The apostolic and prophetic kingdom age building a house made of living stones!
Word for Today January 14, 2021: The apostolic and prophetic kingdom age building a house made of living stones!
Beloved,
I had a discussion with a true apostolic father in the Lord the other day and we were discussing God forming true apostolic and prophetic gatherings.
I know there have been many attempts in God's leaders to come together and work together with a sincere desire to love each other and labor together.
I do not question anyone's motives or desires to see the body of Christ come together in true love and unity.
In our discussion, I felt the Holy Spirit with us as of this moment the gathering of the Apostles and Prophets has to be something beyond "trying" to build something, to "becoming a place where the Lord can dwell and knit us together in his love and purposes.
The danger I see, and maybe I am just one crying in the wilderness is "what we build." Are we going to come together in apostolic and prophetic unity with an old wine skin of the church age, or with the new wine skin of the kingdom age.
There is a huge difference between the two. In the church age there is a need for a "head apostle or person" who organizes everything and everything come under that one apostle or leader.
This is not a new concept. In the region I grew up in they tried that. Many recognized one man's gift, others recognized it, big ministries accepted it, and it failed miserably. Pride comes before the fall.
What happened is man put his hands on what God was doing. Man was recognizing other men's gifts and because the hearts of the men trying to build together were not free of competition, envy, and strife, doctrine of devils started coming out of this false apostolic building effort.
The desire to come together under God's headship and divine order is not wrong and it is from God, how we build it or if we try to build it with our hands it will surely fail. What concerns me in the present attempts to do this is to put everyone in one lump.
Statement like, "if you are not "under" someone you are a lone ranger or rebellious." Those words with a spirit of judgment associated with them is the very things many are fleeing from in the church age. There is hardly any recognition, that God has set some people, ministers and ministry alone with Him.
They are not rebellious against God, nor do they not want to be connected to the body and labor in the love of God with others. What they can't do and won't do is to connect with something that God is ending from the church age.
What they can not do is be part of an old wine skin or a patched up one that has the mixture of yesterdays, flesh and spirit work with the new kingdom age of God's pure holy love filling them.
Many leaders and people are waiting for the "real and genuine kingdom age gathering of the saints, gathering of the apostles and prophets to come together by the hand of God and not by the hand of man.
Are there genuine gatherings of apostles and prophets being birthed today motivated and filled with God's holy love that God is using to bring his people together with. I believe so. Some our in their infancy stages.
I think the important part of the word "submitting" is not to demand it or harp on it. That is old school church age theology and it will push many kingdom minded people away.
Submission to Christ is the Key and the work of the pure holy love of God in a "leaders" heart is the key. Many kingdom minded people being called rebellious are "protecting" the kingdom work of God in them by not joining these things at this time.
What God has worked in them is precious and you don't put that out to the open of those who may trample it under their feet demanding everyone submit to authority.
True authority in the Lord never demands submission, True authority of kingdom life and from King Jesus in the heart of a "leader" by a son and daughter is easy to submit to when they see it.
Maybe I am spoiled a bit, because my spiritual Father was brought into my life by the Lord until his passing. I had spiritual fathers in the early days of my walk with God, that demanded submission and obedience to them no matter what.
In that demanding they began to violate the law of love, and the ability for us as individuals to hear God, and listen for his voice to obey him. If what we heard did not agree with them it was labeled rebellious.
So much harm was done by the "pre-mature fathering movement' back in the 80's and 90"s it left a very bad taste in many peoples mouths.
Now some would say, that all outside of what they consider divine order are still hurt, wounded, rejected and so there is something "wrong with them" if they don't get under someone and often times called lone rangers."
I think staying away from that kind of rhetoric if God is calling you to be one of his builders to establish his kingdom is critical.
I was very blessed in 1990 to meet a true spiritual father who was truly an apostle. When you met him, there was a quality of the substance of God in him. You could tell He had been with Jesus. His words, his writing, his seasoning was like something I had never seen or heard before.
The way he carried the presence of the Lord in humility and brokenness I had never seen. I had never seen someone so filled with God's pure holy love with that character of Jesus in not just words but in presence.
I will never forget his words to me, after I got pretty beat up by the older order of the church age and their demands they were trying to put on my life so that I would not be what God created me to be.
