The world will know that we are Jesus’s disciples by our love; but Jesus didn’t tell us that this is how we make disciples. The New Testament model for making disciples is to glorify the Father by doing His works in the name of the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are called to show the world the Triune God in action.
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye.
Do not be like the horse or like the mule, Which have no understanding, Which must be harnessed with bit and bridle, Else they will not come near you. (Ps 32:8-9)
The essence of walking with God is knowing where God wants us to walk. We “walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh” because we are born-again children of God, with new hearts that have His Law of Love inscribed upon them, and so, as I have already written, our inclination is to walk in the light and not in the darkness. But how often do we stay on that path – or return to it – because we have been “harnessed with bit and bridle,” not because we have an understanding of where the Holy Spirit is wanting to lead us, but because we are responding to the tug on the reins and the pressure of the bit in our mouths that is pulling us away from the trajectory that we are on?
A horse cannot see its rider; it can only see what is in front of its nose. All of us who are serious about following Jesus want to be people who will respond quickly to the lightest touch on the reins from the Holy Spirit. But when I read this psalm again recently I realised how my responses to the Holy Spirit’s prompts are often the response of that horse or mule being led back onto the right path, rather than of someone who is choosing God’s direction of his own volition.
To be like the animal with “no understanding” who needs to be guided by the bit and bridle is to consistently behave in a self-centred way that does not direct God’s love into the lives of those with whom He has put us. Yet as people whose lives are, by our own confession, committed to being God-centred, we could be expected to understand that this is not why Jesus died for our sins and called us into His Kingdom. If I am walking with an understanding of the Holy Spirit’s purposes for my life I will not react to people in a manner that is in any way damaging, hurtful or otherwise destructive. This is all the work of the evil one, the thief who only came to “kill, steal and destroy,” and whose work Jesus came to eradicate. If we are living through Christ, everything we do and say will in some way “bring life, and that in abundance.” (John 10:10; 1 John 3:8) If we understand this, we should not need a tug on the reins to remind us.
So how does God say He will teach us in the way we should go? He says He will guide us with His eye. If someone is guiding me with their eye they do not need to speak: they just need to see that I am looking at them and direct their gaze to the thing or person that they want me to notice, so that I look where they are looking. It’s a universal form of communication between people who know each other well, and the key, of course, is that I am looking at the person who is guiding me with their eye. If I am not focussed on Jesus, I can’t see what, or who, He is looking at.
Psalm 32 tells us that this is God’s intention. He wants us to live lives that are focussed on Him, and to know Him so well that we can see what He is showing us with just a look, and to walk in that direction with an understanding of His purpose. God is love, and God is light: that is who He us, so the general trajectory of His purpose is never difficult to understand. We may not know how He is going to accomplish His purpose on that occasion, but if we are walking in faith we will know that He will give us what we need to know when we need to know it, because
“the eyes of (our) understanding (will be) enlightened; that (we will) know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” (Eph 1: 18-21)
All in all, this is a far preferable alternative to a tug on the reins.
“My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and intruth. And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment.” (1 John 3:18-23)
“Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.” (1 John 4: 17-18)
“Perfect love casts out fear.” This is a Bible truth that we have all turned to, been turned to, or turned others to at different times and points of need in our walk with God. If certain scriptures are familiar “meeting rooms” that we all know and visit on many occasions, this has to be one of them. But I think that there is an aspect of this room, a décor, that maybe we don’t often see, and that I would like to spend a bit of time looking at and appreciating here, and it’s this: the perfect love that casts out fear is not just the love that has been poured in, but the love that we pour out in obedience to God’s command. It’s the love that we walk in. Output, as well as input. And not only does it have implications for our emotional and spiritual well-being, but also for the effectiveness of our faith. We know that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom 5:5), but we have to walk in love for it to be manifested: it is only when that love is manifested that we do actually love “in deed and in truth” and not just in word and tongue, as John so succinctly puts it. That is when “As He is, so are we in this world.” (1 John 4:17)
Walking in Love
God’s desire is for His love to be manifested on earth as it is in heaven. We love the Lord and His love is revealed in us when we obey His commands; and John tells us clearly that when we obey Him we know that we abide in Him: “Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him and He in him.“ (1 John 3:24) Moreover, “Whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him.” (1 John 2:5) When we keep God’s word His love is perfected in us, and so we have no fear of condemnation, because perfect love casts out fear. John tells us that fear involves punishment ( “kolasis:” correction, punishment, penalty. NKJV above: “torment”), so to put this simply we know we aren’t going to get punished because we know we are being obedient. While it’s the input of God’s grace through the cross that brings us to salvation, it’s what comes out of us when we express that love in obedience to His word that casts out fear. And when we walk in the manifestation of this love, we will receive whatever we ask, because we are asking in the full assurance that we know we are walking in His purpose. “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.” (1 John 5: 14-15)
Much of 1 John is a reprise of what Jesus taught and John recorded towards the end of his gospel (see John 15): we love Jesus and remain in Him when we keep His word; when we do this we will do even “greater things” than what He accomplished during His earthly ministry; when we remain in Him we will “bear much fruit,” but without Him we can do nothing.
All the time we walk along the path of love, we walk in ‘the works which are prepared for us beforehand’ (Ephesians 2:10), and we will receive whatever we request to accomplish them because we won’t be asking for anything that is not on our path. If there is a tree in front of me and I need the fruit that hangs from a branch that I can’t reach, God will give me a ladder by the power of His Spirit, because I am keeping His commandment and abiding in His purpose. “Now he who keeps his commandments abides in Him and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.“ (1 John 3: 24). However if there is another tree, or even a whole orchard, beckoning from somewhere over the fields and off my path, God will not give me the means to reach it. And if I do, stubbornly, manage to beat a path there myself I will find that the fruit is either under-ripe, inaccessible, or rotten.
