Different Manifestation Gifts

There seems to be a distinct difference between the manifestation gifts (1 Corinthians), the redemptive gifts (Romans 12- prophet, servant, teacher, exhorter, giver, ruler, & mercy), and the ministry gifts in which we walk out our other gifts (Ephesians 4).
The redemptive gifts are possibly received at conception, rather than salvation. (It is one of God’s mysteries as to when we truly receive a redemptive gift. The Bible does not make clear the exact timing. See Jeremiah 1:5 for indication of initial gifting.) The gifts tend to shape our personality and the way we may then receive one or more of the manifestation gifts.
A redemptive gift is the grace of God woven into who we are; that by His Spirit we are made right with God and able to honour Him with whom He has made us to be. There are certain common behavioural characteristics that are used to help determine the redemptive gifts (Primary and Secondary) of an individual. Although certain traits such as compassion may come easily for some gifts, we are cautioned not to use our gift as an excuse for not growing. We are all called to walk out the fruit of the Spirit whether it comes naturally or not. The redemptive gift teaching developed a connection with the many lists of 7’s in the Bible (7 things Christ said on the cross, 7 days of creation, and 7 pieces of furniture in the tabernacle).
Also, the redemptive gifts also fit cities/churches/states/institutions. The state of Minnesota is redemptive gift of giver (lakes/birthing). USA as a whole is prophet (creativity/design/comes first in culture). The cities of Princeton/Zimmerman/Elk River, I believe are Teacher/Servant/Giver. Any business or church also has a main redemptive gift. Once this is clear, the destiny will be made much more clear.

Here is a Diagram of the Three Types of Gifts:

1: Prophet
Behavioural Characteristics:
-Sees things in black & white
-Simplistic worldview – must make sense of everything
-Able to assess situations quickly and discern whether good or bad
-Takes initiative, likes new things
-Goes against the status quo
-Does not maintain well running organization – will quit, improve it, or change it
-Always has an opinion and is willing to express it
-Judges others compulsively
-Bold, knows no fear
- Not intimidated by the unknown
-Extraordinarily generous – impulsive/unwise
-Shifts gears quickly – large range of emotion
-Visionary – need to know where they are going
- Fiercely competitive
- Gives full disclosure – exposes weakness, compulsion for honesty & integrity
- Very hard on self
- Out of sight out of mind
- Passion for excellence

Principle: Design
Design is the art of weaving principles together in order to produce change. Principle can be defined as a universal non-optional cause and effect relationship. The principle of design is foundational to all the other principles. God has called the prophet to study principles (to look at problems and opportunities) and assemble them into sets that produce results.
Birth right/Blessing:
The passion of the Prophet is to once again have the opportunity to take themselves and others to the outer limits of excellence with God. Showing the picture of God so dynamic and real that it moves people out of the comfort they are experiencing and into a journey that will bring them to fulfilment of what God created them to be.
3 Types of Principles of Design for Prophet to Study:
Man to Matter
Man to Man (Most Overlooked and Weakest Area Human Relationships)
Man to the Spirit Realm
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2: Servant
Behavioural Characteristics:
- Sees needs and meets them – often external or environmental needs
- Very few enemies – considered to be a safe person
- Inability to accept excellence in work, to affirm self, or receive affirmation from others
- Extends honour to others
- Sees potential/best in others
- Has a fierce anger that seldom occurs but usually revolves around loyalty
- Save stuff though not always organized about it
- If immature can become an enabler – mature servant learns to empower
- Attracts dishonour, especially in home, and usually does not resist
- Very competitive in games or sports
- May tend to make excuses for children
- Purity of motives – like no other gift; never counting up what’s owed
- Integrity/honesty/simplicity
- Joyful
- Obedience comes easily
- Tends toward victimization/exploitation by others
- Difficulty saying no – has a strong desire to please others

Principle: Authority
- God gives more spiritual authority to Servants than other gifts because they don’t want it they are not infected with the empire-building germ like the other gifts
- The servant’s prayers for leaders carry more weight than other gifts
- Highest level of authority over the Death Spirit in Spiritual warfare (in a premature demonic attack) because God trusts the Servant to do only what He has asked them to do
- Authority over land (restoration of ecology)

Birthright/Blessing:
The servant walks in holiness in their own life. They are willing to embrace a high calling of holiness and bring a sense of purity and cleanliness. When the servant hears truth spoken it resonates deeply.
The servant has the tenacity to reach out to the wounded and hurting (not limited to, but especially in family situations). The servant is able to be the ultimate life-giver, finding fulfillment in being a life-giver to allow others to do their work; they provide cleansing and authority to others. There is a deep desire to empower others to achieve their best.
Joseph, Jesus’ father was an example of absolute obedience. He did what God asked of him regarding Mary and Jesus every time. God used him to protect them. Joseph had life giving obedience and was highly trusted.
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3: Teacher
Behavioural Characteristics:
-Need to validate truth
- Doesn’t receive or reject new ideas or people right away
- Safe person emotionally – can listen to brokenness and sin and not be rejecting
- Makes new decisions slowly
- Deep family loyalty
- Tend to be poor at returning borrowed items
- Difficult time returning phone calls
- Typically late
- Difficulty handling money
-Usually resists using human illustrations
- Unwillingness to begin a process until they can see the end of the process
- Tends to be a fearful person
- Great sense of humor
- Usually the last to speak in a group
- Tend not to overreact or jump the gun
- A very patient person, slow tempered
- Likes to save things

Principle: Responsibility
The teacher is to walk in responsibility in every area of their life. Their highest responsibility is to worship God. They must make worship a lifestyle, that they would anticipate and enjoy being with God. If the teacher is carnal they will be selectively responsible and unwilling to impose responsibility on others. The teacher would rather work hard at persuading people to change rather than confront.

Birth right/Blessing: Intimacy
The teacher must know who they are as they incrementally walk out God’s will and then reveal the manifest presence of God to the rest of the body of Christ. The Lord wants to be present in the life of the teacher having them experience and celebrate Him.
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4: Exhorter
Behavioural Characteristics:
- Party looking for a place to happen
- Instant rapport with strangers
- Highly relational
- Has ability to understand and relate well to others
- Able to move easily from small talk to sharing the gospel
- Able to maintain relationship although may solidly disagree with other party
- Can have loud argument without alienation of other person
- Master communicator
- Flexible – able to abandon a plan easily
- Visionary
- Seeks the approval of others
- Dramatic and often melodramatic
- Natural leader
- High energy person
- Obsessive compulsive verbal expressive
- Loves change
- Governs by persuasion rather than principle

Principle: Sowing & Reaping
The exhorter must embrace pain and suffering. The most difficult area for the exhorter is to suffer rejection. They must confront sin and be willing to face rejection from within the community. They must incarnate truth and earned authority through pain and suffering. The exhorter is able to be a world changer for Christ when they embrace the principle.

Birth right/Blessing: Know God personally and experientially (Gideon), take time away from people to know God and have His authority. The body of Christ is dependent upon the exhorter becoming all God created them to be; God has called the exhorter to be a world changer!
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5: Giver
Behavioural Characteristics:
- Most diverse/adaptable/flexible of all gifts
- Very independent
- Designed not to be needy – does not look to others for help
- Can look at a problem and find own solution
- Can’t be hustled – must accrue money before can give
- Able to relate to wide range of people
- Sensitive to manipulation of other’s toward spouse or family
- Private in own life – protective of reputation of self, spouse, and family
- Delegates spiritual warfare
- Non-confrontational by nature – wait for opportunity to get best out of situation, won’t knock down hurdles
- Immense heart for evangelism but does everything just short of sharing the gospel overtly
- Nurturer to family – facilitate family environment
- Intuitive
- Concerned about safety, cautious
- Is without shame – does not have shameful view of self
- Can be very impulsive
- Insightful
- Not a big risk-taker
- Good listener

Principle: Stewardship
God doesn’t want 10% of the giver’s finance/assets – not of the abundance or extra that they have; God wants all of it to establish relationship and to accrue generational blessing to pass on to others. Money is not the issue; it’s about their relationship with God. Example in Job 31:16: Job has an incredible relationship with God, is a steward of his money and assets. He walked in high justice, holiness and ethical behaviour in all that he did.

