The lord caused to come before my mind all the things that I had said to my brothers and sisters. It is like it just passed through my mind. When it was finished, one Word was spoken by the Lord. He said, “A relationship ministers.” You begin to realize that we don’t have to have a lot of strain. It’s not what I do for you; it’s not how I work over problems, or solve this or that, or my sense of responsibility, or yours. It is just the fact that I am your brother that ministers.
There should be no strain or frustration, we are all growing in our understanding of spiritual truths; we just come to touch one another and relate because we need it. We just need to be one.
We have learned how to minister by the Communion; we have learned how to minister by laying on of hands; we have learned how to touch one another, to shepherd one another. But when we finally come right down to the bottom line, we are sustained by our relationship. The Kingdom of God is relationships. I am one with you and you are one with me in the eternal realm, it has just not yet manifested in the natural realm.
It isn’t what we do together or what we do for each other; we are just one. This is taking a lot of strain away, because you don’t feel, “Well, I didn’t get that much attention, so I’m neglected.” Relationships are going to sustain us, because there may be times in which we are ten thousand miles away from each other, and it won’t matter. A relationship ministers. I think it is like a new principle. The relationship ministers.
“The relationship will minister.” The strong bear the weakness of the other.
The relationship will minister. So, you do not have to worry about anything; the relationship I have with you will minister. But it works the other way around, too. That relationship is going to minister back to me.
You see, it breaks all the barriers, all the walls; and in some way it is related to what the Lord has been speaking for several days about immunity. We are going to find the immunity in it.
I think that this relationship of being one in Christ we are talking about breaks the subtle bonding where we could stumble around trying to come into oneness.
The relationship breaks the bonding on a human level. I think what it does is supersede the soulish need to bond. Bonding comes because of a sense of insecurity, but oneness is a relationship that is very secure. This throws it up on a level where you are not always trying to prove something and you don’t need anything proved. So you don’t seek for the bonding, do you? The bonding comes because people feel insecure.
This is why I have tried to change the whole attitude that people have toward marriage. Marriage ceremonies have been based on, “Meet my insecurity: for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health; promise me.” Make your promises, make your commitments, till death do you part. Because of that, the bonding has made a bondage. Marriage should make a oneness that is not a bondage but a fulfillment. Bonds are based on insecurity. In fact, all seeking of position is based on insecurity. A man feels insecure so he has to be king of the mountain. Everybody else tries to reach up to dethrone him, to put him down. But in oneness we are one another’s strength. We strengthen one another. “Love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up” (I Corinthians 13:4, KJV)—because oneness is love.
We are the family. As family we are going to make it together. For several days I have been going through this thing of losing a sense of possessiveness. I cannot possess or control another and still be one with them. It is just as if you pass through a sound barrier or something, until you lose that sense of possessiveness. I can’t control or be jealous of any measure that the Lord uses another to relate to anybody else in administration, etc. I can’t do that.
When you are one with the Lord and one with each other, you don’t even have to possess yourself; it is all the Lord’s. You are His and everybody else is His. This is coming into the strangest, most mystical teaching that the world has ever seen: the oneness of the Kingdom, the Lordship of Christ over us. It is very, very important. I think we are all going to move into it.
That’s what we need to be doing right now, ministering to one another perfectly, being very tender toward one another. It is a very broken time right now, because of the division that exists in the body of Christ.
It is very important that we be sensitive without being sensitive. Now, let me rephrase that. How does the Scripture state it?
And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Ephesians 4:32.
There is a tenderness that we have to have together; we have to be very tender to each other, but not sensitive so that we take offense easily. We have to “Have the hide of a rhinoceros and the heart of a dove.” You come to the place where you refuse the soulish sensitivity that takes offense at things—that’s the hide. But at the same time you are very tender to each other, very quick to love one another—to respond to one another, to see one another’s needs.
