PLOWING THE GROUND OF THE PROPHETIC MINISTRY
by Pam Clark ~ WebSite: www.prophetic.net
I learned a long time ago, it's no good to try and force your words on someone. If they can't hear you, they can't hear you. It's better to go where they can, and you may be traveling! Ha ha, but sowing some seeds a long the way. Plow that ground!
What is more important? Being right, being known, having a message, giving the message or having it understood? To me prophetic success is when people "get the message" and can run with it, so to speak.
What best conveys a message? Yelling, friendliness or activity with the word? You have to discern. Jesus did all that. Presentation makes a difference. People respond differently to words, depending on where they are "at"!
Understanding Him, obedience and then positive effective change should be our goals. Knowing Him is the richest thing - to know Him is to reflect Him and enables us to convey Him. He was misunderstood, but yet He was obedient. But to as many as did receive Him, to them He gave the power to become the sons and daughters of God. Isn't that what we want?
The angels sang, "Peace on earth and good will TOWARD men." He's the message and the answer!
As I shared a couple of years back, I felt the Spirit tell me that Kansas City is a city of broken hearts. It's also the center or "heart" of the nation. It's a great city. I do think God is in the process of healing it, but there's a lot of issues, and until character issues are dealt with integrity, there won't be real healing anywhere. At a recent prophetic conference I went to, 90% of the people responded to an altar call of shot down eagles.
You can't scream at anyone, "Get healed" and them be healed, unless God is in those words and then it's pretty evident that He is (or isn't). It takes the character of Christ for real and lasting healing to occur.
You don't wear your scars as a badge of honor unless something is accomplished by them. There is this false doctrine that pain and deprivation is Godliness. God works through pain, to show His glory on the other side of that, but poverty and pain and a lacking spirit is not Godliness or Good News. If you are hungry or hurting, you may mourn for More!
A system is not going to reveal Jesus. This is where so much of the Church has missed it, it thinks it needs the system! The System comes as an outgrowth of Love, it doesn't support it. The system is the crutches until the people of the Church can stand. You may need a stretcher, an operating room, then a wheelchair, then crutches and a cast or brace, and some stitches, but eventually you need to get rid of all that when the healing occurs! Medicine should help, not just make you drunk.
For too many the System is hurting more than helping. That is why more folks are out "in the wilderness" than in the local bodies. When they join the local bodies, their lives get so "programmed," they lose their first love. They're told how to dress or not dress, how to think, how to act, how to give, how to live, how to serve, how to cookie cutter their lives after everybody else!
But somewhere along the way, Jesus got shoved out of the picture! So there is strife and all kinds of other ugly demons. All you have to do is look and see if there is diversity or does everyone look, talk, act alike? Is there a mixture of age groups, races, family types, singles, genders, styles and types of ministries? Are they accepted? Are they functioning to some degree?
Once you get a revelation of freedom, it's hard to go back to the institution, unless you are a servant. If you are a servant, then the system is serving the Church, but if you aren't a servant of Christ, then you are serving the System and the System becomes the god and the idol that people bow down to.
Now sheep bite is still a dangerous thing and this is where the Lion has to enter in. The true Lion will discern if it's the enemy or the flesh and deal with it accordingly. And how do you know if it is working? The people change. They take on the character and maturity of Christ. You see the "power of a changed life." It's not just talk, it's evident. Love is spawned. Today, the hills are littered with broken, wounded, hurting sheep who bite because they are mad. No one cared for them, but then order is also needed.
Spiritual Order has to be built from the ground up. From the ground, there has to be a foundation that Jesus loves them. But what happens is that a few "families" develop and they get self satisfied and they don't want to reach out and they don't want to change to include other parts of the Body, and their growth level plateaus and becomes a stronghold.
They love their own and from the "outside" that can look real virtuous, but if you hang around, you start seeing the same old flaws that never get worked on. They don't intergrate others, they use them. People become expendable and not a holy fear or trust. There may be a little or a lot of lip service, but just like we are seeing in the news, eventually God will deal with some things. Wisdom cries out in the streets! Read the news!
A servant ministry on the other hand, is open to change. It is looking for the ways to accomodate the move of God. It goes through self examination, asking hard questions of itself by others. It asks for accountability. It covers and doesn't expose things to the enemy. It does not set people up. It has wisdom about the true ministry of the Lord. It works to get past offenses so that new understandings can come. It looks for change. We aren't sitting still you know! True ministry is not an idol or a vision that is so structured that you worship the vision. It's a progression of deeper and deeper revelations into Christ, not just outward manifestations.
If you try to build a ministry upon yourself, it will crush you. But if you seek God for wisdom and cry out for understanding, He will bring people into your life who will show and share with you what they are doing and you WORK to work with that! The true work of God is believing on Him who was sent! When you believe, then you DO those things HE did! You learn from others and then you give it out with respect and honor for others.
This is how the five fold ministry and supporting ministry gifts will work. It's ministries coming together with a servant's heart to do the things He wants done, through people, for people, using your talents and gifts, knowing they come from Him, and seeing Him through the ministry.
When you lose Him in the ministry, you fell off the path. If ministry becomes a drudgery and an irritation, or you have signed up for a bunch of stuff you don't enjoy doing and you aren't being trained by that but have only become bitter, then you have missed the main point.
Some need discipline, but some are false martyrs. Some want others to do it for them. And that all stinks to everyone, including that person and those around them. Some get used to the smell.
Somewhere you will sense the life is being sucked or crushed out of you and then you have to leave that scene to find God and peace. I was going through this battle recently and someone wrote and said they discerned it was a python spirit. And I thought, that is what it feels like, that snake that just wraps around and tries to crush you and poison your inner man.
Stop, take inventory and see if the output exceeds the input. It should. Some have no output at all. Some don't have the right input so they are getting the wrong output. Some are in plain denial. They refuse all input. They don't want it and don't seek it. You need to discern if false words are defiling you. It can be presented so nicely or authoritatively, but is it God? The fruit will show!!!
It may not be a location that needs to change, but an attitude. It may be a need for setting some boundaries, or giving some up. But if you aren't evolving into self discipline, which is a FRUIT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, then something is missing in your training and discipleship.
None of the fruits can be forced. But you sure know when they are missing. If you NEED Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-control (or self discipline), and we ALL do, then try to figure out where you will get that. Don't be shortchanged. Get a full diet. Keep crying out to the Lord till you find it. It may be in leaving something, it may be in getting something, but it may involve CHANGE. When I worked at this mental health clinic, we had a phrase, "If nothing changes, nothing changes." Some say, you can't expect different results doing the same things - that is insanity to think you will get something different from the same activities.
You have to discern between persistance, fortitude and the need for change. What Would Jesus Do? You need to HEAR that on the inside of you. Status quo is not change. There can be order to change, but a growing life, needs increased daily food!