Birth right/Blessing:
The blessing for the giver is a generational anointing: The giver has the authority to release a generational blessing into their family line and community and be a life-giver through blessing (not just money). The giver is to have a generational worldview– think long term. Abraham received authority from God and passed it on. He changed the world and was considered a friend of God. Blessings come in the context of being dependent and in relationship with God.
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6: Ruler
Behavioural Characteristics:
- Great under pressure- thrive with it, and expects others to be effective under it as well
- Empire builders – designed to look at things and want to make them bigger
- Own their problems and do not have a welfare mentality
- Skilled at time management
- Not into details
- Immature ruler may allow for casual ethics where the end may justify the means
- Big on loyalty – more important than competence of co-workers
- Don’t like to be micro-managed
- Not in to blame – will figure out how to fix a problem and move on
- Implementer – Take vision, break it down into pieces, and implement it
- Nearly impossible to get ruler to partner with others unless loyalty is built
- Great at using imperfect people – draws the best out of people
- Tendency to be task oriented and omit nurture
- Expert in dealing with people and projects
- Will not choose to place self on a team unless they are wanted/have the loyalty of others
- Innate ability to measure character
- Able to stand alone on an issue of principle or integrity

Principle: Freedom
The ruler is to go from bondage to obedience to freedom. The difference between the three is the amount of willpower. Rulers have the tendency to be focused on task and do what’s required and not walk in freedom. They must walk in spiritual freedom. Like the giver, they are good at making things happen in the natural but God wants dependence upon Him. The ruler is to be first of all righteous.

Birth right/Blessing:
Generational freedom from sin- central piece of blessing the ruler possesses a high level of spiritual authority and is called to earn authority in the heavens and release it to the generations. There is an immense authority given to the ruler: How does the ruler accrue spiritual authority to pass it on? By honouring God and going beyond obedience. This is evidenced in David, a man after God’s own heart. The ruler is to release generational blessings into the world and spiritual realm (must learn to not only do the tasks but honour the Lord). Noah was an example of releasing blessing. The ruler must seek God to find out what He has called them to do and then honour Him in walking it out. No one has the spiritual dominion that the ruler has.
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7: Mercy
Behavioural Characteristics:
- No or few enemies – finds common ground with just about everyone
- Safe place for wounded people – easily confided in
- Tend to be non-judgmental
- Able to pick out people who are troubled and see through facades
- Has only 1 or 2 close intimate friends but many acquaintances
- Craves intimacy and needs physical touch – this need can often lead to sexual impurity
- Slow in making life transitions because it takes a while to disengage emotionally
- Connects with the heart of God – difficulty explaining why feel God is directing in a certain way
- Very intuitive when it comes to following God’s lead
- Dislikes confrontation – natural tendency is to nurture and protect people from harm
- If immature can be indecisive, not wanting to step on toes
- Tendency to be exploited and become a victim because unwilling to confront even a predator
- Fierce anger but usually only surfaces around loyalty – known to take up offense for another
-Drawn into spiritual warfare when another who they care for is being spiritually attacked.
- Strong predisposition to worship – moves more easily into presence of God than the other gifts
- Loves Beauty
- Stubborn in the nicest sort of way

Principal: Fulfilment
By design the Mercy is able to engage spirit to Spirit with God. They are able to go there more easily more often. This is the highest fulfilment for the mercy.

Birth right/Blessing:
The mercy must find fulfilment in God and impart that blessing to others. As the Mercy is sanctified they sanctify their environment (time, people, and place) and are able to transform the sinful into the holy.

