom from the Lord for a context of life together that is more fitting for the relatedness that He desires for all of the saints.

The term community has taken on multiple meanings in Christian thought, as all words do. I am still fond of the word, believing that if community is experienced in the Church -by the reality of the Holy Spirit- it would serve as a great provision for us all in terms of edification, friendship and spiritual sobriety. I believe that the multiplied thousands of pastors who are stepping down from ministry annually (mostly due to sexual sin of some sort) could be radically reduced if we were experiencing intensive community and fellowship, along with our pursuit of the knowledge of God, revival, and the activity of the Spirit. I am even convinced that a right relationship among the saints could have served to expand and deepen past moves of God that instead ended up declining and fading away into the history books. Community, or intensive fellowship, is one of the facets of the Body that will release the Spirit of truth in the day to day lives of the saints, and encourage us toward a fullness that will last forever.

As leaders in the Body of Christ, we need to regain a value for “the least of these”(Mt. 5.19; 25.40), and a value for relationship and fellowship with others as a crucial means of seeing the Kingdom of God break into the realm of real life. Spirit-endued community- like prayer- undergirds all ministry activity, bringing the reality of God as a foundation to it all. If our marriages, parenting, and daily lives are hollow and devoid of the wisdom and love of God’s kingdom, any other ministry efforts will at best be hindered, and at the worst they may be found false. There are a handful of souls who find grace to be true to the Lord without having experienced intensive community, but the vast majority of the saints are still harboring secret sins, insecurities, fears, and anxieties, and are bound up in multitudinous ways that we leaders tend to be unaware of (especially in an event-oriented expression of the faith).

Truth be told, many leaders are still harboring unforgiveness, competitive spirits, and an idea of “performance-driven” ministry that is not in keeping with the apostolic Spirit of the New Testament. How shall we be delivered from all of this without utilizing the relatedness that God has given as one of the key provisions for our Spiritual stability and growth? The New Testament vision is a cry for the emergence of a corporate people who have been freed from the spirit of this age and brought into a present experience and demonstration of the age which is to come.

The Hebraic idea of the faith has always been one of “God over all and in all”(Eph. 4.6), not separating real life from service and ministry. Therefore, the Scriptures show us that it is God’s government to see all aspects of life and spirituality flowing together in one glorious ensemble. This is impossible without the experience of the cross of Christ, and that cross cannot be fully experienced apart from the life together that the apostles encouraged in the lives of their congregations.

How many men have we seen fall from their places of ministerial influence in recent years? Some who were considered by many as seasoned prophets or apostolic leaders, and who had genuine words, visions and dreams have been found engaged in sins ranging from homosexuality to alcoholism to heroine use to adultery and embezzlement. Some of these men went on in these sins throughout the course of decades of outwardly fruitful ministry. How on earth can this be?

My heart breaks for them. The pressures of man-centered ministry and platform persona often become the downfall for men who are expected by the people to be something that no one man can be. This is tragic, and there is a real possibility that if they would have been related rightly in the kind of context that I believe Paul was jealous for, they could have been delivered from that state before they ever plummeted into self-deception. Community is not a guaranteed success for every life involved, but it is indeed a provision for the Church in the last days, and I believe we need to ask the Lord for wisdom to see it built among those souls for whom we have responsibility.

I’m not discouraging larger gatherings, houses of prayer, or any other expression of the Body. I’m asking the Lord to release wisdom to build contexts for true relationship in the Church. Community, as I see it, is not merely getting together a group of saints and moving onto a compound. Christian community is the experience of Jesus Christ and the power of the Spirit in a context that pertains to real life. It has to transcend mere meetings or events, and leak into the realm of day to day life experienced with other saints. This is a challenge, especially in a Western culture, but I believe the Spirit of God will give us the love, courage, concern, and heart for being to one another what the Lord has called us to be. It may not look the same in every case structurally, but a context for this reality must be found for every congregation. The days that are upon us will most assuredly require it.

Here are some purposes for the formation of an intensive “community context”. At the end I’ll share what the Lord has given us, but the main issue is not our model or some other model. It’s the Spirit Who grants a context where these realities have opportunity to flourish.

WHY DO WE NEED “INTENSIVE COMMUNITY”?

1. Confession of Faults

“…confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed.” -Jas. 5.16

“…if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
...If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
-1 Jn. 1. 7, 9

We need to give the Holy Spirit the liberty to create a context in which ALL of the saints have opportunity and are encouraged to bring their faults and sins to the table of fellowship. There needs to be a place where the people of God know that they are not going to be written off or discarded as outcasts when they bring their sins into the light. We all need to be among fellow-believers who have laid hold of the grace to hear our shortcomings without approving of our sins OR rejecting us as we confess our sins and shortcomings.

This is only possible if the Spirit of the Lord is active amidst His people. If we realize that we are all in the “shadow of the cross”, we will not lighten the weight and consequence of sin, nor will we reject or look down on the one confessing. If the love of Christ is burning in a community, the people will have mercy on one another, and pray for healing and liberty from all of the strangleholds of darkness. Everything that keeps us from the love of Christ and the liberty of the Spirit- from immorality to marital strife to self-righteousness- is broken off of us in the place of confession and prayer. We need a context that is “safe” enough for this, that the people of God may come into the Light and find freedom and deliverance once and for all.

I believe that there are many saints who have reoccurring sins that they will not find deliverance from until they come into a context of life together that is conducive to the kind of confession and prayer that the apostle James (Jacob) was encouraging here. It reaches a point in some lives where the secret confession that is ostensibly “unto the Lord” becomes false, the repentance is feigned, and the saint does not truly find forgiveness and mercy, nor the grace to overcome when the temptation arises again. With certain situations, the Lord desires that we meet Him in the face of another saint. For certain issues, there must be a place for brother to brother confession, and that is the means through which God is wanting to bring deliverance. It’s not because of some “magic” power in a certain model of church. It’s that God means to display His wisdom to the powers of darkness through a Body (Eph. 3.10), and until we can become one in reality we will not experience the fullness of His intentions in salvation.

If we have some religious reputation to maintain, and that is the root of our unwillingness to confess sin, we cannot assume that a cowardly secret confession will be a means to deliverance. God is after reality, and the powers of darkness see right through a sham confession. Indeed, they relish in it, for it does not break their hold on our lives. We must come into the light of God, and often times this means bringing our sin to the table of fellowship. Leaders in the last days’ Church have a responsibility to see that a context and value for this reality is established wherever it is that they labor.

2. Edification and the Activity of Spiritual Gifts

I have long believed that the two primary contexts for the release of the gifts of the Spirit were the two least utilized contexts in modern times. I believe that the gifts of the Spirit were given for the edification of the saints and the exposing of the hearts of unbelievers. Prophecy, healing, and other gifts were meant to edify, encourage, and challenge the people of God and release the testimony of Jesus on the streets.

I am happy to say that there has been an increase in America of the gifts of the Spirit being manifested in grocery stores, malls, and on the street corners. May it continue to rise!

The other purpose of the gifts was for edification in Church life, and many have profited spiritually by their occasional activity in larger gatherings. I am convinced however, that the edification that comes from the Spirit- especially through the gifts of the Spirit- is most direct and effectual in smaller gatherings. How else could Paul say:

“What is the outcome then, brethren? When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.” -1 Cor. 14.26

If “each one” had a gift in a large gathering of hundreds or thousands of people, it would be next to impossible to have order in the gathering. The “each one” reality is meant for the smaller community gatherings, I believe. It’s in that familial context that the saints mature and grow in the activity of the Spirit. It’s where they “try their wings”, and are not rejected in their immaturity, but have liberty to be encouraged by others in love and the sometimes necessary correction. The gifts of the Spirit are of course for any atmosphere, but I believe Paul was encouraging their activity in a more relational, communal context.

If Paul said to “earnestly desire spiritual gifts”(1 Cor. 14.1), then it is not as complex as we’ve made it out to be. In a house congregation (as in other contexts), the saints should be be encouraged to set aside time to enter into the praises of God together, while anticipating the release of spiritual gifts. If we ask for bread, He will not give to us a stone.

3. “Let your hair down” and Be Humans

“…they were taking their meals together with gladness and simplicity…” -Acts 2.46b

Community provides a context for the saints to be humans together. There are times in the smaller gatherings given over to prayer, praise, the Word, and confession. But there are also times to “let our hair down” and do what humans do. It’s too easy, especially with those who are young in the faith, to fall into a pseudo-spirituality that is based on religious performance, striving, and seeking to build a spiritually superior image before men. In community you share meals together, talk about life and family, play with the children, break out the board games or the volleyball nets, perhaps. We need times to “be human” together, for the purpose of seeing God’s people released from that subtle outlet for self: man-centered, performance based-religiosity. One man used to say: “Community is what keeps true prophets from becoming false.”

Out of a context with this reality, families and friendships will emerge that will glorify Jesus and last forever.

4. Encourage and Stir One Another to Love and Obedience

“…speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him…” - Eph. 4.15

“Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘today,’ so that one of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
…and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling toether, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” -Heb. 3.12-13;10.24-25

We need a context where the saints are being encouraged and challenged by friends to go deeper in God. The spirit of this age is increasing in influence and power, and the people of God need a Spirit-charged communal reality together to combat the invasive waves of lust, violence, greed, fear, and anxiety that continually assault the saints. We need to experience the Kingdom of heaven in a setting that is more intimate and consistent than what mere meetings can provide. This will help us come into the real nit and grit of life in God. Community helps us to see souls- yes, even believers!- who are still bound by fear, anxiety, compromise and unbelief delivered and brought into wholeness by the wisdom and power that God has given through His Body. The insecure are lifted up and encouraged, the proud and arrogant are confronted, the fearful and timid are strengthened and emboldened, and the compromised are lovingly challenged by those who have become a family to them. It is a context for the experience of the cross, which releases resurrection glory.

Pastor, have your people a context for this reality? It has to be something more than tacking a few cell-groups onto the larger ministry and congregation. We need to see the emergence of a value for these things to be released in the church. I’m not promoting one structure. I’m talking about the realities the apostles encouraged. They require a context that is not fulfilled if we only gather in large assemblies or houses of prayer. So what shall it be?

The Lord has called us (for our part here in Kansas City) to labor for the raising up of 12 large “city-wide assemblies”, undergirded by house congregations and houses of prayer.

Say those assemblies eventually number close to 1,000 souls each. Underneath each one there will be roughly 100 house congregations where the saints will have opportunity for a more close-knit relatedness. There will be several- perhaps a dozen- elders/pastors in the larger congregation who have fatherly oversight of about 10 house church pastors each. This means that each house church will number around 10 to 15 adults (along with their children) who are all encouraged to go deep in relationship to one another, even if they have only a few similarities. In all of this, a formative thing is taking place, as the people of God are learning to take up their crosses and love each other beyond the realm of familiarity and likeness. Authentic love is formed by the Spirit resting on a people who have foregone a ‘me-first’ mentality and chosen the path of the Servant. It transcends cliquish relationship and convenience. It becomes an issue of each member ministering directly unto one another.

