Let’s talk about how to walk in what we have now. The problem has always existed, that when people receive ministry they go away on an assumption that everything is finished. It is sort of like the end of the fairy stories that you read; “And they lived happily ever after,” meaning, they got married.
When you get a little older, in fact, you don’t have to be too old to realize that when they get married it does not guarantee that they will live happily ever after. It means that they have discovered what they believe are the greatest potentials and exposure to happiness that they could possibly get for their lives, so they’ve chosen their partners and they’re married. They really believe the potential of happiness is there, greater than any other circumstance that they could have. That’s not necessarily true, because they’re not necessarily happy, unless they work at it.
The same thing is true of ministry that you receive. It doesn’t mean that you’re delivered with finality to it that you write “The End”, and go galloping off into the sunset. That isn’t the way ministry operates. Ministry opens the door for you to do something. It takes a little block or hindrance out of the way. It opens it up for you to receive an anointing, a spiritual ability or capacity to do something beyond what you have been able to do. It merely opens the door, and it’s up to you.
A ministry service can be most important, or it can be just another ministry service. It depends upon what we do with it. When God has spoken great words over us, we have to enter in to appropriate them. We’ve learned long ago in this walk that the words that come don’t happen by themselves. That word is united with faith in them that hear it. A word comes, and your heart believes it and acts upon it. Faith is an activity. Without the works and action that correspond to your faith, or express your faith, that faith is dead.
Let me ask you a question, and apply this not only to the Scriptures but to prophecy: is the Bible the Word of God? If I let it lay on that table, is it still the Word of God? It’s only print on a white page—black on white. Will that move mountains? The only way it can move mountains is if I open that book, read that Word and it is united with faith in my heart. It is written on the tablets of my heart, I put it into action and the mountains start moving. The same thing is true of ministry and prophecy over you. The ministry you receive today is important to you, but it’s only important as you walk in it, as you act upon it consistently. If you want to get that smoldering anger, if you want to see the impasses broken where ministries are to be flowing forth, believe the word, refuse the pressure and press in with real faith. The word we believe, the word we act on. It’s the thing that’s going to happen and it will happen.
We have to realize in our mind that in the Spirit we must break out, of the little box of limitations we are in. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to set the captives free. (Isaiah 61). There’s a freedom and a liberty in God.
I look around and I see this impasse that people have hit is everywhere. They believe, they have ministries but we have to have even more living active faith that breaks through for the whole apostolic company, for the whole Body.
It’s just a general state of restriction and it is not Scriptural, not according to prophecy and not according to time. It is something we have to break through. We have to accept the liberty of the Lord. And the only way to do it is to take the anointing, take the ministry and just press in. There’s much every one of you can do. Take that liberty and press into it.
The battles in other churches are little bonfires compared to our three-alarm fire. You know what a three-alarm fire is? That’s where they call out everything; you hear them roaring down the street. We have a crisis going and the world is waiting. Other churches are waiting; other ministries are waiting. Other areas are waiting—all are waiting for the thing to break through.
The word that comes is reaching us deeply—it is meat in due season. I don’t think we’ve ever had anything to equal what the Beatitude messages have done to our spirits—a flow of fresh revelation that was a word from God. We’re glorifying God, but we want to walk in this level that was opened up at the Feast of Tabernacles. We have a fresh anointing. Walk in it, do it, get with it. Don’t stop and say, “Well, we’ve come so far, everything’s working beautifully.” It’s not far enough, we have further ground to gain. We’re going to plow into it. I would hate to walk into a twenty-five percent fulfillment of what’s been set before us. Wouldn’t you hate to be walking in something, as wonderful as it might be, that could be four times greater? That would make me sick. It just has to be that we press into it. We have to be audacious and believe. There are prophecies, I’m believing them and standing upon them, but we have to appropriate them. All of us are involved in it together, every member of the Body.
We can’t let anything in us submit to getting kicked around by the devil. There has to be a dominion over him by the authority that God has given. Oppressions should be judged and sent to the pit or sent back to the one sending it. Transference of oppression within the Body needs to be judged. Nothing is really solved in the spirit, if something from one person is transferred to another and everyone feeling sorry for that one transfers it to themselves. Then it’s just “pass the bean-bag” and not really solving the thing. The real answer is to send it straight to the abyss, in the name of the Lord, and that would be the end of it. There has to be judgment, because you are never successful in passing it all, and enough remains that the whole Body is restricted, and that’s what this impasse of the Body is.
