Power issue

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely everything.
True or false?
False.

Well i used to think that power corrupts just as money corrupts people and its the root of all evil but that is not true at all.
Money is a material thing and how can a material thing be moral or immoral?
Power is best said in Spiderman 'with greater power comes greater responsibility' and i agree with that.
Why?

It's not what's outside that corrupts a man, it's whats inside of a man-the heart.

Dr. A.R. Bernard- 5 may 2012

I want to link 2 particular passages from scripture, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament. The first one is Genesis 1:26.

Genesis 1:26-27 (English standard version)
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

Matthew 11:29
29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

What do these 2 passages have in common? Both speak of relationship with God. Now notice what He said. Not only to take My yoke upon you but He also says to learn from Me and you will find rest for yourself. Notice the relationship Jesus makes between knowledge and rest. Rest is a state of peace. So knowledge brings peace. Specifically the knowledge of God brings peace. So Jesus is saying get to know Me and if you get to know Me, it will bring you to a place of rest. He talks about peace in the other gospels. Says “My peace will I give you, a peace that the world cannot give you nor can the world take it from you.

I’ve been walking with the Lord in ministry for 34 years and relationship with Christ close to 40 years as well and the more i know about God, the more rest i experience in my life. Things that i used to fret over be concerned about even as a Christian, as a believer navigating in society, especially bringing the message of the culture mandate. Learning, understanding God’s purposes plans for human society.

I’m today at a place where i experience a greater degree of peace and rest and it’s not because of my faith, it’s because of what i know. Faith of cause plays a very important part of our relationship with God because without faith it is impossible to please Him but my rest in Him. And Paul talks about that getting to a place where you find rest in God that comes in what you know about God.

So Jesus’ invitation here is a relational invitation because He said something “take My yoke upon you and learn from Me”. A yoke symbolizes a relationship, a very close relationship that I’ll speak about a little later.
So what does this passage in Matthew have to do with Genesis chapter 1? Let me give you a term and i love terms, definitions and things.


Imago dei- Latin term for the image of God.

Genesis 1:26 says that God created men in His own image so men became the imago dei. The image or reflection of God. Just like in Matthew 11:29 it is relational as Genesis 1:26 is. The reason why God made men in His own image and in His own likeness is because He had an objective in mind and that objective was relationship and fellowship. It’s God’s desires. That’s why it puzzled David. God’s interest in humans to the point that David said what is men that You are mindful of Him or the son of man that You visit him. And David continues in that psalm. He was fascinated by this love, this connection that God has with the human species. So much so that when God had to bring judgment on humanity called the flood, He still preserved Noah and His family because it was not a complete end to the human species. It was simply a major adjustment that had to be made to human history and experience. So He made men in His image and in His likeness so that He could have relationship, communion and fellowship with men.

God created men in such a way so that that relationship and that fellowship could take place, so He is very careful. He had to create something call compatibility. It’s the very same you look for in human relationships because you want to know that the person you’re having a relationship with have a degree of compatibility between you and that person. It simply means that you have things in common. We tend to have relationship with people that we have certain things in common. If the imago dei is the image of God and God purposely and specifically designed men for fellowship and communion and relationship, it means that He designed men so that men would be compatible with God.

What does God and men have in common?

Let’s begin to explore the image of God and understand why it is so special. God call forth to the ocean for the creatures to come about created all the fowls of the air, beasts of the field, fish of the sea and He did that with His words. He said let the ocean be filled with all types of sea life, the sky to be filled with the birds of the air, let the land be filled with the beast of the field. All these other things He created with His spoken words but when it came to men, He created men with His own hands. Because this creature will be different will be distinct and hold a special place in God’s heart. So the fact that His hands were involved in shaping and molding and fashioning this distinct creature means that God consider this particular creature and species out of all the other creatures to be the most compatible with Himself.

There are 3 attributes of God that is commonly understood if you take theology or any other Bible study.
And these 3 attributes of God are that God is omnipotent.
1) God is omnipotent – God is all powerful
2) God is omniscient – God is all knowing. His knowledge extends beyond time and space.
3) God is omnipresent – God is present everywhere at the same time

These are the primary and major attributes of God but you and i are not omnipotent, we are not omniscient and we are not omnipresent so that means that whatever attributes that God shared with us had to be communicable. It means it had to be attributes that God could share with men. So another words, He did not make us gods or gods to compete with Him so He only shared with us His communicable attributes. So when God breathed into men the breath of life, it was God sharing with men His divine nature but limited to communicable attributes. He breathed into men the breath of life; He breathed into men those attributes of Himself that He could share. So we don’t carry these attributes but we do carry certain attributes that make us like God.

How are you the image of God?

1) Reason – The power of our mind, our ability to think, to understand and to form judgments.

Our ability to reason is one of the things God shared with us. The purpose for all of these is communion, fellowship that’s why you read in Isaiah 1:18
18 “Come now, and let us reason together,”
Says the LORD,

God could say that because He gave men that attribute. The attribute to think, to understand and to form judgment. That’s why when men sinned, Adam sinned, men’s reasoning capacity was affected, it changed the way he thought and you see it immediately because before the fall, Adam was strong in his relationship and communion with God but after he sinned. Now he is hiding himself because he is afraid. Fear takes over the mind and it affects his reasoning. So instead of his reasoning being strong and open towards God it is now hidden and secretive. Fear takes over where there was faith and boldness. So that’s why when we are born again, the Bible says you will be transformed. Transformed what? Into the image of Christ who is the expressed image of God, the original intend in the mind of God for the human species. You’ll be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Because the mind has gone astray so we no longer think like God. But in the beginning He gave us, shared with us the power to reason and to think like Him. That is why the word of God is so important. The word of God, the scriptures helps us to think like God. When you think like God, you are really operating in the realm of faith and creativity is released. Creativity is set free because you are now thinking like God.
When you think like God, you have a set of values and a sense of purpose. The values guide your actions, your thinking. Purpose gives you a sense of awareness that there is more to your life than you experienced in any one moment, there is still more.

2) Creativity – The ability to imagine new things and give meaning to old things

I’m like God because I’m creative and I’m most like God when I’m creative. This is why this ministry strives, has grown, and continues to grow because it employs the attribute of God call creativity. How can we creatively minister to people? How can we creatively create an environment for spiritual growth and development and personal mission in Christ? The power of creativity. What God loves the most of His own attributes is His creativity. You can tell when you look at creation on earth. We have the power to create first of all with our words. Your words create your world. What you are experiencing in the world that you’ve built around you was created by the words you spoke. We have creativity in our actions, the things that we do. 2 Corinthians says that God spoke through faith and we also speak through faith. Creativity is our ability to imagine, to come up with something new.

Genesis 11:6. God came down to see human species building a tower and God testifies, witnesses the power that they had by saying “Nothing that they imagine to do can they not do”. God was testifying, bearing witness to His creative power in His imago dei. Even though He brought judgment to that power because you can have power but use it for the wrong things.

3) Speech – The ability to express our thoughts, our feelings and our perceptions.
How many times we want someone to understand how we feel and we struggle to find the right words to express it. Whether it’s to express our love, our hurt, our anger or our joy. Speech is a special gift. The fact that we can actually communicate it, actually take words and say I love you. I understand some people abuse this attribute, they talk too much but it’s still beautiful to have the ability the power to communicate. In fact communication is still the basis for life. We build life on the foundation of our ability to communicate our feelings, our perceptions, our thoughts, and our ideas.

4) Self-awareness

God designed us to be aware of our own individual identity. In fact we are so aware of our own individual identity that we do everything that we can to make sure that we are uniquely different from someone else.

5) Self-determination – Free will

The will to choose. The power to choose our own destiny was given to us by God.
Deuteronomy 30:19 where He gathers Israel and He gathers the whole spiritual realm and He says:

19 I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live;

The fact is that God lays the facts before them and gave them the power to choose. That is self-determination. So I can determine to do one thing or the other. And in so doing I’m like God. The power to choose one’s destiny.

6) Self-transcendent

God transcends time and space and we do also. Not in the same way that God does in terms of His ability to move into the future, present, past all before Him. But we are self-transcendent. We can transcend ourselves. In our minds we can visit the past, with our minds we can analyze the present, and with our minds we can transport ourselves into a possible future because we can imagine the future.

What was God doing when He gave these attributes to men? He was fitting men for relationship. But instead of fitting we look for someone who fits. We are looking for someone who is compatible. Especially when you want to get married, you want to spend your life with someone with whom you share the same interest, the same values, the same goals, the same objectives, the same sense of purpose. That’s why Bible says that the believer should not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. Why? Because you don’t share the same destiny, the same values, the same sense of purpose. So it creates an antagonistic relationship of tension that cannot be removed and even the Holy Spirit at work in that believer, problem is that the unbeliever with the absence of harmony, that unbeliever can undermine the work of the Holy Spirit in that believer in that unequally yoked situation. And why God tells us all these things in scripture is so that there will be spiritual harmony. It begins in the spirit.

What does it have to do with “come to Me all you who labor and is heavy laden”? Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me?


What is a yoke?

There is this wooden contraption that is around the neck of the oxen and usually there is 2 oxen yoked side by side together. The reason they yoke them together is so that they can pull something but pull it in a way that it doesn’t tip over. So there has to be a compatibility of size and strength between those 2 oxen and the yoke actually brings their strength together. That’s why marriage is a yoke. But a yoke that is intended to bring the strength and creativity and all the other attributes of the bride and the groom together to make one powerful union. So the oxen are yoked together.

