Radical Disciples – A Remnant Revolution

In the kingdom of God, if we are a part, we have a part. There are many parts with various functions that all fit together to form the whole. As believers, if we truly know and love God and walk in the Spirit we will naturally flow into our part and place with little thought about a label or mental effort in defining our part. Jesus gave us a few all-inclusive foundational instructions that bring our lives to flow naturally into place. He gave two great commandments that encompass all the law and the prophets.

Mat 22:37-40: Jesus said to him, �You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself, �On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets�

Jesus said to love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.

Knowing we were not able to accomplish this on our own He further instructed us to abide in Him and allow Him to abide in us. This is a spiritual reality carried out by the Holy Spirit. The provision of being baptized in the Holy Spirit and then walking in the Spirit supplies the reality of loving God and our neighbor which will cause us to know and do naturally the desires of God. Thus we walk into our part and place in the kingdom.

John 15:4-5: �Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.�

Acts 1:8: �But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;�

Gal 5:25: If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

How do we appropriate this into a practical reality in our lives?

Jesus gave us clear instruction for this. He said to pray and to seek. This is a directive to focus our lives. He said pray for the kingdom of God to come on earth as it is in heaven and He told us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

Mat 7:7: �Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.�

Mat 6:9-10: �In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.�

Mat 6:33: �But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.�

None of these instructions are optional. None can be left out. If you don’t know what they mean, you must find out. If you aren’t sure you believe in some of them call upon God and search the Word until you are. We cannot progress into the reality of the kingdom of God until we can obey these directives and commands from our Lord.

Having received this word, you will now make a decision to commit to praying and seeking until these directives are reality in your life or you will decide to let it slide. If you let it slide, it will probably be because you think you already have it or that for some reason you don’t really need it. If you make the commitment to become obedient to these directives then the coming sessions of this material can help guide you into the reality of the promised kingdom lifestyle.

Father, in the name of Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit, I commit to abiding in Jesus and ask that Jesus abide in me. I commit, Father, to seeking the baptism of the Holy Spirit and to seek to continuously walk in the Spirit. I pray, Father, for your kingdom to come and Your will to be done on earth as it is in heaven and I focus my life to seek first Your kingdom and Your righteousness before all else. God, from this moment on I am a seeker of You and Your kingdom. Jesus, empower me with Your life by the Holy Spirit to love God with my whole heart and to love my neighbor as myself. Amen

Date____________________ Signed ________________________

Kings and priests to God

Religion has taught us that we should fit into one of its defined molds of service and that it is important to know and label our part. Religion makes many distinctions, definitions, and divisions. The religious church divided the entire Body into two major categories, one labeled “clergy” and one labeled “laity”. The clergy referred to “full time ministers” who generally performed all the spiritual duties of the church. Everyone else was referred to as laity. This concept was an erroneous carryover from the old-covenant Jewish religion into the new covenant church. The old covenant provided for a separate class of men who were the priests and performed all the temple duties including the animal sacrifices for all the people.

In the new covenant church there is not to be only one who represents Christ as His vicar on earth, but in fact, every believer is to be His representative. We are a Kingdom of kings and priests. We relate directly to the King of kings and Lord of lords. We pray directly to Him. We hear His voice spoken directly to us and are each His divinely appointed agents. We are all full time ministers serving God and serving His people in every activity in which we are engaged. God’s kingdom is much bigger than church work. Every aspect of life is to be the domain of God and all we do is to be serving Him, serving His people and governing His earth.

Rev 1:5-6: ….Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

What is my work as king and priest and how will I specifically know?

What is your work in the kingdom? How can you know for sure? Simple. What is the desire of your purified heart? Psalm 37 says, �Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.� John 15 says, �Abide in Him and you shall ask what you will and He will give it to you.� The key is in abiding and delighting in Him and following the desire He puts in your pure heart.

If we need or desire to get our delights from any source other than God, our hearts� desires will be adulterated. We will have difficulty in knowing our part. Some search all their lives trying to find themselves. Who am I? What is my purpose? All the while they are delighting in many things other than the Lord.

Needy people are not free.

Only those individuals with healed hearts can be free from all need to delight themselves in something other than God. If we have unhealed pain stored in our hearts, we will always need something to make us feel better. As long as we have that need, our desires will be to fulfill it. We will get our delight in filling the needs of our hearts with money, power, position, fame, romance, sex, or whatever makes us feel better. Seeking these things will never produce the good fruit God intended. After being healed by fully appropriating the ministry of Jesus, we can choose to delight ourselves in the Lord, and our desire will be to bear the fruit God intended. We need only to follow our God-given desires, and we will walk in the middle of His plan. We each will know who we are and what our purpose is. We will simply carry out our heart�s desire.

We are then free to do the will of God. We are no longer constrained to fulfill any needs of our hearts. Freedom is the ability to live righteously in Christ Jesus by following the desire He has put into our hearts. The bondage of trying to follow a religious order or set of rules is gone. Trying to be like someone else and do what they do, like they do it, is in the forgotten past.

God has provided five special servant-gifts to edify (grow up) His people.

