Ecclesia: Original Design

Jesus used this Greek term, ekklesia, [Greek word] in describing what He was building. He builds it on the Father’s revelation that He is the Son of God. That is, ecclesia [English word] is built upon the revelation of Jesus as God’s Son.

The testimony of Jesus is the prophetic spirit: Who He is prophesies what God wants man to be. What Jesus is prophesies what God intends man to be, and His kingdom testifies how man should have dominion on earth. That is, the dominion the first Adam lost is restored in the second Adam. Jesus has guaranteed that Father will get what He wants in man and kingdom come.

Jesus says, “I will build My ecclesia, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

What Jesus Didn’t Say

Jesus didn’t say Peter was the foundation of His ecclesia.

People who fail to understand prophetic language and simple simile miss what Jesus is communicating when they assume Jesus meant that Peter is the rock. The Rock is the revelation of Who Jesus is, a revelation that comes to us from the Father.

Father sends Jesus. Father validates Jesus. Father confirms Jesus. But Jesus builds the ecclesia upon this Cornerstone foundation.

The King calls the ecclesia together from the kingdom. Without Jesus being the fullness and fulfillment of what Father wanted man to be, no fullness and fulfillment of man’s dominion on earth is possible. Because Jesus became man, king, redeemer, and restorer, what Jesus created can be fully what Father wanted it to be.

Jesus didn’t say He was building a structure. He wasn’t talking about building a physical facility like Herod’s Temple, Solomon’s Temple, or any temple. Curiously, after making this apparent, people still get this concept confused with respect to “church.” Jesus wasn’t talking about physical structures.

Physical facilities are wonderful tools that help us do the ministry of Jesus better, provide a place for the assembling of called together people, and capture the imagination of man with regards to “church.” God doesn’t live in physical structures, however, but in the ecclesia.

The word “church” used to translate “ekklesia” does have a history of meaning that more closely identifies with a building. The word “ekklesia” does not have any history of meaning that closely identifies with a building, so the use of the word “church” for translation is a poor choice. The term “church” was used to translate “ekklesia” because King James demanded that it be used. In any case, the ecclesia is not a physical edifice.

Jesus didn’t say He was calling people out of the world to be part of His ecclesia. He said He was calling people together from within His kingdom. People called together for His ecclesia must be in His kingdom; they enter His spiritual kingdom by spiritual birth.

While it is true that the word “ekklesia” is a compound word, literally, “called out,” the term “ekklesia” as Jesus used it means “called together in assembly” by its use in literature and Greek and Roman culture and civics. It is valid to speak of our separation from the world or distinction from the world, but the word “ekklesia” isn’t the basis for understanding of that separation or distinction. Our distinction comes from being part of the kingdom of God, and the ecclesia is called together from within the kingdom.

“Born of the Spirit” and “entering the kingdom” are the same thing. We are born into a spiritual kingdom by spiritual birth, and then the King calls us together with other citizens of the kingdom.

Jesus didn’t say that any time two or three Christians are in the same place at the same time, ecclesia is functioning. In the context of Matthew 18, Jesus describes how kingdom business can be accomplished with two or three witnesses. The two or three witnesses are protocols for governing disputes within the kingdom, and Jesus makes it clear that kingdom business can be done with two or three witnesses when they function in His Name.

“Two or three gathered together in My Name” fits into a context of Jesus specifically addressing how to resolve fractured relationships. He says that when any two shall agree concerning the resolution of the issue, two or three witnesses involved in making a kingdom decision about interpersonal conflict can bring full resolution. This is not the same as “tell it to the ecclesia,” but a function of citizens of the kingdom. When the two or three cannot resolve the issue, an ecclesia is called together. Read in the context of the entire discourse, Jesus is making it clear that He is personally involved in dispute that fractures the Body.

In other words, Jesus clarifies that citizens acting within the kingdom can do kingdom business because He is involved, but that is not the same as an ecclesia.

Jesus didn’t say—and I am being overly technical—that He was planting churches. Again, I am being overly technical here and not disparaging the concept of church planting as much as I am pointing toward original design to help us understand the kingdom government function of the ecclesia. Jesus didn’t plant churches and didn’t command anybody else to plant churches. Jesus calls together kingdom people, and commanded His leaders to establish kingdom from which He calls together assemblies. I repeat, I’m not trying to condemn the concept of church planting, but we have mixed terms, redefined terms, and missed original design because we have allowed strategies for “church growth” to frame the Scripture instead of allowing Scripture to frame our strategies. In this way, we have lost large portions of original design and function.

When we establish kingdom, ecclesia happens. Where we establish kingdom, Jesus calls together the citizens of His kingdom for assignment. He has strategies for kingdom growth more than church growth. We have had strategies for church growth that have not produce kingdom growth.

Consider that we can accumulate believers without establishing kingdom, and the resulting “church” that accumulating believers produces may not function with kingdom power and authority. So, to be technical, we establish kingdom and Jesus builds ecclesia.

Jesus didn’t say that He was starting something that people could attend once per week. The assembling of those He calls together occurs! Oh yes! And we should not forsake this assembling together as some have. Ecclesia will have regularly scheduled assembling, announced-ahead-of-time strategic events, and meetings at times convenient for kingdom citizens to attend. Ecclesia will also have strategic events. But, technically speaking “church” isn’t a weekly meeting to be attended. It is a governmental assembly called by Jesus to do kingdom business with kingdom citizens.

What Jesus Did Say

Jesus did say: He has been given a kingdom. His Father gave it to Him. David had already established the kingdom, and Jesus arrived as David’s son to make that kingdom eternal.

Jesus came to do what no other man could do, what Israel failed to do, and what Father wanted from the beginning of creation: ‘take dominion and rule the earth.’

Jesus gave kingdom to His kingdom leaders. He gave them the authority keys of that kingdom. He gave them a spiritual kingdom, a heavenly kingdom, God’s kingdom functioning on earth. He taught them to declare the Father’s Name because that is the Father’s authority. He taught them to declare, “Heavenly kingdom arrive!” because this heavenly kingdom is to be established on earth. He taught them to declare, “God’s will happen!” because what Father wants must be established on earth through kingdom power and authority.

What Jesus did say about His ecclesia had to do with the spiritual transformation such an invasion of kingdom power and authority accomplish on earth: challenge the authority of hell and displace it with greater power and authority, pushing hell back.

“hell will not have enough power to stop this displacement of the ecclesia I am building.” As the kingdom expands, something much greater than accumulating new citizens will happen. The kingdom’s spiritual power and authority will displace the spiritual power and authority of hell.

An ecclesia in a Greek or Roman city would function “at the gates” because that is where the authority of the municipality resided. There the authority of a city would open or close its gates, thus have the power and authority to govern that city. The concept of “gates” was clearly an identification of authority to govern. Jesus says “the gates of hell” because He is referring to the power and authority of His ecclesia over the existing power and authority of hell to govern. So, wherever His kingdom is established, a fundamental spiritual transformation will occur that displaces the authority of hell.

An “ekklesia” was a called together assembly of citizens to determine and decide governmental matters. Jesus used this term to describe the way His kingdom would function. His kingdom would function in ecclesia differently from Greek and Roman culture because His kingdom culture has heavenly protocols, not earthly protocols, but the term that best describes what He is building is “ekklesia.” In other words, Jesus doesn’t do business the same way hell does business. Jesus doesn’t govern the same way the world governs. But Jesus does intend to take over!

Jesus did say that those who are born into His kingdom will be discipled. People certainly need orphanages and refuges and emergency response, but the kingdom of heaven isn’t a “try-to-make-it until I come back” venture.

Our picture of the ecclesia as “called out of the world” often relieves the responsibility to transform it. Such a thought is foreign to the mind of Christ. Jesus never pictured, designed, or established a spiritual kingdom that would survive within the world. He designed a spiritual kingdom with heavenly power and authority to take over the world by displacing the authority of hell wherever it went. We aren’t called to accommodate false religions into a religious subculture in order to accumulate numbers and influence through human strategies as the Roman church has done. Neither are we called to accumulate believers in evangelical subcultures that expand in number without expanding in influence and impact while we await the coming of Jesus.

That is, having babies is not the objective. Expanding the flock as a measurement of success is also foreign to the thinking of Jesus. Jesus never left us with the impression that He could finish His purpose by the accumulation of people; He was clear that He intended His kingdom to function with spiritual power and authority that would disciple cultures.

Our redefinition and redesign of “church” has failed to turn Christians into leaders, babies into mature adults, and mature the kingdom into a culture changing authority. Some would say, “Get people saved and we will fulfill our assignment.” However, the truth is that having half of the population born again would not finish anything! It would begin an enormous kingdom-establishing assignment. It would demand immense personal transformation and maturity. Getting a majority of people born anew does not create a Christian culture.

In fact, our redesign of ecclesia has produced immaturity and fragmentation for several spiritual generations. Ecclesia that fails to turn ordinary Christians into ministering leaders is not producing the kind of leaders who can establish kingdom function on earth as it is in heaven. The kind of leaders Jesus was producing with His ministry is the kind of leaders we should be producing now.

In many cases, we have determined to “win people to Jesus” in a redefinition of ecclesia that leaves them immature for decades. In many cases, we have strategies for church growth that never cross over into discipling at all because they are overwhelmed. Teaching immature, unchanged spiritual children coping mechanisms, survival skills, and institutional dependency is not discipling.

What Jesus did say: “I have been given all heavenly and earthly authority, so wherever you go, disciple nations.” What Jesus didn’t say: “I’m in charge, so go make disciples from within nations and measure success by how many you can get born again.” Most certainly Jesus said to go into the whole world and preach the Gospel, that doing so would bring people to salvation experiences and expand the kingdom population. However, the difference between expanding kingdom population and establishing kingdom is vast. When ecclesia as Jesus designed it functions properly as a governmental assembly, it does more than govern itself; it expands the dominion of the King into the culture where kingdom citizens live.

The Test of Mystery

Our trust in God must be complete for us to experience completeness. A pathway of progressive perplexity pushes us toward profounder surrender. Expanded revelation opens our lives to more mystery; the more we learn, the more we realize we don’t much. The more answers we receive, the more questions we have because we have enough revelation to ask them. We live in increasing levels of enigma. One open door reveals a room we didn’t even know was there.

Trust with God isn’t built upon knowing everything. Trust with God means resting in the greatest reality that He knows everything, and that He reveals everything we need to know to trust Him enough to say “Yes!” Trust doesn’t demand all the answers before we obey. Trust says “Yes” when it is a great risk, and the deeper we go in obedience the greater mystery surrounds our trust.

“Abram went, not knowing…” [Hebrews 11.] Abram did know to go because God revealed this instruction, but Abram didn’t know where he was going. Still, ‘Abram went.”

At various stages of going and obeying, Abram reveals that he still has more questions than answers about where to go, who will be his heir, and “how in the world does God think He is going to make this all happen?” Each step into obedience brings Abram face to face with the profounder perplexity of God’s promise. Every day he ages, Abram’s questions deepen. Every year of personal prosperity demands a son to inherit this increase. But where is the son God promised?

Your Trust is More Important Than Your Revelation

Those who know me attest that I am thrilled about revelation. The Bible is so full of the eternal – No! – the Bible is eternal! It does not contain God’s Word; it is God’s Word. And, I am thrilled about revelation increase in my own life as a child opening gifts at Christmas.

I am thrilled with prophetic revelation. This is not about something greater than the Bible or something completing the Bible, since the Bible is enough and complete within itself. This is about the everyday “He shall be in you” and “He shall lead and guide you” and “He shall teach you” that Jesus promised.

God speaks today! And, Jesus involved in His kingdom and ecclesia means a here and now revelation of strategy and assignment for His leaders and people. Revelation is more important than calculation. Revelation is more powerful than reason. Revelation allows and enables us to think God’s thoughts. For those who say, God removed the messy by giving us the Bible, I must remind you that arguing the Bible is messier and the Bible is used to perpetuate the greatest errors of church history. So, lighten up on the scare tactics about prophetic revelation available here and now!

However, prophetic revelation does not remove the mystery from God or the mystery from our obedience. The idea that God needs to explain Himself or reveal everything He is doing before we obey is the fruit of rebellion, unbelief, and religion. We do what God says without hesitation, keep asking questions, and following orders. We walk right into greater mystery when we obey God.

