Tag Archives: resurrection life

Discipleship and witness, Prophesy and the prophetic

All Bow Down

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“You oh Lord are a shield for me,
You’re my glory and the lifter of my head.” (Psalm 3:3)


We all know the story of Joseph to one level or another, and there are plenty of levels to it. I think one of them that the Lord speaks to us through, and definitely that the enemy temps us with, is the area of recognition. I think this is particularly true today, at a time when a recurring theme in what the Holy Spirit is saying through various prophetic ministries is that He will be using unknown people in the next great move of God. Jesus speaks about it to the Pharisees, and does not mince His words: “What is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God“ (Luke 16:15), and Joseph has serious problems with it when he tells his brothers of the dreams in which he saw all his brothers bowing down to him. How do we deal with it in the Church, operating as we do in a society where badges of rank and leadership are very much a part of the meritocracy in which we live? Jesus clearly gave us the model: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matt 20:28), but navigating this path is fraught with traps and temptations. It certainly is for me, and I don’t think I’m the only one who wrestles with the need for recognition.

The Mantle
Joseph‘s coat showed his brothers that he was his father‘s favourite and his status in the family was higher than theirs; that he bypassed them all to have the rights of the first born; and that he was destined to be leader of the clan. It represented authority and leadership. There’s a picture of the church here: we are called out of the world by our Father to sit with him in heavenly places, where we have spiritual authority and a commission to lead those around us in the ways of righteousness. Our coat represents our call, our authority and our status as children of God, that we receive by Grace through the Holy Spirit. Without stretching the analogy too far, it’s a picture of the mantle that each one of us carries: the anointing of the Holy Spirit that both sets us apart from the world and enables us to bring God’s kingdom into it.

For Joseph, God‘s call was for him to be the vessel of God‘s wisdom and authority that would rescue Israel from famine and ultimately establish them as God’s chosen people. And let’s remember here that the seven years of plenty followed by the seven years of famine which was the world context by which God both established the Ministry of Joseph, and through him the destiny of Israel, were not just circumstances that just happened to be brought about by World conditions: they were planned and controlled by the sovereign God who was, and is, pointing all of history toward its final outcome in the eternal rule and reign of Jesus Christ. Through his dreams of authority, God revealed to Joseph the essence of what his part would be in the great plan of salvation.

If we want to learn from Joseph, I think that one place where where we need to look is how Joseph responded to those dreams. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” (John 18:36), and He also said “the Kingdom Of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21) Joseph however wore his coat as an external sign of his status. The consequence was that it was ripped off him, dipped in blood, and returned to his father. He told his brothers that they would all bow down to him, and far from any recognition he might have hoped for, his reward was to be thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, and cast into the obscurity of a prison far from home.

But God.
But God. “But the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a successful man.” (Genesis 39:2). There is no need to retell the story. Joseph was elevated in Potiphar’s household; he was elevated in prison; and finally he was elevated to the position of governor over the whole of the land of Egypt. While he was in prison his mantle was no longer visible, but it was still at work, because with the mantle came the gifting. He had the seer’s gift of both receiving and interpreting dreams, and we see later that he also had the supernatural gift of wisdom needed to steward the resources of the nation so that God‘s desired outcome could be achieved.

So what happened? The same prophetic gift was at work both before and after his brothers cast him out. Standing before them, wrapped in his coat, he said to his brothers: “Please hear this dream that I have dreamed.” Genesis 37:5) But instead of being persuaded that they should accept Joseph and the coat that he wore, his brothers said
“Shall you indeed reign over us? Or shall you indeed have dominion over us?” And “they hated him even more for his dreams and his words“


Joseph’s lesson
The esteem that Joseph longed for was, as Jesus made clear, “an abomination to God,“ and moreover would have doubtless destroyed the work that God had planned for Joseph. If we seek to exalt ourselves through our ministry we are destined to fail. How different was his attitude when his distressed fellow inmates in prison told him of their dreams. “We each have had a dream, and there is no interpreter of it,“ they said. Joseph replied:“ Do not all interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dream.“  (Genesis 40:8) Like Daniel, many years later, Joseph did not say “I can interpret dreams,“ but he pointed to God and gave Him the glory. He had learnt his lesson, and it was a lesson he did not forget when he stood before pharaoh in the splendour of his palace. He glorified God when he interpreted pharaoh‘s dreams, and he imparted God‘s wisdom without seeking the position of being the one who would carry it out.

The New Mantle
Because Joseph had learnt that he did not need to display a mantle of authority but simply be the vessel of the One who has authority over all things, God could trust him with a new mantle: not just status in his family, but status in the greatest nation on Earth at the time. Joseph had to die to his earthly mantle in order to receive it anew from God in the power of resurrection life. Only in the power of resurrection life could he fulfil the purpose that he was called for. The life of the spirit requires the death of the flesh.