I didn't leave the former "headship" I was under because I was rebellious, but I left to save my life in Christ. That is the truth before the God I serve.
When I had to make the break, the Lord told me Henry, I am going to bring a true spiritual Father into your life and you are going to know him by the love He has for me and that He will have for you.
Six months after leaving that old "covering" I was invited to go a gathering in upstate NY at a Bible School where special meetings were being held about the presence and glory of God.
I decided to go. The first things that I noticed was this place was in the middle of know where, but when we drove on the grounds and I got out of my car, the presence of God was there already meeting me.
I had never been in a place like that where God just lingered. His lingering presence was on the grounds, in the building, and the Lord fully manifested himself in the gatherings.
I had never been in gatherings where people brought their instruments in their seats. There were musicians and singers, but there was "room" for others to play their instruments prophetically as God desired.
The flow of the Spirit of God was so powerful that no one noticed who was playing, singing, but all became saturated alone with God but together with him as one people. I never forgot it, and I pray that is what God deposited in my life.
After the meeting, I was able to meet the man that God placed as head over this work, and I asked him if I could meet with him. He said yes.
When I met him, the peace of God was all around him and in him and I truly say the Lord in someone like I had never seen before.
He invited me to meet him for prayer at 6 am with others and then we could talk. Beloved, that prayer meeting was the most powerful prayer meeting i had ever been in and there was very few words spoken.
There was just a waiting for God to come, an acknowledgment of who God was, and the Lord just came in His manifest presence and then true intercession came forth by the Lord Himself in his people.
Why am I writing this today? I guess I felt the Lord to remind each of us what the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians chapter 3:
5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Ministering servants [not heads of parties] through whom you believed, even as the Lord appointed to each his task:
6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God [all the while] was making it grow and [He] gave the increase.
7 So neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but [only] God Who makes it grow and become greater.
8 He who plants and he who waters are equal (one in aim, of the same importance and esteem), yet each shall receive his own reward (wages), according to his own labor.
9 For we are fellow workmen (joint promoters, laborers together) with and for God; you are God’s [b]garden and vineyard and field under cultivation, [you are] God’s building.
10 According to the grace (the special endowment for my task) of God bestowed on me, like a skillful architect and master builder I laid [the] foundation, and now another [man] is building upon it. But let each [man] be careful how he builds upon it,
11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is [already] laid, which is Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).
12 But if anyone builds upon the Foundation, whether it be with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw,
13 The work of each [one] will become [plainly, openly] known (shown for what it is); for the day [of Christ] will disclose and declare it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test and critically appraise the character and worth of the work each person has done.
14 If the work which any person has built on this Foundation [any product of his efforts whatever] survives [this test], he will get his reward.
15 But if any person’s work is burned up [under the test], he will suffer the loss [of it all, losing his reward], though he himself will be saved, but only as [one who has passed] through fire.
The thing I remember the most to this day, is after the prayer meeting I met with him, and before He said a word, I and we were caught up in the spirit realm instantly and the Lord began to speak to me through him and it burned within the depth of me.
I never heard his voice, but the voice of the Lord in him speaking to me words that have carried me 30 years later. They burn in me today as they did then.
This man was a kingdom age apostolic father, I have met one other seasoned one of this kind in the last few years that carries that same humility, wisdom, and love that comes from the seasoning of the Lord. I am thankful for that relationship today.
I had much to learn in that new relationship and God had to work in me, change me and open my eyes to the deeper truths of the Kingdom of God work.
What this first apostolic father told me I will never forget and for those who are the new apostolic fathers and mothers of this day, perhaps what I am sharing could be important in the days ahead.
I had left my "former covering" I use that church age term for a reason. I could not obey their demands. They told me our services had to be 2 hrs or less, we can't sing prophetically over people, people won't like it and that the focus should just be the message we bring to the people.
Donna and I had a choices in this case, obey men and disobey God or obey God and disobey men. Was I rebellious only to those who wanted to "lord" over us.
How do I know? Because they wrote things, lied, said things about us which were not true and blacklisted us with other pastors in our area.
Does that sound like God to you? When I shared that with this apostolic Father, he spoke to me words I have never forgotten.
