Category Archives: Discipleship and witness

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.

Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect

The Cygnet and the Broken Egg (A prophesy)

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I was talking recently to someone who has been prominent in leading worship since the early days of charismatic renewal. He was telling me about a time when he watched a cygnet breaking out of and egg. I felt at the time that the Lord was saying “this is prophetic.” The next day I found myself reading the account of Josiah’s temple reforms in 2 Chronicles 34-35.  I believe the Holy Spirit has given me the following, that connects the two.

The Cygnet has broken out of the eggshell. At the moment she is small and vulnerable, but she will grow, for this is the beginning, the birth, of the one that will become the White Swan, the spotless bride of Christ. As the world systems are breaking she Is emerging from all that has kept her concealed: secularism, tradition, and religion. But now the egg has broken and its supply is exhausted, and she will feed on the Lord: Jehovah Jireh will be her source. She is not yet recognisable as the one that she will become, but as she grows she will take on more and more of the characteristics of the beautiful White Swan.

It is the sound of worship that has broken her shell, and it is the sound of worship that is the atmosphere in which she will grow and mature. As King Josiah restored the true temple worship in his day, so the Lord is restoring true worship in His temple now, free of all that has contained it. And as Josiah’s restoration of true worship was followed by the greatest Passover that had ever been known in Jerusalem in all the days of the kings, so the greatest Passover ever known among men will follow this time of restoration as the young Swan emerges. For it will be a true Passover: while those in the temple rejoice and celebrate under the covering of the blood of the lamb, those outside will know only the devastation of the broken shell left by the collapse of world systems. They will run around, picking up pieces of broken eggshell, saying “Is this what we cling to? Or is that piece over there what we cling to?“ while those in the temple celebrate in the presence of the One that they cling to, Jesus, the rock that is higher than them all. And just as the priests in the time of Josiah took their places at the altar where they were busy until night, meeting the needs of the many people bringing their sacrifice; so it is time for the priests of the Lord today to take up their positions, ready for the many that will come to the temple from miles around.

And so the Cygnet will grow in the house of worship until the white swan, the bride, is revealed.

“So the service was prepared, and the priests stood in their places, and the Levites in their divisions, according to the king’s command.”  (2 Chron 35:10)

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Buckle up the Belt of Truth

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When God spoke through his prophets to his old covenant people he repeated the same message many times and in many different ways: “Return to me or face the consequences!”

The same God speaks through his prophets today. He continues to say the same thing to different people in different ways. His heart of love for His people has not changed: He continues to say “Return to me!“  And the call hasn’t changed: He said to the first Adam “where are you?“ and today, although the context may be different, He still says to us, the brothers and sisters of the second Adam: “Where are you?“

He still is longing to walk with us in the garden of His promises, and many in His church are still nowhere to be seen. He has a plan and a purpose, and He will see that plan and  purpose fulfilled: His desire is that walk with him, close to him, yoked to him, so He can best fulfil that plan in all our lives.

The message that He is giving to many of his prophets today is clear: the vision is “written on tablets so that he may run who reads it!” (Hab 2:2) There is a great shaking coming on the world; and there will be much upheaval; but in and through this we will find safety under the shadow of his wings; we will be a light in the darkness as we walk in his light, and as His light arises on us so many will come out of the darkness to seek Him. There have been pictures of earthquakes, of storms, of avalanches; there have been words of the lion roaring, of light shining, of a strong tower standing, but the message is fundamentally Isaiah 60: 2-3, and ultimately the deepest symbolism of the Book of Revelation:

For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,
And deep darkness the people;
But the LORD will arise over you,
The Gentiles shall come to your light,
And kings to the brightness of your rising.
And His glory will be seen upon you.

Nevertheless there is a new emphasis now, a new note that hasn’t been heard before. In summary, what I feel the Spirit is saying to the Church is this:

“Buckle up for a bumpy ride, because this really is about to happen soon. Buckle up the belt of Truth, because this is what will keep you safe. But pay attention, because it will be the new thing I am doing, and not the old thing that you have been doing. Listen to me and learn from me and you will tread the high places of the Earth in my presence. But if you refuse to listen you will seek me but you will not find me; you will see my light shining over the mountains but you will continue to stumble through the undergrowth of the valley that I want to lead you out of; and your heart will be in danger of growing bitter and critical towards those who are experiencing my glory.”

Our response.

