Radical Reformation

“There is desirable treasure, and oil in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man squanders it.”
Proverbs 21:20
“…to whom much is given, from him much will be required…”
Luke 12:48

I posted this as a facebook status update yesterday, and a friend asked me what it means.

The first verse (Proverbs 21:20) hit me like a ton of bricks while I was in the midst of receiving sozo ministry. I had been controlled by fear for most of my life and I’d determined that I wanted it gone, no matter what.  Dealing with the roots of that fear was complex, difficult, and painful (and worthwhile, because it is gone completely now!). I came to understand that God had placed great treasure within me and that it was foolish to allow fear to control me to the point that I squandered that treasure.

There is desirable treasure and oil in the dwelling (house) of the wise…

Those who follow Christ are wise… and what is the desirable treasure and oil? It’s the presence of God within us. He literally indwells us… our hearts become His resting place. We are the treasure chest of the Almighty.

Jacob had a power encounter with God and said, “Surely the Lord is in the place, and I did not know it.” “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven!” And he called the name of that place Bethel [Beth-El, House of God] (Genesis 28:16,17,19).

Surely the Lord is in this place… and for the believer, where is the Lord? Within us!

Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells within you?” (1 Cor 3:16)

We are the house of God… the temple of God… we are Bethel. The reason we are Bethel is because Holy Spirit lives within us.

Jesus said, “And the glory which You gave me I have given to them… “ (John 17:22)

We must always remember that we are filled with the same Holy Spirit as Jesus was. He didn’t get more, or a stepped-up version… He didn’t get first class and relegate us to economy class… God does not give Holy Spirit by measure. Jesus needed to be anointed and so do we. Apart from that anointing, we can do nothing. With that anointing – with Holy Spirit – we can do anything. Jesus said we would do even greater works than He did, and that nothing will be impossible for us (John 14:12, Matthew 17:20).

Furthermore, when Jesus said we should pray, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven”, He was declaring to us that every heavenly resource is available not only to us… but within us! Remember, we *are* earth; God created us from the dust of the ground. It would be perfectly appropriate to pray, “Your will be done IN ME as it is in Heaven!” When Holy Spirit is within us, the Kingdom of God is within us (Luke 11:20, 17:21) and we carry that glory, that power, that Kingdom, that treasure and oil, with us everywhere we go. We are mobile treasure chests of glory.

But is treasure any good to anyone if it’s squandered? If we waste the glory of God on foolish things, we ourselves are foolish.

Some waste the treasure on worry and fear. That is what I did. I was so afraid of what people would think of the treasure within me that I spent the treasure on keeping it well-hidden. Fear led to a false sense of humility; I would only bring out little bits and pieces of the treasure every now and then.

Others squander the treasure within them on things that look good, but by themselves do not profit. Bill and I were talking about parties yesterday – we happen to be a part of a church that loves a Holy Ghost party. We love it when God moves in such power that we all get drunk and fall on the floor and howl with laughter. We love when people are so overcome in the glory that they have to be carried out of the building on cots and they don’t come conscious until the next day. We love that! Wouldn’t trade it, do away with it, or wish He’d not do that.

However… the party is not the only thing. The party has a purpose – enjoying His presence has a purpose – it’s building love and trust, to make us open for Him to move in great power. If the party doesn’t lead the gathering to repentance, to healing, to prophecy, to deliverance, to bringing reformation to the city… the party has no purpose and we have squandered the treasure of God.

To whom much is given, much will be required… God has given us the greatest treasure in the universe… the gift of Himself. Much is then required of us. He does not give us Himself so that we can squander Him and His glory… not to waste His presence nor to spend it upon ourselves… this treasure is meant to be shared. We cannot have all of Him unless we give all of Him away. To be filled with all of the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:19) is not to receive a one-time measure… it is to be continually overflowing… our cups running over with His very presence! We’re to pour out that Presence everywhere we go, in everything we do.

Just as Jesus spent His blood for our freedom… we must spend His presence… the desirable treasure and oil within us… for freedom. Jesus gave us authority to “spend” the anointing of Holy Spirit when He said, “Go…” (Matthew 28:18,19)… “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:8)

Freely you have received this desirable treasure and oil within you… freely give. To whom all has been given, all will be required… to receive Him we must give Him to receive more and more of Him…

My husband and I were privileged to hear Bill Johnson preach on Saturday night. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing and we’re very glad we decided to go!

The entire message was excellent – he taught about Ephesians 3:14,15 – “For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named” – great stuff. Yet two tiny sentences spoken near the end of the message impacted me the most:

Hate is not an emotion. Hate is authority.