Each house church may form spontaneous outreaches in their neighborhoods, Bible studies, other prayer times, etc. They will contact each other throughout the week in simple ways (e.g. emails, phone calls, etc.), enhancing their relationships in a manner that is practical within our culture and does not detract from the quality of the family unit. Pastoral couples will be raised up who have a quality of life and maturity, with grace enough to be a presence in the lives of these 10 to 15 people on a regular basis. Saints will be raised up in these settings unto maturity, and as the months and years go by, they will find their identity in the Lord and be released into His purposes. Some will stay in their locale, making disciples and multiplying house congregations, and others will be sent into the nations.

This is a simple model the Lord gave us after 40 days of corporate fasting and prayer. We don’t have anything close to 1,000 souls even in this first congregation. But we believe the Lord has given us a simple model to labor in. The model itself is important, but it is secondary to the reality of communion with Christ and the intentional quality that we need to “bear one another’s burdens” and be to each other what we’re called to be.

In our fellowship, each week there will be a larger gathering with worship, prayer, and preaching. Once a week each house church will gather for confession, praise, the activity of the Spirit, and “letting our hair down” to have meals and hang out. Every pastor or leader will have as much value for the house church as any other aspect of the ministry, and that’s a crucial thing. If the house church is just something we have as an option, and the pastors don’t value it or involve themselves in it, the saints will be likely to neglect it as well. We’ve seen this over and over again.

It’s not primarily about the structure as much it is about living with a holy value for the things God wants to release in the lives of His people.

Still, just as Jesus’ command to take the Gospel required a context for missions (note how foolish William Carey once looked for suggesting that laborers be sent into India with the Gospel!), just as David’s heart for worship and prayer required the context of the Tabernacle, so do the apostolic encouragements require a context for Christian community in an intensive sense. We need a context where it becomes possible to “bear one another’s burdens”(Gal. 6.2), “confess your faults”(Jas. 5.16), and experience an atmosphere where “each one” has the ability to bring to other saints what the Lord has gifted them with.

So this is a rudimentary example of what the Lord has given us here. It may look different where you are, but the question still remains:

Shall we allow the Lord to give us a context in which the saints can come into these realities?

I believe He is stirring many hearts along these lines, and we are not interested in writing a faddish book about structures. We simply long for the Lord to grant the wisdom that is necessary for these things to be released by the Spirit. I believe that when the people of God have this foundation, the great and climactic completion of the Joel 2 outpouring of the Spirit will have a wineskin that is not some new faddish model, but the people of God themselves. They will have become His habitation in the realm of real life. The earth- and Israel Herself- will finally be fit to contain the new wine that will cast out death and usher in the age of glory.

Intensive community is a place where the saints find confrontation and challenge, hope and healing, the activity of the Spirit, time in the Word, friendship and reality in a context that’s intimate and effectual. Coupled with city-wide gatherings, houses of prayer, ministry training centers, and missions-sending bases, I believe these communal contexts will help to bring the Church into the fullness of what God has always desired. Without this reality, there will always be something missing in our experience of the Kingdom.

I am convinced that we will not come into the fullness of Christ without experiencing His community. Nothing short of this will fit us for the time of trial that is most assuredly coming. As a result of the maturation and love that comes over time from experiencing Christ in life together, I believe Israel will be moved to jealousy, the nations will see a greater measure of God’s Kingdom, and this will have a hand in bringing us to the day when Christ will be all in all.

May it be released, Lord. Grant wisdom and revelation to leaders of all streams and contexts for the building and nurturing of intensive community with You as the Center. We ask You to help us to see this great provision developed in our congregations and ministries. Let Your Spirit move upon us, to deposit the loving concern and holy sobriety that has always burned in the heart of the Great Shepherd. And may we hasten the Day when You break into the earth and come down in Jerusalem. Amen.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in Me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

John 15:1-8

Someone was telling me recently about some observations they’ve made concerning a vine his parents have in their front yard. He was telling me that when the useless branches are cut off, they really don’t do anything but die and need to be thrown away or used in a fire. He went on to explain to me, that if you don’t prune the branches that are bearing fruit, then the vine grows very large, and has leaves and branches everywhere, but only very tiny grapes. The reason you prune the branches is so that the ingredients that travel from the roots in the ground and through the stem will make it all the way to the grapes on the ends of the branches, and thereby produce more in quality and size. The less spread-out their pathways are, the more ‘focus’ and concentration–if you will—the juice will have, so that the fruit that is coming forth will be larger and more plentiful.

So in other words, the energy is channeled into specific branches, instead of spread too thin all over the whole vine.

Time and again, the Bible uses the imagery of wine to describe the Holy Spirit and His work in our lives. We obviously get wine from grapes, and so the implications of this passage and the work of the Holy Spirit are made clear, especially given that in the previous chapter and the one following, Jesus went into detailed explanation of the role He’d play in the believer’s life.

The clearest I have ever been able to hear God clearly, has been when I cut out of my life the junk that kept me just bearing leaves and tiny grapes. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be a leaf-bearing tree. There’s nothing wrong in and of itself when a tree has a lot of leaves—that’s just the point. It may look nice from a distance, but in your hunger when you approach that tree looking for food, you are sadly disappointed and go elsewhere to satisfy that hunger. Jesus cursed a fig tree that only had leaves, but nothing to feed his hunger. What does He think when He comes to your life expecting fruit? Does He find any?

Jude also called such people ‘clouds without water’ (Jude 12), when talking specifically of false teachers. There’s many trees in our midst but since the tree looks good, we think nothing of it. But is your hunger and thirst for spiritual matters satisfied by such? Is there healing in those branches? There’s many false teachers out there, making rules like ‘tongues are not for today‘ and ‘it’s ok to ordain practicing homosexuals to the ministry.’ But the culture around us disintegrates because we the church are mostly clouds without water, trees without fruit substituting power and truth with proper theology.

Jesus Himself told the scribes and pharisees “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” (John 5:39-40).  What kind of vessel does the Holy Spirit use–one who has their theological ducks in a row and is not too “imbalanced”, or one who is YIELDED to Him fully, in whatever HE may desire of the vessel? The Holy Spirit and His work is just as resisted, rejected and taught against and ignored as something demonic and not heavenly, as Jesus’ was when He walked the earth in His day.

Now, of course I’m not saying that Jesus ‘curses’ us, His children for not bearing fruit. But we do have texts like the one quoted at the beginning of this entry that we have to contend with. What do eternal securists who believe once you’re saved you’re always saved do with passages of Scripture that say things like ‘if you the branch don’t bear fruit you’re cut off and thrown into the fire?!’ But that’s another topic for another time, sorry to digress.

But everything in God’s kingdom gets the knife. The second verse of John 15 states that the branches that don’t bear fruit, get cut off, and the branches that bear fruit get pruned, so they can produce more fruit. Either way, we can decide if we’ll give certain things up in our lives so that we can be more fruit-bearing, or we can let God cut them off Himself. When we wait for Him to do it for us, it’s always more painful than if we just willingly lay things down on the altar of His grace.

Everything in the kingdom of God gets the knife one way or another. Does God have to prune you, or does He have to cut things off? When He prunes, it’s so that we bear more fruit, and can yield “larger grapes”. So that the Holy Spirit wine can flow through the veins of our branches all the more easier. But in order to discuss the Holy Spirit as wine flowing through our lives, it’s necessary to make a little detour for a moment.

Fruit vs. Gifts
The Holy Spirit’s work within the believer produces the following fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). When Jesus comes to you looking to quench His thirst, does he find fruit like this in your life? The fruit of the Holy Spirit is not to be confused with the gifts (or more appropriately, enablements of power) of the Holy Spirit. Jesus told his disciples the Holy Spirit would be with them and in them (John 14:17), but then he also told them to not leave Jerusalem until they received power from on high. This obviously is a different experience altogether than when they received the Holy Spirit within, or else Jesus would have been mistaken or foolish to tell them not to leave Jerusalem until they received something they already had!

The baptism in the Holy Spirit is not a synonym for receiving the Holy Spirit upon salvation. For one thing, Jesus told them to tarry in Jerusalem until they received power, and did not tell them to wait until they “got saved”, “reborn”, or “regenerated” or any other synonym used to describe the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives upon salvation. They were bearing evidence of salvation already when they met to pray in the upper room every day until that famous day of Pentecost. And lest you think otherwise, let me remind you how rare it is to find unbelievers gathering in groups to pray every day to God! The burden of proof is on those who say we’re baptized in the Holy Spirit AND indwelt by Him both at the point of salvation, to explain away Scripture; for example how come it happened as separate experiences in the Bible, and to explain how the disciples could not possibly be saved already until Acts 2. The explanations I’ve been given or heard take hermeneutical and logical acrobats in order to hold water, and aren’t persuasive enough for me to list and refute all here.

When Paul wrote to the Ephesians, he was writing to a group of believers who already had both experiences—this is where many people make their exegetical (fancy Bible interpretation word) mistakes and start making assumptions about all that’s promised in the empowerment from on high is included in the role the Holy Spirit plays when he dwells in us upon getting saved. The two experiences, in my opinion were never meant to be separate but all believers should have and want this baptism for power in their witness for Christ, and the earlier they get it the better. When I witness to people and pray alongside them giving their lies to Jesus, I also take them through the steps of how the Holy Spirit will come on them also for power to witness for Christ, as well as in them for lifestyle–and it’s SO much easier to lead someone in this prayer as a baby Christian because they don’t have all the bad theology to unlearn and years of living without the power of the Holy Spirit to resist. But it sure would be nice if this experience DID happen at the point of salvation with every individual believer!

Interesting to note also, is that we have two groups of nine connected with the work of the Holy Spirit; nine fruit in Galatians 5, and nine gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11.  The fruit might be referred to the character traits resulting from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit: fruit grows on the branch because of the life within the tree. The fruit of the Spirit is demonstrative of the indwelling and fruit-bearing of the Holy Spirit in our lives as individual believers. The gifts of the Spirit are for service to the Body and the lost, and not ourselves, as a community where each individual constituting the whole, does its part.

We need to stay connected to the vine, and abide in Him or we’re not going to produce any character traits of the Spirit, or flow more fluidly in the gifts of the Spirit.

If you enjoyed this post or were blessed by it, then you may enjoy mp3s we have for free download on our podcast dealing with these same subjects:

Fire On Your Head Episode 21: Spiritual Disciplines
Download mp3 (right click and save)

Transformed into the Image of Christ – message by Bob Gladstone
Download mp3 (right click and save)

Hindrances to the Baptism in The Holy Spirit
Download mp3 (right click and save)

More Hindrances To a Spiritual Life
Download mp3 (right click and save)

“Blessed are those who mourn…” -Matt. 5.4a

The Sermon on the Mount is one of the most staggering portions of Scripture.

Oswald Chambers noted that it was calculated to throw our humanity and self-sufficient religiosity into despair, for there is no soul- however impressive their spirituality may seem- who can meet its requirements without an infusion of supernatural grace.

Indeed, when we peer into this sermon we are stricken by the wisdom of a heavenly milieu; a resurrectional mode of being. Are we living in the reality of this awesome message?