New Full Notes

Prophet
Three Kinds of Prophets:
Office of prophet in Eph.4 as a nurturing position. Anyone who has the manifestation gift of prophesying can be in that office. They should not be the only person in a church prophesying but they should be nurturing the prophets coming up, who definitely need that. So there is the office of, manifestation gift of, and then redemptive gift of. The Redemptive Gift doesn’t necessarily prophesy at all.
John the Baptist is an example of this in scripture. His only prophecy was that Messiah was coming which had been being said for 2000 years. Yet all through his ministry he demonstrated the redemptive gift of prophet. So any of the 7 can prophesy and prophet doesn’t necessarily prophesy at all.
Behavioural Characteristics
“I can’t justify all of these characteristics from scripture, a lot of this is based on 20 years of experience of working with individuals and seeing their patterns. No one gift has a monopoly on these characteristics and so because a person has 2 or 3 of them does not indicate that they have this gift. Rather, when someone has 15-18 of the characteristics we know we have established the behaviour to tell a duck from a horse.”—Arthur Burk
· See things in black and white.
There is right and wrong, good and bad. It’s a very simplistic world view. They can assess a situation in about 3 seconds and tell you whether it’s good or bad.
· They tend to take initiative and enjoy things that are new.
If someone else is not making something new around them they will. The prophet does a terrible job of maintaining something that is running well. If you put a prophet in an organizational or administrative position with a program that is running well, he will do one of four things. He will improve it, change it, enlarge it or quit. To maintain status quo absolutely totally cuts against the core, the grain, the spiritual DNA of how God made a prophet. They do not maintain, they make new. You bring a prophet into a situation where there is chaos, they can be quite cheerful for a while as they restore some order, establish a proper framework, but as soon as the thing is fixed they want out.
· The prophet tends to be a verbal expressive.
Some people have described the prophet and exhorter both as obsessive, compulsive verbal expressive. Peter, for example, was usually the first one to speak in a group situation. A prophet processes very quickly and has an opinion on everything all the time and is quite willing to share it.
· The prophet takes the initiative to judge others
He not only knows what’s right and wrong but, just by default, goes through the grocery store and evaluates whether the groceries are in the right place, whether they have the right lighting, whether the checker is doing a good job. There is this compulsion to pass judgment on anything and everything, and hopefully a more mature prophet keeps his mouth shut most of the time but through his mind he is saying “right, wrong, not good, should be better, change this.” The evaluation is always there.
· The prophet knows no fear unless he’s been seriously wounded.
There is a basic boldness in dealing with others and with situations. Ex: Arthur did home repair in the early years and would tell people he could do a given job whether he knew how or not. He just had the confidence he could figure it out. They are not intimidated by the unknown.
· Another core-value deep in the DNA of the prophet is an inability to tolerate bondage.
They do not like to be locked up, trapped down, set in a closed situation. Perhaps one of the classic examples of this in American history is Geronimo. He was prophet by redemptive gift, and time and again was captured and put in prison. He preferred to be on the run; he’d rather be on horseback with no place of peace, running from old Mexico to new and back, with all the troops pursuing him, than to be locked up. The whole concept of being in bondage is anathema to the prophet.
· The prophet is extraordinarily generous.
Many prophets confuse themselves with givers at first. They give far more than any other of the gifts. Many times the prophet out-gives the giver. The difference is that the prophet many times gives impulsively and unwisely. The prophet brings his “no fear” attitude alongside his giving and will give his last dollar without any hesitation. He’ll commit to the major faith challenge without any concern but sometimes his impulsiveness causes him to give unwisely or to someone who uses it inappropriately. It is amazing to watch how fast the prophet can go from sacrificial giving, to someone who uses it unwisely, to judging them for squandering the Lord’s money.
· The prophet shifts gears very quickly.
In the Burk household it was called changing lanes without signalling, and many times it is like changing whole freeways without using the interchange. They are here, then there, this idea and then that idea.
· There is a need to have vision, a need to have a reason.
Joel Aldridge gave an elegant illustration of prophets. He groups people into three groups: visionaries, implementers and maintainers. He said if you took a bunch of each and put them on a ship that was loaded with everything necessary for the good life and went out to sea, within a matter of two or three days each one of the visionaries (prophets) would one at a time quietly seek out the captain. They’d ask him where they were going and if the captain said “what is it that you need, we have everything on the ship you need for pleasure”? The visionary would say “no, it’s not that I need anything, I just want to know where we’re going.” “We’re going no place in particular but the ship has everything you need for enjoyment.” That doesn’t compute with the visionary, and one after another the visionaries would go to the rear of the ship and jump overboard, because the prophet cannot not go somewhere. He cannot be busy proceeding and not know where they are proceeding to and why. There is a need to have vision, a need to have a reason even if it is a bad reason. The need to have a deadline, a point, an objective is non-negotiable with the prophet. Take away the reason to live and the destruction to the prophet is immense. Where there is hopelessness, where there is bondage, where there is no future and the prophet feels trapped, it destroys his soul and the prophet can literally will himself to death where there has been that degree of hopelessness.
· The prophet tends to be fiercely competitive with emphasis on fiercely.
The only way they know how to play a game is cutthroat. Winning is everything for them.
· The prophet also demonstrates his gift in the area of full disclosure.
When he is selling a used car, unless he is really carnal, it is impossible for him to cover up the defects. He rather discloses them, telling every little defect, doing all he can to un-sell the car after it is sold because of that compulsion for honesty and integrity.
· The prophet is very, very hard on himself.
He is legendary for beating up others for their sins but very few understand how hard he is on himself. When a prophet has majorly sinned, like when Peter denied Christ, it is really hard for him to forgive himself, and to restore him to ministry and dignity, because they are far fiercer in their own denunciation than they are in reproving other peoples’ sin.
· It is important for the prophet to make sense out of everything.
This becomes a trap for many prophets, especially in a theological situation where they have to look at problems and somehow restore logic to the situation. They become the ultimate spin doctors in their own world. Some of the conclusions they reach in their desperate attempt to bring reason to an unreasonable situation can get them in trouble. It is a mark of maturity when he can embrace the sovereignty of God, embrace a segment of his life that simply, absolutely doesn’t make sense and can conclude “I just have to let God be God.” That is a tough step but a major one and a maturing one for a prophet.
· A prophet tends to hold truth much more tightly than relationships
This is especially true in family relationships. You watch a prophet who works in a community for 5 years, has all kinds of relationships, is admired, is appreciated, when he moves to a new community the tendency will be to dig in deeply, to work whole heartedly in the new place and very quickly the relationships in the old community fade away. This is especially true of family. It’s not that the prophet is overtly rejecting his family, although the tendency to be judgmental can lead to a lot of family fragmentation, it’s just an “out of sight out of mind” thing. There is the current world where they live, with two toes in the day and the rest of them in tomorrow, and worrying about yesterday’s relationships just isn’t part of the prophets DNA most of the time.
· The prophet has a passion for excellence in himself and in everyone else.
· The prophet has probably the largest range of emotions of any gift.
The human voice can do an octave or two; the trumpet 12, the piano has 88. The prophet is going to have the deepest compassion, the most mercy, and the fiercest judgmental spirit all in the same person. The prophet is going to have the deepest depression, the most profound hopelessness, and at the same time the capacity to celebrate God with exuberance, with an extravagance that no other gift can match. They run the entire gamut. One of the marks of a wounded prophet is one who has pulled in his emotions and is only playing on 10 notes or so because he is so afraid of the depression he has fallen into in the past. So in order to not fall into the depression, he has to pull in and also not experience the joys. This is sad because God has designed the prophet to be intense, passionate, and to be extreme in most emotional settings. Sometimes even to the grief of those around them.
So these are the behavioural characteristics. Most prophets can be identified by running through these as questions. Unless they are severely wounded, 80-90% of these will apply to the average prophet.
Prophets in Scripture
Miriam, Naomi
Remember how overt Naomi was in beating herself up when she came back from Moab, saying “don’t call me Naomi, call me Mera because the Lord has dealt bitterly with me.” It’s not enough for the Lord to spank her; she has to publicly spank herself in front of everybody. They have full disclosure all the way.
Ezekiel, Peter, Jonathan and Caleb.
Lists of Sevens
The Lists of Sevens in scripture parallel the redemptive gifts. There are about 100 lists of seven to be found including the 7 days of Creation, the 7 compound names of Jehovah, 7 articles in the tabernacle, seven miracles of Jesus in John, the 7 last words of Christ on the cross, the 7 letters to the churches in Revelations… The first thing in each list matches the first redemptive gift. So, first day of creation would give insight into prophet, the second day to servant, and so forth.
Day 1—Light
Of the 7′s in scripture, Genesis 1 is one of the richest.
On the first day God created light. It is interesting to note that God did not create the sun, moon and stars until the fourth day. So what did He create on the first day?
