There must be unity in the body. Half the people cannot be praying in one direction and the other half wanting something else to happen. It has to be what God wants. If you sympathize with a situation or an individual in the church when God wants to deal with him, you will constantly be praying against the will of the Lord.
Outside the body God judges. We are told that inside the body the judgment is ours. This is creating a problem in the body now, and it will have to be changed as the body moves in the right direction. We have faith and a great degree of unity, but we will have to get the word from the Lord directing us how to pray about a situation and then everyone must agree and pray for it. To a great extent this is happening, but not in areas where the real blocks are.
We must eliminate sympathy, for it creates an openness that will react through the body. Some of the more seasoned believers are somewhat prone to base their opinion concerning a situation more on sympathy than on real love. The human element enters in because they have gone through so much. This is usually not as true of the young folks. Witness the fact that older people are very sentimental about their parents, whereas young folks can be very hostile toward them. They have deep feelings, and if their parents are not Christians, they may literally have to forsake them in order to walk with the Lord. Nevertheless young folks also can be guilty of falling into the rut of sympathy.
I have studied the prophecies about immunity, and I have a great deal of immunity; but I have noticed during the past year or two that all my problems of satanic pressure can be traced to some member of the Body who has an openness to a source of oppression. The oppression then reaches me because I am open to that member. None of you should be open to that which God wants to judge, or which is a source of oppression to the body. Sometimes you may be going through something because I have loosed it on you. If you do not learn how to pray and move as a body, how to walk in the things God sets before the body in real unity, you will just have to be dealt with and kept in a corner until you do learn.
We are moving in Christ’s victory to overcome this battle, which is the most vicious we have ever been in. Unless we learn to get hold of God in this push of prayer, there will be some casualties. Our prayers should be united as never before; we should recognize the situations as they come and be able to cope with them. If you do not know how to pray, just lay the burden before the Lord and let the Holy Spirit make intercession in tongues through you. However, do not be guilty of forming a sympathetic verdict about a situation that will cause you to pray contrary to everyone else. Use wisdom. Because God has taught and enlightened us and brought us to a very high spiritual level, it is essential that we use great wisdom. Open your hearts to what God wants. Pray about it. If you do not know anything else to do, ask the Lord to show you how to pray; He will teach you.
The submission that God required in the past was like that of a child to its parents, upon whom it is dependent. I have been like a spiritual father to you to lead you and teach you. When you were rebellious and God was dealing with you, it was easy to fight it and be rebellious toward me. More important than the teaching was the lesson the Holy Spirit made real to your heart in that submission. But now you are coming to a new level of submission (which you have to understand) where you are submissive to the apostolic ministry, not because you are dependent upon it as you have been, but because the apostolic ministry is dependent upon you. And you submit and pray.
Let me illustrate. A woman who has a spiritual husband looks to him for leadership and guidance. When the word comes to be submissive, she has to subdue all the female rebellion in her and become submissive. If she does not, sooner or later she will die, because God will not allow a man to move ahead in the things of God and saddle him with a wife who will not be submissive. Suppose a man is inferior to his wife spiritually—she has more revelation, more discernment, she can prophesy better, she is more spiritual and understands the Word better—and yet the word comes for her to be submissive. In this case, because of divine order, she has to be submissive to someone who, in her opinion, is far less qualified than she is. That becomes a real problem. It is one thing to be submissive to the apostle because you are dependent upon him: he leading you, he has all the answers and help and authority. But I know that I am going through something now in which I am dependent upon the intercession of this body, for I will not make it by my efforts or my prayers. Your submission to the apostolic ministry now is one that is submissive to the Lord, in the sense that the apostolic ministry is dependent upon the unity of faith and prayer of the body. It is a kind of reversal. During this time of intensified seeking, the church has moved up into something that has laid a great responsibility of intercession on your own heads.
The time is upon us when the sons in this walk with God will father things that have to be wrought in Zion. Spiritual relationships can change in twenty-four hours, so that a dependent son can become a spiritual husband who can father things within the house of God. That is exactly what is taking place. It is moving very rapidly, and unless we all move ahead in unity, this seeking after God will find that the first will be last and the last first. Some of the babes will be leading those who have been here the longest, though this is not what God intends. It will depend upon those who will press in and realize seriously and humbly that this Body must move together with an intensity. When the Spirit is upon the people to pray, we see the meekest individuals turn into lions, with that spirit of relentless, ruthless faith. This is born of the Holy Spirit. If anyone questions it or sits back to say, “This is too much for me; I don’t go for this,” they could be on the verge of losing out and should seek the Lord earnestly.
I believe we’re approaching the degree of unity we need to begin to be the church God wants us to be. In these past few days your prayers are much less self-centered? God is putting upon you the travail for the body of Christ, not for your own individual welfare. Some people are praying for the apostolic ministry to be liberated, but they do not even know what it is to be liberated from. There are so many areas of need.