The Bible refers to these as apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. They are five different types of gifted people to mentor the Body. They are all servants. They each provide for God�s people, but each in a distinctly different way. Each must think differently than the others. Each must have different abilities and different revealed understandings of the Word. The shepherd will always understand the Word as it relates to his service. The evangelist and the shepherd may sit in the same gathering, hearing the same Word from the same apostle, yet each will receive the part that feeds his calling.

Ephesians 4:11-13: And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some shepherds, and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ.

The apostle tends to see the overall larger picture. He sees it first in the spiritual and then seeks to bring it forth into the natural realm. He is like a pioneer. Apostles were a major part of the original formation of the church. In this day the apostles have been restored for the re – formation of the church to its original design and intent. In this re – formation major foundational and structural changes are required that call for the gifts and strengths of apostles.

The prophet is primarily an ear and a voice to people who are dull of hearing and do not hear the voice of God clearly. Prophets were very prevalent and most important in the old covenant when the Holy Spirit did not reside in God’s people; therefore, they had no inner voice of God. In this day much of the church is yet dull of spiritual hearing and seeing. For many reasons they do not have intimacy with God through the indwelling Holy Spirit and need prophets to hear God for them and speak direction to them.

The evangelist is a seed sower who loves to plant the word of Jesus in the heart soil of those who have never received it. In the recent past the evangelist has preached the portion of the gospel dealing with being “born again” or spiritual new birth. Evangelists are now beginning to, and will in the future even more, preach the fuller gospel of the kingdom that Jesus preached with the same powerful works that Jesus did. The gospel of the kingdom includes the gospel of being born spiritually that we have preached before but also includes the good news of growing up in Christ to rule and reign in this life with Him as kings and priests.

The shepherd is the mentor who sees to the growth and development of the immature as they grow into their gifts and places of service. In the religious church the shepherd was called �pastor� and served as a vicar of God. He was a person who vicariously represented Christ to the people all of their lives. This allowed little or no opportunity for the believers to mature into the priests and kings as God intended. In the relational church Christ and the mature people relate directly and not through a vicar. The sheep grow up to be shepherds or do other works as mature sons in the kingdom.

The teacher is the one who brings spiritually anointed definition to the fine points of spiritual reality. He is gifted to take natural illustrations and teach spiritual truths to the immature. In the religious church the teacher often brought dry “church doctrine” of many words and little real spiritual life. In the relational church the teacher is a light bearer bringing spiritual enlightenment in detailed pieces of real spiritual life.

These gifts function in the church, in business, and in all walks of life. The apostle in business may be thought of as one who starts businesses from nothing and serves as C.E.O. In business a prophet might be a troubleshooter. A pastor might be a personnel manager. An evangelist might be a traveling salesman. A teacher might be a technical instructor.

There are many other gifts with each having its unique function in God�s overall scheme. All gifts and parts are needed. And they all need to be in their proper places doing their particular jobs. One of the greatest hindrances to each part doing its job is the lack of understanding and acceptance of the role God has given to each one of them. Often our temptation has been to try to mold everyone into whatever we are.

We don�t need for everyone to be what we are. We need to help others to become what God has designed them to be. We must resist trying to form people in our image and stop rejecting people because they are different. We must stop thinking that we are more important than others. We must learn to submit to the servant that God has sent in the area of spiritual grace God has gifted that servant in. Our ideas that we are superior because we have some status in the church or in a business can be a serious hindrance to our submitting to the one God has sent for a specific job. Pride in who we are and in what a great position we occupy is deadly. There are no big-shots in the kingdom of God. When God sends someone with godly ability in a specific area, we need to submit to them in that area and not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.

The need to be a big-shot comes from �unhealedness� in our hearts. If we are healed by the ministry of Jesus, we feel abundance in our lives and don�t need to be bigger than our brother. We are free to allow the love of Jesus to flow to everyone. Love is the key that allows us to receive one another, to hear and see Jesus in our brothers and to submit to the Jesus in them. Also by love, we do not fear boldly stepping into the position of responsibility that He has called us to fulfill. In love, we serve one another.

Love is the greatest principle or law of the kingdom of God. God is love. Love causes the Body of Christ to fit together and to �flow life� from joint to joint. Love produces true unity, and unity leads to production and prosperity of life. Love is the power of the kingdom. It is the single greatest motivational force in the world.

�Unlove� separates and starves the members of the Body. It creates disunity which leads to a lack of production and increased poverty. Unlove flows death from joint to joint. Unlove is simply the lack of love. All sin flows from unlove. Love fulfills the law; unlove breaks the law. Every human conflict has its roots in unlove. Without unlove, there would be no church splits, no divorces, no wars, no crime, no bitterness, no angry hostility, no depression, no fear, no pride, no rebellion, no evil lust, and no need for hell.

Our first and most important �part� in the kingdom is that of loving. Regardless of what our individual functions are, we must be connected by love. Spiritual gifts, ministry, and good deeds are useless without the God-kind of unconditional love.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3:Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Keep on Pursuing Love,
It Will Never Fail,

Ron McGatlin

http://www.openheaven.com
basileia@earthlink.net