If you are waiting for more answers before you start walking the direction God has marked for you, your unbelief is rebellious. “They did not enter in because of unbelief” speaks of a demand to be in control, make the big decisions, use the Scriptures to obligate God to do what we think they say He should do, and play God instead of playing our part as humans.

Many modern American Christians say by their actions, “God, You need to do a better job of being God.” They are saying this because they demand that God remove the mystery from their obedience. They refuse to obey “because God said so.” They stomp the left foot like four-year-olds. They pout with the protruding bottom lip of eight-year-olds. They slam doors and run away like twelve-year-olds. They are basically spoiled spiritual brats with something to prove.

These Christian cannot be trusted with adult things because they have never learned the basics of “do it cause I told you to” as spiritual children. They grow up expecting the keys to the car when they cannot be trusted with such a dangerous experience. They grow up expecting to be given greater freedoms without shouldering greater responsibilities. They believe they are ready to have a kingdom opinion when they cannot even keep their room cleans, take out the trash once a week, and avoid becoming a victim of Internet porn.

Trust Him When You Don’t Understand

But the most mature Christians face the most perplexing questions. The truth is that more revelation does not remove mystery. Revelation expands mystery. We mature enough to ask the right questions.

Remember that Jesus amazes the leaders of His generation in Jerusalem by the questions He asked them. The questions He asked…

Later, He refused to answer their questions because they were not mature enough for the answers. Their motivations for demanding answers were motivations of rebellion and unbelief. They wanted answers to better craft their refusals of obedience. They were using the eternal Scriptures to develop their own answers to God’s mysteries because their refused to obey God until they could be in control.

For the mature, walking through mystery requires greater risk and trust than remaining on the safer ground of analysis, reason, research, and conclusion. In God, wisdom is His strategy to accomplish His purpose. In man, wisdom attempts to wrap the package up with reason and knowledge so it is humanly secure. When human wisdom secures the soul, we have hardness of heart. When God’s wisdom whispers “Go,” we have the joy of a pioneer.

Human wisdom gloats about going to places we’ve been before to boast of man’s purposes. God’s wisdom walks us into fullness so we can produce fulfillment of God’s purposes. Human wisdom can recognize achievement and excellence because it removes the mystery. God’s wisdom recognizes leadership and promise because it increases mystery.

Mystery of the Hidden

The term “occult” means “hidden.” We are forbidden to live by the “hidden” of the occult because it is a storehouse of lies from darkness and hell. The term “mystery” basically means the same thing. A mystery is something real that is hidden.

The occult is something unreal, an imposter of hell that is revealed to capture and enslave by convincing people they are in control. The mystery of God is something hidden to preserve and reserve it for adult kingdom leaders who can receive it and bring something of God to fullness and fulfillment by empower people who are submitted to God’s control.

Revelation from God always puts me in a position of trusting God more. Meddling with mysteries of the occult is my effort to gain control by usurping spiritual power, trusting myself to control in the delusion that I can control things with spiritual power.

God has many mysteries that we cannot remove unless we are God. We are not God! We will never be God! We will live with Him eternally and never remove mystery from Him.

Knowing God does not require us to know everything about God. Loving God does not require that we remove mystery from Him.

So, walking with God expands mystery. Demanding to know everything exposes our immaturity. Demanding to be in control gets us nowhere with God. He simples stops revealing until we obey what the revelation we’ve already received. Not to punish us even—simply because we cannot see any greater revelation from the vantage point of our last disobedience. Disobedience and blindness share the same space.

Every step a prophetic people take demands a greater level of trust in the One who leads them. While a prophetic people enjoy greater revelation, they experienced greater mystery. The moment a prophetic people demand to know it all or even demand to know more before they obey, they have set up camp somewhere on the journey instead of moving further toward their destination.

Rants on HealthCare and Freedom

Let me say up front that any government healthcare regulation or policy that restricts the free exercise of religious belief is blatantly and treasonably unconstitutional. Simple as that. ‘Nuff said.

Careful consideration of the present dialogue about access to “birth control” and forcing religious institutions to pay for it, provide it, and support it, by administrative and bureaucratic mandate may be a trap no matter what happens next. Why? Because when the government steps back from this extreme, over-the-top and obvious overreach – and they will step back with a compromise that is the same thing in a different package – most people will sigh with relief, pump their fists and say “We showed ‘em,” when the real battle has neither been won or even discussed. Most people give up more freedom and constitutional ground if the exemption is extended than they realize.

The real issue is not whether or not there should be exemptions for religious institutions but whether or not the “right to privacy” that was created by a Supreme Court justice to make abortion on demand the law of the land also creates a right to access, a right to healthcare, and a right to have these rights paid for and provided by government fiat. This is a broader rights battle than whether or not the government should extend exemptions: the need for exemptions and our acceptance of exemptions supports the error that government is, can be, or should be authorized to intrude in our freedom so much that they even have an opinion about our healthcare, birth control, and making these services any of the government’s business.

In other words, we are fighting with our government to give us permission to do something that is none of our government’s business in the first place! And, when or if government grants exemptions, we will be drained of the motivation and outrage to fight the real battle. Most people will walk away relieved, satisfied, even triumphant that we were granted permission to be free by a government who is not the source of our freedom.

The government’s job is to protect people from the very thing the government is doing, and the fundamental flaw – the fatal flaw – is that we are assuming the government is the source of our rights and the provider of our needs. Any assumption that government is our source is fatal to freedom, fundamentally unconstitutional, and much more tragic than whether or not we are being granted exemptions.

We are being played like prisoners rioting for better television reception and access to the Internet. We are demanding that restrictions to our privileges be removed when the issue is that we are prisoners of our own government. We are demanding that the fences of our prison be enlarged so we can feel more freedom, but we are still in prison.

We should immediately alter our strategy on the encroachment on religious institutions by making this issue part of a broader protest. The pushback that free people release to this issue should carry us into a new coalition of shared concerns about tyranny and treasonable breaches of the constitutional guarantees that government stay out of our private lives. The dialogue shouldn’t be limited to sound bites about the arrogance of our government or “gray areas” in providing people their rights to healthcare or some bizarre reasoning about “fairness.” This is symptomatic of much, much deeper issues and should become a wake up call for every lover of freedom.

The issues are constitutional, and the very constitution that guarantees that government is limited from this behavior is being used to prove they have the authority to govern our private lives and decisions.

This is not an argument about whether or not women will have access to “birth control,’ this is about the government thinking it is their business or responsibility to provide “birth control” in the assumption that unless they provide it, the right isn’t guaranteed. To assume that government has to provide birth control in order to guarantee a right to healthcare, privacy, or reproductive rights is to assume any of these rights have constitutional enumeration. Or, simply put, the government is restricted from being the source of our rights so we can be free; God is the source of human rights, and government must be restricted by the constitution from interfering with our exercise of those rights.

In this country, people with cause to provide birth control to people have the greatest freedom ever available to history and the world today in which to make that provision available. Access isn’t an issue. Again, I repeat, access isn’t an issue. This is not about the right to privacy, that doesn’t exist in our constitution or the presuppositions of liberty, being guaranteed by forcing institutions to provide birth control to their employees. This is about government being the source of our human rights instead of the protector of our human rights sourced in God.

To depend upon the government to create fairness won’t work because it is not possible for the government to be the source of fairness. The moment government becomes the source of fairness, its citizens become slaves negotiating for fairness with their master.

Media Information Processing

Most people have learned to process information from their experiences with modern media and process information without the conscious understanding that they are attempting to understand their experiences and information in the same way they experience news reporting, opinion analysis, and sound-bite driven updates.

Media is more real to modern people than it is or should be. While these great tools should create better dialogue, conversation, and understanding, they do not. The most obvious division and polarization in our history are upon us. We are a nation divided about issues that ignore the fundamentals we have already lost.

We argue about cutting spending with little or no discussion about cutting the debt, for example. Week after week, we argue about cutting spending with discussions of rich and poor, education and war, job and safety nets. All the while, the debt grows exponentially and the discussion has nothing whatsoever to do with paying down debt, only about how much increase there will be in spending.

What this means is that process reality in the way media outlets process information. We argue about sound bites, press releases, and teleprompter speeches while the blood drips onto the ground from our open veins. We are going to bleed out feeling like we had our say…

We are happy with moral victories that mean nothing except as perceptions of triumphant. We are like Moses presenting the children of Israel with freedom, and being booed by the slaves because they really were interested in better working conditions. Our media-based information processing empties our emotional investments into these moral victory sidetracks while the issue of getting out of Pharaoh’s ownership seems unreal.

Modern Christians need to stop processing information the same way the world does. The spirit of the world is the enemy of the Father. Processing information like the world makes us servants of our Father’s enemies, captives of the strategies of a spiritual conspiracy against Jesus Christ, measuring life with the motivations of heart more consistent with antichrists than our Messiah: demanding desires of human nature, demanding desires of physically experienced things, and the delusional pride of life that oppose the Father. [See 1 John 2.]

Don’t love the ways of this world system. Don’t love the stuff of this world’s system’s values. Love like this empties out your passion for the Father.

Understand the Kingdom of God

We stopped teaching the kingdom of God when we determined that the kingdom was so future that it was none of our business anymore. We had plenty of help from experts

Don’t love the ways of this world system. Don’t love the stuff of this world’s system’s values. Love like this empties out your passion for the Father.

Understand the Kingdom of God

We stopped teaching the kingdom of God when we determined that the kingdom was so future that it was none of our business anymore. We had plenty of help from experts. In the 1800′s a new teaching arose and took prominence that postponed the kingdom of God until Jesus returns. This dangerous new discussion had certain motivations that should be discussed and discovered, but the bottom line was that a new mainstream swept into the Body and the Gospel was emptied of its kingdom authority and power while continuing in the authority and power of salvation.

At some point, many Christians assumed they had a proper understanding of Scripture when they were agreeing to ignore much of It because It was for a future time. The assumption that Jesus came to offer Israel the kingdom and that Jesus postponed it when they rejected Him was fundamental to the idea that the “church age or dispensation” was a great hiatus in history between Israel having the kingdom and Jesus coming back to establish the kingdom.

I am being overly simplistic, but the reality remains that most Christians stopped doing kingdom business and started doing church business, and the terms were all redefined to fit the foundational assumptions.

Conclusions

So, let me bring these three thoughts together, using the occasion of the latest “issue of church and state” as an opportunity to frame a greater consideration.

We establish kingdom. Jesus builds His church. He calls together from His kingdom, assemblies of citizens to give them kingdom assignments. He gives them kingdom authority to fulfill these assignments. He gives them kingdom leaders to prepare them to be good kingdom citizens and function with the ecclesia He calls together.

The antichrists we should overcome are defeating us while we wait around for some future representative of hell or attempt to identify one from ridiculous and distracting conspiracy theories as if this identification is our highest calling. We tend to process information in spiritual sound bites, win moral victories, and demand that our working conditions as slaves of the world system be improved.

We fail to act like kingdom people who can pray like Elijah, endure like Job, and rule like Jesus as leaders in a spiritual kingdom more powerful than any earthly politic. We operate from a position of weakness, division, and confusion because we don’t know who we are. We are more divided than our enemies because we continue to cling to distractions, major on minors, and fail to distinguish between truth and accommodation.

When the government compromises on this healthcare exemption issue, we will go back to our complacency because we process information in sound bites. If we were kingdom people, we would be functioning in kingdom strategies. How long has it been since you even heard a kingdom strategy, a strategy that made sense because the kingdom of God has power and authority on earth here and now that changes atmospheres and awakens a culture to its redemptive purpose?

This is not the time for a cave and a bag of beans. This is day of kingdom strategies that do more than accumulate believers and create religious subcultures. Get rid of your Scofield-Bible dispensationalism and start praying for an awakening in America that moves this nation back to its kingdom assignment. Stop following leaders who refuse to change. Do something radical with your life instead of being comforted by leaders whose objectives are to maintain instead of transform.

Stop thinking of every issue a political issue when the issues before us are kingdom of light or darkness issues, life and death, freedom and slavery, and overcoming and survival.