You need a little science to follow this. Every kind of light, infra-red, ultra-violet, x-rays, gamma-rays, all these different spectrums of light are an electromagnetic field flowing across time. In order to have any sort of light you have to have matter, space, you have to have time and you have to have the laws of science to govern them.
So God created all these on the first day. The first thing He created was time, then He created space, then He created the natural laws, then He created the matter that operates within those natural laws. Every electron, every atom has time and space precisely governing it, the speed with which the electrons flow around the nucleus, the distance away from the nucleus, all of those things are governed by time and space.
Natural Law
In addition to the laws of science, on the first day God created all of natural law. We can’t prove it from this passage, however, the laws of science are universal, non-optional, cause and effect relationship. Meaning that these natural laws operate completely outside of moral law and outside of God’s intervention. If you take a pin and let go, it will drop to the ground because of the law of gravity. God did not reach down from heaven and slam the pin to the ground, rather the natural consequence, the cause and effect relationship came into play.
We understand the accuracy of the laws of science. They are universal; they work the same in Brazil as in America. They are not optional, they apply the same whether we understand them or not, whether we want them to or not. Very simply, someway, somehow, we are violating natural law in terms of Alzheimer’s. We do not know which law we are violating, if we did, supposedly we would stop violating it. Even though we are ignorant, even though we do not want to violate the law, it is non-optional. The fact that we are, is causing disease in our minds. There is a natural consequence to breaking these laws without God’s intervention. It has nothing to do with His moral judgment.
There is a 2nd and 3rd level to natural law. The 1st level is the laws of science, the relationship between man and matter. The 2nd is the relationship between man and man. God has established 5 authority structures in scripture and they are, in order: the relationship in marriage, parenting, civil government, religious government, and in business.
Again, you have to hold separately moral law, which has eternal consequences, and natural law which has temporal consequences without God’s intervention.
Take two people who are married and devout believers. They love the Lord, they’re saved and serving Him. But if they, out of ignorance, or willfulness, violate most of God’s natural laws for marriage, they will have a horrible marriage no matter how saved they are. On the flip side, you can have a couple people who are unsaved, going to hell, but they accidentally obey most of God’s natural law for marriage. They can have a wonderful marriage in time because they reap the natural consequences of God’s law and yet they die and go to hell for breaking moral law. Similarly, an unsaved person can have a great business if he accidentally obeys God’s laws for business. There are principles that are outside of moral law, that are natural cause and effect relationship that apply universally to Christians and non-Christians.
There is a 3rd level of natural law, that between man and the spirit realm. Our relationship with the demonic is governed by laws as well as our relationship with God. These laws are universal, non-optional, cause and effect relationship. If you are ignorant of those laws and accidentally violate them they can give demons access to your life whether you want it or not. Also, there are laws that deal with our relationship with God, how to become more intimate with God. If you violate those you reap the consequences.
On the 1st day God created all 3 levels of natural law. There are things we can do in our human relationships to work more smoothly together, there are things we can do in our spiritual relationship to come into greater intimacy with God when we understand natural law.
This, very simply, is the playing field of the prophet.
Birthright
The prophet, if you will, is the research and development scientist in the Body of Christ. The R & D scientist does not invent any new principles. The laws of science are fixed. He may discover one or two new ones but he doesn’t invent any. He does not invent any new elements. God has already determined the limit of the elements. He may discover one or two new ones but basically he is taking the unchangeable things of the laws of science, that first level, and he is continually reassembling them in different ways. The infinite number of new products we have being birthed in the world today by the R & D engineers are a result of new combinations of the principles and resources of natural law.
So the prophet is not called to create new absolutes, because the absolutes are finite, created by God alone. But the prophet is called upon to see new applications, new ways to implement those principles in new situations.
One of the heroic moments of the church and one of the great moments for prophets was Acts 15. There is no other more pivotal event in the history of the church. The issue was whether Gentiles had to become Jews. The whole church was stirred up over it. There was deep passion, and profound commitment to both sides, so they brought together everyone to Jerusalem. The apostles were there, very credentialed people, those with the manifestation gift of prophesy. In that setting, with one of the most critical theological issues the church has faced, God was silent. There was no prophetic word at all. God left it in the hands of those with redemptive gift of prophet, specifically James the brother of Christ who was elder at the church in Jerusalem, to reason from principle and to come to a conclusion. They listened to all the evidence; they listened to this side and that, all the evidence and all the glory stories. When James got up and issued a verdict he reasoned from principle. He said here’s this verse from the Old Testament, here’s this principle we’re going to extract from the verse. We take this principle and we apply it to this new situation and this is how we’re going to walk.
That is the birthright to the redemptive gift of prophet. To be able to look at a new environmental situation, go to the word of God, take a story from there, boil it down to its principles, and bring that principle back out to a new application. The prophet does not invent new absolutes ever. That is heresy; that is iniquity. The prophet discovers the principles of natural law and brings them out and applies them.
This enables us to understand several of the behavioral characteristics of the prophet.
The reason the prophet does not like to do maintenance is because there is no application of principles. Once something is up and running, it’s up and running, there’s closure. But as long as there are problems, as long as there are opportunities, as long as there is a blank piece of paper to write something new, the prophet can assemble principles. The prophet gets no joy out of standing, watching principles that are already assembled work.
The prophet does not celebrate more than about 10 minutes, “Okay, it worked, that’s good, that’s fun, next.”
The prophet needs an environment, needs either a problem or blank piece of paper to apply principles, to weave together the resources, to make something from nothing based upon principles.
You also understand the boldness and the faith of the prophet. The prophet understands the power of truth. The prophet understands that truth is inexorable (relentless, not persuaded by request or entreaty). The prophet is willing to bet on these universal, non-optional principles.
When you are working with people in the area of faith, you basically have to divvy out the prophet and the other six. Because to the other six gifts, faith is based primarily on relationship. Where they have a strong relationship with God, where they’ve experienced the intervening hand of God in relationship, they have the faith to move forward. The prophet is the only one whose faith is based on the principles and not on relationship. The blind faith that truth is inexorable, that these things are going to work, is the hallmark of the prophet.
Meaning of the word prophet
The Greek word for prophet is a combination of two things that mean “prior” and “to make known,” in other words to make something known before it happens, the idea of foresight of seeing it beforehand and making it known. Understand that this Greek word can be used in two separate ways. For the manifestation gift of prophesying, God sovereignty makes known to the individual what is going to happen in the future. That is the kind of usage we are accustomed to for the word prophet. But the redemptive gift of prophet does the same thing in a different way. Using principles, he can know in advance what will happen.
Look at the laws of science, we can take them and extrapolate where Mars is going to be in a couple of years, so we can successfully put some litter up there. That is extrapolation from principle, we know in advance what is going to happen because the laws of science are inexorable and we can extrapolate into the present. So the same word has two different applications. The redemptive gift of prophet operates in the arena of principles and extends the truth into the future. Whereas the manifestation gift of prophet is able to hear from God directly and just know things that will happen in the future.
A good redemptive gift of prophet is someone who can build, not just one who can criticize. Any carnal, immature prophet can run around and say “this is broken, and that’s wrong, and this you shouldn’t do” and so on. That is very damaging to the church and very low level.
A good prophet is somebody who can embrace the problem and apply the principles in such a way as to effectively repair the problem.
First fruits
There is one other observation regarding the prophet from the 1st day of creation. It is very impressive how important the concept of the principle of first fruit is to God. The very first thing God created was time. Where you create space you have to have time. He created space, then time, then natural law and then matter. While all of us need to give God the first fruits of our time, it seems to be much more critical for the prophet.
Whatever the configuration, whether the first fruits of the day or the week, or the month or the year, or the first fruits of a new project, God seems to require the prophet to sanctify the first fruits of time otherwise the rest will be devoured. This is in the arena of the relationship between God and man, that 3rd level of natural law. As we recognize that God has a claim on time and dedicate the first fruits of time, the rest is sanctified in a great way
Jehovah Jireh
The next illustration is from the 7 compound names of Jehovah that parallel the gifts. Jehovah Jireh, the Lord who provides is the first.
