Traditional churches have a way of covering over the immoralities and indiscretions in their midst; however, on the Kingdom level this is not possible. As we break into the Kingdom, we find that there will be a greater exposure of the things in our lives that are wrong and could cause offense.
The religious world would criticize when they see things which are not in keeping with true Christian conduct. Although we have no defense against their accusations, yet we know that God is working in each individual life to bring the changes He wants. Some people, whose lives were once a mess, are today walking in a righteousness that critics in the religious world know nothing about.
Not many people want to be a part of what God is doing now through His end-time remnant. We realize that there is a need for evangelism, but we know too that it will have to be done God’s way. The field has been narrowed down in view of the fact that God has already grown so many thorns on the Rose of Sharon that most people are reluctant to grab it hastily. Very few will want this new wine of the Kingdom. They think that the old is better. But it is not better. God has saved the best wine for the last and He is bringing it forth now (John 2:10).
It is essential that we change. Those who will not, tend to leave this end-time walk; whereas the people who do change, because of their hunger for God, stay with it. A person who has not made any noticeable change in recent years is continually in a state of crisis. While God is opening more and more doors for him to walk through, he is still trying to work out the initial two or three steps. This is very difficult.
Have you ever wondered how many people met in back rooms and laid plans to crucify Jesus? Of course, the Father allowed it to happen because it was in His plan for our redemption, but that does not excuse them. They became willing instruments to accomplish God’s will, yet they did it with an evil heart. Remember that it was not the Romans or the publicans or the harlots who planned Jesus’ death. What happened to those people who were scorned by the religious world at that time? Many of them were found in the Church on the day of Pentecost. Did many of the Pharisees make it? Not very many. And yet, with careful evaluation, we would have to say that the Pharisees knew more about God; they might even have had more experiences with God, and they surely knew the Scriptures better than anyone else.
Christ almost deliberately alienated the religious world in those days. Therefore we should not be surprised when we see that the Living Word which is coming in this present hour has also alienated almost the entire religious world. Nevertheless, there will be a way to reach people. The greatest revival is yet to come! We do not know how it will happen, but it seems very unlikely that it will start with the religious world. It will be the harlots and the publicans who go in first, as usual.
So we need not become apprehensive when our accusers point out our faults and imperfections. Instead, we need to keep our perspective. The fact that God is showing so much grace is never mentioned. Our critics do not seem to care about that. Nor do they seem to care that we are a repentant people and that the Kingdom of God is a story of continual repentance. What will happen from this time on? It is very clear that the religious world will come against us in every way. They will slander and accuse, as they try to produce evidence of our offenses. All they will actually be doing, however, is trying to dredge up these things out of the sea of God’s forgetfulness, where He remembers our transgressions against us no more forever (Micah 7:19; Jeremiah 31:34). We have been swallowed up in His righteousness. When we are accused of being sinners, we can reply, “Yes, Paul claimed to be the chiefest, but we were lieutenants in that army.” We make no defense, because we never did boast in our righteousness—only in His.
We are told that when Abraham Lincoln was president, a number of men were recommended to him for cabinet posts. When he was asked why he had turned down one particular individual, he answered, “I don’t like his looks.” He was told, “A man can’t help how he looks.” (Imagine saying that to Abraham Lincoln!) But Lincoln replied, “After the age of thirty, everyone is responsible for his looks.” He was not speaking about the physical appearance, but of an inner quality that comes through. He knew that even a person with homely features will still show forth beauty if the first thirty years of his life have had some discipline and order to them. When he looked at that particular individual, he probably saw something wrong—something for which the man himself was responsible. It showed on his face.
That truth can be applied to everyone. Do not be satisfied with the statement that beauty is only skin deep. As people get older, they naturally lose their youthful appearance, but there is still a beauty and a graciousness to be seen if their spirits have been right. If Abraham Lincoln thought that a man is responsible for the way he looks, we can come to a similar conclusion. If you have been in this walk with God for a year or more, and you have not changed, you yourself are responsible. You are responsible for not having changed.