Ecclesia with International Authority

The ecclesia is called together from the kingdom, not the world; ecclesia is called together to receive an assignment and the authority to fulfill that assignment on behalf of the Kingdom of God. The function of the ecclesia is governmental and kingdom cultural, establishing and expanding kingdom authority and culture. In this mode it is confrontational and militant toward tyrants of spiritual dominion seeking to establish and expand their governments and cultures. Kingdom affects spiritual reality but manifests in our natural world.

In our recent Fathering Harvest Conference, I was discussing the principles of fathering nations: fathers receive increase because the increase has purpose they must pass on to prepared inheritors. The third principle of fathering nations is, obviously, “international” because the inheritance of Christ’s kingdom is the nations. [See Psalm 2:8 and Revelation 2:26, 27.]

Jesus accepted to responsibility to create, redeem, and restore. He overcame all His enemies to make them His footstool so He could receive the nations as His inheritance. In overcoming, He received the greatest increase of history: He is worthy of all… Now, He promises those who overcome and bring fulfillment to His purposes “to the end” will be given His authority over nations.

Fathering leaders function with international authority. They prepare inheritors locally, but the inheritors have access to international authority at the local level. From that local preparation, fathering leaders prepare leaders who function at the international level even though their assignments are local or regional. In this way, the kingdom brings international authority to the local level in the ecclesia.

This means that Jesus designed kingdom leadership to provide international level spiritual authority at the local level. We should be preparing leaders who can function at an international level even when the scope of their function is local or regional.

Paul makes a clear argument from this presupposition while proving his point about specific, local protocols for kingdom leaders. He talks about settling disputes and problem solving within the ecclesia. He says that kingdom citizens should be able to settle disputes between them without taking the issues to the courts of this world. They should be able to do this because they “will judge the world” and “will judge angels.” He says that they are being prepared to function with international authority, so they should be able to settle local disputes!

Not only does exercising kingdom authority locally and regionally prepare us to judge the world and angels, we are prepared for this level of authority by engaging in the process right now! I hope you will hear what I am saying, because what I am not saying may be your first conclusion unless you hear me say that we function SpiritFirst. What we do in spirit, however, is more real and more powerful than anything we could do in the natural. Functioning as a called together governmental assembly to receive the assignments of the King and the authority to fulfill them, we establish in spirit with spiritual authority and power. What we do has massive ramifications in the natural order.

Paul makes it clear that we must first get the ecclesia in functional order, and the Corinthian ecclesia was dysfunctional because it was not engaged in kingdom government locally. Therefore, the ecclesia in dysfunctional lacks a local expression of the international level authority and power that should be a norm for God’s governmental representatives.

Paul assumes that the authority of the Corinthian leaders should, here and now, function at an international spiritual level so that they exercise in that capacity to settle local and personal disputes is consistent with the universal assignment of the kingdom leaders. He makes it clear that leaders should be able to function at this level of authority, not everyone, but the local assemblies should have leaders of wisdom who can settle disputes and make it stick – authority to settle the issues once and for all. Why? Or, from where does such a radical idea come? Paul says that this apostolic order for the local comes from the international authority of the ecclesia; or, to be clear: there is a direction correlation between the local function of a governmental ecclesia and an international function of the kingdom.

So, to have an international level of spiritual authority available, we must have a local expression of ecclesia in which leaders can establish a final word on personal issues. Until we have that kind of local function, we will not see an international level of spiritual authority. In other words, while the ecclesia now has men and women of unusual spiritual power and authority who can set kingdom order, we still do not experience the pure and proper function of these kinds of leaders at the local level in many instances.

I am not saying that leaders need to involvement themselves in everybody’s business. I am saying that a properly functioning leadership in the ecclesia, according to Paul the Apostle in the Bible, should have leaders who can settle personal disputes brought to that authority, and that decision-making, problem-solving leadership should stick.

If you are thinking, “Well, that will never work in church as we know it,” then you should be thinking, that is why we don’t function with greater spiritual authority to change the natural order, take cities, and effectively confront the culture of our nations! We cannot father nations without this level of international leadership.

Paul is saying that the ecclesia in Corinth is not going to function properly to confront the regional spiritual conditions when it cannot even deal with the local ones. To father nations, we must prepare inheritors who can function at an international level. We must prepare leaders who can wrestle with angelic darkness, rulers with international influence in the spirit who are affecting the atmosphere of our city and region. Corinth didn’t even have enough apostolic order within the ecclesia to deal with petty personal disputes!

If your question is “Doesn’t this refer to a future condition when Jesus returns?” then you would also have to fit what Jesus says to Thyatira into a future condition. In other words, you have to make what Jesus said to this ecclesia centuries ago completely about what He will do when He returns, and to do that you have to put the entire context into a future condition and make the entire kingdom come reality a future expectation that has no here and now authority and power. [Yes, I am well aware than millions of Christians have been taught to believe that.]

If you say, “Only Jesus will judge nations,” you have contradicted Paul and Jesus. To say, that judging the world and angels doesn’t have an immediate, local, personal application here and now makes what Paul says to the Corinthian ecclesia irrational. If you reject the presuppositions of Scripture, you have given yourself license to make the Bible say and mean whatever you wish.

It has been our effort in MinistryMatrix and FreedomHouse, to prepare and activate leaders to function at an international level so that this level of spiritual power and authority is available in our city and region. Since we founded this ministry with international ministry, we have never “had church” without this expectation of international authority and power available at the local level. So, we expect this present move of God, this new era for the ecclesia, to include spiritual experiences like those of the early church. A day of miracles, signs, and wonders. An era of spiritual government. A season of kingdom establishing that redefines “church” more like what Jesus had in mind when He used the word “ecclesia” to describes what He was calling together within His kingdom, an assembly in which the keys of the kingdom would be fully functional!

Entitlement and Mercy

I have some musing on the subject of entitlement and mercy: simply put, God doesn’t entitle us to stuff even as His children. He treats as true children and we must respond as true children. His covenant with us guarantees the availability of stuff, but not entitlement to stuff.

Most people get mercy and grace mixed up because of the prevailing definition of grace as “unmerited favor.” The idea is that grace is given, thus the “unmerited part.” The “favor” part is more complex, and most people miss the meaning.

In reality grace is more about enabling power. The spiritual capacity to accomplish what we cannot do in human strength and wisdom, God’s way of getting us to be spiritual people. Note that I didn’t say, “More spiritual.” God is interested is us becoming spiritual people, living SpiritFirst, and being dominated by spirit; He is not trying add spiritual stuff onto our lives like an after-market gadget or gravy on our mashed tators.

The grace gifts, or charismata, of the Spirit are examples: we can do things that are purely spiritual capacities, void of human talent, disposition, and ability. Grace is beyond us but invades our lives as we surrender to God’s enabling power. Spiritual gifts are really grace capacities: charis is the word for grace, and grace enabled capacities, as all things spiritual, function as God gives and God operates in and through us.

In this sense, grace moves us above the Law because grace enables us to please God. We can be what His wants because of what He gives us in spiritual power and ability. We can do what He wants done because we function in spiritual power and capacity. Grace isn’t about standing but being and doing. In this way, Paul speaks of his ministry and life’s work as a “grace” and testifies that “I am what I am by the grace of God.” (This is the truest definition of humility.)

Anyway, mercy is more about time. God gives us time to repent that we don’t deserve or merit. He is just and holy, and we could go to hell forever the first time we miss it; mercy keeps the door open for us to repent. In this time of mercy, we may choose to sin more, and usually do! This helps us understand why a loving God allows sinfulness to abound and wicked men to continue in wickedness far beyond the time we would allow it. Mercy.

Entitlement

So, there is no entitlement for anyone, even God’s true children. Entitlement presupposes that grace and mercy have nothing to do with what we are supposed to get. Entitlement says we deserve things we haven’t earned, things we should receive “just because.” Entitlement is a lie hatched in hell contrary to the economy of heaven both spiritually and naturally.

The presuppositions of entitlement assume a limitation instead of an abundance. The thinking: there is a limited pie and everyone is entitled to an equal piece of the pie. One lie produces the next. Of course, the truth produces another truth.

This functions as political and social envy when people perceive that someone has more than they do, and contributes to the idea that “justice” demands equal portions. “If you have a lot, you have some of mine. That’s not fair!”

This lie is destructive. Entitlement envy is destructive, distractive, and distressing. The emotional effort pushes toward getting what is mine more than produces what is available in an abundant world. Entitlement envy wastes creativity on figuring out how to get someone else’s instead of enduring the process of producing something with what is available. Entitlement envy invests emotion in fighting “them,” the problem being “them” whoever that might be.

The political spirit functions upon the lie of entitlement when we look to leaders to right the wrong, leaders strong enough to fight the “them” conspiracy that is taking an unequal share. We cry out for “fairness” and “justice” when neither of them will be realized by entitlement. Entitlement leads to greater injustice and fairness. We don’t need greater entitlement; we need greater opportunity.

Mercy

Nothing in the kingdom of God works this way, yet some terribly misguided people assume that this the reality God wants! It cannot represent God’s strategies for us because God is a God of abundance, not limitation. God is the God of unlimited opportunity. Nothing could be more just and fair than that!

Note the words of Hebrews: we can come to Jesus who intercedes for us to receive mercy and gracious help when we need it most. [See Hebrews 4:16.] We need mercy all the time because mercy is time to receive, grow, produce, mature, and live. Mercy is opportunity. But the mercy comes with “the grace to help.” Mercy is a mess without the enabling grace to help! Mercy would simply be unmerciful without the grace to help because we would find opportunity empty of increase and expansion, change and improvement.

Kingdom Mercy

God welcomes us into His kingdom when we are born again. His kingdom is spiritual, so we must be born of spirit to see it and enter it so we can learn to function in it. God doesn’t entitle us. He welcomes us into a kingdom of abundance and makes great enabling grace available in His land of opportunity.

That is the way God thinks. In His kingdom everybody is different, unique, individual, and loved. In His kingdom, people have different portions at different times. The kingdom of heaven isn’t the ultimate entitlement environment where everybody disappears into equality, and God finally makes it all right by making sure we receive an equal entitlement! Laughable thought.

Jesus makes it abundantly clear that some will have greater authority based upon what they did with enabled opportunity, and those that buried the opportunity end up with nothing because they are not functioning in His enabling and making the most of His opportunities. The parables of the talents is but one example of this. The Bible makes it clear that some people in the kingdom have more than others in terms of honor, grace, opportunity, calling, assignment, gifts, and wisdom.

This occurs, or this is the reality of the kingdom, because God doesn’t function with entitlement motivations but with mercy motivations. In the kingdom, sitting around waiting for your fair share will get you into big trouble! Moaning because someone else has something you want, assuming they must have something that is yours, will get you into big trouble! Waiting for God’s favor, defined in entitlement terms, will leave old and empty because you assume that entitlement means God should be getting you what you want instead of you being enabled by God to get God what He wants!

The Trap

So, the trap is set by entitlement thinking. If I say something other than, “it isn’t fair that poor people are poor,” I am attacked by entitlement thinkers as “unjust, unChristlike, bigoted, etc” by those who mistaken think that anytime someone is poor it means somebody else has what belongs to those poor people. Of course, I do not think that poor people are poor because someone else has what belongs to them! That would be defined as “theft,” taking what does not belong to you.

God has a lot of poor people in His kingdom of opportunity and enabling. He wants them all to prosper! He does not plan to give them all an equal share of kingdom entitlement, however, but to make great enabling and opportunity available to them. The inequality that results is not the result of injustice. The kingdom of heaven isn’t the utopia of entitlement! God creates us with equal opportunity but not equal circumstances. God graces us with enabling power but not with equal capacity, ability, and gifts. In the kingdom the inequality is purposeful because God creates us to uniquely fit into the place He has prepared for us, a place of belonging and producing, that we must pursue through the impossible process of transformation of redemption. It is impossible, so He came and made it possible.

The trap of entitlement thinking has invaded church-anity with political envy. To function properly in kingdom, we must move away from the lie that motivates us by comparison, contrast, and competition. We must reject the lie of limited supply and embrace the liberty of abundance. [The presuppositions of the US Constitution came from the celebration of the individual, protecting the individual from the state to preserve the individual's opportunity of mercy and grace. Yeah, really!]