So the yoke no.1 is a support consisting of a wooden frame across the shoulders













And the other yoke is the one used with oxen.

What makes a yoke maker special? And what makes a yoke work is because the yoke has to be fitted. You cannot just take any yoke and put it around the neck of 2 animals and expect it to work. The yoke has to be designed in such a way that it fits just right so the relationship is not heavy or burdensome, it’s easy and it feels light because the yoke is working. The yoke speaks of a relationship with Jesus but it also must be fitted.

So when Jesus says take my yoke upon you, understand that it means that Jesus has taken the time to appreciate who you are as an individual and in creating your yoke. It is a yoke that fits only you. No one else can wear that relationship that you have with Jesus, only you.

He fits that yoke according to your personality. So when you get saved, Jesus doesn’t want you to become somebody else because the yoke He created for you is fitted to your personality. The yoke He’s created for you as a believer is fitted to your learning style. Jesus knows how you learn. It also had to be fitted to your experiences. Jesus created that yoke taking your experiences under consideration. Your good experiences and your bad experiences. He fits it also to your knowledge. Jesus doesn’t expect more of you than you know. He’s considered your personal characteristics, your intellectual characteristics, your social characteristics, your spiritual attributes. If you are one of those people who uses the communicable attribute of speech a lot then Jesus fits that yoke in such a way that you become an evangelist. That means when He releases you to ministry and to fulfill your calling He put you in a context where that speech becomes a positive attribute for the kingdom.

He fits you for the service He calls you to. He doesn’t try to make you into someone that you are not. He takes you understanding who you are and He designs that yoke to fit you uniquely and personally. So that’s why we have to be very careful how we criticize other believers for not being like us. Because every believer has their own specifically designed, especially crafted yoke that Jesus invited them to wear.

When you are in the right relationship you can be who you really are. But when it’s not compatible and you are unequally yoked in a relationship, you have this need to constantly adjust yourself and operate yourself self-consciously because you don’t want to do anything to offend. But when you are amongst those you are compatible with and yoked together with in the right way, you can be who you really are.

So when Jesus says “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me” He is asking us to accept something that He has specifically fitted for you to love Him, to be in a relationship with Him, to serve Him and to bring glory to His name and no one else can fit what Jesus created for you to wear in your relationship with Him.

It is liberating because for so long in the church there was a thinking that we all had to be alike and the same. No. We are all uniquely different and designed by God. I have my own self-identity and my own self-awareness, my own unique experience of walking with the Lord.
Jesus knows in fitting that yoke of relationship between us to make it easy and not a burden, it’s only a burden when you don’t understand this. So you can never say “Lord you’re calling me to do something that I’m not designed to do”. God will never call you to do something He’s not already fitted you for. You just might not know that, that fits you.

I’m doing things today that I never thought I would do. So His invitation to you and I is always one that fits us because He knows everything about you so you can freely and boldly go to new places and do new things. Because He will not place upon you more than you can bear. That’s why He said My yoke is easy, it’s not choking you. It’s not trying to make you into someone you are not. It’s not calling upon you to do something that you can’t do. It’s easy and the burden that the yoke is pulling is light. Why is it light? Because when something that fits you and fits you well, there is no struggle with it.

Too often, we want to wear someone’s yoke because it looks good and when it comes to ourselves, it’s “oh it’s just me”.

Not true. Each person has a purpose and God has fitted you for that purpose considering everything about you. Everybody doesn’t grow at the same pace, some people take a little longer but in His entire relationship with you as a believer, God has fitted you. So you come and you take His yoke and you move with ease. Knowledge of this set you free.

Matthew 11:30
New King James Version (NKJV)
30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Jesus said that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. How then, that often times we feel burdened by worries, by fears etc and we say it’s just too much to take.
Jeremiah 6:16
New King James Version (NKJV)
16 Thus says the LORD:
“Stand in the ways and see,
And ask for the old paths, where the good way is,
And walk in it;
Then you will find rest for your souls.
But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
In other translations, it says stand at the crossroads and see. What crossroads? It might be in your career, relationships, family, studies, habits, lifestyles etc. The commandments is where the good way is and Jesus came to fulfill it. What is that? It’s love. Jesus is God, God is love and He came to reveal the Father to us. What about the Father? It’s His love. For love fulfills all the commandments. What is the first few commandments about? It’s about loving God.

Deuteronomy 6:5
New King James Version (NKJV)
5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
We know that Jesus was heavily burdened in His heart and He prayed earnestly in the garden of Gethsemane and prayed till His blood vessels burst and it came out through His pores.

Matthew 26:36-46
New International Version (NIV)
Gethsemane
36 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

Luke 22:41-44
41 And He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and prayed, 42 saying, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.” 43 Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. 44 And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.[e]

Back to the first verse of the day- For My yoke is easy and My burden is light. So Jesus too had things which made Him sorrowful and burdened to the point of death that was how it felt. But how did He overcome that and say to us for My yoke is easy and My burden is light. You’ve got to be kidding me right? I mean the burden for souls, my life, other’s problems etc are all real and they are right in my face and you are telling me this? Yes. Jesus often withdrew Himself from the crowd, from people to be by Himself and prayed to His Father. Note this. He withdrew from people, people whom He was sent to. Why? Because He drew strength and restored Himself from the Father by being alone with Him.

Often times we have so many voices in our lives especially those negative self-talking from ourselves. Who needs enemies when you have enough of attacks from yourself right? We need to be alone and go to Him. That’s how Jesus can say that His yoke is easy and His burden is light because He goes to His father and cast His cares, humbles Himself etc. Actually there is so much to continue on and it’s for another sermon. But for now I just want to end by this- Are you withdrawing enough to be alone and to be with Him?

Becoming the greatest of all

Pastor Bill Johnson – Becoming the greatest of all


Worshippers have the privilege to summon nations into their destinies. Worshippers have a place before the Father where we not only worship Him but we turn and we summon nations into their purposes.
God is not looking for us to curse nations, to bring about judgment, to curse people groups, sinners etc. He is looking for us to see through His eyes of mercy and summon and call nations into their destinies. In heaven we will be able to see every effect of every dollar you ever gave. You will see in heaven every lives that were touched because of what you did, you will see the effect of every word, every act of kindness, the domino effect as you lay down your life for Christ and the impact it have on eternity. In that day, that is all that is going to matter to us. Is what we did with the time that we had.
Jesus met with His disciples and was able to send them out 2 by 2 to their own cities. We are going to look at His training methods. He was a different kind of trainer than most of us realized so I want to talk to you about that because I’m looking at our great army that I believe God is raising up to impact the course of world history not just the history of your nation.

Matthew 10:7
7 And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ 8 7 And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ 8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.
Fairly often people will come to me and say “Bill will you pray for me?” “Well of cause what would you like for me to pray for you?”
“I just want to know God’s will for me in my life”
“You already know God’s will for your life. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons.”
“What I meant was should I be a school teacher or a missionary?”
“Well just pick one then heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers and cast out demons”
“Well I don’t know whether I should get married?”
“Well just get married then heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers and cast out demons.”
It’s funny because you can go to Bible school all over the world and you can be trained in music, you can be in leadership, you can be trained in economics, you can be trained in apologetic, you can trained in a thousand different things and never take a class on how to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. I don’t mean that to be trained in music, leadership etc aren’t important well I think they are valuable but they can’t be more important than what Jesus said to do. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers and cast out demons, that is what He said to do.

There are many people who think that well that is the job of the apostles but Jesus trained them.
How many of you believe that Jesus is training them in this verse how to do what He do. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead and cast out demons?

In Matthew 28, after He died and rose again. He met His disciples and said “Now I want you to train your followers, your disciples the same things I taught you” What does that mean? There is no end to the training of generations to walk in the authority and power that the Lord Jesus raised up His disciples to walk in. That means you are designed for the realm of the miraculous as much as Peter was, as much as Paul was.

The uniqueness of a person’s call doesn’t mean they are either qualified for miracles or not. The uniqueness of a call has more to do with how the miraculous is expressed not if the miraculous is expressed.
Once God put the Holy Spirit in you, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of resurrection. Once the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead takes residences inside of you, all of heaven position itself to see what you will conquer in His name. The Holy Spirit is in you and He wants out. The Holy Spirit is in you like a river, rivers flow. He is not in you like a lake, He is not this still body of water. He is like a rushing torrent of water that is looking to shape the cause of history, alter the geography around you. There is this partnership between heaven and earth to release presence to alter history and impact people’s lives. This is our privilege that is why you are alive.
So the Spirit of the Lord took up residence in you and Jesus said heal the sick. Now please notice He didn’t say pray for the sick, He said heal them. But Bill we don’t heal the sick God does. I know. He just didn’t say that. But Bill it’s impossible for us to heal the sick. I believe that too. The problem is we think the rest of the Christian life is actually possible. We have been called, summoned into a family who’s primary assignment is to live the impossible, it’s not just about healing the sick and raising the dead. Have you ever read the verse Jesus said “be perfect as I’m perfect” Who knows without God’s help that one is impossible too. In fact the entire Christian life is impossible. Welcome to the impossible family. It is not normal for a Christian to not to have an appetite for the impossible, it’s in your DNA. It’s the way the Lord made you. You either have to have that bad teaching or disappointing experience, that is the only way you can be robbed of the passion for the impossible because everyone who is born again have that exact same DNA as the one who died in our place and was resurrected. The DNA of Christ defines who you are and what your nature is. Jesus ruined every funeral He attended, including His own. You can’t expect to send the Spirit of resurrection somewhere and not expect something to happen.

