The Lord is teaching us how to redeem the time, because we are entering into the time of the greatest harvest the world has ever seen. Instead of being accused of stealing sheep, we will be calling up the pastors in our city, saying I got fifty new converts today, could you please help me disciple some of them.
The lord is raising up Sheppard’s after his own heart, who are willing to lay down their lives for the sheep. They will walk in such wisdom from the lord that they will speak a living word revealing the true nature of the lord, and the lord will confirm it with signs and wonders following.
It is the goodness of the lord that leads to repentance, and the goodness of the lord shall be seen in the land of the living.
Psalm 27:13 I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. 14 Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.
One of the problems we will face as we walk with God is the problem of losing strength, especially as we labor and become weary in well-doing.
To walk with God we have to know the difference between our soul and spirit, the difference between self and Christ within us. We have to learn how to deny self daily. If we move in self, that union of soul and body that acts independently of the Lord, we step back into our spirit.
Just because our spirit is alive to the lord, doesn’t mean our soul just suddenly disappears. Our self consciousness resides in our soul, and the consciousness of the divine nature resides in our spirit.
Our self nature has an ego that easily gets offended, or puffed up with our knowledge of spiritual things. All the manifestations of self reside in our soul and all the manifestations of God reside in our spirit.
As we learn how to keep our spirit in contact with the Holy Spirit so that his nature and life are flowing through it, it will strengthen our spirit so that we can bring our soul into submission to it so that it does not act independently of the Lord.
In order to walk after the spirit, we have to learn how to not walk after the flesh. The flesh is that union of soul and body that acts independent of the lord. So we find a fluctuation between self-importance and self-pity, we have continual ups and downs and this is the result of walking on the soul-level.
To walk in the spirit is to walk on the spirit level, the result of abiding in the lord, abiding in the vine where the life of the Spirit is flowing into us and out of us in a continuous flow.
To give an example of this, we all meet people and have contact with people that we naturally don’t like. Therefore we find thoughts entering our consciousness causing us to want to reject or judge that person.
God is love; He loves people because that is who he is, not because of what people do or do not do. God loves us the same on our best day as he does on our worst day- when we are behaving contrary to who we are in Christ. Jesus laid down his life for his enemies, saying forgive them father, for they do not understand what they are doing.
Everything that human beings do that is offensive is because they are sick spiritually, or are under the influence of familiar spirits. All manifestations of the flesh are deceitful, a form of insanity, the very thought of sin is foolishness. We do not want to allow ourselves to be focused upon that which is not like Christ.
Because our spirits are alive to God, we can deny self, and tune into the love of the Lord. The love of God can so fill our hearts that we can literally feel his compassion in our hearts towards people, however offensive they may be. And if we learn how to practice the fruit of the Spirit we will find that the goodness of God we manifest towards people can overcome the evil being manifest in them and lead them to repentance.
The question is how much goodness does this person need shown to them to lead them to repentance? To change the way they are thinking?
I am talking about our dealings with people, not those who are demon possessed; we deal with demon spirits in people differently.
As we learn how to walk in the spirit, we can tune into a perpetual flow of the Spirit. But because we are a three part being, spirit, soul and body. Our body gets tired and this affects our soul and spirit.
Therefore, we will need to know how to regain our strength in order to be effective. A crisis comes to those whom God has brought to a place of dedication. Our dedication as a human being will fail, but the dedication that God works in us does not, so we become determined to keep doing the job we are supposed to do, even when we don’t feel physically and mentally able too. After a while exhaustion reaches our spirits, and we do not know how to cope with the weariness that penetrates into us.
We must learn how to refresh ourselves, because in the days to come God will require that we be capable of living in a spiritual state of almost perpetual motion.
There are secrets of renewal that are found in times of waiting on the Lord. It is worth spending hours and days and months to learn how to wait on the Lord. We can learn how to commune with the Lord and how to draw from Him the flow of life and revelation that He has for us.
The time we spend waiting on the Lord brings an anointing to give out to others in service and ministry. However, when our ministry demands so much time that there is less time to wait on the Lord; a vicious cycle develops in which the level of His anointing within us begins to diminish. Therefore we must learn to wait on the Lord and to draw from His very presence constantly, every moment of every hour.
The time has come in which everyone who serves in a ministry will face increasing demands. They will not be able to fulfill everything that people ask of them in a day and still have any time left to wait on the Lord.
We need to learn how to serve the people on God’s terms and not theirs, or we will find ourselves becoming drained spiritually. If we do not learn how to be continually renewed in the spirit we will find that the joy of the Lord has disappeared.
We need a key given to us, a way to be in a state of perpetual spiritual renewal, similar to that of breathing in and out continuously in an endless cycle. A rhythm must be developed: as we give out, we cannot fail to be in communion and contact with the Lord, drawing from Him continually. There must be an alertness to God, in order to receive the much-needed seasons of refreshing that come from the presence of the Lord (Acts 3:19).
No one should be doing the work of the Lord if they are not on top spiritually, no matter how dedicated or how essential they may seem to be. Whenever people work to a point of weariness without knowing how to find refreshing in the Lord, they are in danger of becoming spiritual casualties. People are not able to stay in the work and endure spiritual warfare if they do not have times of renewal or the keys of renewal in their spirits.
They should stop trying to serve until they learn how to constantly renew the Spirit and anointing in their walk with God. Then they will be able to pick up their dedication and fulfill it. This may seem like a drastic action, but it is very essential.
A walk with God should be, above all, a flow of the Spirit. It was never intended to be an endurance contest. We are symbolized by the golden lamp stands mentioned in Revelation 2:1. We are to be filled with golden oil, fed by the inner oil supply of the Holy Spirit (Zechariah 4). Then the presence of the Lord, who walks up and down in the midst of the seven golden lamp stands, will shine forth from our very lives.
A lamp is not self-consuming, but candles are. Rather than being like candles which burn themselves out, we must be like lamps which are constantly fed. We must be fed by the secret supply of anointing within us. We must see our need of perpetual renewal, and then constantly draw from the Lord. If we do not, we will become depleted.
In this day, the Lord will teach His people if they follow on to know Him (Hosea 6:3). He will come to them and anoint them. Those who know their God will be strong and do exploits (Daniel 11:32). Exploits will not be done in any way through human energies. They will be done by the divine flow.
These are the days in which we must switch from human energy to divine energy. Human energy provided a supply in the past, but now we must reach into the divine flow. We must have that anointing which will enable us to do the greater works.
In this day, the wisdom that will come through us will not be human wisdom, but a gift from God. God allows us to come to the end of human reserves before He gives us divine strength
We have not yet seen even the smallest part of what God intends for us to walk in; but before we see it, we will have to switch over to a new source of energy. We cannot be self-consuming in our reliance upon human energy. We must find the supernatural key, the perpetual flow that will come to us constantly from the presence of the Lord. God must teach us, step by step, His secrets of getting into the great provision that He has made for us.