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Mark 16: 15 And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
16 "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.
17 "And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues;
18 "they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."
19 So then, after the Lord had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.
20 And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen.
When we began our journey in the Kingdom of God our focus was on hearing and preaching the Gospel … the saving message of Jesus Christ, receiving Him, developing relationship with God through Him, receiving and being baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues.
That was followed by learning about, believing, and receiving healing.
Finally, the Lord began to teach us about casting out demons.
And, we have moved from revelation to revelation concerning all of these areas of life and ministry sometimes spending a lot of time (one at a time) in these particular topics that cause us to grow up in Him.
Ephesians 4: 11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,
12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,
13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;
14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting,
15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head––Christ––
16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
This all has to do with relationship with the Lord and being part of the body to do His work!
I’m beginning to be stirred again. In our society we come “of age” or are considered to be adults at 21. We have been nurtured and taught by our parents, our teachers, our church leaders, our circumstances, etc. Then, it is time when we (in our natural existence) have to be responsible for everything that we’ve been taught and to use that knowledge to make life work.
I believe that we are at that point where we have come to a place of maturity in Christ.
Small Straws: Please be advised that I will cause you to make adjustments in your plans for the future that will bring your destiny into clear and precise focus. I am expanding some areas of your calling while diminishing or cutting off other areas. This is a refining process that will redefine your purpose and responsibility in My kingdom, says the Lord. This transition will be a smooth one if you yield quickly to these modifications. Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
I have a sense that it’s time to “take our place” or “take a stand.”
I have a sense that it’s time to look back and be clear about what our position in the body of Christ is, and to know the nature of our gifting, our calling, our passion.
Oswald Chamber (July 24th): The characteristic of a disciple is not that he does good things, but that he is good in motive because he has been made good by the supernatural grace of God. The only thing that exceeds right-doing is right-being. Jesus Christ came to put into any man who would let Him a new heredity which would exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus says – If you are My disciple you must be right not only in your living, but in your motives, in your dreams, in the recesses of your mind. You must be so pure in your motives that God Almighty can see nothing to censure. Only the Son of God, Jesus Christ, claims that by His Redemption He can put into any man His own disposition, and make him as unsullied and as a simple as a child. The purity which God demands is impossible unless I can be remade within, and that is what Jesus has undertaken to do by His Redemption.
Isaiah 1:
15 When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.
16 "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil,
17 Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, Plead for the widow.
18 "Come now, and let us reason together," Says the LORD, "Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.
19 If you are willing and obedient, You shall eat the good of the land;
20 But if you refuse and rebel, You shall be devoured by the sword"; For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Acts 1:
1 The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,
2 until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen,
3 to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
4 And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, "which," He said, "you have heard from Me;
5 "for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now."
So, I want to get back to our gifts, callings and passion. There has been a point of error in trying to discover what our gifts are and what we’ve been called to. We put ourselves in the middle of that so that the focus in on us … my ministry, my calling, my gift, my life, my stuff. And, as long as we focus on us in ministry, Jesus Christ is standing at the door knocking, trying to get in, and we don’t answer the door.
Revelation 3:20 "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.
Ministry is not about us! It is about us being available to The LORD to do His work of Redemption on the earth!
Ministry is about yielding to the work of the Holy Spirit:
Philippians 2:13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
Our passion has to be for Christ! We must be willing to yield to the Spirit of God in His gifting:
1 Corinthians 12:11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.
I believe that we are entering a season of Divine Recollection.
Recollection: tranquility of mind; religious contemplation; the action or power of recalling to mind.
What have we been trained for?
Preaching the Gospel … the saving message of Jesus Christ, receiving Him.
Developing relationship with God through Him.
Receiving and being baptized in the Holy Spirit and empowered for ministry (with the evidence of speaking in tongues).
Believing and receiving healing.
Casting out demons.
These are our areas of ministry, and all of these areas must become so much a part of who we are so that our “right-being” produces “right-doing.”
Sometimes we get so focused on deliverance that we forget healing, or we get so focused on healing that we forget redemption, or so focused on our problems that we forget our purpose altogether.
But, our circumstances and situations are the ground where opportunities present themselves to minister. We set ourselves to be ready to be used by the Holy Spirit to will and to do God’s good pleasure.
I was thinking that some of us in our early kingdom days once had a “passion” for the healing ministry, or youth ministry, or deliverance ministry, or whatever. It may be time to remember where we’ve come from and what we’ve come through. Was that passion only a way of defining ourselves in our kingdom? Was the focus on ourselves or on yielding the work of the Holy Spirit to establish His Kingdom?
Again … the word of the Lord: I will cause you to make adjustments in your plans for the future that will bring your destiny into clear and precise focus. I am expanding some areas of your calling while diminishing or cutting off other areas. This is a refining process that will redefine your purpose and responsibility in My kingdom, says the Lord.
I urge you to allow the Lord do His work in you to bring you to the unity of the faith, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that you may grow up in all things in Christ, being joined and knit together, doing your share to edify the Body in love. Amen!
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Marsha
http://ft111.com
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