Don’t receive, believe, and live spirit of the world lies! And, most certainly don’t try to bring the lie into the kingdom! In the kingdom we receive mercy and grace to help in the nick of time from the King who is actively involved in the lives of His kingdom citizens. Kingdom intercession is not our opportunity to demand our entitlements but our authority to release what heaven wants into the earth.

The Spirit of Rebellion

[Notes from Dr Don's teaching on "The Root of Rebellion," Level 3 IMPACT weekend, FreedomMinistry International.]

Rebellion is usually identified in Scripture with specific people because of the behavior of those people. Notably, the New Testament rehearses the rebellion of Cain and Korah. The Old Testament identifies King Saul very clearly with rebellion: “rebellion is like witchcraft.”

Early on, rebellion was functioning in the offspring of Adam. We are born with rebellion fully functional in our hearts. We must learn obedience; it does not come naturally. Cain was born in Adam’s image, and Cain was rebellious against God to the extent that his rebellion captured him and motivated him to kill his brother, Abel. Cain’s rebellion is the kernel of human religion because religion is man’s effort to give God what man wants God to have, more than giving God what He wants.

Beware the idea that God is happy to receive whatever you want to give Him. He has very specific demands in mind, and your substitutes are religious rebellion. The idea that we can just do “whatever” for God and He smiles because “we are doing it for Him” is foreign to Scripture. Certainly, in the beginning stages of our relationship with God, He puts up with a lot of missteps – He is great in mercy – but the truth remains that He knows what He wants, tells us what He wants, and works in our lives to get what He wants.

Beware the tendency to think that because you are redeemed, God delights in whatever you do or say. This is not a good picture of God’s fathering heart. It is true that He smiles when we love Him, worship Him, and talk with Him. It is also true that He talks back and tell us what to do, like any good Father who knows what’s best for us.

Beware the assumption that doing something for God will please God. This is the sense in which religion and rebellion will substitute doing what we want, even in His Name, for what God wants with a rebellious pretense that God will understand my heart. If you are obeying God, God understands your obedience. If you are not obeying God, God understands your rebellion just as clearly!

Principles of Korah’s Rebellion

Korah may have led the most fearful rebellion of the Old Testament. Jude denotes that Korah’s rebellion produces destruction. Jude says people in the ecclesia are “destroyed in the rebellion of Korah.” That is, the same rebellion occurs today that occurred against Moses.

Korah led a rebellion against Moses’ leadership, a direction contradiction of God’s orders and authority. He based his rebellion upon the reasoning that all of Israel was chosen, so why should Moses be positioned to tell anybody what to do? This rebellion destroyed Korah because his pretense was so great that he felt justified in opposing God. While Korah thought he was opposing Moses, he was really opposing God’s plan for leadership among His people.

“Korah and 250 leaders came as a group and confronted Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘You’ve overstepped yourself. This entire community is holy and God is in their midst. So why do you act like you’re running the whole show?’” Moses threw himself face down on the ground in terror because he recognized rebellion and understood its consequences. Moses said, God will show tomorrow whom He has chosen. God would confirm that God chose Moses to lead, not Korah, that Korah didn’t get to define leadership or substitute his own leadership plan for God’s people.

Moses said to Korah, “Bring your people before God tomorrow. Appear there with them and Aaron. Have each man bring his censer filled with incense and present it to God – all 250 censers. And you and Aaron do the same, bring your censers.” So they all did it. They brought their censers filled with fire and incense and stood at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. Moses and Aaron did the same. It was Korah and his gang against Moses and Aaron at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. The entire community could see the Glory of God.

God said to Moses and Aaron, “Separate yourselves from this congregation so that I can finish them off and be done with them.” They threw themselves on their faces and said, “O God, God of everything living, when one man sins are you going to take it out on the whole community?” God spoke to Moses: “Speak to the community. Tell them, Back off from the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.”

Moses got up and went to Dathan and Abiram. The leaders of Israel followed him. He then spoke to the community: “Back off from the tents of these bad men; don’t touch a thing that belongs to them lest you be carried off on the flood of their sins.” So they all backed away from the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Dathan and Abiram by now had come out and were standing at the entrance to their tents with their wives, children, and babies. Moses continued to address the community: “This is how you’ll know that it was God who sent me to do all these things and that it wasn’t anything I cooked up on my own. If these men die a natural death like all the rest of us, you’ll know that it wasn’t God who sent me. But if God does something unprecedented – if the ground opens up and swallows the lot of them and they are pitched alive into Sheol – then you’ll know that these men have been insolent with God.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the Earth split open. Earth opened its mouth and in one gulp swallowed them down, the men and their families, all the human beings connected with Korah, along with everything they owned. And that was the end of them, pitched alive into Sheol. The Earth closed up over them and that was the last the community heard of them.

Note that rebellion of one family tainted the whole of God’s people, so God said to separate from the rebellious unless you want in on the destruction rebellion produces. You should always reach out to wayward people, even when they are rebellious, but you can never associated with their rebellion and maintain a position of obedience with God because everything they do and say is contradictory behavior and spirit.

Beware the thinking that because you are right, you are in charge, that how holy or chosen you are gives you the right or authority to usurp God’s order of leadership. You will become holy – holy charcoal, sacred ashes. Being holy is what all the people of God enjoy; the word “saints” means “holy ones.” Where God’s authority flows through His chosen leadership strategy is not the same discussion as “who is holy?” Rebelling against His strategy gets you in trouble with God, not the leaders. Rebelling means that you do not wish to hear from God through someone else because God should be dealing with you straight on. Heard this before?

Beware the idea that because you are holy, every thought you have comes from God, and that your mind and will produce God’s mind and will on earth. You can be nearly perfect and have little or only a small portion of the strategy of God for His people, a portion consistent with your level of leadership with His people.

Beware the tendency to assume that what you want thrills God, what you are focused upon distracts God, or what you value catches God’s eye. God has already made up His mind about what He wants, whom He wants to lead, and what should be priority for His people.

Korah was of the Levites but he wanted to be a priest. He was attacking Aaron and working to get himself a bigger piece of the ministry pie. He saw that Moses was in the way of getting what he wanted for himself and his family. So, he rebelled against Moses, called Aaron’s leadership into question.

God opened up the earth and everyone standing with Korah dropped into Sheol. Those who stood with him in the rebellion were toasted by the lightning of God. Only those who purposefully stood back and disassociated themselves from rebellion were left standing.

Rebelling against parents and kingdom leaders is rebelling against God who gave them to you. Even if you have bad parents and leaders, you are not authorized to rebel against them. Having abusive leaders is something else altogether, but Korah was not abused or used! He simply wanted what he wanted more than he wanted what God wanted. Personal ambition built a justification for his rebellion.

Principles of Saul’s Rebellion

Saul was king of Israel. God gave him an assignment. Saul had already shown that he was less than thorough with God’s protocols for leadership when he offered up the sacrifice Samuel was supposed to offer. Saul’s pretense was the spawn of his witchcraft and idolatry.

Beware the tendency to be pretentious, assuming you can change the protocols of the kingdom to fit your style or prove your readiness. Whether or not you can do it better has nothing to do with assignment and authority. God doesn’t always assign the best singer or dancer or preacher or intercessor to do something; so do not justify pretense in your own mind because your assumption that you know better or can do it better is probably wrong and certainly rebellious.

Many leaders fail to see and understand their pretense as rebellion. They feel free to question, undermine, and second-guess leaders as if their opinions are worthy of such high consideration. I make myself accountable to people about my decisions in order to measure how well they are accomplishing God’s assignment on my life, but I never allow people’s opinion to be controlling factor in making decisions because that puts people above assignment. So, I have had people whom I still consider my friends pull a Korah rebellion or do a Saul pretense, amazed that they were unable to see that they had functioned in rebellion against what God was doing in the kingdom.

Pretense will birth rebellion because you presume you can do it better, and then rebellion will justify your behavior as Saul justified his presumption with Samuel. Then, Saul rebelled. After that, the witchcraft of rebellion was so advanced in Saul that he went looking for a witch among God’s people. God sent Samuel to give Saul a specific assignment about the Amalekites. “Kill’em all,” God said, “don’t leave any trace of them.” He didn’t. Saul was 99% obedient, and God said he was rebellious.

You say, “Give me a break!” Surely if you do 99% of what God said, with minor modifications to make it a bit more exciting and politically expedient, God should be happy you went at all. Right? Wrong!

Beware the concept that obedience is doing God a big favor! Beware the dangerous assumption that God gave you any assignment because you were the only one who could get the job done. After all, God could do it without you much better than He can do it with you in the sense of who can get the job done! God has quite a bit more going for Him in the weapons and wiping people out department than you do! Jesus was clear that we shouldn’t fear men but the One who can destroy body and soul in hell.

Saul’s pretense opened his life to the people’s pretense. He assumed that God would be OK with everybody just getting along and bringing everybody’s opinions into the mix to create teamwork. All that stuff might be great for a few minutes if we function without pretense, but the bottom line cannot move! Offering God something “close but not quite” is a substitute for obedience that God will not abide.

God was looking for someone to do what He called Israel to do, called Saul to do, to do what kingdom protocols demanded. So, God set up the kingdom and God determined how it would function.

Saul wasn’t just being lax. He was being pretentious and presumptuous. Pretense is a serious form of rebellion that will lead you into open conflict with God. It was rebellion root that produced pretense that bore the fruit of rebellion. “Rebellion is like witchcraft.”

The Principles of Cain’s Rebellion

One of the scariest verses in the Bible: “Many shall say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not done many great things in Your Name, but I will say, ‘Who are you and how’d you get in here?”

This is the rebellion of Cain, and it goes back to the very beginning of human rebellion. This is the root that produces the fruit! Cain wanted to bring God what he wanted God to have instead of sacrificing what God wanted. Cain wanted God to change instead of being changed. Cain allowed this open door of rebellion as an entrance for anger, hatred, murder, and despair. Cain’s rebellion produced destruction.

Rebellion can produce nothing but destruction because rebellion rejects what God wants for what we want. “There is a way that seems right to a man but the end leads to death,” the wise man says. Rebellion brings a strong delusion.

God told Cain that sin was like a panther crouching at the door, waiting to pounce upon him. He said Cain would need to overcome this or it would overcome him. Cain had the fruit of stubbornness, pouting, anger, and wrath that comes from the rebellion root. Cain had the audacity to question God and demand that God change eternal protocols to accommodate his personal whims and convenience. Cain was adamant: “I want what I want.”

Rebellion makes God your enemy, and the enemy of rebellion is a root in your soul that needs to be removed. Repentance means, “I change to be changed.” Repentance appropriates the power of the Cross to break the power of sin, cleanse it from our souls, and set us up for obedience and submission.

Word for 2012, Part 2, Tithe, Offering, and Kingdom

In 2012 God will claim what is His. The fundamentals of giving will be an issue with God, and He will make them an issue with us!

Ananias and Sapphira did not drop dead because they kept back some of the proceeds of their land sale; they dropped dead for lying, for wishing to appear to be as generous as Barnabas and other Christians. They wished to be seen as givers without being as generous as they said they were. They were frauds.

This spiritual condition will be confronted in 2012 because churchanity has produced a generation of people who drop tokens into the offering every week and wish to appear to be kingdom people when they are not.

The level of giving in modern American churches is simply hypocritical. It is a sham to say, Jesus is Lord! Only 4% of American churchgoers give as much as 10% of their increase to God.

To say we are “kingdom people” and not give as much as a tithe to the King is fraudulent! It is both a denial of the kingdom we should be seeking and the Lordship of Jesus we say we are serving. In a season when Jesus is claiming what belongs to Him, we will be called to account for our kingdom culture and economic integrity.

Millions of people moved away from giving sacrificial offerings in favor of a kingdom economic response more consistent with trendy misconceptions of kingdom and ecclesia. The erroneous definition and function of the kingdom has led to a denial of the Lordship of the King!

In business it can be advantageous to study the “best practices” of successful companies to learn how to improve the company in which you work. Even though tithing works and is a “best practice” of God’s kingdom, tithing isn’t on our short list of “best practices” anymore!