The term “Joseph ministry“ is often used today in the context both of the prophetic and of the stewardship of Kingdom Resources. I think it’s probably true that many are called to be Josephs today, but only the few are chosen who have learnt the lesson that every Joseph needs to learn. In the secret place of the prison, Joseph moved in his anointing and met the need of the two distressed individuals around him, but no one knew about his ministry until God decided that he was ready to “go public.“ The extent to which Joseph had genuinely died to his desire for recognition is shown in the fact that he only remembered his dreams of dominion when he actually met his brothers again. “Then Joseph remembered the dreams which he had dreamed about them, and said to them, “You are spies! You have come to see the nakedness of the land!” (Genesis 42:9)

Because pride and its attendant desire for dominion was the sin that led to Satan‘s expulsion from heaven and the fall of Man, the enemy is always looking for ways to infect the Church with that particular evil. If he had bones, you could say it is in them. And just as the Father rewards our prayers and our giving “in the secret place,” so the secret place is where our ministry is matured until the Lord is ready to send us out. If the coat of our anointing is going to be displayed to the World, it needs to be dipped in the blood of Jesus and returned to the Father. He will give it back to us when we are ready to wear it. He, and only He, is “my glory and the lifter of my head.” (Psalm 3:3)

Knowing God, Walking in the Spirit

Resurrection Life and The Human Flea

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“Then Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel:

“Sun, stand still over Gibeon;
And Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.”

So the sun stood still,
And the moon stopped,
Till the people had revenge
Upon their enemies.
Is this not written in the Book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.” (Joshua 10: 12-13)

This famous passage of scripture was quoted in a prayer meeting I was attending one morning. I was on a bit of a “spiritual low,“ so the sceptic that is never very far away from my thinking immediately saw a chance to rock my faith. “How can that possibly happen?” said the sceptic. “For the Sun to stand still would’ve actually meant for the Earth to stop turning – or even, when the shadow went back down the steps in the days of King Hezehiah, to spin in the opposite direction.” (See 2 Kings 20: 8-11.) Shortly after that, when the sceptic was still arguing with my spirit, Anne quoted the following paragraph from one of the sermons of Smith Wigglesworth:

“But I must recognise the difference between my own spirit and the Holy Spirit. My own spirit can do certain things on natural lines, can even weep and pray and Worship, but it is all on a human plane, and we must not depend on our human thoughts and activities or on our own personality. If the baptism (ie the baptism in the Holy Spirit – my note) means anything to you, it will bring you to the death of the ordinary. where you are no longer putting faith in your own understanding; but, conscious of your own poverty, you ever yielded to the Spirit. Then it is that your body becomes filled with heaven on earth.”
(Smith Wigglesworth: “Present time blessings for present time saints” April 14, 1923 from Smith Wigglesworth, The Complete Collection of his Life Teachings, compiled by Roberts Liardon)

This caught my attention, as I’ve come across that same passage before and have even quoted it elsewhere on these pages. It struck me forcibly that the heights of the human spirit, even at its most “spiritual”, are like the leaps of a jumping flea when compared with the activity, the dunamis of the spirit of God.

As we began to pray for our Church from that standpoint the Holy Spirit began to bring revelation of the majesty of God when compared with the poverty of our own spirits, and the skeptic I’d been listening to was silenced by the thought that this majestic God who created the universe, could, if he so wished, indeed tweak the rules that he had set in motion for a few hours and cause the Earth to stand still in its orbit for a day, or spin it in the opposite direction for a few hours. Nothing is impossible with Him, since He created all the possibilities anyway, and holds them in the palm of His hand.

And this brought me back to the flea. The word “Science” comes from the Latin word scientia, which means knowledge. Our knowledge can, and does, attempt to cast its net around the whole of the known universe, and the known universe is pretty big: but what of the unknown universe? How big is that? What is out there beyond our knowledge, our telescopes, and our computers – beyond even the digital football pitches that Power AI? The truth remains, “Man is but grass, and the glory of man as the flowers of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, But the word of the LORD endures forever.” (1 Peter 1: 24-25)

Smith Wigglesworth reminds us that part of the Work of the Holy Spirit is to make us aware of our own spiritual poverty without Him; but the wonderful corollary to that is the promise that the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor in spirit (Matthew 5:3). Once we recognise that we really are fleas in our own flesh, and no matter how high we can jump our glory is that of the flowers of the grass, all of the kingdom of heaven is ours. His grace is made perfect in our weakness. But it’s only resurrection life that can take us out of the mindset of the human flea, and to enter its domain we have to die to our human understanding and “be renewed in the spirit of (our) minds,” (Ephesians 4:23)  or as Paul puts it in Romans 12:1 “be transformed by the renewing of (our) mind” by the Holy Spirit.

It is when our transformed minds have really grasped who God is, and who we are, that we can truly pray in the Spirit and not, as Smith Wigglesworth likes to put it, “on the human plane.” This is when the truth of proverbs 3:5 can ignite faith in our hearts instead of just being filed in our collection of memory verses: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding.” When we lean on our own understanding, our human spirits can remember (or look up) a Bible verse that speaks into our need, but in my experience – both in my own prayer life and in the lives of those around me -those prayers tend to remain unanswered. Why? Because they are not birthed in and breathed by the spirit of God, but have been prayed on the human plane. They might be Bible verses, but they are still flea jumps.