He said, Henry, I never desired to be a spiritual father to anyone. Over the last decade men and women have come to me and asked me to be a spiritual father to them and if I could provide a place for them to be accountable too.
I said to the "Lord" that is not what I desire to do so men don't see me Lord, they need to see you. But the Lord impressed on his heart that the Lord was bringing to him many men and women of God of the kingdom age that would need the counsel and love of the Lord God would give him for them, so he accepted that call.
He said these words to me, "Henry, if God has given me something that is worth submitting to of his life, you never have to demand people submit to that gift. They will recognize it and submit to that gift of Christ in that person willingly and lovingly of their own free will.
When you have to "demand" that people submit to you, or place guilt upon them if the don't that is not the genuine but the counterfeit.
That is why I am writing this admonition to the true kingdom builders with the Lord today. If you truly have an apostolic calling and to be a spiritual father or mother, your gift will make room for you.
Those God will send to you will recognize the spirit of Christ and the quality of the spirit of Christ in your life to submit to. Never demand it.
I encourage you to please be careful what you call a "lone ranger" or people who may not be connected with others yet. There are jewels God has kept secret that he will not allow to be connected with an old wine skin and your words and actions can speak against what God treasures.
He taught me that true spiritual authority is like the old Zenith commercial "the quality goes in before the name goes on."
Personally I hunger for that quality of Christ life to be seen in me. I desire the relationship with the Lord that these two spiritual fathers had in them.
They paid a great price for it, but the substance and quality of their life drip with true kingdom authority and power.
They had the mark of humility and true brokenness in them but could bring a word of correction in a way that I had not seen before.
There are apostles and prophets who are gaining that very work in them right now in an accelerate way and not everyone will be at that level of maturity yet, that is why I caution those who God is building not to label those "outside the camp" as lone rangers or rebellious
Beloved many are looking for the quality of the life of Jesus in the 5 fold ministers and their true submission to Christ headship in their lives. It is hard to imagine that there are saints alone with God that have more maturity of character in them in the Leaders that are calling them rebellious or lone rangers.
How can these mature believers connect with those who can't see them as God made them or the process of what God made them alone with the Lord? That is a key question to ask.
Beloved, there are many who are waiting for God's pure holy love filled leaders to understand the true knitting of the body together as one under the headship of Jesus. There can be no personal gain or ego's involved in the pure holy love of God to have people under them. It must be Christ in us, the hope of glory.
Brethren, Many do not want more man made "associations or fellowships" that are based on working together and work bond relationship and not love bonds.
The real pure holy love of God filing us with His Kingdom glory will bring those are filled with it together in love and unity in ways we have never even seen or know before where we will love each other as Jesus has loved us. It is beyond words and rhetoric.
The true pure holy love of God is the door opener to knit this beautiful hand formed body of the Lord to become a kingdom of kings and priests unto our God.
A royal priesthood and a holy nation where they will not break ranks, sow division, but each part will perfectly fit and be knitted together where Jesus is seen as the head alone over us and within us where we can submit willingly and lovingly in that work of Jesus in God's generals or a 4 year old or 94 year old.
WE will know no man after the flesh but after the spirit. God's pure holy love filling us is the only way that inter-submission can come about, without it everything we do will be like in the church age man made instead of God breathed.
Many mature saints and ministers are waiting patiently for the Lord to knit them together with the right body parts, at the right place, the right time so they can be knitted together in the pure holy love of God.
Each submitting to the gift of Christ in them and knowing that all of us together are under one head, the Lord Jesus Christ. They are desiring to submit to the gift of christ in each one so that the whole body can be built up in love and maturity.
That work can never come into existence in the work of mans hand or the mixture of the church age flesh and spirit. It will come about by each one of us being filled continually more and more with the pure holy love of God
God will now knit together as a beautiful multi-member body of mature sons and daughters connected to his full grown headship.
In that day, Jesus will be seen glorified in His saints. That day has come. Perhaps these words may reach those who desire to see the true apostolic and prophetic government of God be established on the earth.
Perhaps it can help us see a bit further down the road of the kingdom age and how God will build his spiritual house made of living stones.
Much love and blessings to all.
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