This was given in the context of God commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. This made perfect sense to Abraham in the context of the Gentile nations he was living in. Understand that God was still developing, still unfolding the truth of who He was and how He wanted to relate to man. The surrounding Gentile nations sacrificed their firstborn son as the highest form of sacrifice, the greatest appeasement, the greatest bribe to give to a god. So the instructions came, sacrifice your son. He knew it was his only son and that his son was over 13 years old. He took his son to sacrifice him and God stopped him and said no, don’t do this. There was a ram caught in the bush by the horn so Abraham took that ram, sacrificed it, and said “the Lord will provide.” The lesson is very simple here—the Lord will provide the payment necessary for sin. This is all about holiness, all about a righteous God; it is all about satisfying the demands of God.
The prophet is so driven to excel that he can drift into the heresy of trying to buy God’s favor. Not that they would ever say that, but there is the inadvertent belief in them that if they just excel enough, if they just do this, that, and the other, it will be enough for God.
The prophet has to personally come to grips with the fact that God does not need anything from him. God doesn’t need his excellence or self-sacrifice. God has provided everything that is necessary. He is merely allowing the prophet to draw honor and glory to God by the way he works out the process.
This works similarly in dealing with the sin of people. The prophet is one who sees the evilness of sin and also sees the restorative power of God. The prophet has a violent objection to cheap grace. It is the carnal prophet who is first in line to stone the sinner, but even the mature prophet can see the deep damage done to the Body of Christ when sin is dealt with too lightly.
Dr. White was one of the foremost Presbyterian preachers during the 1800′s. He was a prophet by redemptive gift, a mighty man of God. His famous book is Lord Teach Us to Pray. A deacon in his church said “no man had so often dashed him to the ground with his sermons, but no man has so quickly and so often picked me up again and showed me the water in the cleft of the rock to restore my soul.” That is the full range of the prophet. The prophet is the quickest to say “this is wrong, this is very, very wrong.” But the mature prophet must be someone who wisely handles the principles, who knows how to rebuild a broken life. That is the masterpiece of the prophet.
Anybody can be a finger pointer, prophet or non-prophet. But it is the prophet that God commissions to know the principles that will rebuild. To know, not just the evilness of sin, but to know the fullness of God’s grace to be able to restore. Jehovah Jireh is the Lord who will provide everything necessary to cover the iniquity, everything necessary to restore and release once again. That is the prophet at his best, Jehovah Jireh, providing the penalty and restoration.
The prophet is one that is drawn to brokenness.
You usually find the prophet working on the two extremes. The prophet finds very little use for the Grand National average that fills the pews, but he spends his time with the leadership and those who are broken that want to be restored. It doesn’t matter how badly they’re broken, it doesn’t matter what their brokenness is, it doesn’t matter how hopeless they are in themselves. There is something that rises up within the prophet. There is holy rage of fierce anger that the devil would dare to destroy a work of God, a human being, a city, or a community, that God has created. There is a passion and desire to bring the principles to apply, to restore, to rebuild, to release into the fullness of the birthright. That is the heartbeat of the prophet in his maturity.
The Brazen Altar
The first thing you come to in the outer courtyard is the brazen altar, that’s where it all has to begin. Two things happen there. One is a person would bring a sacrifice for his sin. Again we see this motif of dealing with sin in a head-on way. The sinner comes to the priest, offers the sacrifices, the sin offering, the guilt offering and the burnt offering. But we overlook the fact that it is at that brazen altar that the prophet also brought his thank offering, his fellowship offering, his praise offering. Again we see the prophet’s passion for celebration. The prophet is first in line with the glory stories, the prophet is the one that is quickest to celebrate and celebrate the most extravagantly the things that God has done. Think again of the piano, that full range of emotions, not just the sinfulness of sin but celebrating, in advance before it’s even done, celebrating the restorative work of God.
It is the prophet who can look at that broken individual, look at that individual who no longer has hope, no longer has dignity, and to see in him the fingerprints of Almighty God. He can see the call of God on his life and speak life and restoration into him. He can come along side him, partner with him. For the prophet is celebrating years before the person gets to the reality of who they are and who they can become once again when the liberating principles are applied to remove him from his bondage.
So the brazen altar celebrates both aspects, the awfulness of sin and the gloriousness of the restoration that God is able to do, and is willing to do, and desires to do through the prophet.
Changing Water to Wine
Another one of the 7′s is the 7 miracles of Christ in the gospel of John. The first is the changing of water to wine. The prophet very much enjoys demonstrating the power of God, using the power of God over nature to be able to prove to somebody that their God exists. The prophet gravitates to the power encounter. The prophet, with his lack of fear and his great faith, is willing and able and desirous to celebrate the power of God over nature and in nature for restorative purposes.
Letter to Ephesus
In Rev.2:1 we see a classic description of the inner workings of the redemptive gift of prophet.
“These are the words of him, who holds the seven stars in his hands and walks among the golden lamp stands. I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance.”
Those are characteristics of the prophet—hard work. It is difficult to find a lazy prophet, most are doing more than they should. There’s a desire to invest sweat equity into these principles they believe in.
“I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men and that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them false.”
One of the characteristics of the prophet is that they can walk into a room full of strangers and it takes them about 60 seconds to spot the rebels in the crowd. They have an intuitive reaction to overt rebellion. They can tolerate brokenness, ignorance, they can tolerate a lot of things, but the rebel absolutely sets the alarms going for the prophet. And the only thing worse than a rebel is a hypocrite in a position of leadership, and the prophet can usually spot that in 3 seconds not 60. “You have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them false.”
“You have persevered and endured hardship for my name and have not grown weary.”
For reasons I can’t explain, God requires a higher price from the prophet than any other gift, in his own walk and in his personal disciplines. Most of the time the prophet has to live out in his life, in his personal sacrifices his faith and his commitment.
I don’t think there is any higher example of this in scripture than the prophet Ezekiel. He was a prophet in exile. He was ministering in Babylon, having been carried there from Israel in captivity. He was ministering to one of the worst congregations around.
The Israelites were in absolute denial. Denial is something else that drives the prophet nuts. They were saying “this is not God’s judgment; we don’t deserve God’s judgment. We will be back in our land shortly; this is just a blip on the screen.” Day after day Ezekiel got in front of those knuckle heads saying, “It is God’s judgment, and it will last, and Jerusalem will be destroyed and you are in denial.” They said, “no we’re not,” and he said “yes you are.”
Not only was he in captivity and had a wretched audience, there was also apparently poverty and hardship in his ministry. God had him lie on one side for 300 days, then lay on the other side. All of these symbolic things he had to act out—eat food that was cooked over a polluted fire. Many things he lived out in his own flesh, his own pain. Then, finally, God came to him and said, “you only have one thing that is really important to you and that’s your wife, you love her dearly, she’s the apple of your eye, she’s going to die tomorrow and you’re not going to miss a beat. You’re going to preach your morning sermon and your evening sermon and you’re not going to mourn or be part of her funeral.” As prices go, that’s an awfully high price. He paid it.
God calls the prophet to pay a high price. There are many well meaning, foolish people that gather around the prophet who has experienced difficulty in his life, and they begin talking about sin and repentance and this, that and the other. For those with redemptive gift of prophet, don’t let God’s people or the devil lay a guilt trip on you. When your conscience is clear, when you have done what God has called you to do and you’re experiencing severe hardship, when your prayers are not answered and the prayers of other people for you, and prayers for others get immediate answers, God is not angry with you nor has put you on the shelf, this is part of what God does to build authority in the prophet. So persevere.
Rev.2—“you have persevered and endured hardship for My name and have not grown weary.”
There is also the time issue. Ps.1:3—“he is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.” Let’s take first of all, the phrase “he is like a tree planted by streams of water.” There are two separate words in the Hebrew, one for planted and one for transplanted. The planted word is to take a stick and make a hole in the ground like you put seeds in. The word in this verse is transplanted. You do not transplant a tree on a whim. It takes a great deal of effort and skill. When God uproots the prophet and moves him to a new location, which God seems to do fairly frequently, it is very intentional, very carefully done. Even though it is traumatic, it is from the hand of God. God transplants this tree by streams of water, hand-dug irrigation ditches, intentionally put there to water the prophet.
Then He goes on and says, it’s like a tree that will bear fruit in his season and the season depends very much on the tree. A papaya tree bears fruit in 6 or 7 months, a lemon tree in a couple years an apple tree in 5, a Brazil nut in 75 years! Each tree bears fruit in its season and there are different seasons within the season.
Some prophets will begin to bear fruit early in life, some late in life. Again, people are so quick to pigeon hole the prophet, to not understand that God deals with the prophet differently than he deals with the other 6.
It says “his leaf will not wither.” There are two Hebrew words, one for wither, the other for wilt. A better translation is his leaf will not wilt. Wither means you cut a branch off, it’s dying, it’s a one way trip, and the leaf never comes back when it withers. A leaf that wilts lacks water. There’s a drought, a dryness, whether for an afternoon or for a season. There is not enough water getting to the leaf. When the water gets to the leaf, this leaf that is still alive but is drooping will perk up again and will receive its full form.