Elijah said “As surely as the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand.“ (1 Kings 18:15) and, somewhat more recently, writing about the day when we all meet face-to-face with God, CS Lewis said: “What will all that chatter and hearsay count? (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anaesthetic fog which we call nature or “the real world“ fades away and the presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?“ (CS Lewis: Mere Christianity).

Do we stand before the living Lord of hosts, or are we jumping around in our natural minds? The difference between the human spirit and the spirit of God is the difference between our flesh and resurrection life. When the spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead – and who caused the Sun to stand still – breathes a word into our spirits, we can truly pray with faith and expect to see results. Surely these words are the mustard seeds that move mountains.

Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

Lazarus: the grave and the glory.

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“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)

The following material is from a message I preached in Liberia, so it’s more a collection of bible verses arranged under headings, mostly from John 11: 1-44, than a lot of my own thoughts. Which has to be good, really…

The purpose of Jesus’s ministry was to see  the Kingdom of Heaven established on earth through the church, and the account of the raising of Lazarus from the dead is a picture of exactly that: the Kingdom coming on earth; life overcoming death. In it we see two ways of thinking : the earthly way, represented by Martha and Mary, the disciples, and the Jews; and the Kingdom way of Jesus. We’re going to consider these two, remembering that the Word tells us that if we want to see the “good, pleasing and perfect will” of God, we need to be renewed in the spirit of our minds…

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)

Some aspects of earthly, or carnal thinking.

1) Earthly thinking wants to hold on to circumstances as they are

Verse 21: “ Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” (Martha)
Verse 32: “ Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” (Mary)
Verse 37 “And some of them said, “Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?” (Some of the jews)

2) Earthly thinking sees the problem

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.“ (Vs 39)

“Rabbi, lately, lately the Jews have sought to stone you, and are you going there again? (Vs 8)

3) Earthly thinking cannot believe the word of God

“I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, that you may believe. Nevertheless let us go to him.” Then Thomas, who is called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him.” (vs 15-16)

4) Earthly thinking knows the doctrine, but it’s all head-knowledge

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” (v 24)

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to Him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” (v 25-27)

Martha knows about Him, but hasn’t grasped that the resurrection itself and eternal life itself are standing in front of her.

5) Earthly thinking depends on someone else

“If only you had been there…”
If only xxx was still here…
If only the leaders would sort this out…
If only an evangelist would come to our town…

Some aspects of Kingdom thinking

  1. When earthly thinking sees the problem, Kingdom thinking sees the glory of God:

“Therefore the sisters sent to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.” When Jesus heard that, He said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” (vs 3-4)

2) Kingdom Thinking walks in a different dimension; the dimension of the Spirit:

 “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. (v9)

“But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor 2:14)

3) Kingdom Thinking knows Gods protection
Again, “Are there not 12 hours in the day …” (v. 9 – in response to the threat of being stoned)

4) Kingdom Thinking knows that Father has heard our prayer:
 “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I know that You always hear Me…” (vs 41-42)

5) Kingdom Thinking operates out of faith
“Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” (v 40)

How do we change our thinking and renew our minds?

1) Know “The resurrection and the Life” personally.
“that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection” (Phil 3:10)

This is the most important point of all. It’s one thing to know about Jesus; it’s something else entirely to know Him personally and have a relationship with Him as one of His disciples. So the first question is this: Do you know Jesus yourself? Have you been born again of the Spirit of God? As Jesus put it Himself: “Truly, truly, I say to you, except anyone be born from above, he is not able to see the kingdom of God.”” (John 3:3)

2) Know who He is in you
“But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” (Rom 8:11)

“Christ in you, the hope of glory” (col 1:27)

Bible hope is the expectation that something will happen; certainty, not wishful thinking. One of the most telling examples of New Testament “hope” is in Romans 8 20-21: “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that  the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” God didn’t have His fingers crossed when He brought death into the world: He knew for certain that His plan for redemption would be fulfilled.

Jesus was certain that God’s glory would be manifested at the tomb of Lazarus. ““This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God.” Through Christ in us we have this certainty of coming glory, and through faith we can make this a reality in our present lives.

3) Hear what He says in the Spirit

Know that “my sheep hear my voice.” Not just my leaders, not just my prophets, not just the man who is preaching, but my sheep. All of them. Learn how to recognise His voice and believe what He says, because faith comes from hearing. Jesus knew what was coming because His Father had told Him.

4) Instead of wanting to hold on to what you’ve had, look forward to what God is going to bring.

“Didn’t I tell you that you see the glory of God?”

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of what we need to do in order to renew our minds and move towards resurrection life, but it illustrates an important principal of discipleship: we can either stare at life’s tombstones, or we can be like Jesus and look for the glory. The decision is ours.