The Lie of Condemnation
The devil is always working to thwart the purposes of God in Christ, and we are called to achieve them by walking in faith and love. We are fighting a war, and these are the battle lines. The devil will use the world and the flesh to try and tempt us away from the path because these are the domains under his sway; and he will undermine our faith by telling us that we are not walking in love, because if our hearts are under condemnation we will not have the assurance of faith that God will answer our prayers. Faith only works through love, so if he can weaken our resolve to love and convince us that our love isn’t perfect enough, our faith is undermined and our prayers ineffective. Bringing us under the lie of condemnation is one of the enemy’s main strategies.
But “God is greater than our hearts”: He knows that we love Him, and He knows that He has called us according to His purpose. Even though the heart of the old man is “deceitful above all things” (Jer 17:9), the heart of the new man – the new, soft heart of flesh – has God’s law written upon it (Jer 31:33) and is therefore always directed towards fulfilling His purposes. And when we miss this direction because we fall into the ways of the old heart, we know, and God knows, that if anyone sins “we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” (1 John 2:1).
The commandment that we are given, which as John says “is not burdensome” (1 John 5:3), is to love one another and to believe in Jesus. These two are like the twin poles of an electric current: out of our born-again, righteous heart we walk “after the Spirit and not after the flesh,” (Gal 5:16) loving one another with the resources that the Holy Spirit has poured into our hearts. And when we fail to obey this part of God’s commandment – which we will do, regularly – we obey the other part, which is to believe in the power of the blood of Jesus and the Grace of God to forgive our sin. So perfect love – the love that is perfected in us by our obedience to God’s commandments – casts out fear, because “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1) Free of condemnation, we can walk in faith that our prayers will be answered.
Come Boldly to the Throne of Grace
To complete the picture of the electric current, there is (in the UK anyway) a third pin on an electric plug, and that is the earth. We can neither hear what Jesus is asking us to do, nor receive His forgiveness for not doing it, unless we stay close to Him all the time. So we need to always be earthed in the presence of God for the twin poles of our obedience and His forgiveness to be active in our lives. When they are, God’s current flows and the power of the Holy Spirit moves among us, and those “greater things” become possible.
So brothers and sisters, “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need,” (Heb 4:16) knowing that in this place the devil ‘has nothing in us’ (see John 14:30). When we can ask, free of fear and in full assurance of faith, for whatever it is that we need to see His Kingdom furthered, His love will be manifested among us and the name of Jesus will be glorified on the earth.
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul wrote “for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” (Gal 5:6) And then in chapter 6 of the same letter he writes “for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything but a new creation.” (Gal 6:15) First he says “In Christ, it’s not about the law, it’s about Grace; and Grace is only about one thing, and that is faith working through love. Then he writes, “In Christ, it’s not about the law, it’s about Grace; and Grace is only about one thing, and that is a new creation.” So by this logic, faith working through love and the new creation are synonymous. We are born again for one thing only, and that is for faith working through love.
If this is the case, what is the work of faith? James famously writes “for as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.“ (James 2:26) When Paul writes to his friend Philemon he talks about faith becoming “effective:”
“I thank my God, making mention of you always in my prayers, hearing of your love and faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints that the sharing of your faith may become effective by the acknowledgement of every good thing which is in you by Christ Jesus. For we have great joy and consolation in your love because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed by you, brother.” (Philemon 4 – 7)
The Greek word translated as effective – energes – is only used in the new Testament for supernatural power. It’s the same used same word translated as “powerful” – or in some translations “active”- in Hebrews 4:12: “for the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword.“ Effective faith is active and imbued with power. It is Faith with Works; not dead but very much alive.
As the writer to the Hebrews says: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” (Hebrews 11: 1-3), and Paul writes to the Romans: “God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.” (Romans 4:17) God creates by the power of his word. He knows that what he speaks will bring about the fulfilment of his will, and will call into reality things which did not exist before his word was spoken. His creative word carries His life. It “framed the worlds“ and “gives life to the dead.“ The words of Jesus are “spirit and life.“ It is God’s own faith that knows for a certainty that what He says will happen: that His word “will not fall to the ground void.”
So how do we receive this faith ourselves? The answer, as Paul writes in Romans 10:17 is this: “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” When we hear God speak His word into our hearts we know it carries his creative life giving power. If we want to move mountains, we need God’s faith.
“So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. (literally “the faith of God”) For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. (Mark 11:22-23)
“If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matt 17:20)
Paul is clear about the source of effective faith when he writes to Timothy: “And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.“ (One Timothy 1:14)
Faith is in Jesus, as indeed is love. When we exercise effective faith we are drawing on the faith carried by Christ in us, not on something we have generated ourselves. If you have God’s faith the size of a mustard seed you can move mountains. This faith is activated by a word from God brought by the Holy Spirit, and it operates in the spiritual realm. Human faith is activated by the soul and operates in the realm of flesh. You can have human faith the size of a mountain, and it won’t even move a mustard seed. “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!“ is the cry of a heart that recognises the difference between the two.