When Paul spoke of the apostleship he said, “Am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen the Lord Jesus? Are you not the seal of my apostleship?” (I Corinthians 9:1, 2). These were the criteria by which the New Testament churches judged a person’s apostleship. I believe that I am an apostle. I have seen the Lord Jesus. I believe that you and the churches are the seal of my apostleship. Paul also mentions another proof of his apostleship: “Am I not free?” I can feel so many psychic, spiritual and physical restraints that have yet to be overcome. I believe they are to be overcome in you too, but how can I lead you into something when I have not fully partaken of it myself? So we must pray for that liberation.
It is true: we are free in the Lord, but to catch up in experience what God has given us is always a problem for all of us. We are more than conquerors, and we intend to be that in actual experience. We do not intend to preach the doctrine of eternal security—that once you are saved, you are always saved, and it does not make any difference how much you sin. I want you to be saved to the uttermost, to walk in God’s provision, “He is able to save us to the uttermost.” (Hebrew 7:25).
When we read a promise in the Word we are going to contend to actually experience it in our life. When we read about the “greater works” that is what we are going to say is the truth. We know it, for behold, it is in the Word; and behold, it is in our midst. In no way do we want to appear as phonies in the eyes of the world, professing one truth and experiencing something else. Nor do I want to be the kind of an apostle to come forth with all these beautiful truths that God has given and yet find areas in my life where those fantastic truths are not operative. These restrictions and limitations that seem to handcuff the spiritual ministry should not be.
I have lived so much in the presence of the Lord, but I have lived also in the presence of Satan. It is like a battleground, and I am weary of it. In the name of the Lord, with your help and your prayers, I declare an end to it. Without this Body responding fully, wholeheartedly, ruthlessly, violently in their spirit to see this come about, we will be like many other little groups that claim to be New Testament churches with apostles and prophets: we will be shooting off firecrackers; when we should be putting an atomic bomb in Babylon. Stir yourselves; want this more than anything else in the world; seek Him with your whole heart. “The day ye seek for Me with your whole heart You’ll find Me” (Jeremiah 29:13).
I am not asking for it to be easy for me. I want to win battles that are a thousand times greater. I want to be able to do the work more effectively. I want the vigor, the youth the strength to come forth so that I can do the things God wants me to do, without Satan chipping away at my health and strength until I am tired and struggling all the time. You come to the services for good teaching and ministry, but you know there could be something far greater. Once the people have succeeded in bringing forth an apostle in the truest sense, then we will go to work on other apostles and prophets. You are going to give birth. Zion is going to travail, and when she begins to produce, she will be a prolific mother; there will be the strength to deliver. Then churches and ministries that are now being thwarted, will break through too. If we do not take the burden for this, to be the intercessory people of travail and bring them forth, we will not see that apostolic company.
“This is a time that there must be God-given prayer, because the Spirit of God and the spirit of the enemy is in great conflict. It is the battle of the ages, of all history; it is just that serious. The spirit of heaviness and weariness that is on everyone is only to discourage and to make the apostolic ministry the battleground. But it will be of short duration. This is a period of time like we have not had before and may not have again. We have to close ranks and pray, not only for the will of God, but to bring forth the spirit that shall triumph over Satan in every way. With this ushering in of a new age comes a spirit of death and discouragement. The enemy tried to kill the Lord right in the garden. That is what he is trying to do to the apostolic ministry, but he will not succeed. No matter what our limitations are, God did the calling, and the more the apostolic ministry is battled, the more He bares His arm. Whether we see that or not, our faith has to be strong.”
This discouragement and heaviness is very real, but you have noticed that it does not hit you so much in the body as when you are alone. It is an attack hitting at each one individually. If it is at all possible, get two or three united in the home and keep that collective spirit, because the body ministry seems to prevail over this discouragement and heaviness.
A great many mystical truths about spiritual warfare and the ways of Satan can be learned from the stories of Elijah and Elisha. When Elijah was on the mountain, the fire fell miraculously and the prophets of Baal were destroyed. Then he went a day’s journey and sat under a juniper tree and prayed that he might die. How can a man become that discouraged in twenty-four hours? It can happen. That apparently was the only time Elijah became so discouraged. The one thing that hit him is the same thing we have been experiencing: “I’m not any better than my fathers.” In other words, “I haven’t come any further along with God than my fathers. After all this, Jezebel is still alive and issuing her threats.” He was not discouraged by the threat of death. He sensed the limitation upon his ministry, and that was discouraging. That same fact would depress us if we settle down to be just another enthusiastic movement. We have to do more than that. We have to walk with the glory of God.