Jesus will confront our disgust for giving, a cancer that has eaten away at the Lordship of Jesus and opposes the King in His Kingdom. “You can’t give money to God” is one fundamental lie embedded in many Christians’ presuppositions. Christians have been deeply secularized, so much that they think they are giving money to men, corporations, and organizations, and not to Jesus when they tithe and give offerings.

Every time another leader is exposed as a fraud, Christians buy the lie that all leaders are frauds. The picture painted by the media is that anyone who is a leader in the kingdom should be a pauper or be seen as a thief. It is part of a strategic effort on the part of hell to undermine and destroy leadership in the kingdom in a season of establishing kingdom.

Tithe and offering provides the kingdom economic strength. And, whatever you think about tithing, the truth remains that if tithing were 100% among kingdom people, the Gospel would be making a stronger impact on the nations! If tithing were 100% instead of 4%, the ecclesia would be standing in a totally different position, and the individual Christians within the ecclesia would be experiencing the “all these things shall be added unto you” promise of the King!

Tithing is a Lordship issue, a kingdom issue, a submission and obedience issue, an integrity issue, and a consecration issue. The undeniable fact is this: consistent, systematic, measurable giving works. You can’t beat success! Go ahead and do it! I dare you.

Offering and Kingdom

I hear the choir anthem of those who say that tithing is not New Testament, “Jesus wants everything.” They say we are called to something higher than the Law that we are not under the Law of the Old Testament. Laughable statements when only 4% give as little as 10% to Jesus! Laughable arguments about giving when the money that belongs to God is still in people’s hands, still in their control, still being spent or saved for what you want.

Any study of giving to the needy will uncover a list of directives about how God wants Christians to be givers, and will reveal a stark contrast between the money given to the needy and the money given to Jesus. They are not the same money. Giving a “glass of water” in His Name isn’t sacrificial giving. It a glass of water! If you have set the standard of giving in your spiritual life that low, you would certainly not be embracing tithing and sacrificial giving that characterizes someone “seeking primarily the kingdom of heaven!”

Of course I share many of the concerns about how money is spent and invested by churchanity. I would also point out that much of the media hype about leaders getting rich with offerings is hype, that many of them who are wealthy gained wealth in business as good business men and women, not by stealing money from God! I also find the level of hypocrisy nearly mountaintop in height, that people who do not tithe or give sacrificially cry so loudly about whether or not some leader has a jet or a bigger house than they do. This is the entitlement envy of the spirit of the world; it is not a God-of-abundance kingdom mentality!

Kingdom leaders need to function from a position of strength, and Jesus will make them strong. Every kingdom leader lives a life that demands financial miracles on a weekly basis. And, every kingdom leader needs a lot of money to fulfill the assignment of God upon their lives. Really.

While the Gospel is free, spreading the Gospel is expensive. No, it is very expensive! The kingdom should receive billions of dollars because it must invest billions of dollars to fulfill the assignments of the kingdom.

The Kingdom Shift

Jesus builds His ecclesia. We establish the kingdom. As we make a shift toward establishing kingdom so He can build an ecclesia that displaces the gates of hell, the issue of tithing, offering, and Lordship will become even more important.

The kingdom of heaven established in the earth will have influence and impact upon every aspect of culture. As a kingdom economy is functioning in God’s people, that economy influences and impacts the culture in which it functions. God’s economy functions upon a different dynamic from the kingdoms of this world.

God wants His people to have financial strength and wealth, to possess the land means to own things so that God’s people are the one who can make these things available to God.

For those who deny that tithing is something the ecclesia should be doing, even claiming that preachers who preach it are preaching false doctrine and misleading God’s people for their own gain, stop wasting everybody’s time! Only 4% are tithing anyway, so it is really not a big issue anymore!

About this time of year, millions of Christians will begin receiving a giving statement for the charitable giving of 2011. A little comparison would be in order: if you made $50,000 and didn’t give $5,000 to God, you are not much of a kingdom citizen. If you made $100,000 and didn’t even give God $10,000, you shouldn’t act like Jesus is King. You are playing an Ananias and Sapphira game at the wrong time in history!

The promise of Malachi to Israel is a kingdom promise. The same God who was King of that kingdom is the King of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus came as David’s son to make the kingdom David established an eternal kingdom. Jesus didn’t start another kingdom; He made David’s throne eternal as He promised David He would.

Jesus didn’t substitute church for kingdom because the ecclesia is called together in the kingdom, not called out of the world. When you are born again you don’t enter the ecclesia, you enter the kingdom, and you are called together in assembly from the kingdom. When you are born anew, you can see the kingdom and you are called together in assembly to govern with the power and authority of the kingdom.

Jesus said the woman who poured out anointment worth as much as a year’s income was giving an appropriate gift. The open years of the ecclesia in Acts shows a level of sacrificial giving that was appropriate to the times; they were the last generation to live upon that land before it was turned into a wasteland by the Romans.

Giving is a Lordship issue. We are going to experience a revolutionary revival of the Lordship of Jesus in 2012 that will be characterized by radical, sacrificial hilarious giving.

Subtle Changes with Big Impact, Word for 2012, Part 1

We have lived through back-to-back-to-back decades of sweeping changes that have carried us into a decade of implementation. In 2012 the changes will be comparably subtle, but little changes will have massive impact on the implementation of sweeping revolution.

While considering kingdom trends for this calendar year, I received a revelatory reminder that adding or subtracting one word changes a sentence in big ways, even making the statement exactly opposite of what it was before the small change: by adding “not” to a sentence, for example.

We are beginning to implement the sweeping changes of the past spiritual generation, and the implementation process will bring us to subtle adjustments and updates. These seemingly small adjustments, however, will push us past barriers and into a spiritual mainstream, the fast current forward. It will be like touching the wall where the electrical outlet has been located, getting closer and closer to a connection point; then, the last subtle movement between unplugged and plugged-in changes everything!

The difference between first and second place in an auto race can be very, very small, measured in hundredths of a second, but the difference between being the winner in terms of trophy, money, and stature as a driver and race team can be massive.

Perhaps the subtle shift that opens the heavens will be so small we may miss the change itself because of the massive impact we experience when we are in Glory or on the edge of Glory. Perhaps the subtle shift of faith that releases miracles will be so small we miss the adjustment itself but the power release will be so strong we will never be the same again.

Many kingdom people are only one relationship from the alliance that will change their lives. Many kingdom people are one revelation from the discovery of their life’s work. Many kingdom people are one victory away from “getting right” and experiencing accelerated maturity. Many kingdom people are one fatal flaw from being ready to fulfill their purpose. Many kingdom ministries are one service, one night, one moment, from the greatest manifestation of revolutionary revival of their lives.

Subtle changes will have big impact in 2012!

Missing the Adjustments

In this way, missing small adjustments can result in missing the mark by a great margin. When things are moving quickly, a small miscalculation can be deadly and disastrous. I would say that this season will magnify what we previously considered inconsequential.

For two years I have felt this season approaching, the time when Ananias and Sapphira moments would occur because we have lost sight of the big impact of subtle things. Some thing we have judged to be of little import will be revealed as “a big deal” in God’s eyes. Things we were certain would slip right past and not be noticed will be shouted from housetops, and God will reorder our values systems.

Value adjustments can be subtle but have massive ramifications. A tick on the stock exchange can be subtle unless you are managing a million shares. Moving a decimal point may seem a small change but it can turn a hundred into a thousand.

God is going to make subtle changes in our directives, small adjustments to our way of doing ministry, slight movements within remnants, and the changes will result in immediate, massive impact upon the kingdom.

Global Interconnectivity

God is altering the roles of nations, the ecclesia within those nations, and leaders within those nations. What God adjusts in Brasil will have massive impact upon other nations! What God changes in Canada will set off fireworks in Europe! What God fine-tunes in America will send shockwaves throughout the Middle East. What God whispers in the ears of African leaders will become thunder in Asia!

Someone will write a blog or send an email on one continent that will ripple like a tsunami across oceans. Someone will publish a booklet of apostolic strategy in South American that will move leaders to dramatic response in Central America.

Intercessors will pray for nations. Intercessors trained by praying for their local leaders and cities will receive the burden of the Lord for nations, and they will pray with international authority. Prophets will arise like Jeremiahs to the Nations with the word of the Lord to tear down and build again, uproot and plant again. Apostles will begin to align these subtle adjustments into an international strategy to join the continents in revolutionary revival.

Your Spiritual Gifts

Consider what will happen when a billion charismatics receive a revelation of the power of praying in the spiritual language they received with the baptism, understanding their gift is more than Boy Scout patch that validates their claims to the veracity of spiritual gifts. The gift they already exercise will become a weapon! Consider the volume adjustment God makes in each of them when the whole that subtle change hits heaven as a sound of many waters!

Consider the maturity of the gift of prophecy when we return to the Bible’s protocols for prophetic ministry, setting a place for this vital, essential ministry to function as something more than charismatic fad. Consider the difference when “they all may prophesy” is feasible because we prophetic leaders to raise the level of the prophetic.

Consider the renewal that occurs when we take the Scriptures seriously about the ministry of Jesus, when all five aspects of His ministry and leadership are available, and the foundational leadership He bestowed upon His ecclesia is functional. Consider the difference between the ecclesia dominated by maintaining comfort and the ecclesia dominated by the authority to legislate what-Father-wants into the culture of the earth.

We need only relatively minor adjustments to massive impact our generation! The ripple of these subtle changes will be a mighty wave when they arrive at the shoreline!

Subtle Changes Personally

Changing your daily intake can result in big impact on your weight. Changing your exercise routine in minor ways can result in accumulated health improvements. Ridding your life of one really draining relationship can free you to be yourself so that friends ask, “What happened?”

Expect God to tweak your marriage, your finances, your tastes and hobbies, your values and relationships. Expect God to adjust your thinking, attitude, and habits. Expect God to alter you in subtle ways that have massive impact upon your lifestyle and ministry.

Start giving more, praying more, worshipping more, expecting more of yourself as a kingdom person. Start dropping distractions from your focus – people, activities, fears, comforts – that move you away from purpose in small ways. Start looking a bit further out, a step or two away from your previous center.

Political Adjustments

Change is coming to many nations. The United States has experienced massive shocks, but the next year will bring relatively small adjustments that will push her back toward a renewed understanding of her redemptive purpose. Most Christians will be impatient about these small adjustments, not realizing that more shocks are not healthy; the subtle changes will produce big impacts to our relationships with other nations, our economy, and our social values, however.

Political experts will not measure the subtle changes until it is too late for God’s enemies and the enemies of righteousness to respond. These changes will only be apparent when they have accumulated through mini-movements that function with dynamics so foreign to conventional politics they do not show up on charts and graphs.

A new statesman and stateswoman is emerging that doesn’t answer to Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, or Reagan. The subtle changes will be the result of spiritual alterations more than political machinery.

The Ecclesia

More than one book will be required to explain the subtle changes to the ecclesia that will result in big impact to the way we do church and ministry. The shaking that hit “church” in the past two decades has left millions adrift and produced a generational mandate for authenticity. While most leaders have been opportunistic, changing ministry to fit the opportunity, Jesus is claiming His ecclesia with fiery passion and iron-rod authority! Still the difference between authentic and opportunistic will remain difficult for many to discern.

Several mini-movements are close at the extremities while aloof and separate at the center. At the extremities subtle changes will join them together in ways that those at the center cannot understand. These mini-movements will become movements by means of subtle changes at the extremities, joining at the fingertips first. These subtle changes will release a groundswell that none can control.

We will require strong, fathering leadership in 2012 because of the big impact of subtle changes. The subtle change of leadership style will come spirit-first and will expose those who are in ministry for what they can gain from those who are in ministry to fulfill a Divine assignment. Both Saul and David had the same anointing, but the subtle difference of heart resulting in death for one and a kingdom Jesus made eternal for the other. True what God said to the prophet: You look on the outward appearance but I see the hidden conditions of the heart.

False Expectations and Grieving a Phantom

The atmosphere of narcissism moves the center to self much like ancient errors that Earth was the center. We live with a foggy mirror in our hands that reflects ourselves when we are narcissistic. It is foggy with false expectation.