What else do we need to operate in effective faith? Paul tells Philemon that faith becomes effective “by the acknowledgement of every good thing which is in you by Christ Jesus.” The word translated as “acknowledgement” means precise and correct knowledge. The church is “the Fullness of Him who fills all in all.” (Eph 1:23) Effective faith is borne out of “precise and correct knowledge” of every good thing that the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of Jesus – has put into us: the gifts and the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Unless we are operating in the fullness of the Holy Spirit we are unlikely to share our faith effectively – ie, with power. And since any one gift of the Holy Spirit might carry a mustard seed, we need to be open to them all.
Effective Faith takes us from death to life, from flesh to Spirit, from human effort to divine enabling, from standing in the boat to walking on the water. We cannot know it unless we are filled with the Spirit who brings it. “All you who are thirsty, come to the waters!” (Isaiah 55:1)
When spirit-filled faith abounds in the Church, things start to happen… “And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, whom they set before the apostles; and when they had prayed, they laid hands on them. Then the word of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith. And Stephen, full of faith and power, (in other words, effective faith) did great wonders and signs among the people. (Acts 6: 5-8)
HOWEVER…
To be filled the fullness of God we need to be empty of the emptiness of self. The works of faith go hand in hand with the labour of love. “And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.“
The Prophet Bob Jones, who died in 2014, was known for the remarkable accuracy of his prophetic ministry. He is also known for the fact that he temporarily died many years previously, in 1977, after after a short illness. When he reached Heaven he heard Jesus asking everyone the same question. It was this: “Did you learn to love?“ Bob Jones obviously hadn’t, because he came back to this life, and from that time on he was known not only for his gifting and the power of his ministry, but the depth of the love that he showed to others. He was known as “the prophet of love.“ However powerful our ministry, without love we are nothing
Love doesn’t come naturally: it is the result of a choice. At every interaction we can choose love or we can choose self. We can choose life or death. We can walk by faith, or we can walk by sight. We can walk according to the spirit, or according to the flesh; we can live out of the new creation or out of the old. We were born again so that we can learn how to love and bring Gods love into this world. To do this we need to “be renewed in the spirit of (our) mind “(Ephesians 4:23); we need to “put off concerning your former contact, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,“ (Eph 4:22) and “put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. (Eph 4:24) The new man is a supernatural being. Just like faith, love is found in Jesus, so to walk in love we need to walk in Him. To do so we need to die to self. And dying to self all day is hard! That’s why it’s a labour of love. Actually without the Lord’s help it isn’t just hard; it’s impossible. As Paul says: “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:24-25)
If we keep close to Jesus and keep in mind why He endured His cross, He will help us with our own. “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:4)
Jesus endured the cross “for the joy set before him.“ What was His joy? Sit down for this: it was you and me! And the rest of the Church, of course. Paul writes to the Ephesians “Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.” (Eph 5: 25-27) He has a vision for His bride and He is working on bringing her to the potential that He sees. We need to let His love that is within us show us His vision for each other so that He can work for us to bring others to their potential in him.
We are given a wonderful example of how the Holy Spirit gave one man revelation of his vision for another brother. A young man in the early church was clearly on fire for God, but he was not accepted by the other disciples. Barnabas, like Stephen a man “full of faith and the Holy Spirit,” saw his potential and introduced him to the elders of the Jerusalem church, who accepted him into the group. His name was Saul. “And when Saul had come to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, and did not believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. And he declared to them how he had seen the Lord on the road, and that He had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus.” So he was with them at Jerusalem, coming in and going out.” Acts 9:26-28 Before long there was an attempt on his life, and the brethren sent him off to Tarsus, presumably for his safety. At around the same time Barnabas was sent by the Jerusalem church to Antioch, where the Holy Spirit had begun to move in power. After encouraging the brethren there, Barnabas went to Tarsus – a round trip of about 500 miles – to fetch Saul to assist him in the work. The two of them then spent a year ministering together in Antioch. This is where Paul’s apostolic ministry began to emerge, and the term “Christian” was first used.
Barnabus saw the vision that Jesus had for Paul; he connected him with the leaders of the church; he singled him out for an important ministry opportunity in a young, growing fellowship, and almost certainly would have been discipling him during the year at Antioch where he was leading the apostolic team. Later, Paul would write: ““From whom (Christ) the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” (Eph 4:16). To disciple others and to be discipled by others is a natural outworking of relationships in the church and the supernatural work of faith working through love in the body by the power of the Holy Spirit, and is what moves us closer to our destiny in Christ.
So to have the power, we need to be connected; and to be connected, we need to have the power. The essential characteristic of the new creation is faith that works through love. It is the supernatural lifestyle that brings the supply of Heaven to Earth, releases the potential in others, matures the bride of Christ, and makes disciples.
“I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. Therefore take heed to yourselves and all the flock, among which the holy spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the Church of God which He purchased with his blood.” (Acts 20 verses 27-28)
“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” (Eph 4: 11-16)
“God is pressing the reset button.” We’ve all heard it in the wider context of the impact of Covid on the world, but it is also a strong theme in many prophetic messages that the Holy Spirit is bringing to the church in the UK, the USA, and elsewhere in the world. A recurring message that is coming through many people in various ways is that God is going to change the model of leadership in the church. There is a great harvest to bring in, and at the moment many of His people are not being equipped for the harvest field in the way that He originally intended. Although none of us, in our earthly life, can be perfect like Jesus, scripture repeatedly encourages us to become “complete” (see 2 Cor 13: 9; 2 Cor 13:11; Col 4:12; Phil 1:6; 2 Tim 3:17). So how do we grow into “the perfect man,” and what does the Holy Spirit want us to understand by this? I think some of the answer can be found in how the flock is shepherded.