Prophesy requires a response. When Agabus prophesied a famine, “ the disciples, each according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea” (See Acts 11: 28-30) So how do we do to prepare for what is coming? Here are a few suggestions.

Intimacy with the Holy Spirit.
Jesus tells us that His sheep hear His voice – but it’s only through the Holy Spirit that He speaks, whether this is directly into our hearts or via the Bible, so unless we are familiar with that voice we will not recognise it when it comes, and we will miss His directions. This doesn’t just mean spending a fixed period of time every day praying and reading the Bible; it means staying close to Him all day so that we can hear his whisper as we walk, that “voice behind us, saying this is the way, walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:21)

Openness to change.
God is doing “a new thing.” This doesn’t mean that it’s not in the Bible, because it is. It will either be prophesy that is now coming to fulfilment, or aspects of new testament church life and ministry that God is only now restoring to the church. We need to make sure that our openness to what God is doing today is is only shaped by what He did when He first established the church 2,000 years ago. and just not by what we, our fathers, or our Bible teachers saw God doing yesterday.

Practical love
Are we free and generous in our giving? As the financial systems of the world become more shaky, the best place to invest our money is in the Bank of Heaven, where “moth and rust do not corrupt, and thieves do not break in and steal.” (Matt 6:19) As we shovel out, God shovels in – and His shovel is bigger than ours.

Holiness
Friendship with the world is enmity with God (James 4:4). Jesus is coming for a bride without spot or blemish. God judged idolatry and compromise among His Old Covenant people and He has not changed today. We all need to ask the Holy Spirit if we have any idols ourselves, and what we need to do for our “houses” to be an acceptable dwelling place for Him. We must recognise that Peter meant what he said when he wrote “Just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’”

None of these – or other principals of discipleship – are new ideas. I think that the “new thing” that God is doing today is to allow unprecedented erosion of the sandy foundations that the world’s civilisation is built upon, so that what is build on the Rock of Jesus Christ is the safe haven that can be seen by all, more clearly than ever before. His call to us today is to make sure we are in it and are not wandering around outside.

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Entering the Land (2): Greater is He that is in you…(Teaching)

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“So it was, when all the kings of the Amorites who were on the west side of the Jordan, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard that the LORD had dried up the waters of the Jordan from before the children of Israel until we  had crossed over, that their heart melted; and there was no spirit in them any longer because of the children of Israel.” (Joshua 5:1)

The new generation of the children of Israel had been circumcised and were gathered between the Jordan and Jericho. As I wrote in the previous article we, the Church of Jesus Christ and the brothers of the second Adam, are the new generation who will enter the Land of Promise: the old generation, the children of the first Adam, cannot enter. And we live in a time when many prophetic voices are declaring that the Divine Nature will be manifested more powerfully than ever before when a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit equips us to live more fully in the good of the “great and precious promises” that we find in the Word (See 2 Peter1:4). So we too find ourselves between the Jordan and Jericho: we’re born again of the Spirit – we’re over the Jordan – and we know that there is a great advance ahead of us. But first we need to get past Jericho. What can we learn?

First of all, we need to remember that “greater is he that is in us than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4) The darkness is scared of the light, because it knows the light is stronger. The devil knows that he is no match for the spiritual weapons of our warfare, which are “mighty for pulling down strongholds (2 Cor 10:5),” because of course he knows what they are. The question is, do we? I think one of the devil’s main strategies in our warfare is to make sure we don’t. Jesus cast demons out ‘with a word’ because they knew who Him. The demons that overpowered the sons of Sceva knew Jesus, and they knew who Paul was, but they obviously couldn’t see anything of Jesus in the sons of Sceva. Their words alone were not enough.

Over the years I have done my share of “spiritual warfare.” I think I’ve won a few battles, but I have also lost many; and I have come to the conclusion from reflecting on my own experience and applying what I understand from Scripture, that we spend a lot of time firing blanks when we think we are shooting down the enemy.  We can talk, pray and declare all night, but Paul says that we are to “stand” when we have “done all.” When we “stand” in prayer against the forces of darkness, have we “done all?” Are we actually wearing the armour of God, walking in faith, righteousness and truth, spreading the gospel and speaking God’s word, or have we just rushed into prayer mode while the armour of our spiritual selves is still shut away in a locker in our heavenly home? James says we need to be “doers of the word, not hearers only” (James 1:22). The two house builders of Jesus’s sand and rock parable have both heard His word, but only one of them keeps it.