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Deuteronomy 29:29 declares: ‘God, our God, will take care of the hidden things but the revealed things are our business. It’s up to us and our children to attend to all the terms in this revelation.’ We as the Church have inherited every spiritual blessing in Christ … to preach the Gospel, to heal the sick, to cast out demons … to advance the Kingdom by destroying darkness. We must understand that it is God’s desire that the Church occupy (dwell in, inhabit, engage, take up) a place of supernatural territory that invades (enters by force, assaults, raids) the kingdom of darkness. A place where the Church dwells in a lifestyle of reformation and consistently demonstrates His authority and dominion to a world that is full of sickness and death. This place of occupation is to grow larger … ‘expanding the stakes of our tent’ (Isa.54:2) and more powerful as we pass it along to the next generation. Our ceiling must become that floor for our children and for generations to come. Inheritance is a biblical concept and one that we must embrace. This requires vision … ‘without a vision the people perish’ (Pro.29:18) and a sense of responsibility to pass it on. Our mandate is to build something that is larger than we are; something where the sum is greater than its individual parts; something of lasting value. This is what the Holy Spirit birthed at Pentecost and it continues today. The legacy of Jesus Christ is the Church.

A spiritual inheritance is about making us more effective and efficient in our representation of the King and His Kingdom. It is not about self promotion or self gratification. It simply is not for our consumption! It is to open the gateway of Heaven to the world around us … to bring heaven in greater influence to a larger audience. We must become aware of what is rightfully ours … ‘but those things that are revealed belong to us and our children forever.’ This is the inheritance of the Church … to walk in the supernatural power of God, to open the gates of heaven, to free the world from the grip of darkness, to be ‘His-story’ makers. You are an heir with Christ to the promises of the Kingdom. Paul in Galatians 4:6-7 and Romans 8:15-17 makes it clear that we are no longer slaves but sons. We are heirs of God and co-heir with Christ to the abundant promises and blessing of the Kingdom. James echoes this promise when he declares that we are ‘heirs of the Kingdom which He promised’ (James 2:5). The finished work of the cross validates our position and standing as being adopted into the Kingdom thereby granting us access to the abundance of heaven’s blessings. It’s all our! We are no longer orphans but sons of the creator of the Universe.

The Greek root word for heir is a legal term that indicates ‘a right being obtained by partitioning.’ Simply stated, you obtain by allotment the rights of a son the portion that is rightfully his. The promises of the Kingdom are yours. The problem is we don’t believe this and therefore never appropriate what is rightfully ours. The resources of heaven are at our disposal and the world is waiting for the Church to seize that reality. Think about it, the abundant riches of heaven are waiting for the Church to begin acting like a son. We also have at our disposal the rich spiritual inheritance of previous revivals passed along to us by past generations. The spiritual knowledge and experience gained by those outpourings must become the apostolic foundation of the Church that is fully energized by the mandate to build a Church that cultivates and lives in a ‘lifestyle’ of radical reformation. We become a Church where the flow of God’s river never subsides and access to the abundant power of heaven is readily available. The Church becomes a community of believing believers where the power of God is evident in their everyday experience.

The problem is no generation in history has effectively passed on the spiritual momentum generated by revival. Basically, no generation has effectively raised up the next to carry the anointing or sustain the outpouring of the Spirit and then take it to the next level. Territory once gained and occupied by the Church is lost and the enemy repossesses familiar ground that was lost by the advancement of the Church moved by the power of revival. In essence, as the wells of revival are capped, we must start over again. Because of this ‘pattern’, the Church believes revival is sporadic (patchy, random, periodic). Revival arrives ‘just in the nick of time’ to give the Church a ‘shot in the arm’, new enthusiasm, new hunger and ne energy … a ‘pit stop’ for refueling. Revival becomes and exception and not the norm (standard, model, type). This was not God’s intention and was not he model or legacy Jesus left us. Revival must become the standard of everyday life and not the exception. It must become a lifestyle and not ‘a special meeting’ that occurs every now and the. Signs, wonders, and miracles are normal to the Gospel and they are part of the normal Christian life. We were never intended to love outside the outpouring of Pentecost. He takes us from ‘glory to glory’ (2Cor.3:18). He is progressive in every move He makes. The nature of the Kingdom is that ‘of the increase of His government’ (Isa.9:7). The tragedy of history is that revival comes and goes. Subsequent generations build monuments around the achievement of the previous generations but never completely receive and occupy their spiritual territory. Perhaps we are not willing to pay the same price; form organizations around past movements to preserve and defend the idea but not the practice; or they inherit territory but fail to develop it and therefore lose it.