To Shepherd is not to pastor. If this is a surprise, consider this: Jesus is the good Shepherd, and He gave us what He knows we need to carry on His work, which is surely the package of gifts listed in Ephesians 4:11 quoted above: “And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” If this is true, it must the responsibility of eldership to shepherd the flock using the gifts of shepherding that are provided. Arguably two of these gifts, pastor and teacher, can be seen as one ministry, but whether pastor and teacher are one minister or two, the principal of plurality remains the same.
In a prophetic word given to my own fellowship but with a general application, the church was likened to a four-wheel-drive vehicle. It has just been driving on the roads, but while the road has been closed by lockdown God has been getting our attention and telling us that we are an off-road vehicle designed for the mountain, not for the main road at all. In a four-wheel-drive vehicle, each wheel is driven independently, which is what gives it its grip on an off-road surface. Four wheels: apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor/teacher.
Because Jesus has commanded us to love one another he has created a model of leadership that combines independence with interdependence. According to scripture it is the different parts of the body working together that cause the body to grow in love. The word translated as “effective working” is the Greek energia. In it we recognise the word energy. But what is important is that in the new Testament the word energia is only used of superhuman power, whether of God or of the devil. It does not refer to human ability or effort. We mature in Christ through the supernatural operation of all the ministries that Jesus gave to the body as each part “does its share” of His work. The stated purpose of the Ephesians 4 ministries is to “equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying (ie building up) of the body of Christ.” As the different ministries “do their share“ of the work of the Good Shepherd the body of Christ grows in love and unity, and, instead of being children, we grow up “in all things into him who is the head.” Working together, the four wheels take the vehicle up the mountain.
As a rule this is not what we see in many churches today. Although it is not true in every case, church leadership has often rested on the shoulders of a salaried minister who has been to Bible college and is therefore “qualified” to lead. But the purpose of a Bible school is to teach. The ministry gift in operation is primarily that of the teacher. The product of the Bible school will tend to carry the anointing that produced him or her – the anointing of the pastor/teacher. Therefore many churches are led by a pastor/teacher, who received at Bible School an implicit message that it is the pastor/teacher who leads church, and who therefore appoints more pastor/teachers to share the work of leadership as the church grows (if indeed it does grow.) Of course there are many other reasons – going back centuries, even millennia – why the teacher has been put on leadership pedestal that Jesus never intended (“Do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ.” – Matt 23:10), but the fact remains that the pastor-teacher is just one of four wheels. If only one wheel is driving the vehicle it will probably cope, for a while, on a smooth road; and many churches today have done just that. But they won’t travel very far up the mountain.
Discipleship is supernatural.
The mission of the Church is to go and make disciples. The goal of the disciple is to become like the master, and the more clearly the image of the master is replicated in the disciple, the better equipped is that disciple to carry on with the process and disciple others. If it had been left to the ability of the human brain to interpret the original teachings and copy the examples of Christ and the first apostles, today’s disciples would be poor matchstick figures by comparison to the original master. But Jesus thought of that, so He told the disciples that “the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you” (John 16:15). Jesus is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, but by the power of the Holy Spirit His reality can be fresh in the heart of every believer in every generation. Without the power of the Spirit illuminating us, we only have our own understanding to lean on – which Proverbs 3:5 instructs us expressly not to do. So the work of making disciples has to be done supernaturally, through that energia – “the effective working by which every part does its share” – which flows as a life-force through the body when it is operating in the fulness of the Holy Spirit.
To build and equip the “perfect man” who will make effective disciples all the ministries are needed. As each part does its share the believer is equipped in different aspects of the effective Christian life. Through the evangelist, the believer is equipped to preach the gospel. Not all are evangelists, be we are all called to share our faith. Through the prophet, he is equipped to hear God and speak His words. “All can prophesy,” but many need training and encouragement. The pastor heart brings an emphasis on growing loving relationships, in tandem with the teacher who brings clarity on doctrine and the written word of God. All of these are essential for Christian growth. The apostle – the “sent one” – imparts faith and carries an anointing to build, and nurtures the leadership skills of those who have the gifting to be church planters themselves. Although most of us aren’t called to plant churches (or are we??), we are all involved in building the Church of Jesus. Of course there is only one Lord, and one Spirit, in whom all of these streams flow together, and whose thoughts are not our thoughts anyway; and this is very much a thumbnail sketch of a far more complex picture. However the message remains that five different leadership anointings, carried by four or five different ministers, are referred to in Ephesians four, and each of them is necessary to edify and equip the “perfect man.” The ultimate goal of the “work of ministry” is that we go out and make more disciples. The qualification for the work is not a Bible College degree, but the measure to which the Christian ”graduate” has received from all of the fivefold ministries and is able, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to build, prophesy, preach the gospel, care for others, and know the Word of God. All of this is achieved through the power of the Holy Spirit, not through leaning on human understanding.
Those of us who have children long for them to become all that they can be and fulfil all the potential that we see in them. We want to see them use their abilities and achieve their dreams. How much more does our heavenly Father want the same for His children? The Good Shepherd longs for all of His lambs to grow and multiply, and has put in place the “parenting” system by which “we should no longer be children” but instead “grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—” . As we mature in the spirit and come into all that God has put into us, His glory will be reflected in the Earth in as many ways as there are individuals in the church. Surely this is part of “the manifold wisdom of God” that He intends “might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.” (Eph 3:10) However at the moment there are many churches that are full of overgrown lambs who just expect to be fed and kept safe in the sheepfold, and who reflect very little of God’s glory. They have not grown up in all things, and since they are not mature they are not multiplying, because the flock is not being shepherded according to the shepherding plan that we have been given.