I am coming to a place like the mother who was watching the army march off to war; and she looked at her son and said, “They are all out of step but my son Johnny.” That takes a lot of faith, doesn’t it? I have seen that about myself. I am one who got into that predicament where it looked like everybody was in step but me. Slowly but surely, however, they all began to march with me, because it was right. And a lot of us are in that position. You know, this is what you have to be in this whole thing: you have to be rather charitable. You look around and find third generation, fourth generation, second generation, first generation. Each generation is moving out of step in their attitude and in their opinions. And it is really difficult for a person to maintain his confidence in what he or she is and what he or she is doing when everybody else thinks that they are out of step, not moving the right way.
I have watched through the years, in one phase after another, people who were hostile. People who gave you a token submission before, now are so hostile to you they could kill you. In fact, they want to. They can’t say, “I was never dedicated, never consecrated.” They have to say, “The Living Word is not the Word; it is not the truth.” And yet it is the thing that warmed their hearts at one time.
We have got to have the understanding for people to where we do not judge them; we do not extinguish a wick that still has a little glow to it (Isaiah 42:3). I am pouring things out of my heart to the family because I can just see that the relationship really ministers. You do not have to judge one another. You do not have to exalt anybody or put anybody down. Nobody has to be anything; you just have to be one. You are standing at attention waiting for anything that God wants you to do. And in it you say, “I’ll go here; I’ll go there. I will do anything—whatever You want me to do.” And all He has done to you is tell you, “Relate.” All you have done is just open your heart to be part of the family.
In 1937, E. W. Kenyon published a book called The Father And His Family; A Restatement Of The Plan For Redemption. In it, he talked about the Heavenly Father, how the Heavenly Father loves us, and so forth. It was a wonderful thing, but he didn’t go on to develop the awareness of each other as being family; that is the other side of it.
I know God loves me; I know God loves all of us. Yet in some mysterious way He has created a family, and we will never know the Heavenly Father until we know each other as family. How can we love Him whom we have not seen if we cannot love those we have seen? (I John 4:20.)
First we are becoming the family of God. Isn’t that beautiful? We are finding God saying again, “It is not what you do that pleases Me; it is what you become together.” It is very important.
I don’t think that I have ever seen anything as wonderful as this thing of relationship. You see, I am not going to be responsible for doing a lot of things. I know what I am—I am being. It is what I am to you and what you are to me, and how I help you to fulfill that. And I think it was good that the Lord gave that Word: “The relationship will minister.” It isn’t what you do or say, or anything else. You just be a member of the family.
So many have felt so inadequate and insufficient. And others are thinking that they are right and you are wrong. And God is giving you a Word, saying, “Just be a son, be a daughter; that’s all you have to do.” That is good enough, isn’t it? You don’t have to prove anything. There is no jealousy; there is no rivalry. There is nothing except that oneness. It is family. We could have all kinds of revelation, all kinds of ministry. But it isn’t what it does to us, it’s how it brings us into the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is relationships. Have you heard me say that before? How many times? The Kingdom of God is a relationship. I think we are beginning to see it.
Once we really begin to see this, then all of the strain to produce, to accomplish, all the kinds of goals, the competitiveness, ends. There can’t be any competition in the Kingdom of God.
There can’t be. I have to be a father. I have to be a man of God who will see a thousand prophets outminister me. There cannot be any competitiveness in my spirit. I have to rejoice in anyone who can excel. And when I say “have to,” I will, because I am one with them. I have talked several times about Elijah giving a double portion to Elisha (II Kings 2:8–15). And so the theologians and the Bible scholars come up to say that Elisha was twice as great as Elijah. But no one who reads the Bible really believes that. That is only a theologian’s interpretation. Who is greater: the man who can produce somebody greater than himself, or the man who is greater than the one who produced him? Then you see that there is no competition. It is all made out of one thing. The greater my sons will be, the greater will be the blessing and vindication upon what God gave me, because they will be created by my hands, and yet they will be greater than I. That’s what you have to believe for. That’s what I am working for.
What we want to see is somebody who loves the Kingdom as much as I do, who loves the Lord as much as I do.