The Revolution Brigade

I’ve just been meditating on the words of Jesus from Mark 6:4:

Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household.”

I’m not ready to go out on a limb and label myself a prophet.  I think I am prophetic.  I think the Lord gives me prophetic revelation.  I think the prophetic grace is one of the primary ministry gifts on my life.  I think I have more dreams, visions, unctions, and “seemed good” experiences (Acts 15:28) than most folks.  But, despite these things, it clearly can’t be said that I occupy the “office” of prophet at this time.

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“because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”  (Romans 8:14)

I can think of nothing more valuable to an aspiring prophetic warrior than to be led by the Spirit of God at all times and in all things.  I earnestly desire to live my life that way.  I can’t say that I’ve honestly attained a walk that is 100% Spirit-led yet, but I’m contending for it.

A Spirit-led walk…

…focuses on “what” the Lord commands rather than “how” it can be accomplished.

…sees impossibilities as an opportunity to walk in the miraculous.

…values the Word of the Lord over the opinion of man.

…is doing only what we see the Father doing.

…is based in knowledge of sonship and acceptance/validation as a son of God.

There are many more tenets of a Spirit-led walk, but you get the idea.  If you look at the very next verse, Romans 8:15, you see the polar opposite of the Spirit-led walk.  This is the fear-led walk.

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. (Romans 8:15)

The fear-led walk…

…focuses on “how” a mission can be accomplished before deciding whether to obey the Lord.

…sees impossibilties as a deterrant to following God.

…considers the opinion of man more valuable than the Word of the Lord.

…means doing only what seems plausible and expedient.

…is based in an orphan mentality of fear and acceptance dependant upon performance.

Many of our principles of combat power have, at their core, the compentency of being Spirit-led.  Maneuver, for example, is solely about being available to respond to the proceeding Word of the Lord at a moments notice.

Spirit-led living is cultivated by intimacy with the Lord.  It’s about knowing “Pappa” as our provider and trusting in His infinite knowledge and faultless plan.  The Spirit within us actually testifies to us about our relationship with Him.  If we can learn to listen to that voice, the voice of the Spirit within us, we can live a Spirit-led life.

And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. (Romans 8:16-17)

Then he said to me, “Speak a prophetic message to these bones and say, ‘Dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord!  This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Look! I am going to put breath into you and make you live again!  I will put flesh and muscles on you and cover you with skin. I will put breath into you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.

So I spoke the message as he commanded me, and breath came into their bodies. They all came to life and stood up on their feet—a great army.

Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones represent the people of Israel. They are saying, ‘We have become old, dry bones—all hope is gone. Our nation is finished.’  Therefore, prophesy to them and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: O my people, I will open your graves of exile and cause you to rise again. Then I will bring you back to the land of Israel.  When this happens, O my people, you will know that I am the Lord.  I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live again and return home to your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done what I said. Yes, the Lord has spoken!” (Ezekiel 37: 4-6, 10-14 NLT)

Never in history has their been such a concerted effort to prophesy negativity over a generation.  From financial crisis to political turmoil, the world is raising up prophets at lightning speed to prophesy doom over the people of our nation.  They have said that the church is washed up, worn out, and without hope.  They look at us and see a valley full of dry bones.  The Lord sees an army of spirit-filled warriors just waiting to carry out His justice on the Earth.

Even now, God is beginning to stir the hearts of those who will carry the modern day Ezekiel anointing, to speak to the bones prophetically and cause them to rise by the power of the Lord.  All over our nation men and women, boys and girls, young and old are beginning to have dreams, visions, and angelic visitations.  The Lord is stirring the hearts of the fathers towards the sons, and the hearts of the sons towards the fathers.  The prophetic message is gaining spiritual synergy as more and more voices become active in prophesying to this generation: “Awake you sleeper!  Rise and be counted!  Stand up, and let the Lord add flesh to your bones!  You have a war to fight!”

Lord, release the prophetic destiny of the church!  Release the warrior anointing of the intercessor!  Loose your spirit to flow over our nation, and cause the four winds to blow on us once again!  This generation is ready to give birth to a prophetic end-time army that will fear no fear but the fear of the Lord.

Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. (2 Timothy 2:3 NASB)

…This means that God’s holy people must endure persecution patiently and remain faithful. (Revelation 13:10 NLT)

This means that God’s holy people must endure persecution patiently, obeying his commands and maintaining their faith in Jesus.  (Revelation 14:12 NLT)

I spy another end time theme emerging from my reading of the book of Revelation.  On several occasions, the writer uses the exact same words to describe the appropriate posture of the church toward persecution: that of patient obedience and endurance.  Paul calls it “suffering hardship,” but any soldier who has ever suffered hardship in the natural understands the parallel.

