There are several important changes in ministering to people; and I have sought the Lord to reveal to me what these changes mean. I do not want to shirk any ministry to God’s sheep that is in His will for me to do. However, there has also been a strong leading of the Holy Spirit to delegate or commission others to do what has been upon my shoulders for many years. This is true also of many of the other ministers. They are seeking carefully to know the future directions and course of their functioning in His Kingdom.
I observe that we are becoming less diversified and more concentrated. Each individual is finding that whatever he was doing in the local-church pattern seemed to have wider ramifications. A man who was a pastor might at the same time also have been the pianist or the organist, perhaps writing music, as well as overseeing many aspects of church life. However, the further we move into the Kingdom, the more concentrated we are becoming in what we do.
At one time I counted fifty distinct areas of ministry that I have received from the Lord. Now I find that I am moving more and more in just a few. What happened to the other phases of ministry? They were usually delegated to somebody else, or else they have become outmoded as we progressed. Consequently, I do not often do them anymore. In one way or another, they are usually covered in the two or three areas upon which we are concentrating. Before, we had prophecy, personal ministry, revelation, and laying on of hands, etc. Now the laying on of hands is a specific Kingdom ministry, and the Word is a Kingdom Word with greater impartation.
Our relationships to the flock are altered. Many of the pastors have had friends and groups through the church and were variously related to all of them. Now each one must decide whether he will be a man of God who functions as a shepherd, or whether he will continue to fill a multiple role in the church, overseeing the administration, finances, preaching the Word, all the projects, business, everything. We see that until now the pattern has been that the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ comes down and is usually concentrated in one or two men. And because it is often concentrated in one man, or in two or three or a dozen, those few men have a diversified ministry that covers a lot of areas. But as we progress, that authority is released into another pattern completely. Others take some of these various roles and they concentrate on functioning in what God has commissioned them to do specifically.
This is true in other relationships also. God is determining just exactly what we will be to one another, and what we will not be to one another. Some of the division among us is very satanic. On the other hand, some of the distribution and apportioning in functionings is very much in the divine order and plan. We will be to each other no more and no less than what the perfect will of God declares. And we cannot allow anything to interfere with that. When you go through God’s dealings, be sure that you are not reacting on a wrong level and missing God. Be sure that you do not break something that God is trying to channel in certain ways. We have all kinds of illustrations of this. It applies to the Kingdom schools. Who is to be what and to whom? We must be no more and no less than what God wants.
The pastoral role is changing. Pastors can be too many things to the people and not enough of what they really should be as shepherds. Elders, too, have been striving to function with more authority. But when an elder contends for power and authority, he should never forget the fact that he is to be a shepherd to the sheep. And that he may not be doing. So God is making us do what we are supposed to do and be what we are supposed to be to each other. We must not assume what we are not to assume. King Saul was rejected when he usurped the priest’s office (I Samuel 13:1–14).
The key of oneness is the absolute removal of wrong assumptions. Just because something was right in the past does not make it the best thing now. What I was to my children twenty years ago when they were little is now history.
What I am to them now may be very much a different role, but it may be concentrated or condensed down to words of faith to them over a long period. Before, I was responsible for every bite of food they ate, every hour they lived. Relationships change. What was right yesterday may not be the best today. That is why this Word is important. What we are to each other will be determined by the will of God.
The big problem in all of this transition is that duties, projects, and offices can yield more quickly to the will of God than can relationships. We have already seen how an existing relationship between parents and children can change. There must be a flexibility in the parents. The child is growing and is more naturally inclined to changes, while the parents are older and not so inclined to changes. If the parent-child relationship is to be good, the parents must constantly use wisdom to help the child become more focused on what he is to be. As he leaves the realm of play to entertain himself, he then moves into the realm of discipline to learn and to develop into what he is to be.
The same thing is true of the relationship between pastors and sheep. Pastors will leave what they have been and will become overseeing shepherds. And the sheep themselves will move into more aggressive roles of faith and become fruitful in the Kingdom of God. We see an illustration of this change in the relationships with the Blix house. Almost all of our young Timothys are in their mid-twenties or just over thirty, while most of the Blix girls are a little older. The Timothys were once critical of the Blix-house girls. The truth of the matter is that while the Timothys were growing up, the Blix house was preserving the Word which the Timothys now rejoice in. Now the Lord is bringing a time of weaning. The Timothys are moving up more into a fatherly administrative role; and the Blix girls are moving into various positions that God has ordained for them. They are no longer spiritual, glorified secretaries; they are moving into another realm, just the same as the apostolic company is.