Is it possible to live in inherited territory without advancing or developing that territory? To see the Kingdom advanced, we must be willing to expand and enlarge. The quickest way to lose ground is to take up a posture of defending what you have instead of working to increase it. To chose not to expand and increase is to choose to lose the very thing we are trying to protect (Matt.25, Parable of the Talents).

Bill Perdue

VP ESH – Standards

The AHFA

336-884-5000, x1017

276-806-2014m

bperdue@ahfa.us

Duty – Honor – AHFA

Change your mind, change your perspective … funny how the whole process starts with the way we think. The battle really is between our ears. If we could ever seize the reality of this fact and alter the way we think about the Kingdom, we would begin to see through the eyes of heaven (the superior reality) and not through our natural eyes (the inferior reality). This would clearly change our perspective. Once we begin to see from the perspective of heaven … ‘Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matthew 6:10) … you will naturally have an appetite for the impossible.  You begin to see with supernatural eyes into the realm of Heaven for the answer.  Heaven has all the resources for us to fulfill the destiny and plan for the Church to preach the gospel to the poor, heal the sick, raise the dead and set the captive free. Only when the Kingdom of God collides with the situation will we see the works of darkness overwhelmed and lives changed. The greatest mystery of this is that Father God has chosen to limit Himself to the Body of Christ. The normal Christian life is poised between what we presently understand and the unfolding revelation that comes from the realm of mystery. God is God; but He has chosen to work through the Church to impact the world.

Kingdom vision is encouraging and energizing. It focuses our faith and is released with the permission of our mind. Our minds must be transformed from the earthly, natural, and reasonable thinking that holds faith back to heavenly thinking that releases us to Kingdom living. The Kingdom is infinite, encompassing and challenges the mind of man to ‘repent because the Kingdom of God is at hand’ (Matthew 3:2). The challenge is a mandate to accept the eternal and infinite rule of God as normal in our everyday life … revival become a lifestyle and the Kingdom goes where we go. Faith becomes an action verb, things happen, darkness is pushed back, lives are changed … aren’t we tired of talking about a Gospel of power and seeing no demonstration of it?

The challenge before us is to give ourselves completely to the full purpose of God by allowing our mind to be transformed … our thinking altered, the way we see things radically repositioned. This shift will grant us access to a supernatural life style that will challenge us to do greater works … do you believe this? If you don’t then you need to change your perspective. This reformation in the way we think will put us in a position where the reality of heaven comes crashing into earthly problems and simply overwhelms them. The results are astonishing miracles, great victories over the power of darkness, healing, deliverance, revelation … just a normal, authentic daily life style for the believer … affliction and darkness are completely vanquished. Kingdom reality annihilates earthly affliction. What a revolutionary way to live or is it just a return to the authentic. We must begin to see through the eyes of heaven to understand that it is God’s intention for His church to be actively involved in the main activity of the Kingdom … defeating the works of darkness. There must be eagerness within the believer to return to the word and believe that we are called to a life of miracles, spiritual intervention, revelation, peace, joy, love and a sense of well-being and purpose. There is an appetite for the impossible that cannot be ignored … it’s just built into our DNA. Our hearts know that there is much more to life than what we perceive with our senses … see, smell, taste, touch, and hear. We are spiritually agitated by the lack of connection with the real of the supernatural. The bottom line for the believer is seeing the impossible bow to the name of Jesus … anything less is abnormal and unfulfilling.

Bad teaching and disappointment have robbed many people of this reality. We must allow the Spirit of wisdom to draw out the deep things of our hearts. Today we live in an unprecedented hour where the church is hungering for and stepping into her destiny to fulfill the purposes of God for mankind on earth. The most amazing part of all this is we get to be part of it. The normal Christian life begins with the fundamental principle that we (the body of Christ) were put here to do the will of God on earth as it is in heaven.

Jesus said, “But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33)

This command comes in the middle of a discourse about God’s provision for us which could be summed up as, “Don’t worry. God’s got you.” Because of the context, it’s way too easy to see the “all these things shall be added to you” without considering the imperative, “Seek first.”

Seek… the Greek verb is zēteō, and it means literally, “To seek in order to find.” This is not philosophical suggestion Jesus was making – “seek” is a command to us, and both the Kingdom of God and His righteousness are real and attainable by us. This is God’s expectation for His people; we are commanded to go after, to find, to get the Kingdom and His righteousness.

This verb is an imperative, and can have a connotation of expecting or even demanding something of the one who owns something. For example, if I am seeking apples and you own an apple tree, I’m not saying, “Please, may I have an apple?” – I’m saying, “Give me an apple” with the expectation that you will indeed do so!