The enemy knew who Paul was because he clearly didn’t just teach the church about the armour of God; he wore it himself, all the time. To put on the armour of God, stand in it, and to “do all” is to put on Christ and walk in the Spirit. The enemy looked at Paul, and doubtless at Peter and the other apostles after Pentecost, saw Jesus, and had to succumb to the victory of the cross. Paul didn’t give us a check-list for a quiet time procedure in Ephesians 6, he gave us a picture of what the weapons of our warfare look like when we let our spirits do the walking in our lives. If we are walking in the light before confronting the enemy, he will see us coming before we reach him: he will recognise Jesus in our faith (the shield), our righteousness (the breastplate), our thinking (the helmet), our words (the sword), and our footsteps (the shoes). He will still put up a fight, but will be defeated in the end. But if he doesn’t see them he won’t know who we are, and no amount of “praying against” him will make any difference: we will just be firing blanks.

We must remember that the same spiritual powers of darkness that were over  the “Kings of the Canaanites” are at work in today’s world. If they had had shut up Jericho for fear of the people of God, what weapons of warfare are they scared of finding in our possession today? The answer can be summed up in a single word: Christlikeness. The more time we spend with Jesus, the more like him we become, and the more likely we are to pull down the strongholds that stand between us and the promised land.

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness

Where shall I send them? (A prophesy)

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“The LORD has founded Zion,
And the poor of His people shall take refuge in it.” (Isaiah 14:32)

Many of us have heard and spoken words prophesying the coming revival. In an intercession time recently we were praying for all those who would come to the Lord during this revival, and suddenly I saw His eyes, full of compassion and concern, and He was asking: “Where shall I send them? You say, ‘Here am I, send me,’ but will you also say ‘Here am I, send them to me’?”

Because they will come from the highways and hedges. There will be the poor, the needy, the illiterate, the refugee. This revival will not be like any other. There is a storm coming that will start to blow away some of the structures supporting this world: when have started to collapse many will come to the church for support. They will be drawn out of the darkness into the Light. Can we hold them up? Will the one who has two coats share with the one who has none, and the one who has food do the same (Luke 3:11)?

Just as we might prepare for extra family members to come into our house at Christmas, I feel the Lord is asking the church to prepare His house for the many extra family members that are going to arrive. Are their rooms ready? Do we have enough of the right food, and the people to serve them? The Lord is looking even now at all the people He is calling, and His eyes are looking into all our churches. He is asking: “Where shall I send them? Can I send them to you?”

Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect, Living by Faith, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Entering the Land (teaching)

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(Adapted from my new book, “Two Seconds to Midnight,” scheduled for publication in the Spring.)

Many of us believe that a season of harvest is coming soon, and that it will be greater than anything that the church has yet experienced; that we are about to enter a “promised land” of revival. We read about God’s people entering the Promised Land in the book of Joshua, and the principles that we see there speak to us today. If we pick up the story at the beginning of Joshua 5, we can find four main points: the men were circumcised; they celebrated Passover; they ate unleavened bread; Joshua worshipped the Lord and took his instructions from Him.

Circumcision
When they had all crossed the Jordan and set up camp at Gilgal, the Lord commanded Joshua to make flint knives and circumcise all the men of Israel: all those old enough to bear arms had died in the wilderness, and the new generation had not been circumcised with the sign of their covenant relationship with God. When this had been accomplished, God said to the Israelites through Moses: “This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” (Jos 5:9) The reproach of Egypt was the yoke of slavery that they had been under: now, through this act of consecration to the Lord, this yoke was broken.

Under the new covenant, we, the Church, are that new generation, born not of the flesh and the will of man, but of the Spirit of God (John 1:13). Each one of us is a new creation. There is a Land of Promise waiting which the “faithless and perverse generation” of the flesh cannot enter. but there will be another Jericho facing us as we come up against the godless systems of the world.

Paul reminds us (Romans 2: 29) that  “he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter.” To face the end-time Jericho we will need hearts that are totally open and yielded to the Lord. It’s easy to gloss over the use of the word “heart” in this sort of context. But if, in biblical terminology, the heart is the seat of the emotions, this is exactly what must be yielded to the Lord. It is so often our unyielded emotions that cause damage and disunity, and consequently defeat; whereas it is the unity that commands the blessing, as we well know. Only with “circumcised hearts” can we be free of all that ties us into the old, binding us to the yoke of slavery to sin, and be free to take the yoke of Jesus and rise up in the spirit.