Our first objective is to throw off the physical limitations and to loose this apostolic ministry into the wisdom, authority, and strength God wants it to have. Then we will go to work on all the objectives, one step right after another. It will be a lot of work. Every individual who has had prophecies over him wants to see them fulfilled in a far greater measure. Laying hands and prophesying over people is a very good place to start, but now it is time for us to see those things brought into fulfillment as soon as they are prophesied. We have our work cut out for us and we dare not dilly-dally and play around with it.
This heaviness and sleepiness has to go. The unbelief has to go. That withdrawing spirit has to go. Everything the devil brings in is all dealing with your spirit, because this is the realm of spirit. If all the problems in this walk are in the realm of spirit, then the fulfillment will be in that realm, too. And from that realm of spirit will issue forth fulfillment in other areas.
“Bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” I Timothy 4:8. Godliness can affect every area of this life as well as the next life. Do you believe it is possible for you to be so in tune with the Lord that it can affect every bodily process? every function of your body? every organ? every gland? I believe it can. I believe this death and decay process could be reversed. Why couldn’t people start growing younger? Doesn’t the Lord say He will renew our youth as the eagle?
Many things can happen, but first we have to get the priority things done. This is not a time of playing church, of tickling people’s ears, of misguided enthusiasm. God is directing us to zero in upon the thing to get it done. What is the answer to heaviness and depression? Just more authority to cope with it, more joy from the Lord.
The discouragement that came to Elijah’s heart was really not a despair, but an agony to see real deliverance come to the people of the Lord. We’ve had enough revelation and prophecy. What we need now is the power to walk in the fullness that God has spoken over every element of our life. So our despair (if you want to call it that) is not a despair of the old order, but a despair over not coming into the fullness of that which God has spoken. We know the victory of the Lord is already here.
Some individuals in the Body of Christ have been hearing, in the spirit, a complete brass section of trumpets, with fanfare, and are asking what it means. The sounding of the trumpets seem to indicate that we have passed a milestone. Although our conscious mind has not comprehended it fully, our spirit has finally been reached by this continual flow of the word, and it is demanding of our conscious mind that we speak into existence all of this that has been lodging in our spirit. We have reached another milestone. The trumpets are sounding the victory of the Lord. Shortly after Elijah cried out in despair, the dogs were licking Jezebel’s blood. If we are obedient and follow on into what God is bringing to our hearts it will not be very long before principalities and powers and individuals will fall dead in the streets in judgment.”
Before the children of Israel took Jericho, Joshua met the Captain of the Lord of Hosts on the plain of Mamre. He bowed down at His feet and received direction from the Lord as to what the people were to do. I am believing this is going to happen to us. The Lord is changing the apostolic ministry into a Joshua ministry, and he will have that word of direction. He will bow before the Captain and we will go forth as that army.”
We are claiming a meeting with the Lord, not just an experience, but a definite revelation and commission of the end-time ministries so that we know what the people are to do and say, all the things we are to walk in. We are believing for the Lord to give direction of how He will restore full-fledged prophets who will give every warning to the people, and direct every movement of personnel in the churches from one area to the other. We are to be a prophetic community directed by the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus will utter His voice before His camp, and His army will be exceedingly great. We are believing for a Spirit-led, Spirit-directed apostolic company. Of course it goes without saying that we are believing, by the grace of God, to be the dedicated people to walk in it as real disciples.
Lord, we look to Thee with Faith in our hearts. We believe the tide has turned. You have heard our prayers, and we believe that angels are commissioned, the Holy Spirit is bringing judgment upon the prince of this world, the saints have authority to use the name of the Lord Jesus as a leverage, and all of this means Satan’s absolute defeat in his assault against us. We are claiming the complete release from everything in the lives of the leaders of this walk that would in any way detract or hinder it. We are believing for a visitation that will give the wisdom and direction of the Lord, so we can see what this walk is to be, what the company is to do, how to loose the ministries into their fullness. Great will be the company that publishes the word. We are loosing finances, we are loosing the wisdom to know what to do about the churches. No matter what any of us want or do not want at this point, we prepare our hearts to follow exactly Your direction, with unmistakable confirmation. This walk in the spirit will live on with its living word right into the Kingdom. Devil assault, the presence of Sodom and Gomorrah, earthquakes, fire, riots—nothing is going to bring down Your Church.
We are voicing claims of faith. Lord, I am believing Thee for the strength of Samson and the wisdom of Solomon which was prophesied a year ago—for myself and also for the people of the Lord. We are believing, Lord, that revelation will teach us exactly how to eat and how to live from day to day. Lord, You are going to complete the liberation of homes where there are still restrictions, and limitations. Every household of faith will be loosed completely in the name of the Lord. Our people will believe for immunity. Lord, we are going to walk into the days that You have for us, into the word that You have for us to receive and publish abroad to the ends of the earth.