Luke 9
Is where we read some of the details of Jesus sending His team out-His disciples. Sometimes we almost deify these 12 mans and they are so practical that we should be able to relate to all of us.
Luke 9:1
9 Then He called His twelve disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases.
Jesus brought the disciples into His own realm of power and authority and He let them share it. He gives them power and authority. I want you to realize is that after He died, He let them know they have to get their own power and authority and so He reappeared after the resurrection and commissioned them. The commission releases authority. Then He said “you need to stay in Jerusalem till you get power and authority from on high”. The baptism of the Holy Spirit came in acts 2, that’s where they got power.
The point is this. Authority comes in the commission. Power comes in the encounter. If you want a greater anointing, you’ll want a greater encounter with the anointed One.

2 He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.
6 So they departed and went through the towns, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.
10 And the apostles, when they had returned, told Him all that they had done. Then He took them and went aside privately into a deserted place belonging to the city called Bethsaida.

Now here is what I want you to see. Here are 3 stories. In the culture of North America, we tend to over train people. We are very focused on giving people knowledge and not experience. Jesus would emphasize constantly throughout scripture. In fact we ‘ve just read a passage. Where the disciples talked to Jesus and they tell Him according to Mark’s gospel, all they have done and all they have taught. Those 2 realms, teaching and doing are supposed to run parallel courses.

Let me illustrate it. You can go to business school in my country, be trained in business, get a degree and never sat under the instruction of anyone who have ever own a business. Because the educational system of the world is shifting to value concept and thought over experience and that is not kingdom.
Jesus actually sent untrained, unqualified people into the battle. Fishermen, people who really had no sense for going out there to shape the course of history. They wouldn’t be qualified in any of our schools or denominations or whatever there might be.

Jesus’ training method is so foreign to most Christian culture in the world right now so that is what I’m wanting to address. I’m wanting to invite you into a learning process with the Lord as a church and as individuals and it’s quite fun and quite scary.

46 Then a dispute arose among them as to which of them would be greatest. 47 And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a little child and set him by Him, 48 and said to them, “Whoever receives this little child in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me. For he who is least among you all will be great.”
How many of you understand that discipline is vital to the Christian life? In Hebrews it says if you are not disciplined, if you don’t endure discipline, you’re not a child of God. It’s actually evidence that you are a son, that you are disciplined by the Lord. But we often times, we look at God the same way as we look at earthly fathers who disciplines us and nothing can be further from the truth. Jesus talks about this concept of discipline in john 15

The True Vine
15 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away;[a] and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
What does it tells us? God rewards all growth with pruning. So He says this every branch that bears fruits He prunes.
3 You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
The word prune and the word clean is the same 2 words. So what is He saying? Every branch that bears fruits He prune, but you are pruned already because of the word I spoken to you. God prunes us by talking to us. People will often avoid the word of the Lord. Jonah did, he avoided the word of the Lord for his calling. What happens when you avoid God’s voice, you run into a conflict and people look at the conflict and you say well God is disciplining me. No. You ran into the conflict because you avoided discipline. The discipline was His word to you. No one has ever being punished into purity. No one ever become holy because they were punished enough. Somehow we have this concept that punishment is a huge part of God disciplining and training. That’s not biblical and not true. It’s not the way that Jesus worked with 12 extremely unqualified guys and now we get to the first story. Jesus sends them out to ministry, they come back, meet together at a private place and they had a conversation and Jesus listens to them talk and they were arguing I’m greater than you, no I’m greater than you. That’s got to be a weird conversation for Jesus to be listening to. You can just imagine. What’s the context? Their ministry experiences in their home towns.so probably when they went something like this. Peter is talking and says you know things happened in my hometown that is quite similar to the way Jesus ministers. I speak this very humbly but I need you guys to know that I’ve the anointing very similar to the Master Himself. John just sitting there and going “Oh Peter, get over yourself. If you had been with me you would have realized that the power of resurrection was all over me as we saw things happened in my hometown” and they were all arguing to as to who is the greatest.

The concept is how they were used in the ministry in their hometown. I don’t know about your culture but in my culture we don’t sit down with each other and say I’m greater than you. The way in our culture we do it is we don’t say I’m better than you, we just criticize another person. And what is being said by criticizing somebody else is I’m better than you. Jesus looks at these 12 disciples and does this. Takes a child and puts next to Him and says “guys this is greatness” Now this is too simple of a moment, it’s too easy to read through these stories and think well this is entertaining and not realizing what is happening. Jesus is looking at a group of guys who bear some fruits that are really good. Here’s their branch, their branches grows out and they have fruits like these. They have breakthroughs in their hometowns, they obeyed the Lord, they did exactly He said, they preached the sermons, they took the risks and they bore beautiful fruits but the branches is getting kind of weird. It has grown out here and they actually think they are better than each other. So Jesus in His mercy says “Hey guys I want you to watch something. Here we need to prune these branches back and I need to do it because you were so successful and it’s amazing in what you did. I love it, I’m happy with you and we are going to prune this branch back, right here. You see this child and He prunes the branch. What did He do? He redefines greatness for them.
Here’s the funny thing. Notice that Jesus never rebukes them for wanting to become great. What is Jesus doing? Somehow He is creating an atmosphere that they actually think they can become something significant. Religion tries to kill that. Kingdom tries to define it. Religion tries to kill anybody’s passion to have significance. Why? Because we are filled with people who are self-centered, egotistical, they think they are better than others and we react to that false standard not realizing God has put a sense of significance in every one of His kids. Religions kills that passion for greatness and kingdom redefines so that we can pursue it correctly.
What does Jesus say to do it? He says you see this child. This is greatness. In another words you want to be at be at the top then you need to go to the bottom. You want to receive? Make sure that you give all. He redefines biblical greatness. Look at the next story.

Luke 9:49
49 Now John answered and said, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow with us.”
50 But Jesus said to him, “Do not forbid him, for he who is not against us is on our side.”
John is in the group and he has something to say which he thinks Jesus is really going to like. It goes something like this-“Jesus I saw those group of folks over here and they were casting out demons, they were using your name. Can you believe it? They are not even in our club, they are not even in our group, they don’t belong to the inner team of important people so I just told them to knock it off, you guys stop there, you don’t have the right in using that name”. He was expecting Jesus to go “oh John I really like your passion for the team”. There’s a misunderstanding of loyalty. We sometimes use worldly definitions for kingdom principles. Honor and loyalty are huge.

What was John doing? He’s displaying loyalty but the wrong kind of loyalty because in the kingdom you never display loyalty to one and prove it by rejecting another. That’s secular loyalty, that is not godly loyalty. That is of this world, it is demonic in nature. Kingdom loyalty allows me to have a spiritual Father whom I’m totally devoted to and I celebrate all this other influences that are in my life. I don’t have to reject them to show loyalty to this one.
John here is wanting to get rid of any social group that is not associated with them. What does Jesus do? It’s like Jesus is saying “alright John you’ve got this beautiful branch here and you are growing fruits because you’ve got passion for the team, you’ve got passion for loyalty, you have the value for deliverance done correctly and I want to honor that. We’ve got part of the branch here that is growing pretty well so we are going to prune it this way and this is what He says “If he is not against us, he is for us” and then He prunes the branch so that it can bear more fruits. He doesn’t want the branch growing out differently because it’s not going to bear fruit, it’s going to grow in directions God is not intending. And so He brings us a word and He trims it. This is how He deals with you this is how He deals with me. He is a wonderful Father who continuously enhances who we are becoming.
Do you know what happens when God gives you a promise? God goes into your future He grabs the word that is necessary to get you there and He gives you the promise. He deposits that word in you at this point because He’s seen where you are going and He brings the word of the Lord to qualify you, equip you, to prune, to trim so that you can actually reach the destination He has designed for you.

Luke 9:51-56
51 Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, 52 and sent messengers before His face. And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him. 53 But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. 54 And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?”[e]
55 But He turned and rebuked them,[f] and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. 56 For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”[g] And they went to another village.
This is fascinating. Imagine yourself sitting in a group and James and John are a little bit irritated because the city of the Samaritans did not receive them gladly and John leans over to Jesus and said “with Your permission Lord, we would like to kill the entire city in Jesus name of cause, we give You all the glory” This got to be the funniest moment in the disciples’ history. There are 2 things that is funny, one is that they actually think they can pull this off. What was it about their meetings they just had in their home towns that Jesus just nods His head and they would call down fire to kill the entire city. Secondly, they thought this might actually be the heart of God. In my translation it says “Permit us to call down fire just as Elijah did” they even had a Bible reference. Sometimes we missed what God is saying because we are so committed to what He said. God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, as he drew his sword God said “No” I’m sure Isaac was very happy his father kept listening.
Faith doesn’t come from having heard, it comes from hearing. Faith is a present tense expression of one who hears from God. You are designed to be a hearer. I don’t care if you do it poorly it’s still a gift every believer has.
So here’s James and John, they’ve got this wonderful idea we will like to kill the entire city in Jesus name and we give you all the glory. I got to be honest with you. This kind of story seems so foreign to us because it’s so weird, we read it in Bible and forget some of its impact.
Jesus got this group of guys who wants to call down fire. What does Jesus do? No.1 Jesus rebukes them and says you don’t know what matter of spirits you are of. Do you know what He is saying? He is saying you have to go to a different spirit to get that anointing because that is no longer what we are doing. In the Old Testaments there were judgments of such nature to reveal the severity of sin and the New Testament, there’s supposed to be an outpouring of Spirit not destruction. Because it is time to reveal His love. It’s time to reveal the Father. I don’t know why there is so many people scattered all around the planet that are still trying to call down fire on cities in Jesus name. They never get the lesson that Jesus tries to release to His own disciples. I’m not doing that anymore, I came to give life, I didn’t come to destroy people’s lives. How many understand? That is not complicated. It may be challenging but its not complicated concept.
So here we got Jesus empowering 12 guys to change the world. Here’s the bizarre thing. He’s meeting with these 12. These are the 3 things that come out after their successful ministry trip. He blessed them and they went out to preach and they bring back fruit, they started arguing about who’s the greatest , they start rebuking people that are outside of the group and they finally want to call down fire and kill an entire city. And this is the fruit of their success in ministry.

