Category Archives: Leadership
Truth BOMB! How to Pastor Goats in Your Church
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Tagged bible lessons for leadership, faith, inspiration, leadership for end time Church, pastoring nuggets, prophet teacher, prophetic teaching, Truth Pressure, Truth Pressure Ministries, truthpressure, what do i do with goats in my church, wisdom for pastors
Who Will Lead the End-Time Church #15
Restoring Order to Christ’s Body
As Christians, we are called to community. In every community, everyone has a different role to play, a specific function, and a unique contribution that is needed for that community to thrive. If individuals are not fully functioning in their roles and in proper relationships with those around them, the entire community suffers.
Some of the most important relationships we have are with the five-fold ministry gifts. Every ministry gift teaches but has a different expression, function, and assignment. Still, they all have the same purpose: Equipping the saints for the work of ministry. When we do not have healthy relationships with the ministry gifts of Christ, we are hindered from being adequately equipped for God’s work.
As stated before, all believers have within them a measure of the five-fold ministry gifts. Our relationship with other believers allows us to benefit from those giftings and is one source for equipping us. However, there are those among us whom God has ordained to stand in the “office” of the five-fold ministry. These leaders in the body of Christ are uniquely anointed to equip us in ways that others cannot. These leaders are the gifts that Christ has given to the Church to prepare us, strengthen us, and equip us for spiritual warfare and the work of the ministry. We need some level of relationship with all five of these anointed gifts.
One of the reasons we don’t see the level of signs and wonders we see in the early Church is that we have moved away from God’s ordained community structure. When God’s community is out of order, and we don’t have much-needed exposure to apostles, prophets, and evangelists, we become well-equipped to teach and pastor but ill-equipped to function in kingdom authority. Without a relationship with all these five gifts, we will likely not be well equipped to represent the kingdom of God with demonstration and power.
Ephesians 4:11-16 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
Notice in verse 14 that one of the reasons we need exposure to all five gifts is to keep us from being tricked and deceived children tossed about by every doctrine that blows through the congregation. We need exposure to all five gifts to grow up into the full measure of Christ’s body.
If you are hungry for God, you know in your heart there is so much more power available to us than we are experiencing. The Church has been ill-equipped and powerless for centuries. Could this be from not understanding the function and importance of our relationships? Could this result from not understanding God’s plans for community and not holding to His original design? We must be exposed to all five ministry gifts because they equip us differently.
It is no accident that many denominations no longer recognize the ministry of the apostle and prophet. Apostles and prophets help equip the church with power and prepare her for what is coming. The last thing the enemy wants is for his plans to be exposed in advance and for the Church to be equipped to foresee those plans and empowered to destroy his works.
Satan deceives the Church with denominational preferences, racial divisions, political differences, and doctrinal disagreements to keep us weak, ill-equipped, and ineffective. He attacks the body of Christ to damage the joints, straining and breaking relationships to cut off our supply of the Spirit. The unity of the faith is what the devil is trying to prevent. (Ephesians 4:13)
All relationships are meaningful, even the ones that challenge us. Every relationship is a gift, a garden, and an opportunity to sow into and reap from.
Question: What will it take to restore God’s ideal community?
Question: What is your role in the community?
Question: Can you identify some roles that are not filled in your community?
Question: What can we do as leaders to build and maintain a healthy community?
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Who Will Lead the End-Time Church #14
I remember the Lord asking me a peculiar question some years ago. He asked, “How does faith come?” I immediately said, “Faith comes by hearing, Lord.” (quoting Romans 10:17). The Lord then asked me, “So then, how does hearing come?” I didn’t have a quick answer for Him, but I was immediately reminded of all the scriptures that state: “he who has ears to hear let him hear,” and many other scriptures that said, “They had eyes that see and could not see, they had ears but could not hear.”
After some study, I began to see why people who have the “appearance” of faith and declare that Jesus is their Lord are having great difficulty in their Christian walk. They don’t have a hearing ear, so faith never comes.
A typical teaching is that faith comes by hearing and hearing and hearing, etc. And there is some truth to that line of thought. The thing that has not been taught much is that there are different ways to hear, and there is a difference between natural and spiritual hearing.
Romans 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Let me give you a more accurate translation of this verse to make it clear.
ROM 10:17 (my paraphrase): Faith comes by what we hear, and hearing comes from the Word of God that we act upon.
Just because we have ears does not mean we can hear the Word. Our spiritual ears, our hearts, can only be opened by obedience to the word of God. That word will come from the written Word and the spoken Word by the Holy Spirit that dwells in us as believers.