The remarkable thing is that Jesus had a no-holds barred, intensely deliberate motive when He sat down on the hill and opened His mouth to speak. He was jealous for His followers to come into the quality and depth of life that He was introducing, and He believed that His own obedience to the Father would provide the way for us to do just that. I wonder how much less intentional we’ve been in the hearing of the Sermon than He was in the giving of it.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones believed that one of the greatest schemes of the devil was to convince believers that the Sermon on the Mount was not to be literally applied to their lives. He believed that the low quality of moral living, the lack of the fear of the Lord in much of the Church, the absence of joy in the life of the believer, the prayerlessness that still prevails in most places, and the general superficiality that most of our ministries are marked by could all be linked on some level with the Church’s inadequate consideration of what Jesus gave us in this awesome Sermon.

Over sixty years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer unintentionally tripped over the truth and landed face down on foundational ground. The simple revelation that struck his heart was this: the Sermon on the Mount was actually meant to be lived out by those who are following Jesus.

For decades the scholars had been mystifying its statements, critically examining its origins and relishing in heady, intellectual conclusions on the Sermon. To many of them, it had lost its fire and been robbed of its cogency. They examined it technically and symbolically, and though they were neck-deep in studious labors, many of them were far from touching its true vitality. Dietrich’s heart was awakened to its freshness, and the radicalness of its demands and promises. Consequently, he gave us his masterful work, The Cost of Discipleship.

Leonard Ravenhill called Matthew 5-7 “the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest Man who ever lived.” Have we held it in the same esteem, or has it become mere flourish to us? Have we read it with trembling hands and rejoicing hearts, or do we fly through it as we would fly through the newspaper ads or some other fleeting subject?

These are eternal verities, weighty and buoyant, and it will require an entire surrender of heart to hear them rightly.

T. Austin Sparks tells us that:

Truth received and not responded to brings spiritual declension and loss of capacity.

In what manner are you hearing His words? If we think we’ve got it all together, or that we need not heed a word given because we’ve heard it before and it has become familiar to us, we have made ourselves eligible for a despicable numbness of heart that is capable of taking us downhill fast. The words of Jesus are Spirit and the are Life, and if they cease to bring our hearts to a place of awe, the chances are that we are not hearing Him rightly.

“…take care how you listen; for whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him.” (Lk. 8.18)

THE MOURNING ONES

Within the majesty of the Sermon on the Mount there are statements that have been heralded more loudly and frequently, and there are more subtle statements that are not considered as often. This statement, “Blessed are those who mourn”, falls into the latter category. Most of the time it is quoted and expounded in times when we are seeking to console and comfort the grieving. We hear this verse at funerals and memorial services, and it has been of great spiritual help during such times. Still, I am convinced that while this manner of mourning is valid and even Godly (e.g., Acts 8.2), there is a call to mourning that Jesus is issuing here, and it is something much deeper than most of us have been willing to engage.

Without a doubt, the word “mourn” is used most often in the OT in reference to the death of a loved one. But there is a mourning in spirit that Jesus was encouraging here, and throughout history, whenever God’s servants have been chronicled, this mourning can be found in their lives without fail. I am concerned that the frivolity and lightness of our pleasure-seeking, entertainment-centered culture has all but snuffed out this reality in the Church in our day, and we need to cry out to the Lord until we see its restoration.

This mourning is something more than the natural human response to personal tragedy. It is more than the pain we feel when we lose someone or something that we love. The mourning that Jesus was commending in this beatitude has everything to do with allowing our hearts to be consumed with the passions of God Himself.

A.W. Tozer once said that “America is laughing her way to hell.” Our culture, which is tragically man-centered and largely oblivious to the heart of God, thrives on that which brings immediate entertainment, amusement, and gratification. Tens of millions of souls fill the bars and show-houses of our cities every weekend, drinking and amusing themselves into a stupor. Their hearts have a gaping hole that can only be filled by God, and they have seen very little reality in the Church to convince them that there is a heavenly alternative.

While the powers of darkness continue to rock this generation with lies, much of the Church casually jogs along, drinking in the spirit of this age, running headlong into many the same compromised pursuits. As a corporate witness, we are mostly chasing after the wind- fat, happy, and indifferent to reality as God Himself sees it.

Yet, as John “Praying” Hyde, missionary & intercessor to India once declared, “Our Lord still agonizes for souls.” Are we agonizing in spirit? Friends, what has become of the mourning ones?

I am not opposed to the enjoyment of life. I love to watch my children carry on hilarious conversations. I love to play games with them, to hear them sing and to watch them dance. I delight in going on dates with my wife, laughing together, talking about life and enjoying one another. I am thankful for friends. Life is full of God-given things to taste, watch, hear and feel, and the “Father of Lights” has given us wonderful gifts that fall upon both the righteous and the unrighteous.

But what can be said of a Church that is mostly frivolous, indifferent to eternity, and virtually never mourns in spirit? If we have been made into a company of souls who are stewards of the heavenly mysteries, yet so very little of what Christ died for has been realized in the earth, how can we glide through life on this earth so smoothly? How can we not mourn until His Kingdom comes in full?

AN INADEQUATE VIEW OF SIN

As soon as the church adopts a benign or common view of sin, she opens to the gate to all kinds of deceptions. Authentic, God-breathed joy is replaced by a hokey, hollow, performance-based joviality. Once we tolerate sin in our own lives, we are forced to maintain a plastic happiness, for this is what we believe a Christian looks like. He is smiley, happy, and a good old boy who everyone likes to be around.

Our pastors, worship leaders and door greeters are pressured to put on a kind of external performance that doesn’t line up with the true condition of their lives. They are cornered into a way of living that is much more professional than it is an expression of the life of God working within the heart.

Leaders and believers alike often find themselves harboring secret moral failings, and they are maintaining a feigned happiness at public gatherings and ministry events. They have grown loose in their view of sin, the fear of the Lord has departed from them, and the blessedness of mourning in the way that Jesus encouraged has become a foreign concept. Sin is still in the camp, and if we do not align our hearts with the Lord and mourn over it, we become subject to a performance based ministry and life, and worse still, we cut ourselves off from the blessing of an intimate union with the Lord.

Our churches are in a critical need of this kind of mourning, for as long as the presence of sin is tolerated and swept under the rug, the powers of darkness will remain in our midst, unchallenged and unchecked. The greatest faith-healers may come through town, but a measure of sickness and death will always effect the people of God when sin is condoned, however subtle that condonation may seem. A compromised, dry-eyed Church will never express the fullness of Jesus Christ. Saints, let us mourn until the light and holiness of God Himself breaks in!

I’m not encouraging some kind of a grumpy disposition, or saying that if you purse your lips and your brows are straining downward you have come into this reality. You can gripe about the church and self-righteously challenge other believers. That does not make you a part of this company of mourning ones that Jesus calls “blessed”. There is nothing as far from true Spiritual mourning as a self-righteous, smug believer who walks around with a grouchy disposition and calls it spiritual sobriety. That is a sign that you are functioning out of human emotion and thought, and that you are not walking in the abiding life of Christ.

Nothing that the Lord has expressed in the Beatitudes can be established through natural means. Mourning in spirit, like all of the other qualities He spoke of in the Sermon, is not an affectation or something that we work up. This is a resurrectional mode of being, and it takes the dying of our own self-consciousness for us to receive life from the Father.

The mourning ones are those who mourn in the Spirit. Their hearts have been enveloped by God Himself, and they can do no other. They mourn because they have aligned their souls with the God who still weeps. He weeps over Israel. He weeps over the nations. He weeps over a church that has yet to come into the fullness of His Son. He is not depressed or sadistic. His mourning is a holy mourning, and as we align our hearts with His, it produces life in us and in those to whom we are called to bear witness. When was the last time you mourned, dear saint?

Some of you have allowed sin to creep back into your lives and you are no longer grieved by it. There is no mourning in your heart. You have such a guard up against condemnation that you’ve opened the gate to sin, and godly mourning has left you. The clear air of vibrant communion with the Lord has been polluted. The flame of His holiness that once burned in your heart has dwindled. It’s time to mourn!

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.” (Psm. 51.1-2)

Perhaps your heart used to burn for the salvation of unbelievers and the transformation of sin-ridden cities. You’ve grown weary in well doing, and you no longer know what it is to weep for the lost in prayer. Mourning with the Lord on their behalf seems foreign and distant. Friend, it’s time to mourn again!

“O that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep for the slain of the daughter of my people!” (Jer. 9.1)

Moses was a mourning one, for in all things he “cried out to the Lord.”

Samuel was a mourning one. “Samuel was troubled, and he cried out to the LORD all that night.” (1 Sam. 15.11)

David was a mourning one. “My tears have been my food day and night…” (Ps. 42.3)

Daniel, finding himself in Babylon during a time of judgment “wept bitterly”, fasting for three weeks. Though we know of no consistent sin in his life, he mercifully cried out on behalf of his nation, “Lord, we have sinned”!

Jeremiah mourned and cried out to a people who were teeter-tottering on the edge of the cliff of Divine justice. All of the prophets were mourning ones.

Paul was a mourning one, weeping for the salvation of his Jewish kinsmen and groaning as a mother in childbirth, “until Christ be formed” in the churches that he had planted and nurtured. Every true missionary, revivalist and reformer throughout history has been a mourning one.

They were joyful men, but their hearts burned with the passions of Jesus, and they did not treat life like a fleeting game. They wept over lost souls, and grieved over the condition of the Church. They cried out for a greater measure of the power of God, and they mourned over shortcomings in their own lives. They mourned until grace came down afresh. They mourned until the Spirit was poured out. They mourn yet today on our behalf. O friends, we cannot afford to remove ourselves from this continuum.

One day soon, their mourning will cease. When the government of God has its cosmos-wide influence at the end of the age the mourning will be once and for all turned into dancing and holy jubilee. God will rejoice over Israel with singing (imagine the majestic reverberations when God sings for joy!), and He will quiet them in His love (Zeph. 3.16-17). Sin, sickness, death and demonic influence will be permanently uprooted and cast into the lake of fire. The Lamb of God will be worshiped and exalted in the earth like never before. My heart burns for this day, friends!

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted…”

If you are comforted in a way that is not the result of God-inspired mourning, you are likely living in some form of deception. The spirit of this age is driven by the pursuit of comfort, happiness and pleasure in the midst of a staunch denial of all that God is. It is a sham. There is no true comfort apart from a holy alignment with the King of the ages. To come out of our own depravity, out from underneath all that is in this world that manipulates and jerks us, we must mourn.

Isaiah, a seasoned prophet, saw the Lord and mourned over the uncleanness of his own lips. This is not an issue of “works”. We are not talking about justification only, as glorious of a reality as that is. We are asking what it means to be a Sermon on the Mount people, an apostolic Body through which the Lord delivers His own heart to Israel and the nations.

The Spirit of mourning upon the people of God is a catalyst for salvation and deliverance in the societies of the earth. No wonder the apostles were mourning men. They penetrated society because they were taken up with the heart of the Lord, and their ministries were “blessed” by God Himself. The Lord desires to put the same blessing upon an entire Body in these last days, and it will rest upon those who are poor in spirit, mourning in hope until the fullness of Christ is manifested in the earth.

