When a man has been set aside for a ministry, and he and his family are going through testings, they really need to be in the house of the Lord. The ministry may be tempted to withdraw and seek the Lord to meet him. But while the fire is being put to him he had better be with the rest of the Body, having them pray for him. He can get overwhelmed with problems and say, “I’m going to go off somewhere and get an answer,” but he will get his answers better if a lot of people are loving him and helping him right at that time. Many families are going through dealings ordered by the Lord, because we set about to be a company of elders and prophets who will have a sure word from God.
Watch for this: if there is any other order, it is disorder! Let me explain: God has established a divine order of authority in the Church and in the Kingdom which cannot co-exist with other kingdoms in the Church. If, when you come into this walk, someone you look to has the word of the Lord as far as you’re concerned, and you ignore everything else, that’s a kingdom. It may be good in itself, but the very minute it becomes another order, it is disorder.
This is the peril of Pentecostal people. I’ve seen it for years. Because divine order had not been restored, it was like the period where every man did that which was right in his own sight (Judges 17:6), and they would have “cottage prayer meetings,” we used to call them, private prayer meetings in the home. Often there would be some woman who would pray a lot, who would get a word from the Lord and dispense enough directives that she could have directed the government from her kitchen door—but it was not in the church. Yet, she’d be the most spiritual one in the church. Several of them would gravitate together and have their own meetings, but it would come to naught every time because it was disorder. The most spiritual people would be in the church splits, and every one of them would go haywire because God is not in the splitting. Whatever order there was, they were violating it. Sometimes they had reason to feel that their pastors weren’t walking with God, but God was not the author of that confusion.
The same thing applies as you become members in the Body. You may feel that you have certain things you’ve learned elsewhere. Sometimes little groups gravitate together—you don’t call them cliques, but that’s what they are—to get answers and discuss things. You had better bring that to a halt, because divine order is set about by everyone of us being submissive to what God has set us over. We lose everything else. The way God led us before ceases at these doors.
You say, “But God led me, He taught me. I’m not going to accept that.” Listen, in the wilderness you can afford to be an anarchist, but when you get into possessing Canaan you’re to be under divine order. It is one thing to say, when you’re wandering around in the wilderness, “Thank God I’m not under Egypt’s slavery anymore. Nobody is my master.” Well, get ready, because now you’re going to be a bond servant of Jesus Christ under the divine order. This is far more a kingdom than anything you’ve ever been in before.
We have to get something in mind: God is creating an order to which we become absolutely submissive. For instance, one young man came out here from a church where he’d been fed by the Lord. He had everything going for him: football star, brilliant student, genius level. But when he was saved and filled with the Holy Spirit, he had his own unique habits. He wanted to read the Word of God all the time, and this offended his parents, denominational people, who thought he had gone really crazy. Instead of his being submissive to his parents, he actually was rebellious toward them.
You say, “That’s against the Scriptures.” Yes, we told him to try to get along with them, but his very rebellion was the key of his growing with God. It sounds strange, but if he had not rebelled against his parents, if he had done what they told him to do, he would have dropped the walk with God, gone back into denominationalism, and would have lost the whole thing right there. When God brought him into the Church, he wasn’t going to finish school but I sent him back, and he obtained a doctor’s degree.
One day I confronted him, “Listen! I’m going to take a board and straighten you out if you don’t listen.” He said, “Well, the Lord shows me; He teaches me.” I said, “That ends. Before coming here, you existed because you stood against your parents’ wishes, though they were in authority, for they were set against you. You had to decide, ‘I’ll serve God rather than my parents.’ But here that isn’t an issue. You must reverse this and be submissive. You will find that you’ll lose out with God if you’re rebellious. Leave the former ways God dealt with you at the door of this church. Now you are not wandering with some idea of self-preservation but you’re in the household of faith. You’re in the Body of Jesus Christ where we have the same care for one another. It’s a divine order. You’re under these elders, you’re under these deacons, you’re under this divine order that God has brought. That’s the only way you’re going to make it.”
He listened for quite a while, but to be rebellious was too deeply ingrained within him. Today, I don’t know what he has—I wouldn’t want to judge or evaluate it—but he is lost to the walk, although probably there was no one better qualified to have written the book that needs to be written, “The Decline and Rise of the New Testament Order.” We lost something in that walk because he failed to follow through with submission. He will never accomplish as much, I don’t care how great his ambitions, as he would have in this walk. His life would have had significance and meaning.
Lord, bless us that the word we’ve received should burn in our hearts as we submit ourselves anew unto the Lord Jesus Christ and to the divine order He is bringing.
Have you had to learn this lesson, that God has led you different ways, but when you came here they had to be abandoned for a more perfect New Testament order for your life? Oh, pray for one another as you see them going through it. God sets us in the Body as it pleases Him (Romans 12:18), and there is a real order to it.