Most of us would consider this a failed attempt at training 12 guys. It’s not working well, let’s try something else. Let’s sit them in a classroom and make them work really hard with their brains. At least it would keep them out of trouble.

Luke 10:1
After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also,
That’s funny. From God’s perspective, it was so successful He just brought seventy more under the team.
Here’s the deal. The Lord is not nervous about selfishness coming to the surface into one of His children’s hearts. Why? Because He prunes.

Grace creates an atmosphere where things come from the heart to the surface so that is can be addressed, so it can be spoken to. Religion keeps us controlled so that we’ll never have those kinds of arguments as to who is the greatest. We never have people thinking they can control who comes to Jesus, who works for Him. This people I told them to knock it off. We never have people have those kinds of things come into their hearts. There are many people who creates religious system to prevent the possibility of there ever being a Judas but the system you create to prevent a Judas from arising is the same system that never allows for a Peter or a John to take their place in shaping world history. Grace is the environment. The answer is not control the answer is look what happened here, these people were together and Jesus had the freedom to speak into each one of their lives about the things that were wrong. That attitude about you being the greatest that’s just really a poor idea , that’s not going to work well for you. You see this child I’ve got here. From My perspective this is how I measure greatness. The simplicity of childhood models greatness for Me. So what is He doing? He is recalibrating, He’s resetting their hearts to anchor themselves into heaven’s values which is what? Humility is greater than pride. Being low is greater than being high. Emptying yourself is better than filling yourselves. All these things is recalibrating their focus. Why? Because He is training them to shape the course of history. He’s about to leave everything into the hands of 12 guys, 1 is going to kill himself so 11 guys. He’s about to leave it all into the hands of 11 mans who thinks they are better than the other, they don’t want to let somebody else to associate with them and any cities they have problems with, they want to kill everybody. This is the group He is about to pass the baton onto so they can carry this kingdom ministry all over the world. So He’s got a little bit of pruning to do.

James and John wants to call down fire to burn down the entire city and Jesus says “ you know this branch you’ve got there , that’s a pretty wild branch, that’s growing in places I really don’t want to see it grow but I like the fact that you’ve got passion and zeal. We are going to prune this branch back to this point because you have to go to a different spirit to get that anointing. I didn’t come to destroy people I came to save them. And all He does is recalibrate their hearts to His values. He didn’t send them home, He didn’t say you can’t preach anymore, He didn’t say I don’t trust you anymore to pray for the sick. He just said listen it doesn’t work the way you think so let’s change the way you think.

This makes me feel ok I can do this. I can’t do a lot of what I saw when I was growing up and I grew up in a great home, in a great church. This standard of a miracle lifestyle is something I couldn’t do. I couldn’t stand before thousands, I didn’t have the gifting, the courage. There’s a lot of stuff it seems to take but when I see these guys trying and doing these stupid stuff after they are successful I think I can do that, I can do stupid stuffs and as long as He talks to me I’m ok. It’s so practical yet it gets forgotten in the process of trying to accomplish great things for God. What is it to accomplish great things for God? It is to be a lover of God. It is to have everybody under your influence be able to rest because of your love for God. People should be able to dream because you put them at ease. Children filled with stress no longer dream. Children who are free in their family, in their household they don’t live under the kind of stress that they worry about the next meal, things of that nature. They are able to dream and no child ever dreams of being insignificant.

I want the effect of my life to put people at rest in God so that they have the freedom to dream. I don’t want to have to dictate what they need to do. I want them to dream, to discover what God put in their hearts. God puts stuff in every one of our hearts.

Grace empowers people. We want our people to rule with the heart of a servant and to serve with a heart of a king. To rule with a heart of a servant, realizing that any position of authority that God have put us in is only because we have the privilege of empowering people around us allowing them to become all that God meant for them to be and it’s also to want that same group of people to serve with a heart of a king. What does that mean? That as a servant role I’ve got a towel over my arm and I’m going to serve you but I’m going to serve you with the realization I’ve access to unlimited resources to impart to you and to impact the course of your life. This is who we are.
We had foster children, children without parents live in our home for a season. I’ll never forget the first few days they were with us when we sat at the table to eat as a family. They were in abusive home, they didn’t have food all the time, they had a mom and a dad who both killed themselves. And now they are in our home and when the food was put at the table, they grabbed everything they could and they began to take over the food. Why? Because all they know is they may not eat again. That’s how orphans act. Jesus came to reveal the Father to an orphaned planet so they no longer have to fight for myself. I become free to dream so that others around me can become healthy because I’m free. I’m free in Jesus. I’m free to think, I’m free to dream, I’m free to hope, I’m free to believe, I’m free to give myself away. Why? Because I don’t live out of insecurity. Insecurity is security exposed.

Children don’t get a junior Holy Ghost. There is no economy model of God. He only comes large. Because of that becoming like a child becomes very appealing. A child comes to the table knowing there will always be food tomorrow; I don’t have to fight for myself.
The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophesy. The testimony where He has done it in the past is a prophetic word that He wants to do it again.

In God’s autobiography, He wrote of Himself “Nothing is impossible with God” All of creations have limitations and restrictions. God knows no impossibility. Then it is like He said everything I’ve made have limitations and restrictions but I want to give those made in my image access to the unlimited nature of My own Person so I’m going to add to My clause and say nothing is impossible to those who believe. It’s like the Lord is saying come on up higher, I want you to know what it is like to look at problems with no fears, to look at challengers with no insecurities what so ever. The person with the most hope have the most influence.

Creating heaven's culture on earth

Pastor Bill Johnson – Creating Heaven’s Culture on Earth

I grew up hearing about stories of miracles but didn’t get to see it. It’s always happening somewhere else like in Africa or a long time ago. I grew up believing a lie, I thought you had to be a special person, I thought you had to have a unique call on your life and I never had those things and I still haven’t been called into ministry. If it happens I’m going to do my best but until then I’m just going to do what I’m doing. I’ve never had the experience that so many people have or God says you’re going to be this, you’re going to be that. It could happen any day now but as yet it hasn’t happen.

But what I found on the pages of scriptures, there were these stories about what Jesus would do and the miracles will happen and then He tells His disciples how to do that and then before He left He told His disciples, teach your disciples the same thing. Which all of a sudden means this is for everybody. This is supposed to be maintained constantly. Years ago I heard a story of a pastor who was a tremendous Bible teacher, great man of God, he’s home with the Lord right now.

He was building a new building, a new sanctuary. He wanted so much to be involved in the hammering and the cutting of boards. He wanted to help build but he wasn’t a builder, he didn’t know what he was doing and didn’t know that stuff but he wanted so bad to help so and I didn’t know what I was doing.

I have the privilege of paying people to do stuff because I don’t know that stuff. He wanted so badly to help so he talked to the builder, the man in charge of the building. He said “ I want to do something”, so the man said “ listen we need a hundred boards cut, 6 feet long and you do that tonight and after we leave and come back tomorrow, all the boards should be cut and we get right to work”.

He took the first one and he took a measure of 6 feet and he marked it and cut that board and then instead of taking the tape measure and putting on the second board, he just used the board that he just cut and he put it on the next board and used a pencil and drew on the end of it then used a saw and cut that board but then instead of taking the second board that he cut, he took the third board and put it on the fourth board that was uncut and he laid it out and he marked it.

Those of you who ever done this know that every time you put a board where you cut it just right and you mark it, it’s about an 8th to a quarter of an inch too long and he did this for a hundred boards. By the time he got to the one hundredth board. He has boards that are over 7 feet long and they are all supposed to be 6 feet long.
For 2000 years, we keep using the last generation as the measurement of what Jesus looks like instead of the original cut/the original model. We’ve got to be current to which Jesus taught and what He said to do. Jesus Christ is perfect theology. Anything which you think you know about God that can’t be found from the person of Jesus, you have the reason to question.

Jesus came to reveal the Father. The Old Testament is necessary, it is profound it establishes the context in which the Messiah would come but the Old Testament did not reveal the Father, that’s why He came. There’s an incredible difference between Old and New Testament, it’s as different as night and day. I’m so thankful for the Old Testament, I love the Old Testament actually. Everything is so fatal in the Old Testament. The only answer for anything is to just kill the guy. If you got a problem with the rebellious son you just stone him. Kill the nations, kill the cats and dogs, you just kill everything. There’s this severity of sin that had to be realized by humanity, in the entire context of humanity. This thing was created where people realize sin is severe, I need a Savior, I can’t do it for myself, I hope somebody shows up to help and that’s the Old Testament.