Only the word of God we act upon will develop our spiritual hearing. Obedience opens our spiritual hearing so we can receive further instruction.
Throughout the bible, it is the disobedient and rebellious people who “had ears but could not hear.”
Deuteronomy 29:4 Yet the LORD hath not given you a heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.
Jeremiah 5:21 Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not:
Ezekiel 12:2 Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a rebellious house.
Spiritual ears are opened by the word of God we act on. If we are in a place where we feel we cannot hear God’s voice, we should humble ourselves before Him and ask Him where we have been rebellious and disobedient. If God has spoken to us about something and we neglect or ignore it, he is not inclined to talk to us about anything else until we acknowledge and act on what He has already said.
There are vast realms of understanding and revelation that we willnever acquire if we are not doers of the word. If we do not act on what we have heard, the Bible says we are deceiving ourselves. If we hear the word and do nothing about it, we become spiritually deaf.
James 1:22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
Once we obey the word of God, an extraordinary cycle begins. Acting on the Word gives life to our faith and increases our ability to hear more from the Lord, which gives us more opportunities to act on what we hear, which gives life to our faith, and the cycle repeats. This is the never-ending cycle of spiritual growth.
If the Word of God is sown in our hearts and we refuse to act on it (rebellion), the devil has the right to steal it from us. This is the condition that we see in the parable of the sower.
Matthew 13:19 When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path.
There are too many “wayside” Christians in the Church today. The spiritual condition of the Church as a whole is poor, in part because of the inability to hear what the Lord is saying to this generation.
As leaders, we must live a life of strict obedience and teach those following us to do the same.
Matthew 13:9-13 He who has ears, let him hear.” 10 Then the disciples came and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” 11 And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. 12 For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.
When Jesus called the twelve disciples, He said to them: “Come.” They acted on that word and continued to follow Him.Because they acted on the word, they had ears to hear more.
Every time God speaks to us, corrects us, or even rebukes us, He is saying, “Come follow Me.” If the disciples did not follow when Jesus said, “Come,” Jesus would have kept right on walking, and they would not have been close enough to Him to hear further instructions.
Every time God speaks to us about anything, He is asking us to pursue Him. Let’s look at the rest of this passage.
Matthew 13:14-15 Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: “You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.” 15 For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’
Lack of spiritual hearing is a heart problem caused by unbelief. Unbelief can be manifest in many ways: rebellion, disobedience, lack of understanding, spiritual laziness, pride, or selfish desires. No matter what form it takes, obedience is the cure.
John 14:23-24 Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. 24 He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.
God has already spoken many things to us in His written word. Why would He be inclined to say anything else if we are not interested in what He already said? Find out what God has already spoken and act on THAT. This will give us ears to hear what the Spirit is saying.
Question: What causes Christians to become dull of hearing?
Question: What is the difference between Natural and spiritual hearing?
Question: Why is spiritual hearing so important?
Question: How do we develop and maintain clear spiritual hearing?
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Who Will Lead the End-Time Church #13
Be Mindful of What You Reproduce
All Christians should eventually be making disciples. Disciples are made when people willingly follow us and our living example. We must always be mindful of what kind of example we are setting.
As leaders, we should often ask ourselves: What kind of disciples am I making? What am I reproducing? Do we really need two or more like me?
Our priority should be a growing relationship with the Father. We should be cautious of having followers if there are other priorities above that. What can we reproduce if we make disciples apart from intimacy with God?
A leader can easily get distracted from spending intimate time with the Lord. A common trap is to replace being alone with God and pursuing intimacy with Him with the busyness of religious activity. Another pitfall is to allow our devotion time” with the Lord to become lifeless, where we go through the motions and never connect with God on an intimate level. We can read a daily chapter or two in our Bible, run through our laundry list of prayer requests, and never be quiet and listen to the one we are talking to. I have been guilty of this myself. It is tragic to become religious in our devotion to God and call it a relationship.
We can learn a lot about God from reading and studying the Bible, but to honestly know Him, we must spend time with Him, commune with Him, and listen to Him.
Jesus set a remarkable example. He only did what He saw the Father do. This mindset demands a lifestyle of watching and praying. It’s not always convenient or comfortable, but it is necessary to be a disciple of Christ.
If you read a person’s biography, you can learn much about them, but you can’t honestly say you know them. You may “feel like you know them,” but to honestly know someone, you must meet with them, ask them questions, listen to their responses, and spend time with them. It is the same with God. Apart from intimacy, we will never reproduce the fruit of who He is.