Passover
The second heading is Passover. There is only one way to be yoked to Jesus Christ, and that is under the power of His blood. I believe that the Church needs a restored understanding of the power of the blood, and especially of the truth that “the life is in the blood.” Whenever we take communion as Jesus commanded us to do “in remembrance of Him,” we reaffirm not only the covering of the blood and all that it means in terms of forgiveness of sin and shelter from its consequences, but we affirm also the life of the Spirit that courses through it in our renewed hearts.
After Passover comes Pentecost. Our preparation for an end-time outpouring has to be a season of Passover. Many Christians the world over have felt that coronavirus lockdown has been, and still is, a taste of that season, shut off from the world and reaching out for the protection of the blood of the Lamb. We know that many Christians, sadly, have not survived the virus; but we also know that there are many testimonies of genuine divine healing that were granted through the power of the Blood.

Unleavened bread
The deeper significance of unleavened bread has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I’ve always felt that there is more to it than it being a reminder of leaving Egypt without having time for the bread to rise. Jesus talked about the “leaven of the pharisees,” for example, when He was warning the disciples to keep away from their deceptive doctrines; and it is a positive symbol in the parable of the leaven, which is probably (I haven’t done a word-count) the shortest parable in the New Testament. So what might be the symbolism in its Old Testament usage?

Just the other day the Holy Spirit gave me my personal revelation. This may not be the same for you, and I’m not saying it is what He has breathed into the scriptural significance of unleavened bread for everyone to receive, but the following is what He gave me. A negative reaction to something was rising up in my soul. The Lord said to me: “That thing rising up in you is leaven. Get rid of it.” Having “circumcised our hearts” we need to keep them soft.  Paul writes: “For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.” (1 Cor 10:17). To move forward into our Promised Land we need to deal with any leaven in our souls that causes us to rise up emotionally and undo the work of the cross in our lives. The children of Israel “ate of the produce of the land on the day after the Passover, unleavened bread and parched grain, on the very same day.”  The grain of our land consists of the seeds of truth sown into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and these are what we must feed on as we advance. We cannot arise in the spirit if we let negative emotions rise up in our souls: the best way to keep unleavened our corner of  the “one bread” that we are part of, is to make sure that we are feeding on the truth.

Worship in Holiness
And so, with hearts soft and sensitive to God, covered in and fully grasping the power of the blood of Jesus, and feeding on the living truth of His Word instead of the leaven of our emotions as our spirits are filled with His, we come into the Holy Ground where the Commander of the Lord’s Army is standing, and we worship Him. In this place, we can say, like Joshua, “What does my Lord say to His servant?” (Jos 5:14). And His commands to us will be of the same order as His words to Joshua: first, respond to His Holiness (Take off your shoes), and only then move in to defeat the enemy.

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Prophesy and the prophetic

The Cage and the Building

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Susie Molina and Jarrod Cooper both received a “word for 2021,“ posted UK Prophetic Releasers facebook page and on ukpropheticwords.blogspot.com. Jarrod had a dream in which many of “his” congregation streamed out of the church while he was at the front leading the meeting: when he asked the Lord why this was, he was told that they were leaving in order to go out on the streets and preach the gospel. The dream was an illustration of the words “The Church has left the building.” Susie, in the two visions “The caged lion and the staircase” writes of the church as a tired, weakened lion lying in a cage with the door open – free to leave but choosing to remain. “…Due to his long confinement, the lion had not been mentally and physically prepared and fit to see the enemy attack come and deal with it well because he had forgotten how to respond like a true lion in the wild. Chosen confinement, false comfort and increasing apathy had compromised and dulled his natural responses.”

As I read these two messages I saw that the two are closely coupled: the “cage” is the “building.” Many prophetic voices are talking about a shaking of the establishment, about new equipping, new anointing, new release for ministry for the coming season, but I believe that central to all of this is the following:

God is doing a realignment of leadership in the church and will establish Ephesians 4:11-13 as a foundational principal of ministry. I believe the Lord says: “I am going to re-align the five-fold ministries with their original purpose. I did not give these ministry gifts to build my church. I will do that. They were not given for platforms and audiences, for I am your platform and I am your audience. I gave them ‘for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,’ so that all can go out and make disciples. For making disciples is the work of ministry. I build my church; you make disciples. In building, apostles were given to equip the saints to build; in prophesying, prophets were given to equip others to prophesy; evangelists to equip to preach the gospel, pastors to equip to lead, and teachers to equip others to teach and understand my Word. I am taking my church back, and I am releasing my ministry gifts to release others to make disciples in the power of my Spirit, and they will go out and make more disciples because they too have been equipped. Because this is how I have always planned it, and this is the time when you will see my plans being realised. Freely you have received; freely give. As you flow, you will grow. Where there were congregations within walls, there will be conflagrations of holy fire beyond the walls. This is how my glory will be revealed and how my Bride will come to maturity. I am restoring the wild instincts of the lion, and she will shake off her apathy and come out of the building that has caged her in for so long, and she will roar on the streets. And it is the roar of the Lion of Judah that will be heard.”

Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

Ministry Gifts

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“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… 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)

Paul distinguishes three giftings in his letter to the Corinthians:

The Gifts of the Holy Spirit: “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. “(1 Cor 12:4)
The Gifts of the Son: “There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord.” (1 Cor 12:5)
The Gifts of the Father: “And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all.” (1 Cor 12:6)

Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, often known as the fivefold ministries, are the gifts that Jesus gave to men. They are distinct from the gifts of the Holy Spirt enumerated in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, and distinct from the gifts of the Father, sometimes called the “motivational gifts,” listed in Romans 12 vs 6-8.

The gifts of the Son are unique in that they refer to people rather than the gifts of the Holy Spirit which can be “given to each one for the profit of all;” or to the “level of faith” imparted by the Father to every individual to serve in a particular way. Everyone in the church is given a “level of faith” for a specific area (or areas) of service; everyone in the church can be a channel for the Holy Spirit to manifest Himself through a particular supernatural gift or ”manifestation of the Spirit” (1 Cor 12:7), and certain individuals in the church are ministry gifts given  by Jesus to the church to bring it to maturity.

Jesus will be returning for a grown-up; not a child bride. The yardstick we are given for maturity is the “fullness of Christ” Himself. When He returns “we will be like Him.” (1 John 3:2) We will be “a perfect man,” we will know Jesus intimately, and our Unity will be complete. The cry of the Saviour’s heart narrated in John 17 will be answered, because we will be one as He and the Father are one. The fivefold ministries are given to the Body so that we can attain to this perfect goal.

How? When the church is functioning and the Body growing according to the Ephesians 4 blueprint, the saints are equipped as for “works of ministry.” The word for ministry – diakonia –means ‘obedient service.’ In other words, the body learns to do what the head tells it to do. And if we untangle the convoluted language of verse 16, the picture that we find at the core is that everyone grows when Love and Truth flow from the head (Christ) through all the connected members. The purpose of the fivefold ministries is to enable that flow of love and truth into and through “every part.”

What comes next is key. This equipping that brings the bride of Christ to maturity is enabled by what Paul calls the “effective working by which every part does its share.” The language  means more in the original Greek than the English translation suggests. The word “Energeia” – ‘effective working’ – is only used in the New Testament  for superhuman power. The body of Christ grows to maturity when, enabled by the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, each member relates to the others through the operation of supernatural connections. Placing this in the context of the gifts of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, this means that we have to apply “a measure of faith” – going beyond our natural abilities or inclinations, and reaching into the Father’s inexhaustible supply – to whatever works of service we are motivated to carry out; and it means that we expect and rely on the gifts of the Holy Spirit to touch the spirits of our brothers and sisters in ways that are impossible in the flesh. The gifts of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all work together as the church grows into the “perfect man.”

In his book “Into Action,” Reinhard Bonnke says “Christianity was never intended to be anything else but an outpouring of the spirit. It is a reviving, quickening, renewing energy. Revival is not an extraordinary work beyond normal Christianity. Christianity is revival.” Reinhart Bonnke has raised the dead, seen thousands of people healed, and led millions to Christ, so he has some credibility. The church cannot grow to maturity without the power of the Holy Spirit impacting every member and enabling each one to respond to the Head by reaching out supernaturally to others. Jesus has put five ministries in place in order to bring this about, so unless leadership is in the hands of all five the growth will be unbalanced and incomplete.

Revival isn’t just about a lot of people getting saved and healed; it’s about the Church growing up.

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect

Prepare the Way of the Lord

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“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the LORD;
Make straight in the desert 
A highway for our God.