Paul says we should see Jesus in the foggy mirror, that beholding His Glory transforms us Glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord! [See 2 Corinthians 3.] In this way the foggy misprint of self-image can be fixed. Even though the reflection isn’t perfect because we see imperfectly, the revelation of Him grows as we are transformed, we are making Him the center instead of ourselves.

His Glory is a manifestation of His character. We see His character manifested when we see Glory. We have glory, our character manifests in our glory; God crowned us with glory and honor in creation, a glory a little lower than angels. So, we are changed from His Glory to our glory by the Spirit of the Lord as we gaze upon Him in transformational worship. He is the center, not self.

False Expectations

When I mention something of personal destiny that seems inconsistent with someone’s self-image imagination, I risk becoming a “problem” instead of a leader. Yet, no one can provide leadership for one of God’s people without knowing something about what-Father-wants for that person. Aren’t we weary with leadership that plasticizes people to fit into a program or forces people into molds instead of transforming them to become what-Father-wants? If so, we must have leaders who lead with revelation of what-Father-wants for His individual people and provide a strategic path for them to walk to realize destiny and fulfill purpose.

Think about what I am saying: people need leaders because self is not the exclusive source of revelation of personal purpose; leaders unlock aspects of destiny that are not available through natural and personal means. People are often mistaken about their destinies. They tend to be narcissist in their dreams, and they measure potential more than purpose when determining their futures. They get a vision from many sources other than gazing at the Glory of Christ!

Giving my life to the development of leaders, I am a student of the process, and I am sharing with you the staggering reality that “people do not know who they are” until God reveals to them who they are. The more surrendered and submitted they become, the more a Divine reality graces their self-images.

Paul says, “I am what I am by the grace of God.” [1 Corinthians 15.] Paul is talking about who he thought he was until Jesus gave him a revelation that he was “a chosen vessel to Me.”

Think with me – how much of what-I-am is by the grace of God? Or, how much of what-I-am is by the strength and wisdom of man? It is not desirable to a self-made man! It is desirable to be a God-made man, and the process of being what-I-am by the grace of God requires a crushing olive-press, a brutal, shattering death of self. God is not celebrating human potential on display like a heavenly American Idol show! He begins with Jesus and transforms us “what-I-am” so we are by God’s grace.

If you are dreaming your own dreams, you are missing God’s will. If you are developing your destiny out of your own grasp of personal potential, you are missing God’s will. If you are gathering leaders around you as consultants to get you what you want, you are missing God’s will.

Why do I say these offending things? Because they are true! We cannot blend humanism into our redemption. We cannot see grace as a supplement for that blending. We cannot be in charge of our own redemption, using God’s provisions to produce a what-I-am that fits our imaginations! God’s provisions come online through our surrender and submission, not through our strength and wisdom to discover how to use them in the way that best fulfills our false expectations.

False expectations come from faulty presuppositions. In a very subtle way, we substitute what-we-want for what-Father-wants, and we plaster-paris it with a humanistic christianism that turns truth into refrigerator magnet slogans. Be assured of this: if you do it the way you want to do it, it will certainly not be the way God would have done it.

False expectations are fundamental flaws in our foundations that frustrate formation of destiny.

False Loss

When we have false expectations, we assume we are not getting what we are supposed to be getting. From God, leaders, and other people. We expect to receive something that never arrives, expect to see something that never materializes, and expect to experience something that seems always out-of-reach. We expect to have something that appears to have been stolen by somebody else. Yet the truth is that it was never ours in the first place!

We live with a false sense of loss, sensing an empty place in our souls, of things that were never ours and could never be ours, of things we could not hold if we received them. We live with unreal expectations and feel a very real emptiness. The deadening difficulty is that nothing can be done about it! The door is open to blame others for failing us, blame ourselves for being less than we should be, blame “something” or “them,” and live with a sense of being unfulfilled. All the while the energies that would be given to fulfilling our true destiny and purpose are given to delusions.

People need to surrender their false expectations to experience true freedom. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” The freedom comes when we surrender to Him being the Center, the Source and Resource, of personal destiny. Every true Christian will experience a death of the false to release the life of the true: unless a seed dies, it cannot release the life within it.

Let me compare two actual people who came into our ministry for leadership. One arrived with the announcement of being anointed and awesome, probably too much so for a ministry like ours, but humbly by sharing an “amazingness” with us. Just a few cursory glances at the portfolio of brilliance revealed the need for a heavenly CarFax before driving this clunker off the lot! Didn’t need to kick the tires to see they were flat.

Another arrived with tremendous prophetic leadership calling that had been rejected and frustrated by leaders in love with themselves more than the purpose of God for the people they were leading. Arriving with a “I know I have more in me that you can help me release” attitude, this person immediately blossomed into full fragrance and embraced greater and greater revelation of the “who-I-am by God’s grace” that was available from the Lord and leaders to whom this person surrendered and submitted.

After a couple of years, the first spiraled off into greater delusions of grandeur while the second stepped into their greatest kingdom usefulness to date. The first continues to feel unappreciated and “passed over” while the second feels the passion of functioning in what-Father-wants. One misses the will of God while the second experiences more of His will that previously wasn’t available.

Grieving a Phantom

The cycle of grieving moves us through loss into the next season of life without what was lost. This cycle moves us on in a healthy way, but it is possible to get stuck in the cycle and continue to grieve. It is possible to live in grief for things lost.

When we live with false expectations and suffer with a false sense of loss, we get stuck in the cycle of grieving. We grieve something that was never ours in the first place, so we have no way to experience the healing we need to move on. Many of emotions of grieving – denial, anger, regret, guilt – become part of our lives. Grieving a phantom produces bitterness of soul.

People with bitterness continue to cycle because they are stuck grieving a phantom. They vagabond from ministry to ministry, leader to leader, relationship to relationship, and repeat the process of expecting to be discovered and appreciated for “who I really am.” They are enamored with “when will it be my turn” because they see the success of others as something stolen from them. Those people were lucky enough to have what was theirs given to them. Some scenario of perceived injustice and unfairness clouds their minds.

The road of christianism is strewn with the wreckage of head-on collisions between people with false expectations and reality. Anyone in any level of leadership runs into people with false expectations. Some leaders become victims by attempting to fulfill false expectations. Other leaders are so disgusted by the long line of demanding people they don’t try to help anyone realize purpose. Still other leaders start new ministries with the chartered purpose of allowing everyone to reach their potentials! They begin with false expectations and create even greater ones! They substitute human success for kingdom success. They become motivational speakers instead of transformational leaders, and they measure success with the same tools and criteria as the world, the enemy of the Father.

Jesus offers the opposite. Not a better version of the former. The opposite.

We do not dream our own dreams; we receive God’s dreams. We do not develop an understanding of our destiny; we receive a revelation of destiny. We do not produce what-we-want with heaven’s gifts with a clenched fist and firm jawline; we surrender and submit. We do not become achievers; we become leaders. We are not self-made; we are God-made. We do not become successful by attending conferences and imitating professionally-produced christianized-circus performances; we become whom we are by the grace of God, deeply-dug ore shattered and purified by consuming fire.

As you begin this new year, start with surrender and submission. Allow a revelation of God to reset the center. If you dream God’s dream, it will be too big for you and you will be humbled. If you dream your own dream, you will puff up with pride. If you see His Glory, you will point others to Him; if you are self-made, you will sell yourself, make an example of yourself, make miracles confirmations of yourself, and contribute to the popularity of a perversion.

That is why I believe a great move of God is here. A manifestation of His Glory will reset the ecclesia with such power that millions will begin be transformed, and the expectations of God’s people will be what-Father-wants. “They loved not their lives even unto death” be our refrigerator magnet motto again!

Prophetic Protocols Basics

We need to go back to basics with prophetic protocols. Really! We have to revisit the simplest aspects of revelatory experience. A season of maturing must come, and we must begin a proper dialogue of how prophetic ministry functions. We need to get a basic discussion going about the intentions of God in revelation, the differences between spiritual awareness and revelatory legitimacy. We also need to redraw the finer lines that exist between revelatory experiences and prophetic function.

Every Believer Hears God’s Voice

So, let’s begin with the distinction that every believer has the wonderful privilege of hearing the voice of God, but Christians hearing God’s voice and prophecy are not the same thing. Every believer does not, necessarily, prophesy because he is hearing God’s voice or when he is hearing God’s voice.

Prophecy is more than hearing God’s voice. That is pretty basic, I think, but not abundantly clear. I am not being overly technical about this either. There is marked difference between spiritual awareness and revelation, between hearing God speak to you and prophesy, between revelatory experience and prophetic function. To ignore the distinctions is to create and embrace malfunction and dysfunction.

Every believer has ears and eyes in their spiritual head, so to speak, and should cultivate spiritual hearing and seeing. I am certain millions of believers are immature or simply deaf and blind, seldom experiencing God’s voice and failing to recognize when He speaks. To be sure, believers must learn to give spiritual attention to God, expand their spiritual attention spans, and mature in spiritual communication.

Still, hearing and seeing revelation are not “prophetic,” they are revelatory and normal to people who live “spirit first.” Prophetic function involves communication on the part of the prophetic person, and prophetic communication should always occur with prophetic protocols in place, protocols guide the prophetic process in order to maintain the integrity of prophetic ministry. Prophetic protocols involve what to do with revelation once it is received more than developing the ability to receive revelation, which is relatively easy.

It is easy to activate the prophetic gifts, teach people to hear God’s voice, and even show them how to communicate what they hear. Easy. And, we have been so zealous to prove the validity of the prophetic that we have left the weightier matters of what to do with revelation behind.

We are left with an immature prophetic movement at a time when we should have an established, foundational prophetic function available to the ecclesia.

The Kingdom is a Prophetic Culture

Remember that God wanted every Israelite coming out of Egypt to hear His voice. The people were afraid of hearing God’s voice and sent Moses to speak with God. “You go talk to Him and come back and tell us what He says,” they said. Tragic dysfunction occurred while Moses was doing this, of course, because God wants every believer to hear His voice; that is, the Israelites volunteered to be deaf and dumb! Moses was left with the burden of hearing, interpreting, applying, and implementing God’s ideas and instructions for the whole nation.

God gave Moses 70 elders to assist with the burden of leadership, Joshua was concerned that Moses’ light wouldn’t shine as brightly with so many voices speaking prophetically. To Joshua’s concern, Moses says, “Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets and the Lord would put His spirit upon all of them!” [Number 11:29]

This doesn’t mean God’s highest ideal would be for every believer to function in the office – that is a completely false conclusion. Nor, was Moses teaching that each believer should live without leadership, prophetic leaders, or the functions of gift of prophecy and prophets because they can hear God for themselves! We have a pandemic condition of the “just Jesus and me” method of Christian living. We also have a rampant super-saint malfunction that says, “If God has anything to say to me, He’ll just say it. I don’t need anyone else to hear God for me” error and rebellion.

God’s kingdom is a prophetic culture. In a prophetic culture, the more prophetic we become, the more leadership we require. This is a basic of prophetic protocol. We move into deeper revelation and higher levels of revelatory responsibility as we grow and mature. There is much more at stake as we mature, so we need a higher level of leadership for the protocols of our revelatory experiences.

Most people assume the opposite: that the more mature prophetic ministry becomes, the less leadership is required. Yet, the more mature prophetic people and prophets become, the more they see the revelation that the higher level of their prophetic experiences requires a higher standard of personal purity and integrity! Beware any reasoning that brings you to say, “Well, I’m hearing God for myself now, and I don’t need to be accountable. Now that I’ve grown up, I am directly accountable to God.” You have one foot dangling off the precipice!

God designed His kingdom to function as a prophetic culture, a cultural setting governed by revelation of God’s mind, heart, and intention! The spiritual kingdom has a spiritual culture. Culture for a group is the same as behavior or lifestyle for an individual. So, a prophetic culture is about corporate behaviors, and God has designed protocols to guide and govern these corporate behaviors.