If God is pressing the reset button I think this is what He is working on now. And now that we are starting to move again, are we going to carry on along the road as we were, or will we turn off and head up the mountain that we were meant for?
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.”(Gal 5:6)
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation.” (Gal 6:15)
When we preach Christ, we preach the new creation. When we receive Him, it is the New Creation that we step into. Jesus is King of the New Creation: in His Kingdom, all things are made new. On his first missionary journey, Paul had preached the gospel to the Galatians, and now the “Judaizers” were trying to lead them away from the Life of the Spirit and back under the law. This was the first of Paul’s epistles, and his message rings clear: the life that is ours in Christ comes by the Spirit, and not by the law. Paul stresses that there is just one characteristic, ‘the only thing that avails,’ in the New Creation, and that is faith working through love. This is the hallmark of their new life in Christ. “Faith working through love” is the very DNA of the Kingdom of God.
In the shortest parable that He gave, Jesus said: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.” (Matt 13:33) In the Kingdom of God, the New Man is charged with the same command as was the first Adam: “Go forth and multiply.” We are instructed to go into all the world and make disciples, multiplying this Kingdom that we are part of, as disciples make disciples and pass on the DNA of the new creation until, like the stone that destroys the kingdoms of the world, it becomes “a great mountain and filled the whole Earth” (Daniel 2: 35). The Kingdom of God is like yeast, because yeast multiplies. The yeast that multiplies – this DNA of the Kingdom – is faith working through love.
The writer to the Hebrews tells us that “The word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12) The book where I think we can see the Word of God dividing between soul and spirit more than anywhere else in the New Testament is the letter of James, the brother of Jesus and one of the “pillars” of the Jerusalem church. James “divides” heavenly and earthly wisdom, wealth and poverty, trials and perseverance, sensual and spiritual prayer requests, empty faith and fruitful faith, the untamed tongue and “perfect” speech, pride and humility, judgement and grace. He lays out clearly the blueprint of the Kingdom of God, where faith flourishes in the context of a loving, Christ-centred lifestyle, and he succinctly wraps it up in a single verse: “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” (James 5:16) The “works” of faith that are central to James’s message (James 2:18) are both the supernatural results of Elijah-style prayer that this verse refers to, and the grace-filled lifestyle of the “righteous man” who prays them – faith at work in a setting of love.
James makes it clear that a fruitful Christian life requires full commitment to the Kingdom of God, because a “double-minded man” is “unstable in all his ways” and will “receive nothing from the Lord.” (James 1:8). His epistle progresses from portraying various characteristics of the “carnal Christian” whose faith is fruitless, to the picture of Elijah, who “was a man with a nature like ours” and whose faith both stopped and started the rain. In the new creation, where faith works through love, the prayer of faith raises up the sick person, the hungry are fed, and the needs of “widows and orphans” are met. Elijah is praying in faith, and people are being loved.
The goal of discipleship, as expressed by Paul to Timothy, is “that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” This is a recurring theme in the New Testament, revisited from different angles. Paul prays that the Ephesians will be “filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3:19). James exhorts his readers to “let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” (James 1:4) Paul prays that the Corinthians “may be made complete” (2 Cor 13:9), and his final exhortation to them is, again, “Finally, brethren, farewell. Become complete…” (2 Cor 13:11) He tells the Colossians that “Epaphras, who is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always labouring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.” (Col 4:12) The writer to the Hebrews prays that his readers “may be made complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. ”
Finally, Jesus tells us “therefore be perfect, just as your father in heaven is perfect” (Matt 5:48). Throughout the epistles, the Holy Spirit takes these words of Jesus and makes them known to us (John 16:14) so that we can see the goal of His discipleship programme. If the Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, then faith working through love should be multiplying “perfect”, “complete” believers in our churches, as double-minded, carnal, babes in Christ learn to “crucify the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal 5:24)
This is the trajectory of discipleship: the babe in Christ who walks after the flesh becomes complete, like Elijah, and walks after the Spirit, as the DNA of the Kingdom multiplies in his or her heart. It is the bottom line of what it means to make disciples. It is what God will be seeking to restore in the church when He pours our His Spirit in the coming revival. He has been seeking it since Pentecost.
Paul said to Timothy: “Those things you heard from me, commit to faithful men who are able to teach others also.” (2 Tim 2:2.) In one verse, we see the leaven of the Kingdom multiplying three times: from Paul to Timothy; from Timothy to “faithful men,” and from those faithful men to “others also.” I see three questions arising out of this scripture:
Are we training up “Timothys?”
If we are, are they hearing from us the same things as Timothy heard from Paul?
Does our church model promote multiplication of that leaven as far as the “others also,” who will in turn eventually be reaching Timothys of their own?
The new wine is coming, so that as we drink of it the double-minded babe can become, like Timothy, the complete Elijah. He has poured it out many times before, and every time it has stayed around for a little while, then the wineskin has broken and the wine has drained away. If the next revival is going to be different, it won’t be the wine that has changed; it will be because the wineskins don’t break.
We’ve all had a chance over the last year to inspect our wineskins. Have we got the new ones ready? Or are we going to ask God, yet again, to pour the new wine into our old wineskins? Because we know what will happen if we do.
Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you yourself desire, I will do it for you.” (1 Sam 20:4)
The love between Jonathan and David is well known; indeed it is the most elevated example of an actual friendship that we are given in the Old Testament, if not in the whole of the Bible – excluding, of course, the friendship that Jesus offers to all who follow Him. I Sam 18:3 tells us that “Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.” (NKJV) Other versions translate this as “he loved him as himself.” This takes us immediately to the model of love that Jesus teaches when He introduces the parable of the good Samaritan: “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and your neighbour as yourself.” If we need to see an example of how Jesus wants us to love one another, we look at how Jonathan loved David.