I spent time sleeping in holes dug in the ground in the cold of winter.  It wasn’t pleasant, and it wasn’t fun.  But it was part of being a soldier.  My commander had instructed me to remain at my position, and my posture towards his instruction was one of patient obedience.  I know in the back of my mind that the commander would not have asked me to remain in the hole if it wasn’t necessary for the mission or for my development as a soldier.  I had a benevolent commander whom I could trust explicitly to lead me.

How much more can we trust the leadership of Jesus?

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.  For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.  So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.  (James 1:2-4 NLT)

You’ve probably heard the term “training for reigning” before, but I’d like to evoke the idea in the context of suffering.  In the last days, the Lord will pour out his judgement on the Antichrist government and religion, and the beast will rage with anger towards the praying church.  For a season, it will have power to kill the saints, to put them in jail, and to starve them.  We must learn to endure hardship now of our own free will so that we will be prepared to lead when that day comes.

This is not a doom and gloom message, but rather an invitation to come to know Jesus as the author and finisher of our faith.  We are asking Him to finish a work within us and prepare us for that day.   We are saying that any hardship is worth enduring for the sake of knowing Him more.

⁵When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, “Come ” I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand.

⁶And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.” (Revelation 6:5-7)

I had a prophetic experience with the Lord a couple of days ago.  This message may very well be just for me, but I thought I might share it with you anyway.

I was praying about what I needed to get settled in my life in order to be ready for the events of the end times.  I asked the Lord to reveal to me what I needed to deal with, and He replied, “Hunger.”

I said, “Lord, I’m pretty hungry for your presence.  I’m hungry for your revelation,” and He said, “That’s not what I’m talking about.” Now I’m really listening because I’m reminded of when the disciples were on the boat fretting about not having any bread, and Jesus started talking about leaven.  The disciples were puzzled, but Jesus wasn’t talking about bread.  Likewise, He’s not talking about hunger in the spiritual sense.  It’s scary how I over-spiritualized the voice of the Lord on that point, but that’s another sermon for another day.

The Lord began to reveal to me that he was talking about dealing with physical hunger.  He brought to my mind the scripture above from Revelation 6, and I began to understand.  In the last days, there will be a very literal, very physical food shortage on the Earth.  The Lord said to me, “If you want to be used in those days as a leader, you have better conquer hunger now.”

I’ve heard it said that “in a world of darkness, the blind man is King.”  Likewise, in a world of famine, the man who is not controlled by his appetite is positioned to be a leader.  The man who does not rely on bread alone but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God is positioned for supernatural advancement.  God is showing me that if I afflict myself with hunger now, I will be more prepared to operate within the context of world-wide hunger in the last days.

What does it mean?  It means I have to fast more than I have been fasting.  I have to loose the control that my appetite has over my spirit by any means necessary, and bring my carnal body into subjection to my spirit.  Like Paul said, I must beat my body and make it my slave.   If I can’t go a week without food and stay in the spirit, I’m not ready.  Like I said, that may just be for me, but it may be for you also.

Sorry about the title, I couldn’t help myself.  Now, down to business:

And they had forgotten to take bread, and did not have more than one loaf in the boat with them.

And He was giving orders to them, saying, “Watch out! Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” (Mark 8:14-15)

He spoke another parable to them, “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.” (Matthew 13:33)

The bible mentions three specific types of leavens:

• The Leaven of Herod
• The Leaven of the Pharisees
• The Leaven of the Kingdom

Leaven, in the natural sense, is a permeating agent that causes transformation.  In the case of bread, when introduced in small amounts, it causes a batch of dough many times the size of the amount of leaven to rise.  For the purposes of the parables that Jesus taught, leaven is an outside influence on thought patterns that affects our world view and how we think.

Jesus was attempting to communicate the danger of allowing outside influences, even in small amounts, to affect our thought patterns because the result would be an infection of our entire lives.  Just as leaven mixed with dough causes the dough to rise, ungodly thoughts in small measure affect our lives.  Jesus specifically warned us about two trains of ungodly thought:

The Leaven of Herod: The leaven of Herod is an athiestic thought life.  When I say athiest, you think of somebody who doesn’t know or believe in God.  For our purposes, functional athiesm is just as bad.  What do I mean by “functional athiesm?”

Functional athiesm is a condition that befalls followers of Christ in which we live our lives as though God does not exist.  If there is a problem, we try to fix it separate from the power of God in our lives.  It is the logic that says, “God helps those who help themselves.”  When you’re on the boat with no bread, the functional athiest says, “You don’t have any bread because you forgot to bring bread.  Next time bring bread.”  Nevermind the fact that the creator of all heaven and Earth is on the boat with you, and has proclaimed that you are going to the other side.  Nevermind the fact that you have already seen Him multiply loaves and fishes to feed multitudes.  Functional athiesm.  It’s an ugly business that is more prevalent than we might think.