Mourning in spirit is the gateway to the kind of comfort that only God can grant. The mourning ones will bring true comfort to the earth. Their witness and fellowship will produce life in the Church and in society. They will enjoy life, they will rejoice with those who rejoice, but they will not be mindless jokers. They will mourn in prayer and fasting until the Lord sees “the travail of His soul and is satisfied.” (Is. 53)

“Jesus answered, ‘How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast.’” (Matt. 9.15)

Have you become satisfied with the things of this world? Is there a cry for the fullness of God in your spirit? Have you sought to circumvent or avoid the kind of mourning that still burns in the heart of the Son of God? Saints, we have not the time for playing games with our lives. We have one life to live. There is sin to be mourned over. There is a harvest to be reaped by laborers who go into the fields, weeping in faith and anticipation. There is a fullness to cry out for. There is an Israel to intercede for. There is a Living God to pant after!

I want to be in that company of mourners, weeping in spirit until the glory of God covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. What about you?

Father, we ask you to align our hearts with Yours. However Your heart still mourns, we want to be enjoined with Your cry. Make us a house of mourning, that in our day souls may be comforted by the reality of Your salvation. Make us mourners along with the great host of heaven, that the Day of Your return may be hastened. We want to weep between the porch and the altar for the salvation of Israel, the transformation of the nations, and the release of Your judgments and mercies. Forgive us our self-satisfaction and empty religious performances. We lay our souls in the dust, O God. Abide with us, great Apostle and High Priest. Let us weep with You now, until we are able to rejoice with You in full, when Your Kingdom is permanently and indestructibly established in Jerusalem. Have for Yourself a people who mourn in spirit. Mark us with blessing, the high privilege of having hearts that are united with You. Amen.

I have noticed an alarming trend in our day of pastors of churches, who rarely, if ever preach an evangelistic message in their services. They seem to have lost their zeal for souls. Perhaps they have even left their first love. In some cases, pastors don’t feel it is their calling to win souls. However, Paul, writing to Timothy who was a pastor, encouraged him to “…do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of your ministry.”
Why should pastors preach evangelistic messages regularly?

Shouldn’t they just teach and encourage?  There are several reasons.

First, when people visit a church service for the first time, a wise pastor should assume the possibility that they may be there because either they have been backslidden, and God is trying to draw them back to Himself, or they are unsaved and someone has been praying for them. Backsliders can often appear to be right with God. Having experience on how to worship as a believer and speak Christianese, they may appear to be simply someone who is new to the area, and is looking for a good Church. At the very least, a pastor should assume they need an opportunity to get things right with God, and spend the last 5-10 minutes of his preaching in preparing for a call to repentance.

Most congregations are made up of believers at different levels of maturity and skill in winning souls. But mark this down, anyone who professes to be a Christian, but has no zeal for souls is a hypocrite! He or she is only pretending to be a Christian. Those who are not as skillful, but who are full of zeal for souls will learn from the example of their pastor, and while they are learning, they will be greatly encouraged to bring their unsaved friends, family and neighbors to the Church services, knowing they can expect their pastor give an altar-call and bring them to Christ.

But, suppose they bring that lost neighbor, and the pastor neglects to draw the net, or perhaps even to throw out the net. In such a case, the believer get’s discouraged. He becomes vexed and heart broken. Perhaps it had taken him months to convince this person to attend to the preaching of his pastor. Now the service is over, and his friend is still lost.

I have seen the result when new converts are all full of zeal and love for souls. Often, with a faithful minister, there will be a kind of “chain of grace”, in which each new convert begins to bring in all their lost friends and neighbors, and these are converted. Then these also do the same, and so on. Before long, you have revival: a building filled with zealous new believers who hunger to be trained and taught on the subjects of prayer, holiness, soul winning, and all the various Christian graces.

-thatjoelguy

In John 14:17 Jesus said the Holy Spirit will be with us AND in us. These are two different things. The Holy Spirit is with us corporately as a body of believers and He’s with the individual believer, on the inside of us. He builds up the Church, and He builds up the individual believer.

In 1 Corinthians 3:16 Paul tells the church at Corinth they collectively as a church are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Not every Bible translation makes that obvious. The Amplified translation brings out that the church is the temple of the Holy Spirit collectively, and the individual is the temple of the Holy Spirit individually. Compare this with 1 Corinthians 6:19 where we’re told our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.

This is also part of the reason why when believers are baptized in the Holy Spirit sometime after their salvation experience, there’s different varieties of the gift of tongues available to them. Each version of the Holy Spirit’s “temple” has this phenomena manifested. In the corporate setting, the Holy Spirit distributes gifts freely as He sees fit, but we can seek after and desire to operate in some more than others for the benefit of the rest of the Church Body. One person can have the public corporate version of the gift of tongues, and another believer the interpretation (in a public setting). It’s true, that not every believer has the corporate version of the gift of tongues.

However, every gift of the Holy Spirit that operates collectively in the body of Christ has an “individual” version of for the believer. All may prophesy (1 Cor. 14:31), all believers can/may speak in tongues (Mark 16:17), anyone who believes may lay hands on the sick (Mark 16:18), and so on. When you’re not around other believers, do you really refuse to operate in a spiritual gift because you don’t think it’s the one you have? Of course not! But corporately in meetings like Church services, Bible studies, home meetings, some will be the one to demonstrate certain giftings instead of us.

That being said, there’s the gift of tongues that edify the collective temple of the Holy Spirit (see 1 Corinthians 14: 5, and 22), and there’s a tongue that edifies the individual Holy Spirit temples. First Corinthians 14:4, 13-17 go into a bit of detail on this, and Romans 8:26-7 speaks of intercessional groanings and ‘praying when we know not what we ought to pray‘. Tongues for the individual is available to every believer. If you are saved, you are a candidate for it. It’s not something special only some have and others don’t—or that has passed away with the early church. Two types of the gift of tongues are for the Body of believers, for their benefit and edification, and one of them is accompanied by an interpretation. The tongue could be a natural language. The other two types of the gift of tongues are for the individual believer, and the interpretation comes in the form of revelation and/or strength in the believer’s spirit. Every believer can benefit from this personal use of tongues, but misunderstanding and lack of familiar experience are the main inhibitor preventing many evangelicals from entering into this realm of the Holy Spirit.

But Brother Steve there’s other gifts besides tongues that the Holy Spirit distributes besides the gift of tongues. How can you sayall are supposed to have one of the gifts above the others that the Holy Spirit gives?

As I’ve just said, the gift for personal use is something that every believer can have following the baptism in the Holy Spirit. If tongues were not of any significance other than being ONE of the gifts that accompany the baptism in the Holy Spirit, then in the book of Acts chapter 2, more gifts would have been mentioned, but there are none. It says they ALL began to speak with other tongues when the enduement of power (not the regeneration of the Holy Spirit they ALREADY had) came on them. Each instance the baptism in the Holy Spirit is talked about in Acts, the manifestation of other tongues accompanied it, and in Acts 19, prophecy did also. Both are revelation/edification tools that involve speaking something.

So, to keep in mind the framework I’ve been setting up lately in my entries on words and confession, I’ll say that the “confession” that accompanies the baptism in the Holy Spirit, as demonstrated in the book of Acts, is the gift of tongues—for personal edification. I have decided to use the term “inner-fortification [of the inner man]” interchangeably with ‘edification’, but you’ll see that’s naturally what I mean by that.  In general, people won’t desire to operate in something if they aren’t persuaded by the benefits of doing so, so allow me to mention a few more things related to praying and speaking in tongues, hopefully to whet your appetite and make you desirous for it.

The role of this ‘confession’ in personal revelation.

I was reading an article on the website of a well-known and well-respected preacher that undoubtedly some reading this are familiar with. In the article he was talking about how He heard the ‘audible voice of God’ recently, but went on to downplay it and teach that the Holy Spirit always speaks to us through the Word, and only the Word. I have no disagreement necessarily with that because the Holy Spirit and the Word are one (1 John 5:7), but I cringed as further on in the article he started to teach that his personal experience and understanding of how this worked is pretty much the only way God spoke to the believer. He went on to tear apart an example of a charismatic minister hearing God tell him specifically to give some funds to one of his students in his Bible school. I felt sorry for the author of the article for dismissing a simple and practical way the Holy Spirit works in our lives. I might make him and many others like him think I’m a flake if I said I “hear” from God regularly. Matter of fact, that’s what praying in tongues helps do in the believer’s life. If you don’t believe me, then do it a lot and see for yourself!

Can you imagine what we look like to the world when we tell them we can have a personal relationship WITH God Himself, and that He sent His Son to die for us, and that He sent a version of Himself—the Holy Spirit—to live in us—but we can’t hear Him? What on earth?! What kind of relationship is that if you can’t hear from the other person? Do you see how ridiculous this sounds to say the only way He speaks to us is if we read His book?

Frankly, even evangelicals who don’t believe in speaking in tongues or operating in the prophetic and prophesying fail to practice what they preach themselves oftentimes as there’s many decisions we’re to make in life that we can’t find a chapter and verse for in the Bible but undoubtedly many Christians know they’ve obeyed God’s will for their life in various ways in the jobs they’ve gotten, places they’ve moved to, ministry they’ve started. Actually I dare to say much ministry going on in the world today is man’s idea and not the Holy Ghost’s–but that’s another entry!

Hearing God is NOT some difficult thing only really special spiritual people get to do. This should be NORMAL for all believers! How can God live in you and you NOT learn directly from Him with an inner witness and something other than just reading His book?

But back to this stuff about the Holy Spirit being inside of you. I’m loosely basing my thoughts on texts from John 14-16 when I say this. For the sake that you don’t mistakenly think I’m pulling things out of context I highly recommend reading those passages and meditating on them for yourself.

When John tells us the Holy Spirit will teach us  ALL things, the disciples–who were the ones being spoken to here–didn’t have all of Jesus’ words written down in a Bible yet for the Holy Spirit to bring revelation from. Jesus was not telling them the Holy Spirit would help them memorize the Romans Road or the Sermon on the Mount. They had to rely on the Holy Spirit bringing to remembrance what He had told them personally—not from mental or spiritual recollection of the Bible merely as a living text. The disciples had the Word Himself in their midst for 3 and ½ years to learn from personally. However, 2000 years later, since we did not have that exact same experience as them, it’s not a misinterpretation to take this text to say the Holy Spirit brings life to the written Word for us this way.

The very first few verses of the book of Genesis mention how the Spirit of the Lord was hovering over the face of the waters. He was involved when God SPOKE the Word and brought forth life and all therein. The Psalms mention how God knew us before He formed us in the womb. Before we ever set foot on the face of the earth and began to have some goo-goos and ga-gas, the Lord had a plan for your individual life. That is what the Holy Spirit brings to remembrance in us as we pray in tongues. The Holy Spirit living in you, repeats to you and gives you revelation and insight into the things God has spoken and decreed about your life before the foundation of the world, and Holy Spirit helps build you up and qualify you into that plan/will–remember before I’ve said I’m not a Calvinist in the traditional way it’s taught–I will post what I think about God’s sovereignty at a later date. God has a will for us that we can miss. He has set up in his unending wisdom a way to deposit that will on the inside of us, and then let us unpack at our pace, through praying in tongues–edifying ourselves in the spirit.

