Thursday

A Model for Apostolic Ministry

It was a Wednesday night, of course, because in the ’80s, that’s when you had your home group meetings.

This group was already considered a little aberrant, because we discussed more than merely the Sunday sermon. And we had discovered prophetic gifts. In fact, we’d often put someone on a chair in the middle of the circle and ask God for how to pray for them. We were sometimes quite surprised by how much our prayers touched needs we hadn’t known about.

So it wasn’t completely unusual when the home group leader brought some guests to one of our gatherings. Without any more than just their names, he parked them in side-by-side chairs in the middle of the circle, and asked us to pray for them. We gathered around and laid hands on them.

For a while, the prayers were rather generic Christian blessings. We discerned a significant leader’s calling on the couple, but then we paused and pressed in deeper. We waited in silence for more revelation.

A quiet sob broke the stillness, and then another. These were from an intercessor we all knew and trusted, who heard God as well as any of us. We waited while she wept, and then she shifted her position, grabbed the man’s feet, and wept over them. It reminded me of the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears. By this time, the man and his wife were weeping as well, and several of us praying for them were near to tears, but we couldn’t have told you why.

Eventually, the intercessor was able to form words, and what she said through her tears has shaped much of my thinking on the topic. She explained she saw an apostle’s mantle on the couple, on the man in particular. That wasn’t what she was crying about: the Lord had revealed to her much of what that calling would mean in his life, the price that he’d have to pay to walk out that calling. She was weeping for the struggles and the abandonment he’d face, for the betrayals and the accusations, for the opposition he’d face, and for the burden of love he’d carry.

She saw the victories, too, and declared them, but that was the day that I knew something of what it means to “count the cost.”

That was the moment that I concluded that the big man on the big stage with his big congregation and his big budget is not the model for an apostle. An apostle is not just a really successful or really well-respected pastor or denominational leader. The image of a true apostle is not the corner office, not the fancy website, or even the anointed business cards.

Paul’s description of his ministry was not the exception; it was a healthy example of what many apostles will face. This is the model that the New Testament gives us for apostolic ministry:  

"Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again.

Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move.

I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.

Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness." - 2 Corinthians 11:23-30

I've learned that a man, a woman, is not a an apostle that I can trust who does not know tears. 


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False Teaching, or False Signs

The New Testament speaks time and time again about false doctrine, false teaching, false shepherds. We don’t really pay a whole lot of attention (as a larger community) to these issues, which the Bible emphasizes pretty heavily.

The Book mentions “false signs and wonders” only ONCE, but that’s the thing that gets the attention. And the definition has been expanded: “If you experience _____ during your intimate times with God, that’s a false sign! It’s of the devil!”

Bah!   Er... “No, that would be in error!

The false teachers that those apostles were warning us about had one thing in common: they wanted to add some form of “works” to the message of grace. It came in various forms:

§         “Obey the Law!” (Or “Obey this part of the law.”) or
§         “Don’t eat meat!” (or some other dietary restriction) or
§         “Respect these Jewish holidays!” (or “…these new [age] holidays”) or
§         “Don’t drink alcohol!”

Fundamentally, the false things that the New Testament writers were warning us about generally were limitations to the freedoms that Jesus brings his people into! It was exactly this context into which Paul writes, “do not submit again to a yoke of slavery!” and he goes on in that context to say, “I wish that those who are troubling you would even mutilate themselves.” (See Galatians 5; it’s really quite graphic.)

This was the greatest danger to the new Church, and the one that so much of the New Testament epistles were specifically written to combat: that there would be people come into the congregations (called “savage wolves” in Acts 20:29) who would want to draw people away our freedom in Christ.

By contrast, we have very large numbers of congregations, where the leaders teach their favorite part of the Law (note that I did not mention tithing!), or about all restrictions about what good Christians should or shouldn’t do. Often, they preach an even more restrictive law to their leaders.

And many of them are warning their followers against what they’re calling “false signs and wonders,” but is really just brothers & sisters getting free. 

Freedom. What a wonderful thing when we experience it. It’s jumping and dancing and celebrating; it’s shaking and falling over and being rocked by love; it's worshipping with abandon; it’s healing the sick and casting out demons; it’s falling in love with the person of Jesus. 

This is what we were made for! This is exactly why God said, “Let us make man!”: we were made for relationship!
  
We're warned against these things, as if they were “false signs.” Nah. It's just freedom. And freedom is our goal.

I don’t understand why this is sticking in my spirit so strongly today. Perhaps someone needs “permission” to hunger for God (if it matters, you have permission!). Maybe you’re asking why all the “Do this, don’t do that” rules are not fitting you well. This would be why: they’re not for you!

It’s easy: It is for freedom that Christ has set you free! Do not submit again to a yoke of slavery!

And maybe let me know if I was writing for you today? 


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Some Thoughts About the Purpose of the Prophetic

How many times has it happened that a prophet gives a word to someone you know, and you think to yourself, “They missed it! That is SO not them!”
                                               
Sure, it might be a muffed prophecy; the only guy who never muffed a single prophetic word was murdered for it a couple of thousand years ago. Nowadays, we all completely miss it occasionally. It’s like the man said, “Now, we see in a glass darkly.”

But it might not be a failed prophecy. That’s actually the goal sometimes. The goal of the prophetic is NOT to declare what everybody already knows.

The prophets declare the goal, solution, the finished product, the end result of God doing something in the person’s life. And sometimes they declare it as early as when God is just beginning work on the project. They're "declaring the end from the beginning." If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, how do you aim?

So when God speaks to a destitute homeless guy, “I see you as a man of substance, a man of wealth,” he’s probably not saying “This is they way you are now, in case you didn’t know.” No, he’s more likely saying, “This is your calling, this is your destiny. If you come with me, this is where you could go. Do you want in on this?”

Or he might say to the destitute homeless guy, “I see you as a leader of men,” and that may not show up the way we expect it to. The English language – especially American English – is not God’s first language. When he speaks of a “leader of men,” he may not mean what you’d mean: a recognized position of appointed leadership or power. 

I’ve known guys that chose to be homeless so that they could reach those that nobody else would reach. Their leadership was often just conversation between bunks in the local mission. They are indeed “leaders of men,” but nobody except the homeless guys they lead recognize it.

Really often, the fulfillment of the prophetic promise doesn't line up with our expectation of what it would look like. But it does line up with the word.

Second, the prophetic declaration releases God's resources to bring about that which they declare. 

When God speaks to the destitute homeless guy about wealth, that declaration, when activated by faith, is releasing the grace of God, the power of God, to gather wealth to the guy. Power to accomplish the word is carried by the word.

That doesn’t necessarily mean people will hand him cash money, though I’ve seen that happen. It may mean that God is lining up an educational opportunity, or bringing him an advocate, or giving him an idea for an invention, or lining up other, unexpected circumstances to make it happen. 

And fairly often, it's true about prophetic words: "If you don't declare it, it won't happen." 

If we want to be in on what God's doing, we can discern what God is breathing on in the prophetic declarations (1 Corinthians 14:29), and then join in with that. We can add the prophetic word to our worldview and begin to see and relate to people according to the things that God has said to them.

Or we can bury the prophetic declaration, and the power that it carries to accomplish the thing of which it speaks, under our own unbelief and jealousy and resentment, and kill the word.

It’s our choice.




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