Every valley shall be exalted
And every mountain and hill brought low;
The crooked places shall be made straight
And the rough places smooth;

The glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
And all flesh shall see it together;
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.’” (Isaiah 40: 3-5)

Scripture is clear about where the glory of the Lord shall be revealed: “Unto him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever;” (Eph 3:21) or as Jesus Himself puts it: “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” (John 17: 22-23)

However, the highway by which He chooses to come is by way of the desert. The world is becoming more like a desert on a daily basis, but it is precisely when the world is in a desert place that His glory will be revealed in the church,  and “all flesh” will see it. Luke quotes Isaiah to declare four areas in which the Holy Spirit will “prepare the way” while this is happening and before the world sees the Glory of the Lord.

Every valley shall be exalted.

Luke renders this as “every valley shall be filled,” when he quotes the prophet in Luke 3:5. What are our valleys? When we lose sight of the place that we have been lifted to; whenever our souls are cast down; when the Victory of the cross is on the far side of the mountains – these are that the Lord is going to fill. A particular valley we read about in Scripture is the valley of Achor, where Achan and all his family were executed for keeping back some of the plunder from Jericho. It’s the place of judgement, condemnation and death. It’s where the accuser will always seek to bring us. However there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), so Isaiah 65:10 says:

“Sharon shall be a fold of flocks,
And the Valley of Achor a place for herds to lie down,
For My people who have sought Me.”

And Hosea writes:

“I will give her her vineyards from there,
And the Valley of Achor as a door of hope;
She shall sing there,
As in the days of her youth,
As in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.” (Hosea 2:15)

In Christ, the valley of condemnation becomes the place of peace, hope, and the joy of our salvation. If we bring our valleys to the Lord, He will “exalt” them as He lifts us again, and He will fill them with His presence as we praise Him for our deliverance from bondage.

Every mountain and hill shall be brought low

Just as the Holy Spirit can’t “prepare the way of the Lord” until He has dealt with our valleys, we also need Him to deal with our peaks – our mountains and hills.

Proverbs 29:23 tells us exactly what our peaks are: “A man’s pride will bring him low.” When Mary magnifies he Lord, she says

“He has shown strength with His arm;
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
And exalted the lowly.” (Luke 1 51-52)

These and many other scriptures make it clear that the Lord will deal with any areas where we seek to exalt ourselves before His glory will fill our lives. The flesh wants to promote itself, protect itself, control and be noticed; the Spirit seeks only to Glorify God, love and serve. Our example of course is Jesus, who “humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil 2:8)  If the Glory of the Lord is going to come in, there can be no peaks in the way. They have to die with Jesus on the cross.

The crooked places shall be made straight

Jesus calls The Holy Spirit “The Spirit of Truth,” and He Himself is, of course, the Truth. When Jesus saw Nathaniel coming towards Him, He said: ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!’ (John 1:47). Revelation 21:8 says categorically that “all liars” are destined for the lake of fire. Satan is the “Father of Lies,” the creator of crooked places. The Spirit of Truth will come and purge every tendency to conceal the truth. Where we have believed a lie, He will reveal it; and where we have let others believe a lie He will bring us to repentance. Wherever the father of lies has brought his distortions into our lives, the Holy Spirit will make those crooked places straight, so that we can all, like Nathaniel, be “Israelites indeed.”

And the rough places smooth

What are our “rough places?” Where are we abrasive? Are we gentle in our dealings with others? Are our relationships made smooth by the fruit of the Spirit being manifest in our lives, or do we have rough places here people are hurt or damaged if they bump into us? If Christ is going to fill our lives with the glory of God, these rough places need to be confessed and submitted to Him. If people have been hurt by them we need to repent and seek their forgiveness. We cannot be rough with one another and love one another at the same time.