Reading the Bible takes on new dimensions when intimacy becomes a lifestyle. The word of God bears much more fruit in our lives. We begin to view His written word through the lens of His divine nature; we see it with an unveiled face and a heart of love that makes us more sensitive to His spoken word.
As leaders, we must understand that spiritual gifts are free, but maturity is expensive.
If we are to reproduce mature leaders, we must first make sure that we are maturing. Most disciples will never rise above the level of those mentoring them.
Exposing the Deception of Itchy Ears
Matthew 23:9-10 Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. 10 And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ.
That may seem contradictory since the Lord Jesus gave us teachers through the “five-fold ministry gifts” mentioned in Ephesians 4, but it is not. All the five-fold ministry gifts have one purpose: to equip the saints for the work of ministry. All five gifts teach differently, but their purpose is primarily to equip the saints for the work of ministry. We must filter those teachings through the anointing and our relationship with God and His written word.
1 John 2:26-27 These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you. 27 But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.
Suppose we abide by false doctrine out of ignorance. Regardless of our intention or our ignorance, we partner with the adversary, building strongholds of wrong thinking and wrong believing in our hearts and minds. We assist Satan in his deceptions by helping him make the strongholds that bind us. Unfortunately, it’s an evil deception that most of us fall for at one time or another.
These strongholds are not only reinforced belief systems but encampments in our minds that the enemy hides behind to ensure we stay trapped in wrong thinking and believing.
One of the ways he does this is to keep us running in the same circle of believers, hearing the same false doctrines taught repeatedly and despising believers in other denominations. Denominational divisions were never God’s plan, and now they are an effective tool the enemy uses against us.
To be truly free, we must be very selective about what we are hearing and beholding, who we are listening to, and how much we are doing it. Without the filter of a robust relationship with God and His Word, we cannot skillfully discern wrong doctrine. Truth becomes obscured with the leaven of religious doctrine that appeases the carnal mind and satisfies our selfish desires. Self is the very thing we need to be set free from. Freedom from self will not come until we renew our minds to the truth of God’s word.
Again, are we abiding in His word or just reading the latest books and listening to the latest sermons? Do we desire the sincere milk of the word, or do we lust for the leaven of a self-serving gospel that doesn’t challenge or strengthen us for trials and testing?
Our tendency to have itchy ears and the lust for leavened bread binds us and closes our eyes to the truth. There is a reason the apostle James wrote, “My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.” (James 3:1)
If we are bound by false doctrines and doctrines of devils, that is what we will reproduce in others. When discipling others, we should do it in the fear of the Lord—encouraging them to seek God for themselves and acknowledging that we don’t know it all.
If we abide in His word, seek Him diligently when no one is looking, and cultivate a hunger for the sincere milk of God’s word, we will become everything the blood of Christ has paid for us to be. Others will follow our example, and they will be true disciples of Christ.
Be Mindful of What You Teach Others
2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
All scripture is profitable for reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, but not necessarily our interpretation or delivery of it. Handling the word of life without humility and the fear of the Lord will not only result in teaching false doctrine, but the effects of those teachings can result in people being cut, hurt, offended, and deceived. It brings a reproach on Christ, discrediting His name, harming the Church, and devaluing His Word.
The Bible says in James 3:1 My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment. And yet, the world is full of Bible teachers who do not rightly divide the Word of truth. We should all realize that teachers of the word of God are held to a high level of accountability—a stricter judgment. Teachers should teach from the overflow of their intimate relationship with the Lord, for these are the only things they truly know. Accumulating knowledge about the Word of God is not the same as knowing the Word. A true teacher is not only anointed to teach but also anointed to learn. We must all lean on the anointing to learn more than the need to be heard.
In the age of abundant information that we live in, it is easy to accumulate knowledge about God and reduce ourselves to just relaying information. Unless we put that knowledge into practice, we don’t know the truth we are trying to share. The common practice of merely sharing information results in teaching and preaching that lacks spiritual authority with demonstration and power. Many try to compensate for this lack of authority and power by being funny and entertaining or dramatic and forceful in their delivery. These are poor substitutes.
We should keep in mind that the Word is a person. When we share the Word with others, we are to share from our understanding of that person we have gained from the relationship, not the knowledge we have accumulated about God through academic efforts. If we are not practicing what we know, we cannot teach it with the authority and power it deserves.
Question: What does it mean to have itchy ears?
Question: What are some things that cause us to have itchy ears?
Question: On a scale of 1-10, How would you rate your fear of the Lord when teaching it to others?
Question: What are you reproducing?
Question: Who are you discipling?
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