Beware the conclusion that the validity of “personal prophecy” creates the validity of “Jesus and me” prophetic function. “Personal prophecy” does not mean that God speaks to each of us as individuals, so we don’t need to function with a corporate setting. Beware the error of the phrase “I am not accountable to anyone but Jesus.” Beware the compounded error of saying, “God told me and that settles it.” Why? Because God is One who set the protocols of kingdom behavior! He isn’t functioning as if His protocols don’t exist!

Within the kingdom of God, the ecclesia is called together by God wherein the voice of God is readily, consistently available to God’s people. Gifts of Holy Spirit function widely, openly, consistently, and authoritatively within the ecclesia. Prophetic protocols do not seek to limit this revelatory reality but to maintain its constant flow and integrity, to keep it pure of human manipulation and intimidation, to ensure that what the ecclesia hears and sees is very Word of the Lord, demanding that we take the good and dispense with the bad so that we do not come to despise prophesying. [1 Thessalonians 5:21-22.]

We are responsible to avoid despising prophecy. We are responsible to establish a culture in which prophetic function is properly valued and respected as a foundational leadership dynamic. God gave us protocols for prophetic ministry to maintain this proper value and respect for prophetic behaviors. When ignore these protocols, we limit or destroy prophetic function because people stop listening, rejected prophetic become more shrill, then eventually silent, and the kingdom culture substitutes a different communication system for the one designed by the King.

Prophecy is Communication

1 Peter 4:11, “If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God.” People can speak God’s oracles! The norm, the baseline, the reality of speaking for God should be speaking God’s oracles, a short speech from God. The most common form of prophecy involves communicating a speech or message from God. A message spoken or written that arrives via revelation must be communicated in a revelatory manner. It is not the product of good thinking, a conclusion reached by reason, but a message received from outside you from God Himself speaking into history. It is not God’s voice being heard, but yours.

Oracle, logion, means ‘to speak on the behalf of another.’ An oracle of God means to speak on His behalf, a word that originates with God that is spoken or communicated by man.

God communicates to you in many legitimate ways. Everything God has ever used to communicate throughout history as a method of communication is available today in some form or other. God isn’t thundering from a mountaintop as He did at Sinai, but He is speaking through chosen, sent, and positioned leaders, who can see and hear, experience, taste, and smell, and communicate what God is saying. So, revelation comes to people so God can release revelation through people. And, God often communicates through code, symbol, impression, picture, full-color video, and revelatory experiences – all of which require prophetic processing.

Examine the first steps of Jeremiah’s prophetic leadership. God speaks to him by showing him a picture that suggests something through word association. “What do you see, Jeremiah?” God asks. “I see an almond branch,” young Jeremiah replies.

Was there an almond tree nearby? Or, did Jeremiah see a vision? Did an almond branch drops at this feet? Or, did Jeremiah’s spiritual eyes see an almond branch? It doesn’t matter. The point is that God revealed the branch a particular tree to him, and the Hebrew word for almond sounds like the Hebrew word for another activity.

God still speaks and reveals in this way today. He doesn’t just say things in sentence form with proper punctuation and paragraph indentations. He still communicates the way He has been communicating since the beginning, and He likes to have people experience something natural in order to give them a revelation of something spiritual. While what is spiritual is more real than what is physical, it is our ability to experience things physically that dominates our lives, and God uses what is physically real to reveal what is spiritually real.

I mention this because the process of the prophetic is both a wonderful way to more effectively and efficiently release revelation and a fault line for pride, flesh, and impure motivations to subvert the process of communicating spiritual things. God doesn’t desire to communicate through automatic, robotic means. He wants to communicate through real people, real experiences, and real words. The process is more effective and efficient this way, but it also depends upon the people involve following proper protocols and maintaining personal purity.

I am answering the question, Why doesn’t God guarantee that His Word will be communicated perfectly in prophetic ministry the same as He did with the Bible? To be sure, we can know that God has preserved through centuries of contrary challenges a written record of His Word that is without error. We have a perfect Bible. No prophetic ministry operates at the same level of that revelation because it is perfect, inerrant, immutable, eternal, and finished. We aren’t writing more books to the Bible.

Prophetic ministry is not the same thing at all. I recently read a blog by some poorly informed young man who was making a ridiculous case for the idea that “no prophetic word needs to be judged because it is God’s Word and judging the prophetic word would be the same as judging God.” Duh! Why do people insist upon saying something about things they don’t know very much about? Obviously, he is having experiences where people are properly judging his errant words and isn’t enjoying those experiences! Everything he says needs to be judged, or more likely, he needs a leader to help him sit down and be quiet for a season until he learns the protocols of the prophetic.

I am not joking about that. Part of the protocol is to stop the communication that doesn’t fit the protocol. The protocols will be challenged by people who see their right to speak as authorized directly by God because they think they have a revelation directly from Him.

The Bible is perfect. While it is obvious that each writer communicated in his own style, consistent with the period of history in which that writer lived, that no writer of Scripture was robotic in his expressions, we do know that every writing of Scripture was “God-breathed.” We know that every word of God will not pass away. We know that the Old Testament wasn’t destroyed by Jesus but brought into fullness so it can be fulfilled. We know that God cannot lie. And, we know God has intervened in history to preserve and purify this Bible so that we have full confidence that every human error in copying or even the subtle shades of meaning in translating have not diminished the complete accuracy of what God says in Scripture.

Prophecy is not perfect. The Bible tells us so. “We prophesy in part…but when that which is perfect arrives what was imperfect gives way to the perfect.” We don’t remember the incomplete when the complete arrives. We understand the incomplete when the complete arrives. The fulfillment of the anticipated gives such a greater understanding of the anticipated that we realize the prophetic is not intended to be exhaustive.

While prophetic ministry is amazingly powerful, it is not everything nor intended to be everything. In one sense this is true of the Bible: Scripture isn’t exhaustive. The Bible doesn’t tell us everything but what it does tell us is totally accurate. Prophecy doesn’t tell us everything but what it does tell us requires a prophetic process totally different from our interpretation, application, and implementation of Scripture. Prophecy is a different form of communication. Preaching is another form of communication. Teaching another. While our speech should be seasoned with grace, everything a prophetic person says isn’t prophetic.

Basics of Prophecy

God’s oracles will be spoken through people. That is, God has thoughts for you, about you, and concerning you that He wants you to know. Prophecy communicates these thoughts as God shares them with other people so they can share them with you.

Personal prophecy is a message for a person from God spoken with God’s heart in God’s time for God’s purpose. The prophetic gift allows the expertise of God to be available to God’s people. Holy Spirit searches the Father’s heart and searches every human heart. He then reveals a word or way that gets the two hearts together. Without the prophetic, we may be giving people what we can give them. With the prophetic, we may be giving them what God can give them!

The prophetic process is revelation, interpretation, application, and implementation. Each step of the process is revelatory. Receiving the revelation is only the first, easiest step. After that, people who don’t follow protocols and work at the process may turn a nearly perfect revelation into a messy distraction or destructive delusion.

Protocol number one – communicate with permission.

Just because you discern, hear, see, or sense something about another person does not mean that you are required to speak or communicate it. What you know or think you know arrives with or without permission to communicate it, and that permission includes timing, setting, interpretation, and judgment.

Simply discerning a spiritual condition is not permission to verbalize what you discern to a person you feel is carrying that spiritual condition. Having a word of knowledge, a particular of information, about a person does not mean that you need to share it. Having a word of wisdom, a strategic detail or response that you feel applies to a certain person does not mean that you are being asked to prophesy that revelation to them.

Beware the tendency to think what you have from God arrives with an inherent license for you to do with the revelation whatever you think best. With the ability or capacity to receive revelation comes another dynamic of what to do with revelation.

God simply sharing His secrets with you; God pulling back the curtain of spiritual reality to teach you how to hear and see better; God assigning you to pray an accompanying strategy about the revelation; God giving a portion of the revelation you will share later when the rest of the revelation arrives.

These are a few possibilities to consider and learn to apply to your revelatory experiences.

Protocol number two – communicate proper content.

We should encourage personal prophecy! Holy Spirit will be sharing God’s heart, secrets of people’s hearts, and words that comfort, encourage, and exhort to people.

Oikodome – edify, build up, promoting growth and stability, health
Paraklesis – exhort, admonish, refresh, console, comfort
Paramuthia – persuade, stimulate, motivate

Note that correction, judging, condemning, directing, opining on God’s behalf, charging, imparting, or creating are not included in this list! These are gift of prophecy parameters. Prophets can do these things but people do not function in the same way as prophets.

We would understand this prophetic function to apply to the gift of prophecy for two reasons: 1) God wants everyone to prophesy but not everyone is a prophet; 2) Paul is speaking about desiring spiritual gifts, the function gifts, specifically, a comparison of languages and prophecy.

We can conclude from this that Paul is discussing the gift of prophecy operation within the ecclesia. Since we have examples of how prophets function in the New Testament ecclesia, we can understand that prophets have authority and power in that positioning to speak beyond these three parameters. A prophet functions as a leader, and his prophetic gift and leadership function combine to speak greater than the scope set by these three words. It would also seem that the scope of these three words concerns prophecy spoken in a specific setting within the ecclesia although the prophecy may also communicate to someone who “comes into the ecclesia, those that is inexperienced or unbelieving.”

These protocols do apply to public meetings in specific but serve to provide us strong insights into prophetic protocols because they tell us how the gift should operate. We see that prophecy occurs in a way that allows for leadership, judgment, order, interpretation, faith, and response. It operates openly. When the gift of prophecy and personal prophecy occur, as well as words that edify the whole ecclesia, publically. This is not the only insight we receive about prophecy and prophetic functions, of course, and we must include everything we learn from Scripture as the highest and first revelation of prophetic protocol. We don’t add Bible to our prophetic experience; we start with Bible as the textbook of life, living, spiritual reality, and gift function. Nothing is valid that counters what Scripture says.

So, this instruction from Paul is not so exclusive that we err to do or say or act in any other way. Nor does Paul prescribe this as an “order of service” as if any kind of strategic gathering of saints that doesn’t follow this specifically misses the commands of Scripture. Prophetic operation doesn’t turn on when the ecclesia gathers and shut off when it goes home.

There is a place for prophetic operations and a prophet’s function outside the assembled ecclesia. That said, we should take care that we apply the same principles to other expressions of the prophetic. For example, prophetic words should all stand the scrutiny of judgment by prophetic leadership; we should ask for prophetic insight and interpretation no matter how prophetic communication comes into our lives.

To this point, email and Facebook words should be put through the same process. In our ministry, I have created prophetic groups on Facebook so that revelations can be shared and the whole group of prophetic people and prophets can process these revelations. I would even go so far as offer a rebuke to those who are casting off prophetic protocols in the way they give and receive prophetic ministry in ways that short-circuit the process and protocols.

I read posted prophetic words that come out of nowhere and go nowhere but are passed around by people by sharing. I don’t know the sources, the people speaking them, nor do these words even make a lot of sense sometimes. Frauds copy something they read on a prophet’s website and pass them on Facebook as if they heard God speaking to create the impression that “they hear from God,” hoping to attract people to themselves because of a personal desperation for meaning and recognition. Well-meaning people then encourage them because of the tendency to “high-five” people who are listening to God and contending for revival.

While I understand the pattern and how it plays into our “everybody can do the stuff” thinking, I would caution that we are opening the door to abuse, fraud, silliness, and watering down the proper protocols of the prophetic.

Let’s say a couple things out loud. I used to say that Sunday School classes were the source of more false doctrine than the devil because we would encourage discussion and allow people to say the craziest things, high-fives all around because people participated in the process. The same thing can happen with prophetic operations and functions in this new world of communication.

I would never allow a man addicted to pornography to prophesy. But I saw a guy I asked to step down from ministry prophesying on Facebook the other day. His word was warped, and he has never be restored to leadership or function by anyone but himself. At the same time a woman’s husband called him to tell him to stop texting his wife and demanding to know her dreams and prophetic revelations so he could mentor her.

My point is that there are protocols for the prophetic. When a leader who is accountable to leaders prophesies, communicating via internet, I listen because there are protocols in place for his life, leadership, and function. Outside of that, getting personal words from strangers is just a crazy idea. While I receive prophetic words from people in many nations who are my friends, leaders I know, and leaders who have an accountability process in place, every person who is interested in the integrity of the prophetic should simply refuse to receive things prophetic operations that do not have recognizable protocols surrounding them.