Jesus used different language but a similar sentiment when He said we should pray, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done.”¹ This is also phrased as an imperative, which “expresses a command to the hearer to perform a certain action by the order and authority of the one commanding.”²

Yes – Jesus really did say, “Command God to perform an action”… but remember, this isn’t “Your money or your life” – this is relational, borne in covenant. We’re not exercising dominion over God, but dominion with Him, by His invitation. In a parallel passage, Jesus says, “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good, pleasure to give you the Kingdom.” (Luke 12:31,32)

Daddy in Heaven wants us to seek so that He can give! It is the glory of God to conceal a matter… and the glory of kings to search or seek it out.³ To paraphrase Bill Johnson – God doesn’t hide things from us. He hides them for us. He delights in us seeking and finding His treasures.

And so we must seek the Kingdom and righteousness first… which means simply, “first”. Not second, not an afterthought, not later, not when it’s convenient, not when it’s easy… it means, “first.” When Jesus said, “Do not worry”, what He was getting at was, “don’t let all this other stuff of life distract you from your primary purpose.” Not only should we not worry or be distracted by material concerns like family matters or the economy… we also shouldn’t be distracted by what God is doing. Miracles, signs, and wonders abound and where should our focus be? “Seek first the Kingdom and His righteousness”… always.

That which is in first place has the place of absolute priority. Nothing else can be more important to us than this pursuit.

Why? Not because our “stuff” doesn’t matter to God. He cares about the things we care about very, very much. In fact, His care for us is evident in this command. Kingdom means, “the King’s domain,” and refers to the area over which the King has dominion. Therefore, when we seek first the Kingdom, “all these things” of life come under His dominion through our total, willful submission to and partnership with that dominion. Furthermore, when His righteousness is our priority (nothing else takes its place, it’s not put off, it’s not shed because it’s inconvenient), all that we do is from a place of right standing with God.

It’s not our righteousness, it’s not something we earn or achieve; it’s His righteousness we must seek. The word “righteousness” has a sense of justice or getting what one deserves. Thank God that we don’t get what we deserve – Jesus took that for us so that we could get what He deserves!

In His righteousness, we are as we ought to be, as He longs for us to be… and we know who we are and who He is. Everything we do flows from the purity of that relationship, and “nothing shall by any means hurt you”.⁴ The enemy has no legal right when we are clothed in God’s righteousness.

Consider the things that must bow to the dominion of God: sin, disease, death, poverty, demons, depression, despair, the list goes on.  Every sin, every sickness, every storm, and every spirit is 100% subject to Him. Focusing on them does not bring change – in fact, focusing on sin, sickness, storm or spirit just exalts satan. Remember, we become like what we see. If all we see is our trouble, sooner or later we’ll start looking like it.

How do we see transformation in a situation? Jesus said that if He casts out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.⁵ He also said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.”⁶ God does not want us to keep His Kingdom within us… He commanded, “Freely you have received, freely give”⁷.

When we encounter a situation, be it storm, sickness, sin, or spirit, we must release the Kingdom – the King’s dominion, by Holy Spirit – upon that situation. We cannot release what we do not possess… and therefore, we must seek first the Kingdom of God.

1. Matthew 6:10
2. For parsing information, see Blue Letter Bible – Help, Tutorials, and FAQs
3. Proverbs 25:2
4. Luke 10:19
5. Matthew 12:28
6. Luke 17:21
7. Matthew 10:8

Continued from Part 1

That’s a far cry from the teaching that we must die again and again, and suffer endlessly, isn’t it? But doesn’t God say that’s precisely what we’re supposed to do? Not exactly.

I am going to start off by paraphrasing Bill Johnson, who said he gets asked, “Well, what about Job?” He responds, “I don’t know. I’m not a disciple of Job’s. I’m a disciple of Jesus. Job was the question. Jesus is the answer.” And so I say, “I”m not a disciple of suffering. I’m a disciple of Jesus. Suffering is the question. Jesus is the answer.”

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A friend and I have been discussing the problem of suffering in light of several comments, scripture references, and quotes I’ve made recently on Facebook. The discussion got heated when I quoted Kris Vallotton in “The Supernatural Ways of Royalty”:

We have made cross-carrying a career opportunity instead of a one-day event.

My friend made a point: “After all, Jesus Himself did say that we’re supposed to “take up our cross daily“, didn’t He? Besides, isn’t the Christian life supposed to be one of suffering and pain? That’s what God said! ” (note: that’s my paraphrase and reflects my perception of what she said… )

Well, yes, He did… and no, He didn’t. Let’s look at this concept of “taking up our cross” and see what it means:

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