Jesus came, everything’s different. And I don’t know why but people still try to pattern their ministry after wonderful men and women of God from the Old Testament. In the Old Testament the power of sin is a primary revelation and now because of that if you were carrying a lamb in the Old Testament to the temple to be sacrificed. You’re carrying this lamb and somebody came up who was unclean and they touched your lamb or they spit on it, suddenly you have an offering that is unclean. Why? Because the primary lesson was the severity of sin. Sin contaminates everything it touches. In the Old Testament, if you touched a leper you become unclean but in the New Testament you touch the leper and the leper becomes clean. In the Old Testament, you were warned about being with angry people, lest you too become angry. Who you associate with will contaminate you. In the New Testament, the believing spouse sanctifies the entire household, it’s the power of righteousness to realize what Christ has done in you. It’s actually come to a point where we have to start believing we are actually born again. That the Spirit of God lives in us and made us new, a new creation. What would it be like if we actually believe in the power of our own conversion? That’s what the Lord is doing for all of us, all over the earth. He’s stirring this thing up in us


Luke 3
I want to talk to you about creating a culture that is like the culture in heaven. Sometimes we pray prayers that we know are right because they are in the Bible but we don’t understand what we’re saying. For example, we pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God actually plans for this world to become like that one. It wasn’t a carelessly thought out prayer by Jesus. It wasn’t a prayer about someday going to heaven. You don’t have the responsibility in going to heaven, you have the responsibility to bring heaven. There’s a difference between your destiny and your assignment. Your assignment as man and woman of God is people’s faith, is people who knows how to make godly decrees into the lands to respond to the Spirit of God with risk and radical obedience. We draw the reality of that world into this one. We love it when it shows up and brings healing into the body or bring deliverance to the torment on somebody’s mind. All those things are essential expressions of the gospel, but this gospel is bigger than that. It has to do with how we treat our wives and it’s not just that about being unkind to my wife. It’s literally that a relationship together is patterned after the reality of relationships in that world.
See in heaven there is honor for everyone. Everyone is celebrated, nobody is tolerated. In heaven, you celebrate who a person is without stumbling over who they’re not. So much time in the church life, there is a stumbling over offense that is because somebody is not good in that area or strong in that area, they have no gifts and its remarks like that that undermines the grace that is working at a person’s life and in the culture of honor we value people because they are made in the image of God. It doesn’t mean we ignore sin, it doesn’t mean we turn our heads when somebody needs our help or assistance to get out of the problem, doesn’t mean that at all. But it does mean that the Lord wants us to learn how that world relates, what is valuable in that world.

Number 1, everything rotates around the presence. In church after church, all around the world, tonight, tomorrow, all through this weekend. Millions of believers will be gathering. It’s a wonderful point of celebration to know that they are that many converts of the Lord Jesus Christ scattered all over the planet. Tens of millions of believers, its glorious. But most of them will gather around a sermon. Israel camped around the presence, it’s their supreme value of heaven. Everything about that world rotates around the value of the actual presence of God. It’s got to be more than a theory, it’s got to be more than a theological statement. It is a fact that everything rotates around the presence. And that culture is working to permeate this culture.
It’s wonderful when we can pick things up, you can see it in the worship, and you can see it in the celebration in the joy that’s involved with worshipping. That’s heaven. You can see it in the decrees, the absolute confidence in God, you can see it in the affections shown to one another. All these things are traces of that world permeating this one.

I want to emphasize it, highlight it, underscore it but I also want to say that there is more.
The Lord is ready to unveil blueprints of His world to show us how to adjust and pattern our lives on earth as it is in heaven. There’s an effect of kingdom culture on humanity. The way I like to illustrate it is what happened several years ago.

I was in Holland and had a break one afternoon in this conference that we were doing. So they took us down town where there were these large green houses and Netherland is known for the supplying of the large percentage of the world’s tulips. They are absolutely beautiful. God is such an amazing artist. My friend and I went into this building and we saw acres after acres of these tulips, beautiful tulips, all in rows, in entire sections of yellow, green, red. It was just acres after acres of them. It was spectacular, it was so great. There were people and the weather was just freezing cold on the outside and the inside was rather pleasant, it was actually a wedding going on. There was wedding gown and people were just celebrating the beauty in this fabulous place. You have control over light, you have control of moisture, temperature. What you do is you work to create an atmosphere so that in their case tulips grows easily. Now the interesting thing is the tulips there were in abundance inside the building won’t have a chance outside the building as the weather is too horrible but inside it was just spectacular. And what a kingdom culture does as we learn this in our homes, in our relationships, as teams, staff members in churches and in offices, businesses, schools etc. As we learn as a group of believers, how to adjust our lives first of all around the presence, that it is not just a theory anymore, not just a doctrinal statement but we are actually drew in together to honor the presence of the Lord above everything else and that presence dictates, determines the focus of the day. As we learn to live this way and it begins to permeate how we think and all the values we have of life suddenly we are creating a greenhouse effect over an entire group of believers. It’s quite possible in some nations, in fact it’s already happening here. There is a greenhouse effect and what I mean by that is , culture, the way you do life, the way you worship, the way in your leadership, the way you’ve stuck together in difficult times is created a culture in this house and what is it? It’s an atmosphere in which the right kinds of seeds grow easily and that’s the desire. You want to touch a city so what do you do? You learn how to do kingdom culture here and you get outside of the box you permeate society around you and bring heaven’s values into that culture.

You don’t start as far as adjusting culture, you don’t start by necessary getting them to believe in Christ even. It’s what we do we help to establish right relationships. We value people, we celebrate, we honor, we congratulate, we commend, we do what we can to help people in tragedy, in crisis. We just live that kind of a lifestyle obviously proclaiming Christ every chance we have but the point is your life establishes an atmosphere that creates a culture and here it is the seeds you want to grow, grow easily in your city.

What are those seeds? Healthy families. Many churches work hard to get healthy families in their cities but they haven’t succeeded in establishing a kingdom culture in the house so that it can be transferred out of the house. The point I’m trying to make is how we do life creates an atmosphere in which all the things that we value. Healthy families, businesses that succeed, where everybody wins. It’s a win win. It’s not we stop this person that a city flourishes. It’s a fact that drug abusers are dealt with and people live a life that is free from addiction and entanglements. It’s the kind of thing that everybody wants. All your schools teachers, all your political leaders. They all want that. Everybody has that same value and so we have common ground but we have the secrets, we have the key. What is it? It’s the presence of King Jesus.

We come into this environment, we learn to live with risk here so that out there we have a presence that begins to impregnate culture and society and bring about change.
Now I want to talk to you about this. I have to give it somewhat quickly cause I want to make sure we have time to pray for the sick at the end of this message but I’m not talking about healing. I actually don’t teach it very often. I just talk about Jesus, He likes to heal people so it’s a good combination. Here’s what I want to do. In Luke chapter 3, I’ve got a long list to go so I need you to listen fast. Instead of giving you a wine gauntlet, I’m going to give you a shot glass and refill it every once in a while. Take another drink and find out what God is saying, what He is doing.

Luke 3:21
21 When all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also was baptized; and while He prayed, the heaven was opened. 22 And the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven which said, “You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.”
This story I cannot tell you how important this story is for me and my own life. So much of what I learned I spent the first goodness 25 years probably of pastoral ministry studying the entire Bible as you ought to. I focused a lot on Old Testament. I would try to draw out the truths that I could out of the Old Testament but something have happened in me in the last 15 years. I can just hardly get out of the gospels. I actually figured out that it was actually all about Jesus. I don’t know why it took me so long but I had to get it down that it is all about Jesus. And I’ve yet to get the lifestyle down and that is what I’m fighting to learn about. So I read this stuff about Jesus. He comes to John to be baptized and John is scared to death at the moment. Why? Because he just prophesied that there is one coming after me, I’m not even worthy to untie His shoes and Jesus walks right up to John and says “baptize Me” well that’s kind of weird because John baptizes a baptism of repentance and Jesus has no sins to repent of but He wanted to identify with you and me enough that He was willing to stand in a baptism of repentance when He had no sin to repent of. Amazing thing John knew he was not qualified but sometimes when you are willing to do what you are not qualified to do, that is what qualifies you. Jesus was baptized in water and when He came out of the water as Bible says the Holy Spirit came upon Him in the form of a dove and remained. This is John’s gospel, adds this quality to it. I want you to hear this part. I have so much to say this evening but if you only got one thing this is probably going to be the most important. Jesus came out of the water, the Holy Spirit came upon Him in the form of a dove and remained. I want you to understand something we need power and authority. Authority comes in the commission. Power comes in the encounter. To the degree we embrace the commission of God to that degree we walk in authority. Power comes through encounter. They are not the same. They are complimentary but they are not the same. That’s why Jesus gave authorities to His disciples in Matthew 28 but Luke 24 told them not to leave Jerusalem till they were clothed with power. They needed both. Jesus lived it. Here He is baptizes in the water, comes out of the water, the Holy Spirit comes upon Him in the form of a dove and the point I want you to remember is - and remained. Now if I’ve got a dove sitting on my shoulder and I don’t want him to fly away. I want Him to do it as it says with Jesus. Came upon me in the form of a dove and remained. If I don’t want Him to fly away, how do I walk around in this room? Every step is with the dove in mind. Every movement is to preserve what I value most.

Jesus lived in a way in which He neither grieve nor quench the Holy Spirit. Grieving has to do with sin. Quenching got to do with the stop of the flow of the Spirit of God. These are 2 complimentary subjects, 2 side of the same coin if you will. To grieve the Spirit is what we do when we sin, sin in action, in attitude, in what we dwell on, think. Sin grieves the Spirit of God but to quench the Spirit means to stop the flow of. Grieving is character issues, quenching is power issues. People asked me isn’t character more important than gift and I understand the thinking because I get so nauseated over people that are very gifted but they just can’t be trusted or they live immoral lifestyles and it’s so grieving to me but I want you to hear my heart on this unfortunately I have enough time to open a problem and then I leave town so I’ll let your pastors fix this. I want you to think carefully about this. Which is more important? To not grieve the Spirit or to not quench the Spirit? One is character centered the other is power centered. I believe that it’s absolutely essential to walk in purity and in character, I believe that with all of my heart but the problem is what we make character the pre-requisite for power, gifts are no longer gifts they are now rewards.