I have people show up at the ministry to prophesy, people I don’t know, who just walk in and plan on speaking life or death to God’s people. I do not allow them to do so. I do not allow them because I am controlling or afraid of their revelations. I do not allow them to speak because they are not operating according to protocols. While there might be an exception that proves this rule, it would be so rare that people in our house would be extremely surprised!

Recently, some woman watched a silly DVD teaching that accused revival leaders of releasing some demonic spirit from India to everybody they touched. She came into the meeting to set us all straight about our worship, my preaching, our spiritual atmosphere. She was really full of herself. She couldn’t speak to everybody so she wrote me a corrective email “to be faithful to the Lord.” I asked for the phone number of her leader so that I could speak about her activities and get some clarity on her behavior. She didn’t have leader, of course, because she is “taught of the Father in Heaven and needs no man on earth to tell her what to do.” So, I told her that I wouldn’t be opening any of her emails and she would not be welcome to speak anything in the ecclesia. She broke so may Bible protocols that I couldn’t find a basis for a discussion with her. The DVD is so obviously a hatchet job on good people that it is not worthy of analysis.

Protocol number three – We never prophesy in a vacuum.

We commonly call these things “parking lot prophecies” because they occur outside the setting where we can most safely receive personal prophecy. Or, at least this is an example of possibly prophesying or receiving prophecy in a vacuum.

So, if we receive a word from someone, however that word is received, or however trustworthy the person prophesying may be, we cannot properly interpret and apply that word without involving other people, especially leaders, in the process.

Now, I didn’t say that we wouldn’t receive communications via internet, phone, written notes, and spoken messages. I said that we never prophesy in a vacuum: we assume the involvement of other people, especially leaders, in the process of prophecy. Doing this is grounds for being “sat down” and our prophetic voice silenced, our gift function invalidated. Not because we don’t hear or see correctly, but we function improperly, dangerously, and recklessly. People come to despise prophecy because of improper function that assumes every word of every prophetic communication is good just because the prophecy came by revelation. What I mean is that if we receive words outside the protocols, we cannot be allowed to communicate prophetically because we are creating the impression that the prophetic process isn’t that important by our own actions.

Note the language of 1 Thessalonians 5: “Don’t suppress the Spirit, and don’t stifle those who have a word from the Master. On the other hand, don’t be gullible. Check out everything, and keep only what’s good. Throw out anything tainted with evil. May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together – spirit, soul, and body – and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ.” [The Message]

I have received hundreds, even thousands of personal words, and I have given thousands of personal words. I will continue to receive and release personal prophecies. However, in both receiving and releasing, the words have not been 100% pure-oracle of God. Some mixture is possible, even probable. By mixture I mean that the oracle of God may have an accompanying communication or subtle rewording and a commentary that includes the gift of teaching or exhortation in such a way that the prophecy and the other are not noted or distinguished.

Add to that the motivations of people who hear and see revelation, put into the situation a desire to be heard or seen, add a pinch of people having been taken less seriously than was appropriate or what they desired, and then note that people are perfect in their communications. You get a situation in which leadership is needed 100% of the time!

Protocol number four – We prophesy in part.

Beware the thought, “That’s it. I said it all! Everyone note this powerful revelation I’ve spoken, the end-all of the matter.” Beware such thinking that measures the value of your revelation or prophecy by the fact that you heard and saw and spoke. The value of revelation is equal, but we can measure its import by our level of trust with the person who communicated it. It is the level of trust we have in the one communicates that measures the purity and power of the word, not the revelation itself.

Let me tell you that I have seen and heard some things that were very accurate in detail and specificity that looked and sounded a lot different when they came to pass than I thought they would because the interpretation and application of the very pure revelation was bigger than my ability to receive the revelation.

I have heard prophetic words turned into something they never said, implied, or communicated by the assumption that the word settled it all. Perhaps a word is a confirmation in a stream of revelations. Perhaps a word is an expansion of revelation from things a person has heard or seen privately. Perhaps a word is a piece of revelatory puzzle that outlines what needs to be filled in. In no way does the “prophesy in part” make prophecy less valuable when it is an oracle of God.

Therefore, we never assume that we don’t make decisions on our own, that people don’t make decisions on their own, that prophecy is required as a basis for making decisions. This thinking leads to several different kinds of error including the silly idea that “if we hear God on everything we will never make a poor decision.” That is a premise that encourages false prophecy or prophetic dysfunction.

Beware the tendency to “take that word to the bank” as a “jumping to conclusions” knee-jerk reaction to words spoken. Beware the error of putting your own timing on God’s revelations or interpreting a word into another framework of expectation so that the final picture looks like what you had in mind.

The prophecy doesn’t do the dishes, as I like to say. It isn’t all that and a bag of chips, so to speak. God isn’t going to turn prophecy into a horoscope or psychic reading so you can decide whether or not to get out of bed, brush your teeth, get married, or buy a car. Most certainly, God isn’t going to speak to you every week and tell you whether or not you should tithe or pray or fast or worship or kiss your spouse because these decisions do not require a daily word, a momentary revelation, a confirming oracle.

We prophesy in part. We have a part. We speak a part. We fit the part into a process.

Protocol number five – Prophecy confirms God’s directions.

If you get a prophecy to divorce your spouse, you know that is not a word from God anymore than a prophecy to rob a bank as long as you tithe what you steal or a directive to sell drugs to support world missions is a God-word. Prophecy confirms what is going on in a person’s life that is God-directed.

God could do a shocking shift but it would not be prophecy that shocked and shifted you in the sense of that word being directly opposed to what God has already spoken. God isn’t going to prophesy through someone that you should sin, get angry, break your word, steal money, or tell a lie. I know you are laughing but I am not because I have experienced the silliness and tragedy of such prophetic dysfunctions.

God tells someone to make a commitment to ministry leadership, then three weeks later God rescinds that order and tells them to do something else, close that door, or “run as fast as you can.” One of those prophetic words wasn’t from God! By the way, God isn’t into the “forget what I said yesterday, I changed my mind.” [I am, unfortunately, quoting someone who spoke this to someone in my hearing.] God gets the blame for lots of stuff He didn’t have anything to do with!

On the other hand, I have to question the statement: “every prophetic word confirms something you have already heard from the Lord.” There isn’t a good Bible premise to make this a rule, and the statement itself begs the question of whether or not prophecy is less valid that what a person hears or sees on his or her own. While there are many experiences, even most experiences, in our spiritual walk that mirror the sentiments of this statement, we cannot really make it a rule that God has to speak to us personally before a prophecy can rightly arrive that confirms something of which we are already aware. It just doesn’t happen that way every time in Scripture or life.

However, confirmation isn’t a bad word! No, confirming words are more common than any other because many confirming words are actually the witness of Holy Spirit within us. In other words, when we hear any prophetic word, we usually have some sense of its authenticity when we hear it. Not always as strongly every time, but we commonly recognize God in prophetic words because of an immediate response of spirit. Other words confirm what we have already heard or something we have experienced privately.

Confirming words are often the awaken of things hidden within us, so when they are awakened by prophecy from apostles and prophets, they seem to confirm some inner inclination. When this occurs we may be surprised because what we had a hint about can appear different when actually set in place to function in our lives.

There are words that surprise us. These are the words of prophets and apostles in my experience, but even then they bring immediate witness and confirm something that causes us to see what we already know in a new way. It can be shocking because it brings together some pieces of revelation in a new way that astounds us, but in one sense the word is confirming that the pieces were God’s oracles even though we couldn’t see the fullness of the revelation until the last piece or new piece was given.

Expect confirmations. It is a pattern of prophecy. But don’t limit the words of prophets to confirmations, and don’t automatically reject a word because you don’t immediately see where it fits as a confirming word. After all, the first indication of a revelation isn’t a confirming word since it is the first piece of a prophetic puzzle.

Don’t give the time of day to contradictory words, goof-ball words, and words that attack the whole tenor of your spiritual experiences. In addition, recognize that confirmations will often come through your spiritual leaders. The judgment of prophecy is a form of confirmation: that is, those sitting around listening and judging prophetic words are either confirming or not confirming the words when they properly judge them for content and motivation.

Protocol number six – Prophetic words are always subject to judgment and prophetic functions are always subject to correction and training.

If you aren’t teachable and submissive, just don’t say anything prophetic at all. No matter how well you hear and see revelation, just keep it to yourself if you are unwilling to submit to leaders as a person and your prophecies for judgment. As I said before, I actually read a statement on the internet that said, “No prophecy is subject to the judgment or correction of any man because it is the word of God.” I didn’t know whether to laugh, weep, or be sick!

If that guy had walked on water and relieved his arm of ten deadly snakes with fangs sunk into the flesh without dying, I would not listen to a word out of his mouth! (A little hyperbole there!) Perhaps I should say that such a statement is so blatantly unScriptural and practically unrealistic that it should be categorically dismissed.

However, people often include a bit of that sentiment with the words they speak. A bit of excess here. A hint of “this word is a for sure deal” there. A little too much stress on how they hear clearly or how clearly they heard, even a subtle hint that you better take this seriously or else. People will also take strange postures and make flourishing gestures with acrobatic spittle included at no extra charge to convince you of the word’s validity.

This usually means people have suffered rejection and/or been misunderstood, but sometimes it means they have not been submitted to correction, avoided training, and don’t intend to have their gift or message questioned. Pride. Arrogance. Fear. Ambition. Control. Unfortunately, each of these maladies has been exhibited in the name of prophecy. Good prophecy. Impure delivery.

You need to function in a place where someone can be firm in correcting your excesses, be specific in helping you share what you’ve seen and heard, and walk you through the times you miss it or add to what you’ve received from God.

Prophets and prophetic people who have no accountability are dangerous. So, don’t be dangerous! You never outgrow the need for accountability, and the higher and deeper you go in revelation experience and prophetic ministry, the higher and deeper your leaders should be, the more accountability is needed because of the serious nature and trust level of your revelation. We cannot purchase or earn the gift or office but we most certainly must experience training that includes correction and teaching so that we can better communicate with accuracy and precision what God is saying through us.

Here in MinistryMatrix and AMP, we are learning to function as a company of prophets, and in prophetic teams. I am so sorry to tell you that some of those who started didn’t continue when they were corrected in the presentation of prophecy or in their personal lives. Some didn’t pass the test of using revelation to create a need for themselves, making people feel dependent upon their insights. Some were quitters. They just didn’t want to make the effort that true prophets must make to function as prophets. They wanted it to be easy or easier – “I just want to hear God and speak what I hear.” It isn’t that easy or simple. Nothing else is that easy or easier.

For a long time, the idea that there should be order and decency got a bad name. “Decent and in order” in the ecclesia when spiritual gifts and functions were available to the Body came to mean that leaders were “shutting down freedom” and “quenching the Spirit.” The purpose of leadership isn’t to determine what God is doing but to protect the situation so God is the One doing it.

Prophetic Protocol number seven – prophetic people judge prophetic words.

While this protocol makes perfect sense, I am personally amazed how little it is followed in prophetic process. It seems to me that people judging prophetic experiences, words, and prophetic process are, more often than not, people with little prophetic function or experience. The obvious intent of Paul’s order and decency for prophetic operations in the ecclesia is that prophetic people, the ones who prophesying, are the one judging the words spoken. Prophetic order in a public setting should be done with one than one person prophesying; while one is speaking, others are judging what he says.

Leaders who function prophetically should judge prophetic words, people with prophetic experience. While it is true that teaching and activating people to prophesy is possible and actually not that difficult to do, providing for prophetic function involves a bit more than giving people with a word the microphone and giving them a high-five when they are done!

This “just do it!” attitude isn’t consistent with the order of prophetic experience and function, and releasing people to speak their prophetic minds without proper protocols and training always produces perversions of the purpose of prophetic ministry.

I would include in this discussion every aspect of revelatory experience so that we get a clearer picture of how leadership functions in the ecclesia, how humility secures our destinies, how submission and obedience shelters us from traps of offense, flesh, and darkness. I would include dreams, especially dreams that are interpreted as directional, that are used to make decisions and direct people’s lives. More on this later.