We could study in depth what details that we are given about their relationship and find spiritual meaning in all of them; but what speaks loudest to me is who – or what – David and Jonathan actually represent in the Bible narrative. Jonathan is Saul’s son, and Saul represents the dynasty of the flesh. However David, as we know, is a man ‘after God’s own heart;’ he is a prophetic type and the human ancestor of Jesus, and he represents the dynasty of the Spirit. The anger that Jonathan’s covenant of loyalty to David provokes in Saul is the anger of the devil himself who knows that it is Christ’s rule, and not his own, that will ultimately be established on the Earth:
“Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness? For as long as the son of Jesse lives on the earth, you shall not be established, nor your kingdom.” (1 Sam 20: 30-31)
In “choosing the son of Jesse,” the son of Saul chose the dynasty of the Spirit over the dynasty of the flesh. Prophetically, Jonathan died to self and turned to Jesus. When we love, we make the same choice for God. In the immortal words of Deuteronomy 30:19-20, we “…choose life, that you and your descendants may live, that you may love the LORD your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days.” To love others is ultimately to love God, and there is only one way to do that, which is the way that Jesus tells us to love him. It’s quite simple. He says: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)
A husband can long for his wife; he can miss her when they are apart; he can love to be around her; he can admire her beauty and her qualities and can enjoy her conversation. He can miss her, desire her, and seek her presence: but unless he does the things that she likes and avoids what she doesn’t like he is not actually loving her. It’s the same with the Lord: we can long for His presence and spend time with Him; we can enjoy His conversation and immerse ourselves in His word, but we aren’t loving Him if we ignore the things that He asks of us and grieve His Spirit by doing what He doesn’t like.
Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you yourself desire, I will do it for you.” In the same way, therefore, we look to Jesus as we make our choices throughout the day and say to Him “Whatever you yourself desire, I will do it for you.” Colossians 3: 17 tells us: “Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father, through him,” This doesn’t mean we tag “in Jesus’ name” onto everything we do and say: it presupposes that we can’t actually do anything in the name of the Lord unless we know that it’s what He desires. We can’t separate loving God from loving our brother, which is what the apostle John makes clear in his first epistle: “He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him.” (1 John 2:10)
To love our brothers and sisters, we need to abide in the light, and we achieve that by doing what He says. As we do, the Kingdom of the Son of Jesse is established on the Earth.
If we have been following Jesus for any length of time we will know Proverbs 3: 5-6, probably by heart – and if we don’t, it’s one to learn! “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.” The word translated as “acknowledge” actually means much more that just a nodding reference – it means to know intimately. What this scripture actually tells us is to know the presence of God in all that we do. Here’s a story of how God delights to surprise us at times with the truth of these words.
I am fascinated by wild birds, and my main leisure interest is to spend time watching and photographing them – as those who know me will testify. Sometimes God speaks to me through them as well – see “Dabbling Ducks and Goosanders,” for example. Yesterday was Sunday. My morning routine is to start the day with about an hour reading the word, praying and listening to the Holy Spirit – in other words, having a “quiet time.” But yesterday I woke at about 6.30, saw the sun shining outside, and thought: ”I’m going birding this morning!” I felt a release to go; I didn’t feel that I “should” be having my quiet time or even checking in with the Lord in case He had anything for me to bring to the church meeting. So I made a cup of coffee, and I did in fact read a few verses while I was drinking it, including 1 Cor 8:6 “yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.” That’s nice, I thought: I’m going birding through Jesus.
So at around 7.00 am I set off for Norton Bog, one of my favourite birding spots, about 25 mins drive away. I was listening to some worship on the way, and one of the songs referenced Acts 17:28 “In whom we live and move and have our being.” Hello, I thought – there could be a bit of a theme coming through here… Then as I was thinking about where to go in the location I was heading for, I felt the Lord say, quite clearly, “I’ve got something for you this morning.”
I parked the car and set off down the path I had selected, with my camera and binoculars slung round my neck. It’s a wooded area, and I quite often see jays around there, but I’ve never managed to take a decent picture of one – they always fly off into the trees before I can get them in focus. “I wonder what He’s got for me?” I thought. I had it in my mind that I might see some warblers who should have arrived on our shores to breed by now, but I just mentioned to the Lord that If I could get a decent shot of a jay I would go home happy.
There are various trails at Norton bog – woods, heathland, and waterside. In opting for the woods, I wasn’t going to go on the waterside trail as well – it was in the totally opposite direction; but as I was walking I changed my mind, and when I came to a fork in the path I took the one that would double back to the lake. On the way I saw a small bird at the top of a tree whose call I didn’t recognise. My big zoom lens did a good job and I looked at the images on the screen of my camera. A marsh tit! Not a common little bird, and in serious decline, like many others. I’ve been wanting to see one this year. Was this what God had for me? I looked carefully again at all the pictures, and then I saw a tell-tale splash of white on the back of its neck. This wasn’t a marsh tit at all, but a coal tit: much more common. A nice picture of a sweet little bird, but nothing special; not what I felt God had for me. I carried on towards the lake.
I wasn’t far along the lakeside path when I saw it: a splash of white rump flitting among some trees fifty-odd yards away that said “Jay.” As usual though, before I had got it in shot, the bird had flown onto another branch. I backtracked a few paces to get a better picture, clear of some of the woodland obstructions that were in my line of sight, and then the jay did what jays, in my experience at least, never do: it flew onto a fence post in the open and just sat there, posing for me. And not only did I get a beautiful picture of a perching jay, but when it did fly off I already had it in focus, and I got another beautiful picture, this time of a flying jay. This definitely was the treat that God had prepared for me. What a loving Father.