And God says this tree He has planted is not going to wilt, the leaves will not wilt, which means there will always be enough water to get up to the leaves. This has to do with the root system that is so critical for the prophet. The issue is not the water. There is plenty in the irrigation ditch, there’s no shortage. God saw to that, that’s why he transplanted it. The issue is the size of the root system. The wise gardener who did the transplanting knows he can’t allow nature to run its course. In the natural, the tree is going to develop proportional roots and branches—the first year 10 units of roots, 10 of branches, the 2nd year 20 and 20, the 3rd year 30 & 30.
The gardener knows in the context of Israel that this tree, which is planted in the lush valley between the mountain range of Jerusalem and the Jordan River, is going to be subjected from time to time to the siroccos, the hot blowing winds that come from the desert, east of the Jordan River. So the gardener prepares. He does so by changing the ratio of roots to branches. He has to see to it that there are enough roots to draw not just the ordinary amount of water but to draw the extra-ordinary amount of water up to the leaves.
So the gardener does two things. From time to time he will artificially stress the tree by withdrawing water. By simulating a drought, removing the water from the irrigation it forces the tree to thrust down roots deeper and farther to find new sources of water. It’s traumatic in the short run but beneficial in the long.
It can be very disconcerting for the prophet when all of a sudden God is silent. When after years of being able to open the word and hear God speak to him through the word, years of hearing God speak in his ear, all of a sudden God is silent for days, weeks or months. The prophet goes to his heart and searches for sin and confesses everything he ever did and the things he intended to do but didn’t get a chance. He goes to his friends and asks them for examination, he does everything he knows how to do, still God is silent. Again the well meaning friends of Job come around and begin to point the finger and accuse. Don’t accept the guilt trip from man or the devil. When your conscience is clean and God is silent it is because God wants to force you to drive your roots down deeper level. Eventually, if you will be tenacious, hang in there, persevere, if you’ll keep going to the word that seems so dry, keep going to the word that seems like a rock, eventually out of that rock anointing will flow, the honey will flow, all that you’ve been looking for.
There are times, seasons in the prophet’s life when God is silent and it is not because of their sin, it’s because of God’s plan for their life, trying to develop a deeper, richer root system.
There are also times, repeated seasons, for everyone, but more for the prophet where God prunes an effective ministry. You were in a ministry, you were serving, things were going well, and God was blessing and all of the sudden God yanks you out of that ministry and hands it to someone else. It’s painful.
What God has done is prune the branches, and now this tree only has 10 units of branches and 30 units of roots. It grows another year and you get plugged into another ministry and that begins to build and you have 20 units of branches and 40 units of roots and 50 units of branches and 60 units of roots. God prunes it again and yanks you out of this very profitable ministry where you’re touching lives, where the Spirit God is flowing, where there’s life and there’s fulfillment. You’re excited, and you’re beginning to feel the release of the volcano that’s in your belly, and God cuts off those branches and pulls you back out and you’re standing there a nub of a tree with 10 units of branches and 60 units of roots. Now God says, “I can let him go. Now I know there is enough of a root system there, a root system that is far greater than the branches and I can let him move into a position of ministry.”
God can laugh at the siroccos coming across the Jordan River. Those hot, burning winds and knows that this prophet can face the fire, can face hardship and turmoil, can look fearlessly in the face of a withering blast from the devil and have enough of a root system to draw life from the word of God and his leaf will not wither.
God calls the prophet to a higher price than any other gift. God prepares him, prunes him, stresses the root system
Vs.4 “yet I have this against you, you have forsaken your first love, remember the height from which you have fallen, repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent I will come to you and remove your lamp stand from its place but you have this in your favor you hate the practices of the Nicolaitans which I also hate.”
The Nicolaitans were apparently the followers of one of those first 7 men that were chosen to serve tables in Jerusalem, Nicholas. He taught a cheap grace. He said almost any sin can be overcome very easily. The sin of fornication only made you unclean for 8 days then you were fully restored, there were no long-term consequences and against that cheap grace the prophet’s ire burns hot.
This is characteristic of the prophet. They are so quick to restore but only after there has been legitimate repentance. They are quick to restore but they understand the damage that is done by sin. They’re quick to restore but they know there is no such thing as a small sin. God commended them for their hatred of cheap grace.
The verse before said, “if you do not repent I will come to you and remove your lamp stand.”
God has built within the prophet deep within the core of his being a terror of being sidelined, an absolute fear of becoming so unworthy that the prophet loses the opportunity to pursue his birthright, that the door is forever closed, that the lamp stand is removed. It is something God has placed there as part of the terror of the Lord to keep the prophet walking a holy walk. No other gift can fully understand that latent, resident, permanent fear that the godly prophet has of making a mistake that will cause him to be sidelined, to position him to where he can never possess his birthright. The prophet brings that fear to bear on others desperately pleading with them to walk in holiness and to not run the risk of losing their opportunity for their birthright.
Principle of Design
Now the most familiar phrase from Revelations 2:2—“I hold this against you, you have forsaken your first love.” That brings us to the issue of the principle of design. Moving away from the 7′s to the principle of the design; this is the area where the prophet has to stand and fall on this principle.
Basically, understanding the principles and weaving them together, the challenge for the prophet is to embrace all of the principles. The prophet gravitates to a particular set of principles. There are those areas of rebuilding that seem easy and natural and comfortable, and there are others that seem to be a real nuisance.
One of those areas is the principles dealing with relationships. The prophet gets very irritable with having to earn the right to speak because of relationship. “After all, truth is truth, and you should receive it because it’s truth, not because I said it.” Yet the reality is that only a small segment of people are prophet. Only a small segment of people are ideologically (relating to a systemic body of concepts) driven. The other 6 gifts are relationally connected.
The prophet can be obstinate, he can stand on his truth and cram it down people’s throats and be ineffective with his truth crammer. Or the prophet can choose to study the principles that have to do with relationships and can learn how to walk in authority and in relationship, how to establish appropriate bridges without prostituting the truth that he communicates.
To the degree the prophet is unwilling to embrace the principles of relationship, to that degree his ministry will be crippled and limited.
Furthermore, coming back to the passage in Revelations, to the degree the prophet is unwilling to embrace the biblical principles, to seek them out and pursue them, the principles that deal with intimacy with God, to that degree he will be a miserable failure in his walk.
Again, God does not need the work of the prophet. God created an entire universe without a prophet helping him do it. Even though God commends the prophet for the hard work, even though God blesses the prophet and called him to work hard, to work sacrificially, to weave together principles, to do things and go places others haven’t gone before, still the primary call on the prophets life,(which is the primary call on everyone’s life), and that is intimacy with the most high God. That is first and foremost.
The carnal prophet who is task-oriented and project-oriented and focused on the truth of the word of God, does not necessarily have intimacy with God, and has missed the point entirely. God says, “I will remove you, even though you were diligent and hate cheap grace and work hard, even though you’ve persevered, even though you’ve allowed me to prune and haven’t gotten bitter, I will remove you if you consistently resist studying the principles of intimacy with the Most High God.”
Father, Forgive Them
Each of these 7 last words of Christ on the cross is the most difficult things for each of the 7 gifts to do. Jesus had all 7 redemptive gifts. Christ faced the toughest issue with each one of the gifts, in sequence, on the cross.
The first thing that he said was, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do”.
Prophet’s Battlefield
Bitterness becomes the prophets enduring battlefield. The prophet sees hardship, sees the consequences of sin so much more clearly than anyone else. The prophet is horrified by the evilness of sin more so than the other gifts, and so he becomes very prone to step into the role of God and to be not only the judge and jury, but to be the one who issues the sentence and say “this is how long it is going to be, and this is what you have to do before I will release you.”
It is against that back drop of bitterness, that unforgiving spirit that is so destructive, that it would be good to look at Matt.18:21, the story of the two slaves. One slave owed the king basically the national debt, an immense amount of money. The other owed the king a lesser amount but still a significant amount. But notice the context 18:21 Matt 18:21.
“Then Peter (redemptive gift of prophet) came to Him and said, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.’ The servant owing the national debt pleaded with the king. The king knew he could never repay that amount and unilaterally forgave him. Then he went out and found a second servant that owed him 100 denarii. Many say this was an insignificant amount. Not true, 1 denarii was 1 days wage and so it was 1/3 of a year’s wages.”