It says Jesus is baptized, the heaven opened and the Spirit of God came upon Him in the form of a dove. I want to hit one more thing if I can. The pastor earlier during the offering was talking profoundly about heaven opening promise in Malachi 3. There is something about radical acts of obedience in fact just simple acts of obedience just causes that open heaven to rest over us. At the same time I believe we are to look for ways to radically obey to rend the open heavens over our lives but also our cities, over our churches. There is also another reality that Jesus illustrated to us in the story. In Mark’s gospel, it says the heaven was parted at the water baptism of Jesus. Just picture this, He’s baptized in the water and when He comes out, the heaven parts, the Holy Spirit comes in the form of a dove and rest upon Jesus. But the word there for parting is actually a violent term, it’s not just the removing of clouds, it’s actually a violent action from heaven’s side of things. How do we know? Because the word parting is the word found in Matthew that talks about the tearing of the veil in the temple at the death of Christ so we know that is not merely the whispering of the clearing of clouds. It is a violent tearing of the spirit realm that hovered over Jerusalem, that hovered over humanity and so here’s Jesus and He is baptized in water and when He comes out, the Father tears open the heaven and the Spirit of God comes upon Him. It is interesting that word in Matthew is also used twice in one verse. It is not only used to describe the tearing the veil in the temple, it’s the same word used to describe the breaking of the rocks around Jerusalem at the death of Christ. Jesus died the veil in the temple was ripped from top to bottom and rocks around Jerusalem, just cracked open. That violent act of tearing rocks is the word described parting the heaven. I would like to suggest to you that what happens in this chapter in this moment is the answer to Isaiah’s prayer, rend the heavens and come down. The prayer he prayed over humanity, God we need open heavens. And he cried out, he taught generations in fact that prophetic word has been prayed probably by you guys. It’s been prayed by us countless times as we prayed God rend the heavens and come down and it’s vital that we prayed this kinds of things for our churches and for our cities but I also want to deal with it from another angle. Do you know that every believer has an opened heaven? That’s how the Holy Spirit is upon you. Do you know that the Father in heaven is zealous for the spirit in you can you think of any demonic power that can block the fellowship of those two? Listen what you most conscious of you will release into the atmosphere. You will always broker that which you are most aware of if you’re filled with anxiety because you’re fearful of this failure, fearful of the doctor’s report, whatever it might be. The anxiety that you feel, you walk into a room, you don’t have to say anything, people start picking up what you’re carrying. Why? Because you’re most aware of the issues and the problems but when you cultivate an awareness of the Spirit of God who rest upon you because you actually live and dwell under an opened heaven, guess what? You walk into a room and the atmospheric shift because somebody steward the presence well walks into the room and changes the atmosphere.

Think about this, it is how Peter’s shadow can heal the sick. There’s no substance to a shadow. But the truth is your shadow will always release whatever overshadows you. We’re carriers of a Person, of a Dove that remains. Living aware of this open heaven.

How do you increase in finances? By correct stewardship.
How do you increase in favor in relationships? By stewarding what you have.
How do you increase in open heavens? By stewarding in what you’ve been given.

Verse 1 of chaper 4.

Jesus been filled with the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Being tempted by the devil for 40 days, in those days He ate nothing. Afterward when it had ended He was hungry. That’s a miracle verse to me, I don’t understand how you can, not eat for 40 days and only get hungry after you have finished fasting. The devil said to Jesus in verse 3, if You’re the Son of God command the stones to become bread. Look at verse 22 of chapter 3. A voice came from heaven and said You’re My beloved Son, in You I’m well pleased. Yet in verse 3 of chapter 4, the devil said to Him if You’re the Son of God. This is a pretty big deal because if we don’t understand how things work in this born again life, in this kingdom of heaven, the King’s domain, the realm of His dominion. If we don’t understand how the economy of that world works we’ll be constantly frustrated because we’ll think we’ve done something wrong when we are in a conflict when often times we’re in a conflict because we did something right.

Jesus goes into the wilderness, He’s fasting and the devil shows up “If You’re the Son of God turn the stones into bread. What was the last thing the Father spoke to Jesus? “You’re My beloved Son. What was the first thing the devil attacked? Was the last thing He heard from the Father. You have to understand that, what the Father speaks to you attracts conflict. If you don’t get that you’ll constantly have negative self-talk, self-criticism, you’ll find fault with others around you because you don’t understand what’s happening in your life. The word of the Lord attracts conflict. We know this from Matthew 13, it talks about the seeds that was planted in that rocky soil and Jesus used this phrase “and when tribulation and persecution arises because of the word” the word of the Lord attracts conflict.

There is probably a thousand reasons why but I have 2 reasons why. The first is the word of the Lord needs to be opposed in order for you to see the strength of that word. See the Lord releases a promise over your life that you are now ready to take a bullet for. The Lord summons you, calls you into eternal life He gives you divide purpose, He releases a word over your life that’s going to shape the remainder of your days and now you’re to hold to that word as though it is your very life. Are you going to do that if you’re going to begin by questioning the strength and authenticity of that word? No. So the word must be opposed so that you can see how strong that prevailing word is over your life.

The Lord is trying to toughen us up, He’s trying to make us faithful soldiers that are truly committed to one thing. Our resiliency, our resolve, our focus to be able to serve Him completely regardless and so He put a word in us that actually attracts conflict. Why does He do that? Because it’s the only way we can see the strength of the word released over our lives. That word can be released to you in so many different ways, it may be just a desire of your heart He confirms to you. It’s maybe you’re studying the scripture and this portion of scripture stands out to you and you realized that God is summoning you to something in particular. Let’s say it’s this passion for evangelism, you just weep over the lost, you just have this sense God is really putting an evangelistic anointing on you and it may come through a prophet, you may have some man of God or woman of God come and they are preaching and they stop in the middle of the message and say he who is in the red stand up and that person stands. And they began to prophesy and they may say something of this nature “I see the Lord putting upon you a mantle much like the one He put upon smith Wigglesworth and disease will stand before that man and he will raise the dead and he will do such and such. And you’re called to do the same thing. It’s a great encouraging word and anybody who receives word of such nature should be ready for some conflict for the word of the Lord attracts conflict. It’s wonderful to dream, we see people get these great words, they are right words, accurate words but they get these words and they don’t know what to do with it. They try to go out and perform it. Much like what Abraham did, he tried to create his own son, he tried to bring about the purposes of God on his own and it always creates a problem. And here is the word of the Lord over your life, you’re going to walk with extraordinary faith, you’re going to be called an apostle of faith, bringing miracles to nations all over the world. It’s a little intimating but still encouraging.
Here’s the word of the Lord over your life, it’s a revelation of divine purpose and assignment. As sure as I’m standing here, something will happen where you’ve got a love one or friend who needs a miracle and you prayed your best prayer and they are not healed. What do you do? You now have the word of the Lord and a contradictory experience. Do you know what this is? It’s 2 trees in a garden. There has to be 2 trees in every garden
The second reason the word of God must come under conflict and opposition is because there has got to be a second option created for you to either respond to the word of the Lord or the question that undermines the word. Why is that necessary? Because God wants me to fail? No. He just wants to reward you for making the right choice and there is no reward where there is no options.

All of heaven backs the revelation of your life. That word of promise that He gave you that summons that call that I’ve put on to mantle that is similar to that of Smith Wigglesworth. Ok awesome word. Here’s the word of the Lord. All of heaven is ready to attend to that word, to support it, to cause it to come about. Now you have a contradictory experience. There is no power or authority in that contradictory word. But you have authority and if you lend your heart to the question, you empower a powerless word so much that it can undermine the prophetic word over your life. And the Lord is looking for soldiers, soldiers who will embrace the word over their lives regardless of circumstances. I’ve learned more about the goodness of the Lord since losing my dad to a disease we see healed. What happens in disappointments like that? What happens in loss? What happens when you cried out to God, you prayed the way you’ve always prayed and you do the things you’re supposed to do. A great man of God, a great man of faith and he dies. I watched him at his bed side as he withers away and dies. Nobody could look at that man and that disease and believe that God gave it to him as a gift. It’s from the powers of hell and we should hate the disease as much as Jesus hated the disease. It brought Him to a place where He bore stripes on His body. He despised it so much. And you look at that suffering that somebody goes through. Thankfully it ended in death, he is eternally with the Lord. I rejoice in that.

But here is this moment. You’ve got confusion, you’ve got questions, you’ve every reason to start questioning this that’s been declared over your life.

What are you going to do with your moment?
What are you going to do with your disappointment? How about the stuff you now can’t explain?
You have more questions than you have answers. What do you do?

I tell you what I did. I took the painful season and I held it as close to me as I could. All the pain, all the confusions, all the questions, and I held it as close as I could and then I gave God praise for being good. Because you see, I’ll never have disappointment, loss, confusion, I’ll never have any of those things in heaven. The only chance I’ve to give Him an offering out of my pain is here on earth. I only get one chance at this to give Him an offering with the fragrance of loss, disappointment and pain. I’m going to take my moment because I’ll never have another one like this, I’ll never have another of this experience in which to declare His goodness and His greatness so I embrace these moments as though as incense being flavored by loss. There is something of that pain that I want to influence my absolute celebration of the goodness of God and we stood as a family, with hands raised. Thanking God for a dad who taught us the priority of worship. We stood there with his lifeless body. Willing to embrace the call that we were worshippers before we were anything else. We want this loss to affect the offering as we will never have another chance in eternity to give Him that same offering.
God is looking for people He can trust. He can only find out He can trust you by allowing a second tree in the garden. It’s the contradictory experience.