The Leaven of the Pharisees: The leaven of the pharisees is a religious mentality.  It has God in form but without power.  Phariseeism offers explanations but not solutions.  When a pharisee is on the boat with no bread, he says things like, “God, in His sovereignty, has arranged for you to have no bread so you can better identify with others who have no bread in this hour.”

A religious spirit is one in which principle trumps presence.  We tend to want to reduce the persuit of God to a formula that always produces the intended result.  The bible is full of godly principles that mean nothing apart from the person of Jesus.  The new covenant was never about religious practice, but rather about a restoration of the relationship between God and His creation that was damaged in the garden.

The reference to the leaven of the kindom is obvious.  A “kingdom” is the “dominion of the king.”  If we allow Jesus to reign supreme in our hearts, even in small measure, the effect will be a rising of our entire life.

I strongly recommend the teaching entitled Three Leavens of the Mind by Pastor Bill Johnson of Bethel Church in Redding, CA as an expanded resource to further clarify the writings here.  Most of this is influenced heavily by his material, and he is a world class teacher who explains it better than me.

We took a look in the last post at the some strategies that the enemy will use to attempt to undermine the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.  I believe that the rebuilding of the crushed, destitute, smoldering walls of the city of Jerusalem by Nehemiah is akin to the work of the Holy Spirit in taking the believer from the state in which they were saved to the victorious, sanctified, spirit-filled life to which we are called.  Let’s look at that scripture again:

1Now it came about that when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became furious and very angry and mocked the Jews.

²He spoke in the presence of his brothers and the wealthy men of Samaria and said, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Are they going to restore it for themselves? Can they offer sacrifices? Can they finish in a day? Can they revive the stones from the dusty rubble even the burned ones?”

³Now Tobiah the Ammonite was near him and he said, “Even what they are building–if a fox should jump on it, he would break their stone wall down!”  (Nehemiah 4:1-3)

We’ve already examined strategies one through three in a previous post.  For now, I’d like to pick up in verse 2 with the fourth enemy strategy:

Strategy #4:  Discourage the believer by showing him how far he has left to go. In verse 2, Sanballat says, “can they rebuild it in a day?”  The idea behind this statement is to call into question the ability of the believer to withstand the period of time between the present and the conclusion of the work of the Holy Spirit by pointing out how much work is left to do.  Perhaps some of you can relate, as can I, to the sentiment of being a perpetual work in progress.  I have so much growth and development left to undertake in the Lord that it would overwhelming if I were to focus on it.

I’ve often found that it’s more beneficial to focus on the finished work of the cross than it is to focus on my state.  Lifting up your eyes to the Lord means that you can no longer look at yourself.  Remind yourself that you are being transformed by the renewing of your mind, and that it is a process that takes an entire life.  Nevertheless, Christ is being formed in you, and your enemy is not happy about it.  Any attempt to get you to focus on how far you have left to go is an attempt to get  you to forget how far you’ve come by the grace of the Lord.

Strategy #5: Tell the believer that he can’t be used by God because He’s too messed up. Sanballat says, “Can they revive the stones from the dusty rubble, even the burned ones?”  The enemy would have you to believe that the pieces of your life, broken and burned and neglected as they have been, can never be formed again into any semblance of an existence.  This flies in the face of the redemptive work of the cross.  The same Son of God who turned water into wine and multiplied fishes is more than capable of doing a creative miracle in your life.  He can, will, and is using you for the purpose of the Kingdom.

The entire point of this argument is to get you to disengage from the prosecution of God’s will by having you believe that you are an unworthy vessel, or that you are somehow incomplete because of your past.  If he can cause you to be introspective about how you’ve been hurt, who you have been, and how undeserving you are, he can get you to lose sight of the work of the Lord in your life.  Don’t fall for it.

Strategy #6:  Call into question the strength of the finished work. Tobiah the Ammonite is another one of the devil’s minions in this story.  He said, “Even what they are building–if a fox should jump on it, he would break their stone wall down!”  Once you have had some success in allowing the Holy Spirit to build the proverbial walls of your life, you will find that the enemy is always trying to get you to believe that you are weak and frail, and that you can’t stand against him.  Folks, you are covenant sons of the most high God.  You’ve been grafted into the branch, given spiritual title and authority in the Kingdom, and reconciled to the Creator of heaven and Earth.  You are more than able to stand.

It’s all about the topic of agreement.  Your mouth is a covenant making machine.  If the enemy can get you to articulate your weakness, discouragement, or unworthiness, he has effectively gained jurisdictional authority to torment you.  Don’t fall for the school yard tricks of a defeated foe.