Are you offended? Do you cry out, “I can’t change; I can’t make the change”? If you have been in this move of God for a year, if you have watched what God has been doing and heard what He has been saying in the prophetic flow, and you have not found God constantly dealing with your heart and His Word inspiring changes in you, it is your fault. You are responsible for not having changed. You are responsible for where you are positioned spiritually.
A beautiful passage in Hebrews explains this: For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for some one to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For every one who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. Hebrews 5:12–13.
It is the way you hear the Word that changes you. Take heed how you hear, because the amount of revelation of the Lord that comes to your heart is based on the Word that you hear. Even when the Word is sown in the best of soil, there is a varied degree of fruitfulness: thirty-, sixty-, and one hundredfold. Milk is for the babes who are not accustomed to the Word of righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. Verse 14.
Are you satisfied with your spiritual growth? The Hebrew Christians were exhorted, By this time you ought to be teachers. Perhaps you ought to ask yourself, “By this time what should I be? Am I still a babe who needs milk instead of meat? Why am I not yet a teacher?”
Again it goes back to the battle over the Word. It is the Word of righteousness which you hear that changes you. No doubt you have sat through many services and received much of the Word. Then why haven’t you changed? Perhaps you got “hung up” over a Word or a revelation from God, and you were not able to assimilate it. Then that revelation could not penetrate any further in you, and you were not transformed by it. It got “stuck in your craw” instead of transforming your heart. Do not excuse yourself by saying that you saw many things which caused you to become discouraged and bitter. You are condemning yourself by your own mouth. Don’t you know that you are to keep your eyes on the Lord? If you had, you would be changing into the same image from glory to glory (II Corinthians 3:18). If there is no change, but there is bitterness, this indicates that you do not have your focus on God. If you are not being changed, then you are not receiving the Word of righteousness.
Within the next decade, we will probably never see a time when things will go so smoothly that there will never be a reproach upon the Word of the Kingdom. Not all believers will joyfully embrace the Word without focusing on the negative aspects. God will give you a choice, just as He did the Israelites. He set before them life and death, a blessing and a curse (Deuteronomy 30:1). Moses set the Word before the people. If they chose to walk in it, they survived and went on. Those who wholly followed the Lord made it to the promised land. But those who looked at the circumstances, who murmured and complained, remained unchanged; and they perished.
You make the choice. If the Word can come to you only in its most elementary form, then you will continue to be a babe. Do you need to be taught the elementary principles, The First Principles? there are people in church after church who have come into this walk in the Spirit who know nothing about the first principles.
We do not want the true spiritual babe to stumble, but we must be concerned for those who stumble because they have deliberately prolonged their own infancy. It is surprising how healthy a true spiritual babe can be. He can sit in a service and receive the milk out of the Word when meat is being served. It is amazing. However, there are many who need to be taught again the elementary principles. They do not need meat; they are choking to death on the meat of the Word. They have prolonged their own infancy. They have stunted themselves. They have made themselves into some kind of spiritual midgets, incapable of assimilating meat. And they did it to themselves. Our churches are full of people who claim to be hungry for God. Then why don’t they listen to His Word? There are many who buy tapes of the Living Word, but do they really listen to them? Those Words could change the whole church.
Wake up to the realization that in many instances, you are responsible for your lack of change. When you come to a place where you are bothered by things that are happening, it is your fault; it is because of where you are spiritually. By this time you should be teaching the deeper truths in God’s Word instead of choking on them. You ought to be teaching someone else. You may claim, “I have listened to the Word, I am growing, I love the Lord; yet I see problems that are not my fault.” If you are choking over those problems, you are at fault, because you are getting your eye on things other than the Lord.
What did Paul say was the mark of the babes? They looked to a man instead of to the Word. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to babes in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able. I Corinthians 3:1–2. The only way to get ready for meat is to gobble up the milk, just like a baby who eagerly drinks his mother’s milk. That baby grows! Face it: You are responsible if you do not change. The ministries can take only so much responsibility for your growth. If they set the table, it is your responsibility to come and eat the food. You are not going to grow until you do.