Jesus in that chapter of John was not exclusively talking about the Word of Jesus He spoke 2000 years ago—the Holy Spirit is capable of remembering words spoken no matter how long ago they were spoken—He is not bound by time–we are. Everything that ever has happened or will happen, has already happened and not yet happened (in a manner of speaking) from His point of view already. The moment that He was hovering over the waters in Genesis 1:2 and the moment He speaks of in Revelation 22:17 inviting the Lord Jesus to come back—are on the same level plane in the history of existence.

Am I shaking your brain yet? This stuff is hard for us finite beings to understand since we’re linear and bound by time. The Spirit of God takes the things He has heard about your life and the plan God has for it, and reveals them to us. The fact of the matter is that the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus, takes what He has heard, and repeats it or makes it known to us. When and where exactly did the Holy Ghost hear things to tell us? Did you know this includes things that are not ‘written in the Book’? This includes the calling God has for you. This includes whom you’ll marry. This includes what you should do today. But, my friends, He’s never going to contradict what He has allowed to be written down in this book we call the Bible. The Author of that Book is never going to give you revelation that contradicts the Book He Himself penned through human hands! Remember, the Spirit and the Word are one (1 John 5:7). If you ever hear someone teaching some “new teaching” that they say God revealed to them, ask them for at least three Scripture passages to back it up!

Brother Steve, what does this revelation stuff have to do with the gift of tongues?

As I’ve said before, extended tongue praying is directly related to personal edification and revelation–and inner fortification. I’m just saying all this stuff to get you jealous to be doing it more in your life if you’re not already. This process of personal tongue speaking, God set up in His infinite wisdom to allow us to be the stewards of our own edification. He doesn’t force His will and His plans on us, but allows us to pray ourselves into His will and our calling at our own pace. Slowly or speedily, it’s up to us–the same way an athlete decides how much time he’s going to spend in the gym working out and developing his muscles. God doesn’t sovereignly “ordain” him to just get buff overnight. The athlete is in charge of how much he’s going to do this practice, and likewise every believer is a steward of their own spiritual edification.

If then, this is part of what speaking in tongues a lot does, then why would anyone NOT want to do it or find a way to relegate to some spiritual ecstasy or some weird thing only believers in the first century could do, but now we “don’t need” for the various reasons many evangelicals teach and preach we don’t need it for? I guarantee you, I’m not speaking gibberish and being “self-hypnotized”. Look at the fruit and the insight it results in in those who do it a lot, and try telling me that’s from the devil of someone hypnotizing themselves! When we fear things we don’t know explain or aren’t doing ourselves, we can come up with all sorts of silly misunderstandings about it, but God desires every one have this gift. It’s just people decide not to take it or believe that because of their understanding of God’s sovereignty and will, that if God wants us to have something He’ll force it on us or do it Himself without our own initiative in the receiving it.

I’ve accepted it and after over 7 years of being filled with the Holy Spirit I’m still just as excited to run deep into these realms of the Holy Spirit as I did the first week after getting baptized in Him. I’m taking in all I can get, and if others don’t want it, I truly can say it’s their loss.

Be blessed, and may God draw you into deeper and deeper realms of His Spirit.

If you were blessed by this article, you may like the following podcast mp3s free for download:

Hindrances to the Baptism In The Holy Spirit
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More Hindrances To a Spiritual Life
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Holy Spirit: Baptism in Power
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The Foundation Stone

I deeply treasure the terms apostolic and prophetic. They are dear to me. I desire to know, understand, and operate in the fullness of their meaning, as Jesus intended, when He gave them as gifts to us, His church. Only when these gifts are in their proper place in the church, is there a correct foundation laid for the building up of the Body of Christ to attain to that fullness. After the completion of the Prophetic Essence study, I knew it would not be complete without a study of the apostolic; therefore here a some introductory thoughts on the matter.

The church must have the actual five-fold gifts in place for the church to be solidified. A church that illuminates all the fullness of Christ will shake the heavens and the earth. It will be the exacting image of God in the heavens and in the earth. It will set the stage for the completion of the ages. It will usher in the last days. It will beat testimony that will lead to the salvation of Israel.

God has given me over to this. I am jealous for the apostolic and the prophetic and hate to see them misused and misrepresented. Therefore, in these studies, I am making a statement that I hope is correct in the shinning of truth on the essence of the apostolic, and the fullness of Christ, to the degree of revelation and teaching that I have been granted. There is so much to discuss pertaining to these issues. I am not claiming this complete, nor do I venture into vast subjects that other teachers have already examined. However it is in my heart to express the insight that I do have. (The influences of Robert Gladstone at FIRE School of Ministry and all his studies on the authentic church as combined and exemplified with a truly essential prophetic voice in Arthur Katz, and one simple yet complex earth shattering message from him, have steered me by the Spirit into this direction, and of whom a great deal of inspiration of these studies have come.)

I have been undone for anything or type of subversion of the church that does not have at the core of its being the pursuit of the real, absolute, authentic, apostolic call of the fullness of Christ. I am possessed with this; I will give my life to this; and I will settle for nothing less than true apostolic essence.

The substance of this study is a series of studies that I have conducted, researched, preached, and refined over the last six years. It will essentially paint a picture (not a complete masterpiece, but a portion) of a church that seeks, begins to function in, and moves towards, the fullness of Christ. All that I study, share, write, and preach seem to filter back to this core teaching and verses. I am both excited and guarded in sharing it because I am jealous for the truth and hate perversion. I do not know it all, but I do seek the truth of the plumb line that stretches throughout all of Scripture.

Lord your will be done. Guide my hand in the unleashing of that which You have placed in my heart, Take away my own thoughts and celebrate yours. May this help all of us to become more like You. To be part of, and individually a body that understands, pursues, begins to walk in, and reaches the fullness of Christ, in Jesus name, Amen.

Building the House of God

The church is a body, not a building. God is building a people, not a palace. The house is not the structure; it is the people who reside together, and the family that makes up its constitution. So, in reference to the building up of the house of God, it is the local and worldwide body of believers who are of the significance.

Ephesians 2:18-22

“For through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you are also being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”

This passage describes the foundation and building up of the church into a temple of God. The building must have the proper starting point-”corner stone; ” the proper foundation-”apostles and prophets,” for it to grow into the temple, the dwelling place of God. The procedure for this is found in Ephesians 4:11-13, the equipping of ministry into maturity, which results in completeness and fullness. A church that is the actual house of God, the temple of His presence, and a people in whom the living God dwells, will be a true representation of His image to the earth. Thus, the challenge is seeing a church built in this apostolic essence; a church that God would actually inhabit. He does dwell in each of us at various levels of fullness, but we must join in the unity of the Spirit (v 4:3) as on people (John 17:21) full of God-Jesus in the earth in us.

The Foundation Stone

Jesus is the foundation stone. He is the revelation of God to mankind. Everything in the church is built on Him, for Him and through Him. He is the foundation for all creation (Jn 1:1-5). He is the spoken Word of God, who became flesh, and walked with us to show us the way to God, the way to live in the Spirit, and the way to fellowship as a body of those who believe in Him (Jn 1:14; 14:6; 17). He came to redeem all creation from the bonds of death (Rom 8:19-21) and restore their relationship with God. He chose to have a body of people in the earth-His church- to be His ambassadors (2 Cor 5:20), and preach the good news that He is Lord to all men everywhere (Mt 28:18-20). Now there must be a proper foundation in place for the rest of the building to be built upon, and function properly.

Matthew 16:13-23

Jesus asked His disciples who people said that He was (13-16). The response by the disciple was a natural one. They knew He was supernatural so they compared Him to other supernatural men. This sounds good, but their vision was still on men and not on God. They needed to lift their vision higher, so Jesus asked them the question again; “But who so you say that I am?”

Peter had his vision on God. He was not comparing Jesus to other men. Jesus was more than a man. He was God manifested in their midst, yet it still required the unveiling of a mystery to see this. Jesus was revealing in such a way to show that the unveiling of the mysteries of the kingdom come from God, and not from man. The vision must not be surface level, and must be a heavenly eternal vision. This is where, at this time, Peter had his sights. Therefore he could make the proclamation that this Man was the “Christ, the Son of the living God.” This is the same as saying; “Here is God!” This is monumentous, this is perplexing, this is a clarion call sounding throughout the earth: creation acknowledging and returning in faith and revelation to His creator. Here is the announcement to the heavens and the earth, the creation and the universe HERE IS GOD! (This revelation should be present within us everywhere we go, if indeed we are the church.)

Do you realize what it took for Peter to speak that out (17)? What it took for Peter to confess that? Peter who was a Jew in a nation where all men where looking for this? This was risky; to look at this man, Jesus, as the Son of God. Yet all the others missed it. God was staring them in the face, but because they were looking at the appearance of a man, they missed the revelation needed to understand that this was the appearance of God.

Thus you have the revelation of two paradigms: The vision of God and the vision of man. This is the core of the issue in determining that which it in is initiation is defined as; the way or God or the way of man. This is precisely why Jesus came, to save us from our own way and to show us His. Ours is the influenced by the devil and it is the way to death. His way is influenced by the Holy Spirit, and is the way to life. The very first thing to understand in the church is that Jesus is Lord, and from this revelation, we must build the church in the Spirit, by further revelation from Him, and not try to build it ourselves.

Jesus recognizes that Peter had a revelation of Him from the Father (18). He tells Peter-small rock-that on this large rock-revelation-He will build His church. All that the church does should be built upon this stone, this rock of revelation, Jesus the very Word of God. This is, in a sense, the birth of the church. And as we will see later, the church is over all dominion in the earth (19), because she is seated right next to Jesus in the heavenly places (Eph 2:6). The church has the keys to the highest supernatural power and can mover both heaven and earth, natural and spiritual.

Jesus has laid the foundation and now He begins to build on it (21). He starts to reveal more of who He is and the purposes of God. This includes His suffering, death and resurrection. He must suffer death from man, so that man can be redeemed from suffering death from Him. He just showed that the way of man is not of God. He came from God to man as a man, to save them from the ways of man and restore them through this revelation to the ways of God. His death by men will put their ways to death, when in Him, they acknowledge that the way they have been living is evil and that they must repent and live according to His ways. So when we believe we shift from living in the paradigm of men into living in the paradigm of God.

He must die and rise again, and the revealing of this is the next stone of revelation that is now being laid by Jesus for the church to be built up properly. (The rejection of these two foundational truths is the basis for which most cults and false religions stand.) Jesus is Lord, and His dying for us, rising again and ascending to the Father is the very heart of the matter for all that we believe as Christians.