If you watch a person who has real love, you see that they do the will of God joyfully. If someone is moved out of sympathy or human feelings, they will gripe, murmur and complain. I’ve seen that thing over and over again. “Oh, I’ll do the will of the Lord.” But they want to get paid for it, in certain things of honor and prestige and the right amount of money, or they want everybody to know. Sometimes you are ignorant that you give sympathy where people ask for it. They come along, “Oh, feel sorry for me.” And so you feel, “I feel sorry for you.” You bite on it. Every problem is based upon one simple action: if there were love in everyone’s heart there wouldn’t be wrong things developing.
The human level flourishes where the divine is scarce, but the love of God can choke it out. If you have not love things will come to an end. You know that’s true, don’t you? Dedication is an answer. If people are dedicated and filled with the love of God, they go at it. But people ask for sympathy. Some don’t know the difference between love and sympathy. I don’t want sympathy. Some say, “You’re working too hard.” I don’t want that, I’m not working too hard. It wouldn’t be the hard work that would kill me, it would be the impasse created by devil power because the Body handcuffed itself and didn’t get rid of its problems and the whole thing internally bogged down.
If you went at it, and really meant business, you could loose the impasse in the Body in one day. There are many areas where it has to be broken. The worse thing you can do is to be sympathetic with the problem. Just say, “Lord, bring a solution to it.” What right have you to put the blessing of God that comes down in this church on the problem? Why do you want to bless the problem? You’re not going to help the situation, you’re going to prolong it. If you see a drunk sliding down the street and give him five dollars, you’ll be financing his way to hell, that’s what you will do. Pray another way, in such love that you agonize before God to bring the problem before Him. Then the person has a chance to make it. But if he doesn’t have something that stops him, he won’t make it. And if he’s not going to make it, then he might as well get the judgment now as later. If I’m not going to make it, I don’t want to waste the rest of my life. “God, let me make it or kill me.” That has been my prayer so often.
This is not only the move of God, this is the army of the Lord, and yet we’re not willing to draw. We still want to pray around a blessing, a vague thing. You pump people up, give them a shot, give them some vitamins, keep them going, but what about the disease? Let’s analyze it. “Lord, let’s bring it to a crisis.” If you have to induce a fever in order to bring the thing out, then let’s bring it to a crisis. There isn’t that much time to pray around for another generation.
Again there’s that transference—where there’s no submission in you, you go on with that thing in your heart and suck everyone dry around you. I would be on my feet in three days if it weren’t for that which is constantly transferred, sucking the life from me. I’m carrying too many things that I have to throw off. I have to be the channel in the will of God, not a sponge to soak up everybody else’s thing that they want to dump on me to destroy me or to take the life from me to keep them alive because they have no walk with God themselves. That’s what has happened all through the Body with all of the different situations and the different people that are involved. This is not one person, it is a state and a condition that exists many times over in the Body.
Instead of beginning to judge one another—that’s not it—begin to cry out in love. Begin to pray like you ought to pray. “Lord, loose this Body. Lord, loose this apostolic company. Bring the things into judgment within us. Let judgment begin at the house of the Lord. Judge it Lord.” And honestly pray, “Lord, judge me.” You pray, “Lord, judge the apostle. Destroy him or deliver him. Don’t let anything stand within his own spirit that will keep him from what You’ve prophesied over him.” Pray that about yourselves. Pray it about your families. Pray it about the whole thing.
How much do you lay people on the altar? You lay them on the altar, and then you have such sympathy for them that the first time that God begins to put a knife in them you grab them off the altar. “O God, You can’t do that. I pray for him, I bless him. O God, I bless him.” Leave him there. In putting people on the altar, put them on the altar and leave them there! Pray for them until God deals with them. I know what I’m talking about. God has beat this into me, because of all people, I’ve failed most on this one thing of sympathy. I’ve given sympathy. I’ve been in the ministry longer than the average age of the people here and all my problems have come when I did something stupid out of sympathy, and I can point to a lot of them. I’m not talking to you about something where I’m the good boy and you’re the bad boy. I’m not saying that, I’m saying that this is the problem of the Body. It’s been the problem since the beginning of this walk. It will always be a problem until some church comes up that can see there’s one thing—submission to the Lord Jesus Christ with all of your heart and walking in love, absolutely walking in love, not in human sympathy; walking in the love of God and the direction of the Holy Spirit.
There are enough of us here to move the world for God. We are the channels and the instruments that can do it. When we break through a step or two more we will begin having endless prayer, day and night. We’ll move things, move countries for God, move a world for the Lord. I am angry that we have just a few little things standing in our way, little spiritual impasses that have been built up around us. You know they’re in your lives, you’re in the same boat. You’re going through the same thing I am, except it is more important that I get out than you, because when I get out of it I can help you out of it. We’re all in it. We have to be free.
The prophecies are real, the truth is real. Remember what I said to you? What good will the Word do laying on the table. Get it out, put it in your heart, walk in it. That’s what we will do. We will believe the Word of the Lord. Put it in action today.