What do you do with the questions?
What do you do with the confusions?
What do you do with the disappointments?

If you feed your heart on what God is doing you’ll always do well. If you feed yourself on what He hasn’t done you’ll end up with the spirit of offence and you’ll end up unbelieving. Unbelief is a partnership with the demonic realm against God.

Luke 4:14
14 Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of Him went out through all the surrounding region. 15 And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.

Just notice that after this encounter with the Spirit of God, He went into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil when He came out that’s when He could display power. Many people cannot display power or even though they had many wonderful experiences but they cannot display power because they keep tossing between the word of the Lord and their contradictory experience. Jesus made it through that experience when the devil said “If you’re the Son of God” questioned the very word over His life. When He navigated that experience, He came out and displayed power.

16 So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. 17 And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:

I’m looking forward to the moment the body of Christ stand up and say to the world :

18 “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,[j]
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
19 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.”[k]

Jesus reads these verses to Nazareth His hometown but something is starting to happen in that room, He’s in the synagogue. They’ve never heard from God before. I don’t know if you realized the context which Jesus is ministering. He stands up to read. Picture this. He is in Nazareth, in the synagogue and there’s a hundred people there. He is inside the synagogue, stands up to read, He is just one of the guys. Nobody knows anything about Him yet except His mom. She knows He is the Son of God but nobody else knows. Picture this, for 4 hundred years the heaven have been silence toward humanity, no dreams, no visions, no prophets, no prophesies, silence.

Jesus stands up to read. They all sitting there, going through the motions on every other Sabbaths. Jesus stands there and says “ The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me” something happens. Jesus reveals what happen on John 6. He said “My words to you are spirit and they are life”. Here is the Son of God, He is the word of God made flesh, but now when He talks the words becomes spirit. Remember He only says whatever the Father says. So when He speaks now His words become spirit. Why is that vital? Why is that so important? Because the Holy Spirit is where the kingdom is.

Romans 14:17
17 for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

The kingdom of God is in the Holy Spirit. The kingdom is in the Spirit. Another way to look at it is where the scripture says “where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty” lets rephrase that to emphasize something. Where the Holy Spirit demonstrates the Lordship of Jesus, liberty is the evidence, liberty is the result. Citizens of the kingdom are free, that’s the point, He came to set us free. The evidence that we are the citizens of the kingdom is we are free. So now Jesus comes to a crowd, words become spirit. He stands up to a group of people and begins to preach to them. Picture now what’s happening. Words become spirit, what does the spirit contain? The kingdom. What is the kingdom? It is the answer to every earthly dilemma. On earth as it is in heaven. And as He speaks He says repent. Repent means to change the way you think. And so He comes announcing the reality of His world co-existing with the world that we live in and as He speaks the Holy Spirit is released over the group of people and changing the options that they have because just moments ago there were no solutions to their disease. But Jesus began to talk and says “now the kingdom of heaven is at hand” it’s within reach. Why? He just spoke.

Because in God’s world, the word creates. He speaks and changes the reality over the group of people. Says repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, it’s within reach. Most Christians repent enough to get forgiven but not enough to see the kingdom. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It’s from, onto.

As Jesus reads these words, everybody in the synagogue are sitting there somewhat stunned by what they are hearing because they’ve never heard God’s voice before. They don’t know what it is. You know it every day of your lives. You sit and read the scripture and feel the life of God’s words. They have no experience of the word coming to live, they don’t know what it is like to have the prophetic word change their lives.

Jesus stands up to read and He says these words “the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me” but the difference now is His words became spirit and the spirit filled the atmosphere and everybody in the synagogue is realizing something is different with this moment. My particular translation, I really like how it treats this verse. Verse 22. It says “ all bore witness of Him” what does this means? The implication of this is I think is incredible. They are all sitting there looking at Jesus, having an internal witness that this is the Messiah. What is this important? What was Nazareth known for? Unbelief. Nazareth in the Bible was known for unbelief the same way that Babylon is known for immorality. But what I want you to see is they didn’t start there. They started with the divine encounter, started with the release of the presence into the atmosphere. There was something that was happening with them as they heard Jesus’ inaugural address. Announcing His ministry on planet earth, declaring the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me and as He announces these words. Words become spirit. There is an atmospheric shift all over the synagogue that people are sitting there and they all have the internal witness. “This is what we prayed for, for generations”. The next thing it says “they marveled over the gracious words proceeding from His mouth”. What is grace? It is divine favor. But it’s more than that. Jesus increased in grace and in favor. It’s the empowering presence of God, it’s as though favor releases the Spirit of God upon you where He enables and empowers you to do what only God can do. It’s divine favor that enables and empowers because it releases presence.

They are sitting in the synagogue and they have this internal light that goes off. It’s like it’s the first time they feel alive and then it says they were marveled, stunned, they were intellectually baffled by the grace filled words that are coming from His mouth.

Then somebody in the group leans over and says “isn’t that Joseph’s son?”
God is not opposed to reasoning but reasoning that doesn’t have Christ as it’s center will be demonic in nature. God is not intimidated by anybody’s questions. But questions that put God on trial are not accepted in heaven. Mary the mother of Jesus had a question “how can I bear the Christ, child? I’m still a virgin” God is not intimidated by questions. What He doesn’t like is Zachariah’s question when the angel shows up and says “You’re going to have a son”. “How do I know this is really true?” Questions that put God on trial are not acceptable. Questions are actually out of inquisitiveness or desire to learn, are celebrated in heaven.

Reasoning apart from divine knowledge undermines the revelation. The revelation of Jesus the Messiah and the second tree of It’s Joseph’s son. What happened in Nazareth is they all embraced the contrary experience and they undermine the greatest revelation any city has ever had since the beginning of time. And that was the unveiling of Jesus as the Messiah. And how was it undone? By a question, a contradictory experience. Jesus tries to help them through this issue and began to teach in verse 24 “Then He said, “Assuredly, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country.” Another way that was taught is stated “a prophet is not without honor except in his own country”.

Matthew 10:41 says this “if you honor a prophet in a name of a prophet, you will receive a prophet’s reward”. If you honor a prophet according to the favor God has given him then you will be able to draw fully from their gift. If you honor a prophet not as a prophet but as a brother then you have access to the reward of a good brother. Why? The concept here that Jesus is teaching the people is the honor you give determines what you receive.

25 But I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout all the land; 26 but to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath,[m] in the region of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 27 And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

The message that Jesus gives in these 3 verses is the culture for miracles or the culture of unbelief. He’s presenting a contrast and Nazareth has already bought into unbelief by elevating human reason above faith.
The mind is important. Jesus died to protect the mind of men. The problem is the mind is either being renewed or it’s at war with God. The mind is not to be worshipped. The heart can take you places the head can’t fit.

Jesus turns to His own citizens in His community and says there are a lot of widows in need of food and the famine in Israel but God took care of only one. He said there was a lot of lepers in Israel in the days of Elisha the prophet but he healed only one and it wasn’t even in the nation of Israel. Here’s the point Jesus is making. He’s illustrating healing power and supernatural provision. Elisha called forth famine, for the rain to stop, for the rain to start. A tremendous man of faith he was. Jesus told them their own history. There was famine, God is Jehovah-Jirah He is the Great Provider. It’s not just what He does, it is who He is. He sought for people to provide for but because there was not sufficient honor for those He had favor on. He could not release supply to a group of people because the honor wasn’t sufficient. So He found a widow to display His nature upon. God must express who He is and if His own covenant people do not respond in honor to what He’s doing He will find somebody outside the family to touch.

This explains why the most difficult people to minister to are the people in the church. The world gets healed so quickly and people say it’s because of God’s heart of evangelism. No. It’s not either. Is He an evangelist? Of coz. Does He love the loss? Of coz. But He doesn’t bring you into the family so that He can ignore you. He doesn’t bring you into the family and then ok now I’m mad at you. It will be a perversion of a household if I’ve fed all the neighborhood kids and I didn’t feed my own children. It’s not either or.

Elisha a man with double anointing comes along and a lot of lepers around according to Jesus’ sermon and God who is a Healer by nature looks around the land and cannot find a measure of honor necessary to draw the gift out of the prophet so God sovereignly goes to the general of an enemy’s army and heal to manifest to humanity who He is. The sovereignty of God has you written into the equation. What we do with what He’s given us has a tremendous impact on humanity. God invites us into this partnership.

Jesus points it out. Hey Nazareth do you know why your breakthrough never happened? Remember Elijah? Remember Elisha? The Spirit of God was upon both of them but because the entire nation rejected giving honor to what was resting on them even though they brought the answer to solve the issue of famine and disease neither were experienced by the nation.

The reason we are supposed to learn ministry at home before we learn ministry outside of home. Jesus said a prophet is not without honor at home. Why do you need to learn the ministry at home first before ministry outside? So that you do not become addicted to the applause of men. It’s important we learn ministry in the context where people know more than they need to know about us because if you can weather that one then you can be entrusted with favor.
The anointed man and woman of God is often times the person sitting next to you, in front of you, the one we are familiar with. That’s the problem. The problem is familiarity causes us to stop seeing the favor of God that is resting on a person. It’s not practical till it’s with the people we know well. Paul says we are to know one another after our spirits. Not after our personalities or our histories.