Now Peter has a paradigm shift (22-23). His vision was on God for the first revelation. And now for the second, we find that Peter’s vision was on man. Peter did not understand that Jesus was building upon the first revelation. Sometimes we get one revelation just to set us up for another, in order to understand both. The danger lies in camping out on the first and missing the second. Peter took his eyes off the fact that God was speaking with Him and revealing something new to Him, and saw with the eyes of men. This is why Peter was rebuked so harshly by Jesus. The devil’s aim is to get us to follow our own appetites, what is appealing to the flesh, just as he did with Eve (Gen 3:6). Death, there is nothing the flesh hates more than death. It would rather your spirit die than it, just so it can survive a little bit longer. Jesus recognized satan as influencing Peter, so he rebuked him saying;

“Get behind me satan, you are a stumbling block to me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interest, but man’s.”

Looking at man’s interest instead of God’s is demonic and satanic. This will not build up, but it will tear down. If we try to add to what God is building with our flesh, then it will be a destructive stumbling block that tears away at the building of God. It does not belong. Revelation is sent of God. Apostolic means “sent ones.” God sends us the plans of His building, as Jesus was doing here, through revelation of the Spirit and the Word.

Matthew 16:24-27

In order to build up the body, we must continue in this, keep our visions on God, and deny the flesh. Our flesh is in tune with the ways of man, which is why we must make our flesh submit. After Jesus rebukes Peter, He then goes on to teach his disciples how to avoid this while at the same time He adding further revelation to the plan of God. Jesus is denying the flesh and so must the disciples if they are to be like Him. They must get their eyes of the temporal (26) and focus on the eternal. This will keep the building strong and free of stumbling blocks. We are not building man’s house, we are building God’s. The church should reflect the image of God and not the image of man. What are you building?

The Kingdom

Jesus preached repent or change the way you think and live (GR def.), the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus was of course preaching proclaiming this news to His Jewish brothers. In their mindsets and understanding of the theme of the kingdom of which He was proclaiming. I think of the references to the kingdom in Daniel.

In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the statue we find an illustration of all of the kingdom’s of all time. I am not going to take a stance on the metaphoric meanings here, just some quick gleanings. There is a list of all of these kingdoms and their rule and power, then all of the sudden out of now where you see a rock cut out without human hands strike the statue and crush it so that it is scattered by the wind.This stone became a mountain that fills the whole earth. ref. Dan 2:31-31; 44-45.

So this kingdom is set up by God and not human hands and it destroys all of the other kingdoms and fills the earth. Jesus was proclaiming that this kingdom was at hand which is why it was so powerful. “At hand” the Interlinear says “has drawn near.” The kingdom which would fill the earth. (This is not a strictly eschatological statement. Prophecy is like a stone that bounces across a lake that has several fulfillments before splashing onto its final unveiling or apocalypse. Ref. John the Baptist was the Elijah to come and after making that statement, Jesus again said that Elijah would come.) We see now that Jesus by preaching the kingdom is at hand is also now demonstrating it because He is fulfilling the revelation of the dream.

We know that Jesus is the chief corner stone, rejected of men, and the kingdom that he is now building in the earth is not of man’s origins but God’s. He is the stone that strikes the statue, the evil empire, and His kingdom is the one that is now filling the earth. (Eph 1:19-23)

Jesus was also speaking to His disciples when proclaiming these things. He taught them to pray “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…” Is there sickness, sin and death in heaven? Absolutely not. On earth as it is in heaven. Jesus brought the realities of heaven to earth when He preached, healed the sick, raised the dead… He was demonstrating the kingdom and pushing back the powers of darkness at the same time. The same way David’s stone defeated Goliath. The disciples were witnesses of these things, for Jesus was training them to go and do likewise. Luke 9:2; Mt 10:7-8 They were sent out to do and say the same things. They are apart of His kingdom, demonstrating the power of heaven here on the earth, just as they were instructed to pray for.

After Jesus ascended His disciples went out everywhere preaching the Gospel. Signs and wonders and salvations and new church plants were all fruits of their ministries and a demonstration of the kingdom of heaven filling the earth.

Everywhere we go we bring the kingdom. We go to the grocery store and see someone sick, we have an opportunity to show them how much Jesus loves them by healing their sickness. The kingdom is in us. The more we preach the more His kingdom fills the earth. The more we love people… The more we share and discuss the things of God on forums such as these, the more mature we become and the more the kingdom is advanced.

Yes there is an ultimate fulfillment. Our goal as a church, a fellowship of believers should be to walk in all the fullness of Christ (Eph 4:11-13). There will be a ministry suitable to the fullness of the times where all things are summed up in Christ (Eph 1:10) and I believe that the closer we get to the fullness, it will usher in the fulfillment of the age, and the final fulfillment of the kingdom. Jesus is alive in you and He wants that life to come up out of you and touch the nations.

New Apostolic Age

Hebrews 9:11

“But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say not of this creation.”

Christ entered the eternal tabernacle as the eternal sacrifice. In the tabernacle was the Holy Place. It was the place where the presence of God resided. This is a shadow of that which was in eternity, in heaven. This is the tabernacle which Jesus entered. The heavenly Holy Place is God Himself. This tabernacle is of eternity and not the earthly, it is not made with human hands. In essence it is in origin of God.

Apostle means “sent one.” Things that have their origin in God are obviously of God. Whatever proceeds forth of God, is of God. Whatever is sent of God, is of God. If it has its origin from above it is from God, if it does not it is of man, being influenced by satan (Matthew 16:23). It is not of man’s hands but of God’s hands.

God Himself carved out men, a people for Himself. They are the stone cut out, like their elder brother Jesus, that fills the earth with His Kingdom (Daniel 2:44-45). Creation will culminate with a people who are apostolic, sent of God, who have their origin, calling, and motivation in Him, and Him alone. They will change and challenge the earth to such a degree that the fullness of time will manifest.

The arsenal of men will not work (1 Samuel 38-39); only the secrets of God will reveal the way to each man’s heart and slay the giants of their generation (1 Sam 17:40; 49). This will not be cut out by the education of men (1 Corinthians 1-5), but in the river of th presence of God.

Hebrews 9:11-14

The writer here is showing that the old covenant was a temporal shadow of the eternal. Now the Eternal One (Jesus) has come, and offered the eternal sacrifice (Himself), fulfilling the old and beginning the new. This is the inauguration of a new era. The temporal being filled and fulfilled by the eternal. Apostolic.

The kingdom of Heaven has come to the earth through Jesus. He broke the eternal veil between God and man, with His eternal sacrifice; without which we would spend eternity with out God. He is the gateway through which we all must pass into eternity (i.e. eternal life and salvation). Likewise our relationship with Him allows eternity to flow through us to the world. The eternal, sent of God to overtake all the earthly kingdoms and establish His rule. This is our call, apostles of the kingdom; building, establishing and equipping that which is born in the heart of God and to make His will a reality in the now, here, in our day to day existence and being.

The writer is stressing here something that the Hebraic reader would have either accepted or vehemantly rejected; that this Jesus is the fulfillment of the entire nation of Israel’s existence. And that nation, while it remains unique as the people through which He came, now must embrace the sending out of that which God has intended.

The last days are (and could be transliterated as) a new Jesus age. And just as Jesus was sent of the Father (John 17:18) so He is sending us to magnify what He did for all, and marry the heart of man to the heart of God, the spirit of man to the Spirit of God. This is a new apostolic age whence the will of God will shine forth through a people that are sent from Him. The find their dwelling in Him and He in them, and through that relationship, the world will be won!

This will be somewhat of a picture of what the apostolic church will look like. This is not a dogma on the office of an apostle, but a prophetic glimpse of a time when the reality of the apostolic actually is a reality in the earth. And I pray that this word which I feel the Lord has given is and apostolic statement the permeates truth and life, in Jesus name.

I am sitting at my desk with one of the original copies of “The Great Revival in Wales”, a book that was published in 1905 and handed out in that same year throughout Western American congregations. It was distributed by a relatively unknown man named Frank Bartleman (author of “Azusa Street”), a revivalist whose fasting, praying and preaching was effectual during this time. It is an early collection of many eye-witness accounts of the revival which made history at the beginning of the 20th century.

The Holy Spirit revival of Wales in 1904 was one of the greatest movings of God’s Spirit in the history of the Church. The most popular sporting events were barely attended. The nation sold out of Bibles. An estimated 100,000-plus souls were brought from darkness to light over a period of about nine months. Bars went out of business, and the praises of God could be heard from the sanctuaries to the streets to the coal mines and back. We’ve never seen anything like it in our generation, at least not in the West.

This book on Wales was used, in part, to fuel the faith and hunger of many believers in America at the turn of last century. In particular, several congregations in California were radically moved by the reports of such a Divine invasion of society. Repentance and prayer for like awakenings became the cry of many hearts during this time. People began to realize that if the Church was not having an effect on the surrounding society, something was tragically amiss. From that conviction the prayers arose. The kinds of prayers that move things in the heavenlies were offered up. People travailed and groaned for the salvation of unbelievers, and for the fire of God to fall in the Church.

The result of this stirring was an answer from heaven that would again alter the course of history, when coupled with other events, a broken-hearted black man named William Seymour made his pilgrimage to Los Angeles, a place where he would be a part of what came to be known as the Azusa Street Revival. This was a movement which saw the fire of God’s Spirit spread with fervent rapidity, touching many parts of the world. John G. Lake, speaking of Seymour noted that “when the fire of God came it glorified him, and the glory and the power of a real Pentecost shook the world.”

Friends, we need to be revived! We need outpourings of God’s Spirit! We need floods of mercy to sweep through the streets of our cities! We need a fire of impassioned prayer and worship kindled in our churches! We need the Spirit of the fear of the Lord to be released in our communities! We need an ever-increasing consciousness of Jesus Christ! I am thinking of the Psalmists’ cry:

“The humble have seen it [the salvation of the Lord] and are glad;
You who seek God, let your heart revive.” -Psm. 69:32

There are some of you who once rejoiced in the presence of the Lord, filled with a heart of simplistic praise and an innocence that came from knowing you had been cleansed and shown mercy. Now you are burdened with busyness, suspicious of others, entrapped in the stranglehold of fear and compromise, and there is no living song in your heart. Dear saint, “seek God,” and “let your heart revive.”

There are those who knew a pure communion with the Lord in the secret place, where you sat at His feet and wondered in adoration before the Throne. You had a love for the scriptures, and a grace-charged passion in prayer. Now you can scarcely remember a time of fresh and new exchange with the God of life. He has become a taskmaster, or an employer, or an unknowable figure. Once he was to you both King and friend. Now your heart is weary and aimless. You’ve grown worldly, and all that this world has to offer- its fashions, its foods, its entertainment, its false light- has caught your eye. You are not conscious either of His Lordship or His kind and personal embrace. Yet He is as near as He ever was. Dear child, “let your heart revive.”

There are those of you who once anticipated the works of God. You expected the Gospel to penetrate the society. You prayed and believed for words of conviction and life that would have an eternal effect on unbelievers in your sphere of relationship. You believed that the lame really could walk, the blind really could see, the dead really could arise, and demons really could be driven out. Your heart was aflame in God for the needs of the suffering ones. Now He has become a mere concept. You wonder whether or not He will break into history at all. Perhaps you’ve “been there, done that” and been let down. You’re not willing to let faith arise in your heart. You would rather just go through life as it is. But that is not the cry of true sons! That is not the faith your heart once knew! That is not the compassion that once burned in your spirit. Dear saint, “let your heart revive.”