The people who have related to each other on one level in marriage or other close spiritual relationships are also finding that this is changing. Years ago we taught the people to avoid getting into cliques and bonding together on a lower level because that relationship would inevitably be destroyed. It could not exist, because the relationship of spirit must come first. Then the spiritual dominates all the soulish, emotional levels, including that which generally motivates us. Then we come finally to the physical level.
To reach the place where your spirit, soul, and body are “preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord” (I Thessalonians 5:23) is not as easily attained as you might think. We tend to start a relationship on the physical level; then we move to the soulish, religious, emotional level; then we try to work up to the spirit level. But in the Kingdom of God this order is reversed.
We do not even see the Kingdom until there is a generative process for it in the realm of spirit (John 3:3). And the same is true, no matter what anybody says, in relationships that exist between people. If they will accept what they are to be to each other in spirit, then they can ultimately become what they are to be to each other also on any human level, because it will be so purified. But if you try to approach it from a lower level, there will be contention, divisiveness, and bitterness. Nothing is evaluated correctly from the realm of the flesh and circumstances, or from the realm of the soul and emotions.
I Corinthians 2:14–16 tells us that only the spiritual man is able to judge all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. The purity in spirit is the prerequisite to standing before God. And that right spirit will enable a minister to stand before the people and give them a Word that is untouched, undefiled, not suppressed or diverted, not tinged with bitterness.
Many areas of relationships will have to change. But they cannot change by vindictive condemnation. They will change because there is oneness with understanding, and because the relationships are established on the level and in the way that God wants them to be—in the spirit. Everything else will take care of itself, in due time.
Marriage is no longer significant for the same reasons and purposes it had in former generations. Marriage now is desirable for another reason—the very reason that the unchristian world objects to it: marriage is a divinely imposed yoke. And that is the very reason it is more necessary now. People are rebelling against the restrictions of marriage, but the restrictions are the basic advantages it gives. They need those restrictions. That is really true. This is the way we should think about marriage in this period, as we come into the Kingdom. Marriage is not a complete answer for anything. It actually becomes a yoke that two share, and that bondage is necessary. Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers … II Corinthians 6:14, KJV. The world does not want to be tied down. Undedicated lovers say, “If everything is right, we might get married.” But God says, “True lovers get married with a commitment.”
In former generations marriage had another purpose. A man had to have a woman because he had to produce children who could farm the land, tend the flocks, etc. He actually was producing a necessary work force. In early American history, a woman did not often live beyond the bearing of her children. The father usually married a second wife who completed the raising of his children. Now, of course, this is reversed. Women outlive men by several years. They no longer have such heavy responsibilities. The divorce laws protect them. And the woman continues to live long after she has raised her children, which is no longer such an ordeal. The woman’s role is not the kind of work that a man gives himself to, but he is under the pressure and the tension of the modern world, and he usually dies under it before the woman does.
Few women, or men for that matter, ever understand the heavy pressure that a man might be under, for instance, in the ministry. Until one has been under heavy pressure as a minister he does not know. The pressure of other duties, such as administration, finances, singing, leading worship, are not as demanding as the heavy pressure that a pastor experiences. He often ages before his time. The same is true of businessmen who are under constant pressure.
A pastor took over a new pastorate; and when he went to the church, he bought a new car to tie himself down so that when the urge came to withdraw and run, he would not be able to. He had to see that obligation through. That is what God does with you in marriage. It is not that it is always so easy, but it anchors you down until you produce something, until you become a responsible, mature person. People who love each other should be married only because it is the will of God for them to be yoked together, not just because they love each other.
Relationships in the Kingdom can serve to fulfill God’s will in the earth because they are the catalysts and crucibles of the Kingdom, as well as the occasion of the joy inexpressible and full of glory. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with Joy inexpressible and full of glory. I Peter 1:6–8.