I know we have this question, does God have that someone for me?
And so i found this from www.BibleIssues.org and i hope it will help you just as it does for me.





DOES GOD HAVE A SPOUSE
PREPARED FOR EVERYONE?

By Denver Cheddie

Someone once asked me, “Do you believe that God has a spouse for each
person?” My response was a resounding NO. Absolutely not! Yet there are
many Christians who believe that God has a spouse for each person.
Romance novels and songs like “I wonder what God was thinking when He
created you” all contribute to this notion. Personally I am disinclined to
accept this view primarily because there is not a shred of evidence for it
from scripture. In fact, there is much evidence from scripture for the
opposing view, that we must go out and find ourselves a spouse.
Now this is by no means false doctrine. No one’s going to burn in hell for
believing that God has a perfect spouse for them. But it may keep them
single all their life. I’ve seen it. A young lady keeps turning down potential
husbands because she has not “heard from God” or someone told her “he is
not God’s will for you”. Years go by and she’s not so young anymore, and
still waiting for God to “bring someone into her life”. Of course, there is
nothing wrong with remaining single – if that is what one wants. However, if
one is interested in being married, I would like to dispel the myth that God
has a spouse prepared for each person.


Biblical Precedent

Adam was the only person who ever just woke up and saw the perfect
woman next to him. God has not done that for anyone else. The bible uses
language like “Abraham took a wife”, “Judah took a wife”. There is no record
in the bible, New or Old Testament, of anyone sitting on their butt expecting
God to send that perfect person in their life. The precedent that the bible
sets is that of men going out and finding their wives.
There are only two exceptions – Hosea and Joseph. God told Hosea to marry
Gomer, and Joseph to marry Mary. The first was because He wanted to get a
point across to Israel, the second to facilitate his plan of redemption. These
are exceptional cases, not the norm. This is NOT how God normally works
concerning marriage.
God does not have an ordained spouse
There are other reasons why I don’t believe God has a spouse prepared for
each of us. For one, it makes no logical sense. Think about it. Suppose God
predestined that person A will marry person B, and suppose person A
marries someone else or never gets saved. Then what is person B supposed
to do? Marry outside of “God’s will”?

Secondly, suppose things did in fact work out for persons A and B, and they
got married, lived happily ever after. Then person B dies. Is person A
allowed to remarry? According to the bible, yes. But according to the view
that God has a spouse prepared for each one, no. Who is person A going to
remarry? God’s perfect spouse for her already died. Does God have two
spouses prepared for her?
Thirdly, why didn’t Paul get married? He said that he could have if he wanted
to, but chose not to (1 Cor 9:5). Now it’s either God had a wife prepared for
Paul, and Paul was not co-operating by choosing to remain single. Or it was
God’s will for Paul to remain single, in which case Paul had no right, writing
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to say that he could have taken a
wife if he wanted to. Which is it? But there is a third option. God had no wife
prepared for Paul, but instead gave Paul the liberty and the wisdom to
choose whether or not he wanted to marry. Paul decided that given his
ministry – traveling all the time and the possibility of being killed at any
moment – it was better to remain single.
Fourthly, Paul seems to teach that whether someone marries is a matter of
circumstance rather than design. In 1 Cor. 7, he discourages young people
from marrying because of the “present distress”. In 1 Tim. 5, on the other
hand, he encourages the young widows to remarry, again because of
individual circumstances. Never in his discussion, was there any hint that
God may have a fore-ordained plan concerning marriage and we need to get
in tune with it.


God has given us the choice

God has left it entirely up to us to choose our spouse. He gives us wisdom
and liberty to make that choice. He has only set one condition for us – that
believers marry fellow believers[1] (2 Cor 6:14; 1 Cor 7:39). That’s it. As far
as God is concerned, it does not matter whether you marry someone who is
fat or thin, short or tall, brown eyed or blue eyed. It doesn’t matter to God.
God also does not care one bit about ministry. It is OK if a preacher gets
married to a caterer. That’s fine with God. There is nothing in the bible that
says your ministries have to “complement each other”. There are some
people who believe that (I used to). The bible clearly teaches that although
we have a diversity of ministries, it’s all one Spirit (1 Cor 12:4-6). In other
words, any forms of Christian ministry will automatically complement each
other, you don’t have to fret over that.
Any condition beyond the one God stipulated is really a personal and
individual matter. For example, one man may decide he wants to marry
someone who doesn’t work. That’s entirely up to his discretion. Neither the
bible nor God requires this. The idea that we need God to decide who we
marry is absurd. Yes God brings people in and out of our lives, but ultimately
it is we who decide, not God. If I may be so bold, God does not care who
you marry (providing it’s a fellow Christian) or whether you marry. As far as
God is concerned, life is short and those with spouses are just as those
without (1 Cor 7:29). And as far as God is concerned, marriage is solely for
our earthly enjoyment and has no eternal significance (Matt 22:30). If you
want to get married, then YOU have to find a spouse.

God’s will concerning marriage is what I call post-determined as opposed to
pre-determined. God does not decide in advance who gets married to whom.
Of course He knows what will happen, but let’s not confuse ourselves trying
to figure out what God knows. Let’s go solely on what He reveals / has
revealed to us. It is after two people get married that God puts his stamp of
approval on it and says “This is now my will. You are now one flesh, and
whatever I join, let no one separate.” That’s how God works. Whoever you
choose to marry becomes God’s will after you get married. Note that this is
true even if a believer marries an unbeliever. It still becomes God’s will. I
know persons who got married then later decided, “You know what? This
was never God’s will, I’m getting out.” This is grossly unscriptural. It’s a
product of this misguided view that God predetermines people for marriage.
The right attitude in relationships
The belief that God has a perfect spouse out there results in a passive
attitude toward finding a spouse, and even after you do get married it
creates a passive attitude in handling marital issues. In this day of 50%
divorce rates, a passive attitude is detrimental to the relationship. If deep
down inside you believe that there is such a thing as a perfect spouse,
you’re going to set your expectations so high, that everyone will disappoint
you. You will always find some flaw in the other person that you don’t like.
Secondly, if you believe that God predestined both of you to be together,
then you are likely to believe that the relationship will “just work out”. You
don’t have to do too much, God will work it out. Wrong! It is YOUR job to
work it out. It is a couple’s job to handle the problems that come up in a
relationship. A couple must decide that whatever comes their way, they are
staying together. This requires an aggressive and pro-active attitude toward
the relationship. Please rid your mind of this disease that it is God’s job to
handle your marital business. It’s yours. 1 Tim 3 holds men responsible
when their families go astray, not God.
Now is God totally detached from our choices? No. God is very much
involved in our day to day lives, especially important decisions like who we
marry. But we need to properly understand God’s role and our role. What
exactly does it mean to trust God? Does it mean to sit on our butt on hope
that God’s will falls into our laps? No, but that’s what so many people do.
Faith is an active word. Just to illustrate, how do you trust God to supply
your needs? Not by hoping money will grow on a tree in your front yard, but
by trusting God to prosper your work. Similarly, marital faith is not trusting
God to just give you a spouse – that one day a stranger will knock on your
door with roses and a ring. That’s not faith. That’s romance novel drivel.
Faith is trusting that as you go looking for a spouse, meeting new people
etc, that God will guide you and help you make good decisions so you can
find a good spouse.
Note that I didn’t say RIGHT spouse. There is no right spouse. Every
relationship will have problems and everyone will have qualities that drive
you insane. But you can find a GOOD spouse. There are many people who
can be good spouses. The more you meet, the better your chances of finding
a good one. A good spouse is someone with whom you can have a happy
relationship and with whom you can resolve many of the problems that
arise. But brace yourself for a really bumpy road. Relationships are hard,
especially for people who have known only singleness all their life.
Relationships require A LOT of work. But the happiest marriages I know are
between people who’ve decided that whatever comes their way, it will not
separate them. These people don’t wait for happiness to happen to them.
They make it happen.
The Biblical model
Whenever you get a chance, read Genesis 24. It narrates the story of Isaac
and Rebekah. In it you’ll find the perfect model of how to find a mate.

1. Seek a mate. Abraham sent his servant to look for a mate for Isaac.

2. Know what you want. Abraham had a very precise list of things he
was looking for. The problem with many folks is that they don’t know
what they want. Here’s a test. If it takes you longer than 3 months to
know whether or not you would like to marry a particular person, then
you don’t know what you want. You need to discover yourself first.

3. Trust God to guide you. As the servant went, God led him straight to
Rebekah who was everything Abraham wanted and more. God worked
it out so beautifully that even her parents had to acknowledge that this
was God’s will. The bible says that the steps of a righteous man are
ordered by God (Ps 37:23). As he walks, God directs him. The steps of
a man standing still cannot be directed. Know what you need to trust
God for. Know what’s your role and what’s God’s role.

Conclusion

Finally, we should not only focus on what traits the other person should
have, but we should also consider whether we are the kind of person that
person would want. Everyone has flaws. Character development and self
improvement should be a way of life. There are some things we can control
and some things we can’t. We can’t control other people. But what is in our
hands is our own personal development.
If you’re single and searching, I pray that what I’ve written has helped you
in some way. Please don’t trust God for something He did not promise. If
you’re already married, I pray that God will give you the strength and
endurance to work on your marriage, and build a rock solid family that will
do wonders for the kingdom of God.


[1] And this is not even a rule, it’s more of a strong suggestion. It’s certainly not a sin to
marry a non-believer, albeit a very bad idea.

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