However this isn’t just a testimony of the goodness of God, although it certainly is one, and shows just how much God loves to bless His kids with little treats: there are a few lessons we can draw from it, not least the one that I have already mentioned.
Don’t stop at the coal tit. God has great things planned for us. There are promises in His Word, and there are promises given to the church and to you as an individual where He has said, in so many words, “I’ve got something for you.” There are many prophesies current at the moment in which the Holy Spirit is talking about a great revival to come. One I saw recently said: “Don’t try and surf the ripple: wait for the wave to come,” the message being that if you surf the small wave you will finish up on the beach and won’t be ready to ride the big wave that follows it. Let’s not be content with one or two people getting saved and joining the church, the occasional healing or other testimony of the grace of God. While we must not “despise the day of small things,” our Father has great things in store, and He wants us to press in to them.
Be open to a change of direction I had planned just to stay in the woods, but I turned back to go to the lake because I felt a little nudge from the Holy Spirit telling me to do so. I knew He had “got something for me,” so my spiritual antennae were up and open to His guidance. But the fact is that He has always “got something for us:” sometimes He will prompt us to follow an unexpected course that we hadn’t planned for. There will be “a voice behind us saying “this is the way, walk in it” (Isaiah 30:21), but our ears need to hear the whisper of the Spirit behind the clamour of our flesh, and when we hear the voice we need to do what it says.
There is… one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things. As one for whom the morning “quiet time” is as regular and as certain a start to my day as the breakfast that follows it, I am the last person to diminish its importance. But let’s not put God in a box – or an armchair. He does not need us to be sitting with our Bibles open and worship music on to be getting our attention: what He needs is for our hearts to be open to His love. Routine is the friend of religion, not of faith. He wants us to sit with our Bibles open because we are hungry for His word, not because it’s what we do at 7.30 every morning. He wants us to be with Him where He is (John 17:24), and it may not be in our 7.30 a.m. armchair. In Him we live and move and have our being, and all things are through Him. When we are truly walking in the Spirit our quiet time will last all day long, and we will walk into all the things that He has got for us.
“Mercy and truth have met together, righteousness and peace have kissed.” (Ps 85:10)
I saw a parallelogram, leaning over so it was nearly flat. Two corners had very obtuse angles, and the opposite two had very acute angles. I felt the Lord say this:
“My house is leaning over. It is leaning over because the corners are weak. The corners are where Word and Spirit join. In some places the rigor of My word is lacking, and although those places are open to My Spirit, they are also open to that which is not of My Spirit, and so they are weakened. Other places at the opposite corners have no openness to My Spirit, so they are narrow and sharp and do not display my glory or release my power.”
The right angle is neither obtuse nor acute, but is made at the cross, “Where mercy and truth have met together, righteousness and peace have kissed.” (Ps 85:10)
See me upright on the cross with my arms outstretched to you. This is the right angle. Now stand on all I have said, stretch your arms out to one another, and be open to all that I can do. Stand straight, be open. Make right angles. With these I build My Church.”
“Whatever you bind on Earth will be bound in Heaven” (Matt 18:18)
The Greek tense here is actually a future perfect: “It will have been bound in heaven.” In other words we can only “bind and loose” on Earth that which has already been bound or loosed in heaven. When Peter, and through Peter the church, was given the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, these were the terms under which those keys were passed on. Keys are a symbol of authority: with the authority that Jesus has given us in His name, we can unlock Heaven on Earth.
When Jesus taught us to pray, we learnt to pray for God’s will to be done one Earth as it is in Heaven. In other words, for that which is bound or loosed in Heaven to be bound or loosed on Earth. King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus was also the firstborn of all the New Creation. Not only are we His disciples, called to do what He did; but we have His DNA and we have His Spirit within us. He has set the precedent and laid down the pattern for everything he has called His followers to carry on doing in His name. He held those keys Himself before He passed on a set to the Church, and we see that His ministry operated on the same principles that He gave to Peter.
Jesus only did what He saw the Father doing. (John 5:19) He didn’t bind or loose anything on Earth that He didn’t see the Father bind or loose in Heaven. Although a few people have been given some partial revelation, none of us really know the dynamics of the relationship between Heaven and Earth; the realm of the Spirit and the realm of the flesh. But we do know one thing, because it is in Scripture: what is here below is a “shadow” of the greater reality above. The original glory of Creation, when it was good, and God walked with King Adam in the garden, was lost at the fall. Sin moved in, Heaven moved out, and reality became a shadow. But when God’s will is done on Earth as it is in Heaven, the doors of Heaven are unlocked on Earth and the shadow takes on something of the substance of its true spiritual nature.
So how do we disciples follow the pattern we were given in order to “bind and loose” on Earth in the name of Jesus? The keys we have been given are the keys of heavenly authority: what we don’t do is see “binding” just as something we might carry out on demonic “strongmen” (Matt 12:29) or principalities (Ps 149:8) and try to use the term as a verbal weapon of spiritual warfare. We do see the power of demons bound in the gospels, and we see people loosed from their grip; but the words describe the results of effective deliverance ministry; they don’t bring it about. I think we make a lot of noise and fire a lot of blanks when we try and “bind” demons, and unless we have seen it done in Heaven first we are surely wasting our time.
Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of Lights. This is the key to how we exercise our heavenly authority on Earth: we simply release what we have seen the Father doing. And here again we have to model our ministry on the ministry of the Master. If we want to see what the Father is doing, we need to spend time with Him. We need to ascend into heavenly places in worship and prayer in order to take hold of what the Father has given us for the situations we are bringing to Him. We need to be hungry for the gifts of the Holy Spirit, because it is by these gifts that we receive revelation. Revelation might be the end of the Bible, but it is the beginning of effective ministry. Whether we are dealing with demons, sickness, relationship issues, material provision, or anything else where we are calling on the Lord, it is only by revelation that we can see what the Father is doing in Heaven, and so it’s only by revelation that we can unlock His Kingdom purposes on Earth.
This teaching follows on from “the cygnet and the eggshell.” You also may want to read 2 Chron 35 vs 1-19.
If the command has gone out for us, the priests of God, to “stand in our places” ready to minister at the altar, what does this mean for us? We serve the Lord, and we serve those who are in the Temple. Here are a couple of thoughts on the second of those two: our ministry to others.
Remain in peace
2 Peter 3:14 exhorts us to “be diligent to be found by Him in peace,” and in 1 Pe 3:11 the apostle quotes Psalm 34:14 – “Depart from evil and do good; Seek peace and pursue it.” Impetuous Peter was probably one of the last of the 12 that we associate with a peaceful demeanour, but in his position as one of the leaders of the new church of His Lord he is emphatic about the need to minister out of a place of peace. When we stand at the altar of Calvary and look on the perfect sacrifice that tore open the veil of separation between God and man, when we hear the words “it is finished,” we can be assured of His presence and His power touching whatever we do. That place of peace is the place of faith. The children of Israel did not enter the “rest of God” because of their unbelief (Heb 3:19). If our souls are not at rest we too are in unbelief, and since “Whatever is not of faith is sin” (Rom 14:23), anything we do or say when we are away from the peace of God is likely to be corrupted by sin. Isaiah 26: 3 says “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.” The way to peace is to keep our minds centred on Jesus; to stay in touch with the altar. If we move away from the altar we lose our peace; if we have lost our peace it’s because we have moved away from the altar.
Remain in the Spirit
For most of us this doesn’t mean we cut ourselves off from the people that God has put us with to spend all our time in prayer, worship, and studying the Bible, although there can be seasons when this is exactly what we do, and for some it is the calling on their lives. But whatever our commitments and our calling, we are citizens of Heaven, and our spirits are seated with Christ in Heavenly places. To stay in the Spirit is to remember who we are and where we are from, and to be aware that whatever we are doing, whoever we are with, that is the reality of our condition. Like Jacob’s ladder, our spirits connect Heaven and Earth. If we pray “Thy Kingdom come” we need to remember that this can happen through us at any time, in any situation. “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17) means to keep Jesus on the line – like a permanent phone call – all the time. We won’t be speaking to Him all the time, and nor will He be speaking to us all the time, but He is there, on the line. And if we know He is there, it means we can expect the supernatural to break into our lives and the lives of the people around us at any moment.
Be providers
“Then Josiah gave the lay people lambs and young goats from the flock, all for Passover offerings for all who were present, to the number of thirty thousand, as well as three thousand cattle; these were from the king’s possessions. And his leaders gave willingly to the people, to the priests, and to the Levites. Hilkiah, Zechariah, and Jehiel, rulers of the house of God, gave to the priests for the Passover offerings two thousand six hundred from the flock, and three hundred cattle.” (2 Chron 35:7-8)
When Josiah instituted his great Passover after he had restored Temple worship in Jerusalem, people flocked to the feast from all over Judah and from the remnant of Israel who had remained after the exile of the Northern Kingdom. The people came to the Temple, but they came empty-handed. Following the lead of the King himself, the leaders provided generously and willingly for those who had nothing, so that all could join in the feast. In the Passover that is to come, when the only safe place in the world is under the blood of the Lamb, many will flock, empty-handed, into the church. We serve at the altar of Jehovah Jireh, and our King has already set us His example of giving as well as giving us some very clear principals in His teachings. When we give to meet the needs of others, the Lord will provide or us.
Be pray-ers
I’ve already mentioned the need to “keep Jesus on the line” as an understanding of how we can “pray without ceasing.” The more we can do this, the more our daily life merges with our prayer life. But in this context, let us remember to keep interceding for the needs of others. The most important thing to remember is that prayer in the flesh is as unproductive as anything else we do in the flesh. We are told to ”pray in the Spirit,” and we are told that the Holy Spirit help us to pray because we don’t know how to pray ourselves. If we pray as God leads, we are engaging with Him in what He is doing. If we pray where our emotions – or someone else’s emotions – lead, we can expect to be disappointed. James 5:15 tells us that “The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will restore him to health; if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” (ASV) We also know that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” (Rom 10:17) So before we pray, we need to be hearing from God, by the Holy Spirit, who to pray for and how to pray. There is a chasm of difference between human sympathy and God’s compassion, and it’s His compassion that brings Heaven to Earth, not our sympathy. We need to know from Jesus what, and who, is on His heart for us to pray for. But If we have Him on the line, He will prompt us.
“Then afterward they prepared portions for themselves and for the priests, because the priests, the sons of Aaron, were busy in offering burnt offerings and fat until night; therefore the Levites prepared portions for themselves and for the priests, the sons of Aaron… There had been no Passover kept in Israel like that since the days of Samuel the prophet; and none of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as Josiah kept, with the priests and the Levites, all Judah and Israel who were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” (2 Chron 35: 14, 18)
We need to get ready, because we are going to be busy.
Notes From The Winepress 