A baby who wholeheartedly goes after his mother’s milk will grow rapidly. His growth is the direct result of a persistent hunger for the food that is given to him and his assimilation of it. Before long he will have several teeth and will be able to eat solid food. How does a spiritual babe grow? By drinking the milk of the Word—every bit of it. As he walks and moves in the strength of it, he will soon be ready for solid food. Hebrews 5:14 tells us, But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.
Growth is sometimes painful. A teething baby will chew on anything he can bite into—even your fingers! He may even become feverish and somewhat sick, until the swollen spots on his gums give way to teeth. Then he must be fed something else.
If you are like the Corinthians, not yet able to receive the solid food, keep working at it. Determine to assimilate the teaching and to wait on the Lord until His Word is real to your heart. Then, like the Hebrews, you will grow “because of practice.”
The greatest Word that I ever received from God was ministered to me by prophecy during a period of about an hour and a half. It was the prelude to an apostolic commission, and I was unable to handle it. I listened to the tape and read the transcript of that prophecy, but I could not bear it. Even though I wanted to receive it, I fought with that Word for six months. Everything within me rebelled against what God was demanding of me. It was death to me. But because I did receive it, I can now speak an honest, free Word to you. I can tell you, “Listen to this Word. Hear it! Receive it, even if you do not like certain aspects of it.” Others may speak a word that is easier to swallow, but it may not be the word you need. Do you want to worship in the old ways? You must realize that if you want to make the Kingdom, you must go through transitions where the Lord takes one thing after another out of you and replaces it with something else.
When you are a child, you think as a child, but when you become a man, you put away childish things (I Corinthians 13:11). When I was a boy, I played with a Jewish friend named Irving. We played hockey with sticks and tin cans. We played war with castles we had built and little lead soldiers we had made. One day Irving came out and said, “I can’t play with you anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve been to my Bar Mitzvah.”
“What’s that?”
“Well,” Irving answered, “my uncle took me to the synagogue and I learned a lot of things. I am a man now, and I can’t play anymore.”
Our fun was over. The games were done. He had to forget about the lead soldiers. I never played with him again.
Paul told the Corinthians, “When I was a child, I thought as a child.” That is the trouble with people who have prolonged their own infancy—they are still thinking as children. Without realizing it, they are playing church because they do not know how to do anything else but play.
Paul wrote in I Corinthians 3:3b–5: Are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men? For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not mere men? What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one.
A number of years ago a young man announced, “I’m going to leave this church. I don’t believe in it. I see people failing God here; I see their wrongdoing exposed; I see that God is dealing with their sin and judging their iniquity. I’m going to go someplace where they don’t practice sin and immorality—someplace where they’re preaching righteousness.” Twenty years have passed since that fine young man turned away from this walk with God. All that time he has sat under a word he thought was righteous, in a movement he thought was righteous. But now God is allowing the press and the government to unmask that facade. The immorality of that movement is being uncovered for the whole world to see. What happened? Who was really preaching righteousness? When that young man would not allow the Word to become a revelation to his heart, he became open to deception. Consequently, somebody could bring a nice story and cause him to become a victim of a vicious deception that swallowed up a potential ministry.
We do not defend the offenses in our lives or in our walk with God. Neither do we judge as favorable something that is not the Word of God. If you have had a Word from God, listen to it, digest it, pray over it. Then if God makes it a revelation to your heart, you will start growing. But if you don’t do that, you will not grow. The Word will neither profit nor benefit you if you do not hide it in your heart and become obedient to it. Eventually, you will find that your immaturity, for which you are responsible, becomes an occasion of your stumbling and losing out with God.
Ministries have a great responsibility to bring forth the Word and to bring the babes into maturity. But we cannot baby them forever. Each person must listen to the Word. We can preach the Word, we can give the babes the milk of the Word, but if they persist in their own immaturity, they will reach an impasse and could ultimately destroy themselves.
People need to be stirred up and asked, “How many times have you been moved by God? Have all these Words been in vain?” Don’t complain about everything being so different now. It is true, things are different; but you would not be complaining about that if you were not still the same. You notice the differences because you have refused to change.