Whether you earn 100K a year or minimum wage, if someone rips you off 4 months’ salary, the probability is that it hurts. Compared to the national debt it was nothing. But for a man destitute, broke, a man who was in debt 4 months’ salary is a significant amount that could leverage him to something better. Servant 1 went to servant 2 and demanded payment and when 2 couldn’t pay, 1 threw him into prison.
The king heard about it and his response is interesting. First, he didn’t set servant 2 free. He did have servant imprisoned and turned over to the torturers until he should pay all he owed. If I have nothing and owe the national debt and someone is beating me, that does not necessarily position me to have more money. So the beating couldn’t accomplish servant 1 gaining money. The king was trying to cause servant 1 to receive the forgiveness that had been extended. The reason 1 grabbed 2 and tried to get the money was that he still wanted to get a nest egg to leverage it to make the money to repay the king. The king had forgiven him but he could not receive the forgiveness and so he was to be tortured until he paid all that he owed. How much did he owe? Nothing. His debt had been forgiven. All he had to do was to say to the torturers “I don’t owe the king anything” and he would be released. But as long as his pride kept him trying to pay the debt, as long as his pride kept him from receiving the forgiveness that the king had given him, to that degree he still had to be tortured. If he could swallow his pride and receive his forgiveness he could be released and then could release number 2 because he would no longer need to exploit him.
Again, we come back to the prophet’s perception of God. The greatest battle for the prophet is not to forgive others; it is to forgive himself when he has sinned deeply. There is a tendency for the prophet to drive himself, for the prophet to flog himself and make everyone around him miserable as well, as the prophet is trying in some way to “pay back” the Lord for the harm he has caused the kingdom of God.
God forces the prophet into a position where he must unilaterally receive the forgiveness that he absolutely does not deserve. Because then and only then is the prophet capable of extending mercy and forgiveness to others, once he has seen that he is a debtor and has learned how to receive forgiveness.
Prophet’s Birthright
The issue of fulfillment. What is the birthright of the prophet, what is the thing God has created the prophet for that when he possesses this, when he does this, embraces this it will bring the highest degree of fulfillment to him as well as benefit to the body of Christ? The answer is found again in Rev.2 at the end of the letter to Ephesus and the promise that is offered up.
Rev.2—“he who has an ear let him hear what the spirit says to the churches, to him that overcomes I will give the right to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”
We go back to the Garden of Eden and we see that there were two trees, one of the knowledge of good and evil and another of the tree of life. Scripture is very clear that when they were kicked out of the garden, cherubim were stationed with flaming swords at the entrance of the garden to keep Adam and Eve from going back in and eating of the tree of life. If they had eaten of the tree of life they would have lived forever.
In the garden, there were two generational trees. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil brought a generational curse and the tree of life brought a generational blessing.
God’s intent was that Adam and Eve would eat of the tree of life and live forever in holiness extending the dominion of the garden to the far reaches of the earth, raising up generations of godly, holy children who knew no sin and had eternal life imparted to them. It was a win big, lose big and they lost big.
The prophet’s desire, his passion, in the prophet’s DNA is to once again have that opportunity to take, not only themselves, but others to that point of excellence, to experiencing the outer limits of what God’s principles can do.
One of the greatest problems in America is not the brokenness, but the American cult of comfort. It is relatively easy to move someone in brokenness from -50 to +20. It is the pain that motivates them and because of their pain they are willing to do the things they need to do to get out of pain. Pain is a wonderful motivator. So he works with a broken individual, bringing principles to bear on their lives, teaching them what to do, how to do it, when and where to do it and they grow and they change and they move and when they arrive at +20 they know they are walking in a level of holiness they never walked in before. They’re beginning to see the blessings of God on their lives, beginning to reap positive fruit from their actions and +20 feels like paradise compared to -50 and so they stop.
It is like Israel with two and a half tribes settling on the other side of the Jordan for no other reason than that it was comfortable and it fits their mentality and their herds, and the others settling on the correct side of the Jordan but failing to drive out the enemy because they had enough space. After all those years of being in the desert, of living in a tent, of moving all the time, their nice little house with a white picket fence and a garden seemed like paradise and they were content to be comfortable instead of possessing their birthright.
Against that backdrop God brings the prophet and it is the prophet who does the vision casting to be able to inspire people to do what is unnatural to them, which is to voluntarily embrace pain once again. Scripture says “for the joy set before Jesus Christ He endured the cross and scorned the shame.” “For the joy set before him.” It takes vision to get people to embrace pain and yet it is absolutely necessary to embrace pain to possess your birthright.
There is not one single child in the history of mankind that was born with a desire to join the Marine Corp. Yet year after year 1000′s voluntarily sign up for the Marine Corp knowing beyond any shadow of doubt they are going to soak up more pain than they’ve ever had in their life when they go to boot camp and it’s voluntary and it’s optional and it doesn’t pay very well. Why do they do it? Because someone did some vision casting and for the joy set before them, whatever that may be, whatever they think they’ll get out of the Marine Corp, they willingly embrace the pain.
So the prophet comes into the church that is obedient, righteous, bearing some fruit and yet is complacent, and he says, “comfort is not the epitome, possessing your birthright is.” The prophet takes these people that have spent years getting over pain, avoiding pain and he says it is time to do a180 degrees about face and voluntarily embrace pain that you don’t have to embrace in order to possess your birth right.
It is the fulfillment the prophet feels when he is able to cast the vision, when he is able to allow people to see their design, when he is able to help individuals see the call of God on their lives and the price they have to pay to get there. That’s part of the reason God calls the prophet to embrace so much pain, so he can set an example and say “it is worth it, come with me, walk this out, I’ve already walked this way.”
The prophet wants to bring people beyond the cult of comfort, from +20 to +80, to cast the vision and give them the principles to them walk out that vision to get to the place where they possess their birthright.
The greatest fulfillment for the prophet is to see the extrapolation of God’s principles applied to the lives of people for fulfillment.
Extrapolate: 1. To infer, values of a variable in an unobserved interval, from values within an already observed interval. 2 a: to project, extend, or expand (known data or experience) into an area not known or experienced so as to arrive at a usually conjectural knowledge of the unknown area extrapolates present trends to construct an image of the future b: to predict by projecting past experience or known data )
It is as though the prophet was moving beyond math where you have 5+5=10 to algebra where you have principles and equations that you’re weaving together. Then beyond that to the story problems, where he takes the principles and he weaves them together to show the way to help a person get from point A to point B from plus 20 up to plus 80 to possess their birthright.
So the cult of comfort is the enduring enemy of the prophet and the prophet is not content to arrive at excellence alone. There is no fulfillment, no life for the prophet in merely excelling in his own right. His life, fulfillment, joy, his exuberance, his identity comes in showing a picture of God so real, so dynamic, so current, so applicable that it will move people out of the complacency and comfort of plus 20 to where they possess their birthright. It is in the joy of others, the fulfillment of others experiencing their birthright that the prophet finds his own greatest fulfillment.
One of the greatest prophets of all time, Caleb, walked by faith. He had no fear and came into the Promised Land and said, “Giants, what giants, all I can see is God, come on guys.” He tried to bring the entire nation with him and he failed, they turned against him. His heart break was that he could not inspire the nation to rise to the challenge and possess their birthright. He couldn’t bust them out of their comfort into voluntarily embracing pain. So he went through forty years of waiting. He was a man who bore fruit late in life; he was 80 years old when his time came. A new generation came up, a younger generation and they were willing to go into the land. They won the battles, they drove out the preliminary batch of enemies and then it was time to divide the land and God’s promise to this man who had so much vision, God’s promise to this man who tried to inspire an entire nation to move out of comfort and voluntarily embrace pain to embrace their birthright, God’s promise was that he could have anything he wanted in the land. He got first dibs over everybody.
He lived true to his calling. He could have chosen the nicest, most comfortable place, he had paid his dues, he had been there, done that, he had his promise from God, he could have gone for the easiest place but he didn’t. The cry of the prophet echoes down through the years where Caleb said “Give me this mountain, the mountain where the giants are, the mountain where the whole army of Israel went around the mountain instead of attacking the giants, give me this mountain, I want the hardest place in the land, I want to possess my birthright.” That mountain was Hebron, a place steeped with the history of Israel, a righteous, holy place. God honored the passion and faith of Caleb. Caleb took that mountain, he experienced fulfillment, and he set a standard for all other prophets who are willing to wait and to be obedient and to pay their dues and spend those years in the wilderness and in the fullness of time. With roots that went down deep and drew up water, whose leaves never wilted, this man possessed his inheritance and watched Israel possess some of theirs.
This is the call of the prophet, to move beyond comfort, to provide the vision and the principles to bring a group of people to possess their individual birthrights. That is what it is for the prophet to possess his own birthright.