We have gone too far to turn back. While I believe that the greatest time of upheaval, suffering, and tumult that history has known is just around the corner, I also believe that we are on the path to seeing the greatest awakening the Church has ever witnessed. This time, it will not fade into memory, only to be recalled and wept over. It will culminate in the return of our Heavenly King, and the establishment of His perfect rule. Hallelujah!

…that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner-man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; so that…you…may know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
-Eph. 3:16, 17, 19

We need to believe as Evan Roberts believed for Wales. We need to believe as Jesus Himself believed:

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
-Jn. 14:12

It’s time for us to cry out to the Lord. If there is sin, let it be brought into the light and repented of. If there’s discouragement or fear, let it be cast aside. There is a great harvest to be reaped, and it will only be brought in rightly by “revived” souls. Servants whose hearts have been kindled by the fire of God’s own Spirit will be the bearers of the ark in these final days. This is not a plea for hollow emotionalism, or the repetition of some method for success. This is the inheritance of the children of God.

Maybe you’ve been handpicked by the Lord for some specific function in the church and you’ve valued your “place” or position above God Himself. Maybe you’ve some lingering bitterness toward someone in the Body. Maybe you’ve lost all perseverance and hope of seeing the realization of a God-given vision. “…let your heart revive.”

Revive unto what? The psalmist has a question that is also to us an answer:

Will You not Yourself revive us again,
That Your people may rejoice in You? (85:6)

True revival, before it is anything else, is the recovery of a living union with the God of Israel. If we are not rejoicing in God as He is, that itself is sufficient evidence that we need to be touched again with newness of Life.

Tozer was fond of the early mystic’s phrase, “the fellowship of the burning heart”. I am growing fonder of it myself. How about you? I can’t see a valid reason for theology, mission, meetings, or preaching unless my heart has a living flame from heaven.

Dear friends, let’s not settle for something less or other than going in past the veil. In gracious covenantal loyalty He waits for us. He watches us, even now. May He not look upon us in vain. Don’t take this as a conceptual teaching or a theory to consider. God yet awaits you. Respond to Him, beloved.

My God! Have my heart completely, and may it burn fervently with the light of eternal love and holiness today. Revive our hearts, O God. Cause us to look now upon Your majesty.

1. Always give the altar call before you preach, otherwise, sinners and backsliders might understand what they are getting into, and be truly converted.

2. Make sure you ask everyone to close their eyes and bow their head, that way you will both grieve the Holy Spirit and you will give sinners the impression that following Jesus is something they should be ashamed of.

3. Avoid making the impression that sinners are expected to repent publicly NOW, otherwise they may feel a sense of urgency, and actually be converted.

4. Don’t mention the particular sins of which you know some of your congregation to be guilty, otherwise, they will take it personally, and may get under conviction and be converted.

5. Always rush through the altar call, then sinners will not have time to consider the enormity of their crimes against God, count the cost,respond and be soundly converted.

6.Remember not to give a strong, urgent altar call at every service, otherwise, those who are unskillful in winning souls might be encouraged to bring their unsaved neighbors to Church, knowing they can always count on an altar call being given.

7. When giving an altar call, be vague, and ask ,”if anyone needs more of God or prayer for anything, feel free to come forward!” That way, sinners will more easily obtain a false hope, and grieve away the Spirit of God.

8. Be more concerned about your own popularity than you are about the glory of God and the salvation of souls, otherwise God will work with you and sinners and backsliders will be convicted and converted to Christ.

9. If you really want to ruin an altar-call, avoid prayer as much as you can. Then you will be doing the work in your own strength, and few, if any will be soundly converted.

If you avoid these instructions, you are in danger of being successful in winning souls to Christ, obtaining the help of the Holy Spirit, building up the Kingdom of God and being extremely useful to God in this life.

“For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” Luke 6:43-45

In my last post, we started off with looking at this passage.  The context is trees. Bad trees don’t bear good fruit. Dare I say it this way; dirty hearts don’t produce wholesome speech either. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. You and I are in charge of what is in our hearts to be able to overflow out of our mouths.

A tree needs several things in order to grow and produce fruit. If you water it too much and/or only give it water, then it will get waterlogged and die. If you don’t give it any, and it only gets heat and sunlight, it will die also.

Sometimes I get asked how “I know so much about the Bible.” It doesn’t show on my blog, but in person I’ve been told I can just know where Scripture passages are found so readily, and what certain verses say–it’s been commented to me that my preaching/teachings are always well thought-out and well-prepared. But the thing is, I’m relatively extemporaneous, and spontaneous. I prepare a few notes, merely skeletal outline points and only to serve as an anchor to keep myself on some topic, but much of what I teach and preach comes to me on the spot. I’d say 20% prep and 80% ”go with the flow when it comes up” is how I do it.

Do you want let in on a little secret on how you can do it too? Reading the Word and speaking in tongues. Not one over the other, and not one without the other. It has to do with what I spend my time storing in my heart and spirit, and then what’s there to pull out of it. Also, certain topics are naturally an overflow to different people based on passion and studying and meditating on them more than others.

First, reading the Bible regularly. I will not specify an amount because we all have different reading levels and schedules, but it has to be a daily occurrence of quality time doing it. Not bites or snacks—but meals. It’s true that an apple a day keeps the doctor away–but not if you only eat apples, and only eat one a day!

Second, a whole lot of speaking and praying in tongues. Those readers who do this know from experience also know just how much this private prayer language helps ‘unpack’ the revelation into the things of God and the Word that you’re storing in your heart as a result of reading the Bible. Like with the tree, sunlight alone will not produce much fruit, and water alone will not produce fruit either, but will overdo it and kill the thing. Similarly, feeding and storing in your heart the Word of God, is like placing the minerals and such in the soil for that plant to feed off of. The roots are not just feeding off of the water, but also from the minerals in that soil. The Word of God is like precious stones. Jesus our Savior is called the rock (1 Cor 10:4)–which is a type of stone, and He is the Word (John 1:1-5). A rock is also solid, serving as a foundation for a building–so notice the very next few verses in Luke 6 have to do with building a dwelling place on a solid foundation so the storm doesn’t destroy the house that was built (verses 46-49). Likewise the tree needs its roots deep in the soil to withstand the sun’s heat and fiery trials of life.

You need to store the treasures of the Word of God in the soil of your heart, and the tongue praying acts like the water (symbolic of the Holy Spirit in our lives), and from constant and continual use and practice–at your own speed and your own initiative–brings this stuff out of the treasures of the heart, for good usage and fruit, the way the tree’s roots will draw its nourishment out of the soil, not the water alone.

I know many believers in Christendom who don’t like any talk on tongues and for some sad reason a large portion of the Church removes from their Christian experience the gifts of tongues and prophesying, and the gifts of the Spirit that involve miraculous speaking, and teaching others the same, but this is the most effective way to gain insight into the Word of God for our lives. The Holy Spirit, who wrote the Bible, who is living in you, brings it to life in your spirit. The prayer done with your spirit gets answered in your spirit. Speaking is directly involved in the unpacking of what’s stored in that treasure, as we allow Him to store those things in our treasure chest (heart).

I’ve noticed that reading and confessing the Word of God and praying in the Spirit are both vital to the Christian walk. People who only speak in tongues and aren’t in regular Bible study other than their token verses for positive confession, are usually flakes. The ones who only read the Bible (I know I’m going to be misquoted and misunderstood…) tend to back away or have alternative explanations for matters of the Spirit, and are generally (but not as a rule) more intellectual in their approach to the Scriptures. That’s my opinion anyway. The law kills and Spirit gives life. I kinda steer clear of both flakes and intellectuals. There’s a middle that I have no idea if I am located in (but hope so!), and both are vital spiritual disciplines that work off of each other in our lives.

Tongue praying brings to life the Word of God in our spirits in a faster way than intellectual understanding does, hence why your understanding/mind is unfruitful (1 Cor 14:14) when you pray this way, but your spirit is edified (1 Cor 14:4) when you pray in the Holy Spirit. Contrary to how a bad interpretation of this text would have you believe, your mind not being fruitful is not indicative of this practice being bad. It’s just people who don’t understand the benefits of praying in tongues usually accidentally come to this conclusion.  However, Paul said in this text he’d do BOTH praying and singing with understanding and with his spirit (v 15), not one to the exclusion of the other.

For computer experts reading: it’s like downloading zip files to your computer, and then it’s on your hard drive needing to be unpackaged. Zip files are faster to download than the whole file in its ”unzipped” state. The mental intellect alone cannot handle the revelation God desires to give us for our lives, hence a personal edification tool like the gift of tongues for individual use. Trying to understand the things of the Spirit using our own intellect alone, is like trying to unload an atomic bomb inside a soup can. It just can’t happen, so from praying in the Holy Spirit, God brings us up to His level to communicate things to us, in our spirits, and then the interpretation will be made to our minds when whatever He’s downloading to our spirits is completed.

For those who’ve never spoken in tongues, and don’t want to, or think it’s unnecessary and you’re skimming this part because you don’t think it applies to you let me just point out that the people who teach and preach it’s not necessary or that it’s demonic to do so, tend to reach that conclusion out of lack of experience doing it. It’s their lack of familiarity with this experience ultimately that leads them to this conclusion and interpret the Scriptures through that bias. Can anyone–”tongue talker” or not–really disagree with that observation? I find it’s as simple as that. You never hear tongue speakers and charismatics teach it’s not for today–why? Because they know better from experience as well as the Word!

If you’re one who as of yet inexperienced and are offended and resentful when it’s implied you’re missing out on this AWESOME experience–the only thing I can compare this to is like when you suddenly “get something” in the Word or from God directly and you just know that you know that you know that you now know something from God and not your own understanding. And the Scriptures back it up, and don’t contradict it. Well, with regular tongue praying–multiply that “getting it” experience exponentially! Oh if the whole Church would do this!! God is not withholding it and giving it only to some and skipping others–this is a tool that’s vital to understanding spiritual matters, and God does not give it to some and not others. It’s something all who want it can have. Lack of proper understanding is what inhibits many believers from seeking it.

I can totally understand Paul when he said “I wish you all spoke in tongues” (1 Cor 14:5) to the believers at Corinth. It wasn’t like his gift of singleness that He saw the benefits of and wished other people could share but not all would. This man was not one of the original disciples that got to interact with Jesus face to face. This was a man who was more zealous for studying the Torah than many others, and spoke in tongues more than the Corinthians (1 Cor 14:8) and look at the revelation he had from those two components–he wrote stuff that we canonized and put in the Bible! I don’t know about you, but I see totally how Bible Study and tongue praying are vital–especially if you’re called to teach anything to others in the Body, you best be doing both, not one over the other.

Bible reading provides the boundaries and the minerals for those tongues you’re praying out without your own understanding. Tongues waters and unpackages those treasures in the soil of your heart. To repeat and summarize: Bible reading & study, and consistent tongue praying work off of each other.