Instead of complaining because the church services are not the same anymore, thank God that they are not the same. God does not want the church to remain the way it used to be; He wants it to progress and move on. And He wants you to know that the way you have lived with the Word is the key to your growth and change.
Growth comes as a result of your attitude. The Word says, Therefore, putting aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord. I Peter 2:1–3. Have you tasted of His kindness? Then press on with all your heart. Let nothing hold you back. There may be many things that you do not yet understand, but you will understand them if you get into the flow of revelation. It all starts with the milk, which begins to unfold the revelation of Christ and His Lordship over your life. From there, you move on to take the next step and the next.
A child in kindergarten should not be criticized because he does not understand algebra. Of course he does not understand it now, but he will by and by. Similarly, as you press in to walk in every bit of light you have now, more light will be given to you. Revelation is a result of your reception of the Word of God. The Word is the key to revelation. The more you receive it with all of your heart, the more the Lord will make it a revelation to your heart. If you have been sitting under the Word for a year, and you have not changed, it is your fault. Do not blame anyone else.
If we were more mature, how much further along would we be? How much more would God have been speaking to us? How much deeper would be the Word that is coming now? How much further into the Kingdom would we be in actual experience? We accept our responsibility before God for the fact that we have not changed as much as we should have when He made His creative Word available to us to bring about change and transformation.
James speaks about people who are hearers of the Word, but not doers of it (James 1:22). How do we do the Word? We take hold of it; we determine to walk in it so that it becomes a part of us. We do not want to be just hearers of the Word. We must be open for God to lead us in the next step—especially during periods of transition.
After hearing the Word, we should have times in which we apply it to our hearts, times when we open up and determine to get hold of the Word so that it will live in us. When you want to change, immediately take a step—just one step—and it will be easier to keep going. When you wait until the next day or the next week to act on it, you never do. For example, if a believer hears a Word on tithing, he should not only respond by determining to become a tither, but he should act on that Word immediately. If he gives ten percent of the money in his wallet to the Lord in that service, he has taken his first step as a tither; and other steps will follow. If you listen to the Word and apply it, God will give you another Word. If you refuse to do so, He will dry up even what you do have—it will become obnoxious to you.
The churches need meetings in which they receive something—times of waiting to allow the Word to work in the people. The one hundred and twenty believers went to the upper room and waited after they had received the Word from the Lord to wait. They refused to leave. Where were the five hundred brethren who had heard Jesus at one time? Multitudes had seen and heard the Lord, but there were only one hundred and twenty in that upper room. What happened to the rest? God had given a Word, but they could not sit still long enough for Him to work it in them.
We are ready for a Kingdom breakthrough. Let us hold steady before God, saying, “Lord, I’m going to believe Your Word. I won’t panic; I won’t run. I will be right here before Your face. I’m going to walk with You.”
Sometimes God gives a Word, but you will not move in that Word until you set your heart before His face. When the children of Israel were standing in front of the Red Sea, they asked, “What’s the Word?” Stand still, and you will see the salvation of the Lord. The Lord gave you a Word. He started it all, so just stand still. “But I want to run. That cloud of dust back there means that Pharaoh’s shock troops are after us. Moses, we’re in trouble! What are we going to do?” Stand still! God has given you a Word—stand still.
Finally when Moses looked to the Lord for the next Word, He asked, “Why do the people cry out to Me? Tell them to go forward.” They moved right down to the edge of the Red Sea and the Lord rolled back the water. If you believe, anything can happen. Do not panic. Do not run when God says, “Stand still.” But do not stand still when He tells you to move! Be quick to hear.
Plunge into the flow God has for you. Do not think, “God won’t bless me because I’ve sinned and made a lot of mistakes.” That is not what knocks people out of a walk with God. No matter how many mistakes you have made, believe His Word. Get up and walk with God. As long as your heart can respond to a Word from God, and it keeps on responding as the Words continue to come, you will continue to walk with Him.