The Glory of God will fill the Church when He has dealt with judgement and pride in our lives and has made us pure conduits of truth and love.  When that happens “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Luke 3:6)

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

The Stage is Set

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I was looking at an image of a stage with the curtains drawn across and the spotlight shining on the curtains. Then I felt the Lord say this:

The Lord has set the stage and is assembling His cast. Our lines are written in Heaven, according to Ephesians 2:10. He says to us now: “Learn your parts. For your parts are not playacting, they are the eternal reality of my Spirit. What is on the stage will not pass away; it is not just there for a season; it is built for eternity.“

An actor who comes out of role on stage is said to “corpse.“ The Lord says to us: “Your role is the reality. The spirit is your reality. Walk in the spirit, and do not corpse by walking after the flesh. The world thinks it is here to stay, and it is always fighting to stay; but the truth is the opposite: you are here to stay, and the world and all that is in it is passing away. Soon I will be drawing back the curtains to reveal what is on the stage that I have set, and my church will act the parts that I have prepared for them. But the spotlight will not be on you; it will be on Me. The Acts of the Apostles was just a prelude to what I have prepared for these times. Listen for my cues; wait for my cues; always move on cue and do not corpse. The world will begin to see who you are and who I am in your midst. The first act is coming; there will be many more acts after this, until the time comes for the final bow. So I say to you again: learn your parts, do not corpse, listen for my cues. And do not fear, for I am renewing faith among my people. You will enjoy the thrill of being in my theatre.”

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect

Walking in the Light (2)

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“If we walk in the light as He is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7.)

I’ve come back to this verse because I’ve often often pondered it: it seems back to front, as I would have expected walking in the light and having fellowship with one another (ie true relationship in integrity and genuine  love) to be a consequence of being cleansed of all sin by the blood of Jesus, and not for it to be the other way round. But John puts the cleansing of sin as a consequence of walking in the light. I understand it like this:

Jesus said “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12) Walking in the light is quite simply following Jesus. We go where the light goes. The entrance of His word brings light, (Psalm 119:130) so when we let His word enter our lives and do what His word says we are in the light. And since He is both light and love, we have to be walking in Love if we are walking in the light. Consequently we will have fellowship with one another. That seems straightforward enough. Not easy, but straightforward!

Walking in the light is a discipleship decision. If we are surrounded by the darkness of the world we simply mustn’t take our eyes off the light of Heaven. Just as there is no darkness in Jesus, there is no light in the World that isn’t from Him. If we are not following the way He shows us we are going to stumble, but (as I wrote in the earlier post) if we are walking in the light, we will discern the darkness in us whenever the flesh rises up, and we will bring it to the cross for cleansing. Because the flesh does rise up, and therefore we need to die to it, and we can’t die to the flesh if we’re not walking in the light. That’s why it’s a “living sacrifice” that we have to bring to the cross daily, as Paul urges in Romans 12:1. Because the flesh is alive, we have to keep sacrificing it. Jesus is fully in the light because He is the Light, whereas we walk in the light with him but bring the darkness of our flesh along with us.

Some Bible teachers will say that walking in the Light is to do what Jesus would do and manifest the fruit of the Spirit in our daily lives, and they point to the Sermon on the Mount as our set of guiding principles. And yes, the Sermon on the Mount is the manifesto of the Kingdom of God; it gives us the bullet points of the Spirit filled life, and if we let those principles guide us we will be blessed. And yes, to walk in the Light is to manifest the character of Jesus: kindness for cruelty, mercy for revenge, purity for pollution, generosity for meanness etcetera.  However we cannot do this on our own (well, I certainly can’t anyway); we cannot be living examples of the Sermon on the Mount unless we’re conscious of the Holy Spirit illuminating the scene that is before us. 

Temptation comes, in whatever area of personal weakness it is that the “prowling lion” (1 Pe 5:8) has spotted, and our flesh wants to yield to it because it is only by the light of the Holy Spirit that we discern it as sin, or as Jesus puts it Himself (John 16:8) it’s only the Holy Spirit that can bring conviction. If I feel slighted by someone, for example, I will fall into the sin of a negative reaction unless I see a beam of truth from the Holy Spirit showing up that reaction for the darkness that it actually expresses.  Once I see my piqued emotions as wounded pride I can make a decision take it to the cross for cleansing by the blood of Jesus, and I can keep my heart pure instead of giving sin a voice. It’s simple discipleship; it’s 1 John 1:7.

My choice is always simple: as I’ve said it might not be easy, but it’s simple. Do I charge ahead in the darkness, driven by my emotions and circumstance; or do I pause at every step, check that I am following the light, and respond according to His direction? Do I follow Jesus, or do I go my own way? If I want to walk in the light as He is in the Light I have to make a decision to dwell in His presence all the time. It isn’t being guided by a set of principles; it’s making a daily decision for step-by-step discipleship. There is no other way, no other truth, no other life.

“Plant the good seeds of righteousness and you will harvest a crop of my love. Plough up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you.” (Hosea 10:12 NLT)