If you enjoyed this post or were blessed by it, then you may enjoy mp3s we have for free download on our podcast dealing with these same subjects:

Fire On Your Head Episode 21: Spiritual Disciplines
Download mp3 (right click and save)

Transformed into the Image of Christ – message by Bob Gladstone
Download mp3 (right click and save)

The words of the resurrected Jesus to the church in Ephesus ought to hit home just as much in our generation as they did over 19 centuries ago:

“…you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, and have not grown weary.” (Rev. 2.2b-3)

In our day there is a proliferation of men “who call themselves apostles, and they are not…”

We have men trotting the globe in three-piece suits and private jets, 6 or 7-figure salaries and all the earthly esteem a man could covet. They have organizational oversight of several congregations. Some even boast that they are the apostles over hundreds of assemblies. They shine on full-color conference advertisements and are skilled proclaimers of the “successful life.” My heart aches with concern for some of these men, particularly the ones living extremely lavished lifestyles, maintaining massively marketed ministries, and thinking they are doing God a service. As the saintly old Leonard Ravenhill once remarked, “There’s a lot of public ministry ‘in that Day’ that’s going to go down in ashes, my brother.”

There are other brothers given the title of ‘apostle’ who are not guilty of some of the abuses I’ve written about here. Yet I fear that there is yet too much of a mixture in most of what is presently called ‘apostolic’ in the western world, to the extent that in most cases I remain respectfully unconvinced when introduced to the men who are bearing these titles. I do not doubt their sincerity. Yet mere sincerity or good intentions are not the qualifications of the men whom God is wanting to send. Have we been willing to do things His way? Have we really been jealous for His glory?

FOUNDATIONAL SERVANTS

There is something transcendent about the truly foundational servants the Lord is seeking in this last hour of history. They are not professionals, nor are their works the result of ingenuity, cleverness, or skill. They have been SHATTERED by a vision of the Most High, and have become like Jacob. They limp through life, knowing that they would not have become what they are but by the grace of an encounter with Him. They have an authority from another age. They have a compassion that is more than human sentiment. They have a faith that pierces the most disparaging and discouraging of situations. They have a joy that beams. They associate with the lowly. They have a fierce loyalty to the God of holiness. They abide in peace. They do not fear men.

They do not cease to pray. They have become, over time, men OF God. They are reverent and faithful stewards of the abiding life of Christ.

There is something presumptuous and vain about much of what is called “prophetic” and “apostolic” in our day. There is a self-appointed prematurity about many of the ministries who bear these titles. I fear for our lightness in these areas, especially in the charismatic realm (of which I’ve been a part for over a decade).

“…those who CALL THEMSELVES APOSTLES, and they are not…” (Rev. 2.2)
“Jezebel, who CALLS HERSELF a prophetess…” (Rev. 2.20)

We can be sure that as this age draws to a close, we will see an increase in signs and wonders, both true and false. We can also be sure that there will be an increase in those who are considered apostles and prophets. The question is vital then,

“Who are we to receive as apostles and prophets?”

We may run the risk of rejecting the true on the one hand, or receiving and endorsing the false on the other. I believe the Scriptures have given us a framework for wisdom in this area, and it behooves us to obtain a radical jealousy for the glory of God, that we might pray and believe for the emergence of the same kinds of servants that He Himself is wanting to raise up and send.

(I am assuming that those reading have already overcome the lie that apostles ceased to be in the first century.)

CHARACTERISTICS OF TRUE APOSTLES IN PAUL’S LIFE AND TEACHING

1. A profound revelation of Jesus Christ, and an intimate walk with the Lord.

“For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
…God…was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him…” (Gal. 1.12, 15-16)
“…I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord…”

True apostles will be secure in a revelation of Jesus. They will be impart peace and righteousness. They will walk in joy. They will also be sober men. This will all result from the depth and intensity of their walk with the Lord. It will be deep and intimate, and it will rub off on those who they spend time with.

2. A spirit of humility and love towards all men.

“Paul, a bond-servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of those chosen of God…” (Tit. 1.1)
The False apostles “all seek after their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.” (Phil. 2. 21)
“…I will not be a burden to you; for I do not seek what is yours, but you…”
“I will most gladly spend and be expended for your souls…” (2 Cor. 12.14-15, seg.)

Apostles will carry a meekness. They will not throw around their names or earthly influence. They will have a radical inward dependence upon the Lord, and will not be moved by the threats of opposers or the flattery of admirers. They will be servants in the reality of life among the saints. They will not be superstars or self-imposing figures. The fragrance of the crucified Lord will emanate from them.

3. Rejoicing in affliction and hardship as sacrificial servants.

“When they had struck them with many blows, they threw them into prison…
But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God…” (Acts 16.23a, 25)
“…rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation…” (Rom. 12.12a)

They will likely provoke opposition and persecution as the result of their living and preaching. They are conveyers of a Kingdom that runs completely against the grain of those whose lives they are addressing, and this will not be a ministry which is free from the ramifications and conflicts of the most ultimate kind of war. But they will not have a self-centered suffering complex. They will simply abide in the Lord and labor with Him, rejoicing even in the resulting sufferings, and teaching the churches to abide in joy in the midst of all trials. They will not be softies, whining and complaining when things don’t go their way.

4. Supernatural servants, engaged in prayer, seeing miracles.

“The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles.” (2 Cor. 12.12)
“For I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit; so that…I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. And thus I aspired to preach the gospel…” (Rom. 15.18-20a)

They will be men of the Spirit. They will have a history in God, a fervent life of prayer, and the activity of Holy Spirit power will be evident in their labors. They will serve to release others into faith for a supernatural walk with God. They will not discourage the spirit of prophecy or other spiritual gifts. In fact, they will impart and help release them in the community. They will heal the sick and drive out demon spirits. They will be a presence in any locality they visit, pushing back the powers of darkness and introducing the Gospel of the Kingdom to all who encounter them.

5. They will be jealous for purity, holiness and the intimate knowledge of God.

“Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company corrupts good morals.’ Become sober-minded as you ought, and stop sinning; for some have no knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.” (1 Cor. 15.33-34)
“…so that He may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.”
“For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification.” (1 Thess. 3.13, 4.7)

They will be men of holiness, seperate from the wisdom of this world. They will despise the immorality of their age, and passionately love the presence of God and the inbreaking of His mercies and judgments. They will preach repentance and mercy. They will challenge the churches to walk in righteousness and freedom. They will despise anything that does not issue from the life of God, whether it be an immoral issue or a religious doctrine or expression that is devoid of the power of God’s truth and love. They will breathe holiness, and impart the sense of God among the saints.

6. They will have lives and ministries that are formed through a communal experience of reality.

“and all those who had believed were together…”
“Now there were at Antioch…prophets and teachers…ministering to the Lord and fasting…” (Acts 2.44, 13)

They will not be loners or self-appointed leaders. They will have experienced life amidst a group of saints who know their faults and still love them. They will be raised up out of a true church experience- life together, in a setting that’s intimate enough for the confession of sin, personal encouragement, personal confrontation, and all the dynamics that come as we give ourselves to the Lord alongside other believers. They will be real men, not performers. They will delight in the fellowship of the saints, and will pursue the formation of healthy relatedness for the churches in which they labor. When they are appointed and sent, it will be by the Spirit of God, through a company of souls who know the Lord and who know them. They will never become relationally inert.

7. They will possess a burning consciousness of the mystery of Israel and the end of the age.

“I am standing trial for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers;”
“…I am wearing this chain for the sake of the hope of Israel.” (Acts 26.6; 28.20)
“For I do not want you, brethren, to be uniformed of this mystery- so that you will not be wise in your own estimation- that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in…” (Rom. 11.25)

They will not have an immature view towards Israel or the end of the age. They will not be ignorant of these realities, nor will they merely be educated or caught up in sentimental issues pertaining to Israel. They will have revelation of the nature of God’s dealings with Israel [and thus mankind], and will be conscious of the words of the prophets pertaining to the end of the age. They will carry a fervent spirit of prayer, a burden and love for the people of Israel. They will have a jealousy for these foundations to be implemented in the heart of the Church. They will walk in a consciousness of coming judgment, inwardly aware of the redemption that will overtake the earth “in that day.” They will see their own labors as connected to that final revelation of Jesus.

8. Intensely involved in the preaching of the Gospel- to Jew and “Greek”.

“…woe is me if I do not preach the gospel.” (1 Cor. 9.16)
“I am eager to preach the gospel…For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (Rom. 1.15, 16)

They will have an especial grace to invade localities with the Gospel, both in message and demonstration. Things will change where they preach. There will be an upsetting of “things as usual.” Atmospheres will shift. There will likely be opposition, but there will be great salvation simultaneously released. They will carry this burden and preach out of it- from the Synagogue to the Streets. Wherever souls are found in darkness, there they will be “eager to preach.” They will preach “Christ, and Him crucified.”

9. A radical concern for the churches- their family lives, and their doctrine.

“For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy;”
“But I am afraid that…your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” (2 Cor. 11.2-3)
“Wives, be subject…Husbands, love…Children, be obedient…” (Eph. 5, Col. 3)
“Speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine.” (Tit. 2.1)
“…in all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified…” (Tit. 2.7)

They will not be concerned for raising up impressive ministries. They will have a radical jealousy for the glory of God in the churches. They will not settle for all kinds of compromises or low views of God in the lives of the saints. They will pray and intercede for a fuller revelation of God to come to His Church. True apostles are seeking something holy. They are pursuing the revelation of God to His people. They are not satisfied with anything other than the fullness. Families saved and transformed. Lives made whole and complete in the Spirit of the Kingdom. They will labor for this. They long to see truth, righteousness, and joy released upon the earth. They will not be at peace with marital disorder, bad doctrine, compromise, lovelessness, divisions, laziness or any such thing in the lives of the saints. In a fatherly way, and to the degree that they have time and grace for it, they will see to the death of all that opposes the increase of the intimate knowledge of Christ in the Church.

True apostles are being formed even as we speak. They are learning how to abide in the Lord in the secular work place, in unheralded ministries, in the raising of their children, or in other ways. They are learning to love fellow believers, and even enemies. They are being tried in ways that no mere Bible school could provide. They are searching the Scriptures. They are on the wheel of the great Potter. True apostles are being formed. And so is an apostolic church that will reveal God, even to the point of death. What about you, dear friend? Are you allowing the Potter to mold you, or have you removed yourself from His wheel? You can trust Him. You can give your life to Him afresh. There is nothing greater than being one with Him.

This is not meant to be a complete statement. But I believe that we can be assured that the men who call themselves apostles, and have not these qualities, can justifiably be questioned. Let’s not be duped by the false. Let’s give ourselves completely to the Lord, and cry out for the raising up of these servants! Let us cry out for the emergence of a church of this kind. The Lord is jealous for His glory. He is jealous for us, friends.

Father, release Your Spirit upon us. Raise up the foundational servants You have always desired. Demonstrate Your wisdom to the powers of darkness. For Your Name’s sake, for the salvation of Israel, and for the transformation of the nations. Amen.