Servant
Behavioral Characteristics
The second of the redemptive gifts is servant. In our culture, the term servant does not carry a great deal of honor with it. We come from a society that emphasizes the individuality of people. We are very aggressive movers and shakers and social climbers in the US.
Yet in the eyes of God, the gift of servant is an incredibly significant one. It was the second one created (Rm.12:6-8) and one that is vital to all the rest of the gifts.
· Sees and meets needs
Behaviorally, on the surface, the servant is one who sees needs, particularly the external needs, environmental needs such as comfort and food and is quick to meet those needs.
· Victim spirit
The servant, more than any other gift, tends toward having a victim spirit. This is not a key part of the DNA of a servant, it is just a misunderstanding of the gift. The willingness to meet needs causes the servant to be exploited by those who are looking for an enabler rather than someone who empowers them.
· Difficulty saying no
Frequently the servant has difficulty saying no to the competing demands around them. There is such a desire to meet needs and to please people that they get in over their heads with scheduling and typically the family takes the brunt of the busy schedule, particularly when they’re in ministry.
· Apologizing
One of the little indicators of a woman with a gift of service is usually found when you come to her home and eat a meal she has prepared. Almost invariable the she will find something to apologize about—the gravy’s too thin or the meat’s not quite done right. The inability to accept excellence in their work, to affirm themselves, to receive affirmation from others could be an indicator that you are dealing with a servant.
· Few enemies
Servants have few, if any, enemies and part of it is their willingness and desire to extend honor to others. In fact, they go so far as to make excuses for others. One person’s grandmother had this gift. Not understanding this, the family used to ridicule her propensity for seeing the best in all of her grandkids. One cousin had dropped out of school several times and was in his mid 20s still with no direction or career, the rest of the family, with a critical spirit, was alert to all he was doing wrong and would ridicule his lack of progress. The grandma always could see the good in him, extend honor to him and believe in a future for him. That is one of the strongest points of a servant.
· A fierce anger
Servants can have fierce anger that only manifests once in a great while and almost invariable it is a loyalty issue. They’re not angry because someone has done something to them, they’re angry because someone has done something to one of their friends, most especially a family member. The loyalty to family is sky high.
· Tend to save stuff
Servants tend to save stuff, but not in a particularly organized manner. They don’t always find what they’ve saved, but they like to save.
· Work Hard
The servant works very hard. Their downfall is that unless they understand how to help, how to serve, they become enablers. In many Christian organizations you have leadership that is immature or carnal or unskilled administratively and they tend to find servants and, under the guise of calling for loyalty and good character, they expect the servant to continually clean up their messes. Leadership sometimes uses servants to salvage their inefficiency, so they, as leaders, don’t have to grow up and develop Godly character. This is a very common scenario and it is not right in the eyes of God. A wise servant learns how to empower, not enable.
· Attract dishonor
They seem to attract dishonor, especially in the home. It is customary to find the servant being talked down to in the home or joked about. The servant seems willing to allow this to happen, participate, or shrug them off. The dishonor multiplies becoming habitual and pathological in a family because the servant does not turn it away or typically resist the dishonor.
· Competitive
It is ironic that while in every other area the servant is desirous of making others comfortable, in games or sports, the servant suddenly becomes very competitive. The desire to win and the willingness to win at the expense of someone else frequently comes as a surprise to those who only see the servant in a non-competitive environment helping everyone else.
· Denial towards children
Another of the negative indicators of an immature servant is denial regarding their children. The servant tends to spoil the children, meeting too many needs too often, and the children grow up and walk in immaturity. The servant parent will make far too many excuses for their children, covering up the fact that they have bad character.
· Without guile
The single most dominant characteristic of the servant, the quickest way to spot them is—using the words of Christ—the servant is without guile. There is a purity of motive that is un-touched by any other gift. This is part of the “free money” part of the character quality that God builds in at conception. There is simply no guile, they are straight forward, they are honest, and they can be trusted.
That is why so many leaders end up with a servant around them. Everybody else who gets close to the leader is giving, serving, but also wants something in return and the leader knows there are IOUs being accumulated. The servant is never counting up IOUs, is never investing with an eye toward the day when they can call a favor. There is an integrity, a simplicity, an honesty and a truthfulness about the servant.
Servants in Scripture
Queen Esther, Joseph in the N.T., Barnabas, Simeon from the 12 sons of Jacob, Timothy, and Ananias (not the one struck down but the one who ministered to Saul in Damascus)
Day Two of Creation as a type for the servant: Atmosphere and Ocean
The various lists of sevens in scripture often parallel the redemptive gifts. The seven days of creation, the seven compound names of Jehovah, the seven pieces of furniture in the tabernacle, the seven last words of Christ, the seven miracles of Christ in John and the seven letters to the seven churches in Revelations.
Gen 1:6-8 Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
On the second day God created two things. First, the atmosphere and secondly the big body of water collectively called the ocean. The atmosphere is an interesting picture of the servant because the servant really prefers not to be visible. We don’t see the air. We appreciate it, use it, benefit from it, but do not see it. The servant is deeply involved in many different things but does not desire the spotlight, in fact, can be uncomfortable or even embarrassed when the spotlight is on them.
Much more to the point, however, is that the servant and the atmosphere are vital to life.
So much of the servant is wrapped up in this issue of life. We can go weeks without food, a couple days without water but only four minutes without oxygen. The issue of the atmosphere is central to life. The servant in the Body of Christ does not have a lot of spotlight on them but are central to the life of the Body.
Again we come to the issue of empowering versus enabling. The percentage of oxygen in the air is critical. God masterminded this percentage. If there is too much oxygen in the air the world just explodes into flames. Pure oxygen will explode without even a spark being around it. Yet, without enough of it in the air, we can’t breathe and die. There has to be just the right amount of the servant in the body of Christ doing what the servant does well.
Jumping ahead to some of the other lists of 7′s, you can get insight from the Genesis passage that is not readily apparent, which is that the servant is primarily involved in cleansing. The air and water created on the 2nd day were primarily for cleansing. Think of the atmosphere. You have carbon dioxide that is breathed out by birds and mammals. That carbon dioxide goes through the atmosphere, to the trees that need it, into the leaves which use it for photosynthesis to create the starch. The trees, in turn, release oxygen that is then made available to the creatures that need it.
Without the servant as the cleansing atmosphere, as the transition between the two, all the defilement, all the carbon dioxide that builds up in the lungs of living creatures would kill them. So the cleansing work of purifying the oxygen is a central part of the servants DNA.
A second, less obvious component is the diluting of impurities in the water. The filth that washes off the earth into the ocean when it rains is not necessarily cleansed by the ocean but it is diluted. We have managed to pollute small sections of the ocean but not the vastness of the ocean, even with all of man’s dumping.
The servant seems to be able to walk through filth and iniquity, without getting personally defiled. These two aspects of cleansing are one of the reasons the servant makes one of the finest armor bearers. The ability to cleanse leadership, to stand alongside leadership, to protect leadership is incomparable.
One final aspect of atmosphere is that there is no distinct “turf;” there’s no place where it really begins and ends. While the prophet very much wants to carve out turf, to know where the boundaries begin and end, the servant is relatively free from all desire to build their own turf, to have their own piece that they control. They work well interfacing with other people, plugging into an organization, unplugging from an organization; they are just committed to the present moment, to being able to meet the needs of the present moment. They do not need to have, hold, and control turf.
The compound names of Jehovah – Jehovah Rapha – The Lord Who Heals
Ex.15:22 gives us the 2nd of the compound names.
As Jehovah-Jireh is commonly misunderstood, so is Rapha, as it is not a healing of illness. Listen to the context. Israel has just come out of Egypt. In Egypt, Israel was dependent on the medical profession of the Egyptians. God has supernaturally healed the nation, there was not one who was lame or ill, an entire nation was whole.
Ex 15:22-27 So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; then they went out into the Wilderness of Shur. And they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. Now, when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore, the name of it was called Marah. And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” So he cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There He made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there He tested them, and said, “If you diligently heed the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.” Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees; so they camped there by the waters.
Notice that this is not a healing of disease, but a keeping people whole. This is preventative—“if you obey the commands I will not bring on you any of the diseases of the Egyptians for I am the Lord who heals.”
Again we come back to the issue of cleansing. In cleansing and deliverance ministries, the servant is one of the best available. There is just an anointing on them to do that type of cleansing; there’s a desire to walk in holiness. This is one reason there is such a strong synergy between prophet and servant. Servants are almost always surrounded by prophets and are usually ministering to or partnering with prophets. The servant resonates to the high call of holiness that the prophet utters and draws on that teaching to communicate holiness to others. Typically the servant is not the greatest scholar. It’s not that they dislike study, it’s just not one of their main strengths. They go to the word and don’t necessarily see the jewels, but there is a resonance to truth. So the servant gravitates to the prophet who is developing these principles, articulating them and giving them to the servant for the servant to apply to others in a cleansing ministry.
More than meeting the physical needs—the food, the comfort—the deeper desire of the servant is to provide cleansing and allowing the person’s life to operate the way God designed. So when we invoke the name of Jehovah-Rapha, the Lord Who heals, it is in the context of obedience, in the context of being able to avoid something that is about to happen. This ties into the issue of obedience, which seems to come easier to the servant than anyone else.
If faith is the free money for the prophet, obedience is the free money for the servant. That is one reason God probably choose Joseph for Mary. Mary had a virgin birth, something that had never happened. God could have had Jesus raised by a single mom. But God brought Joseph with the servant gift to be able to protect the life of Jesus. It was Joseph’s obedience that made him the chosen vessel to protect.
Basically God said, “Joseph, I want you to marry Mary; she’s pregnant, not by man but by the Holy Ghost. No one will believe that and your reputation will be ruined the rest of your life. Stay in your home town of Nazareth and walk out the shame.” Joseph said, “Yes, Lord.”
Then God said, “Take Mary, five days after the birth of Jesus, to Bethlehem even though it’s not a great time to travel,” and he said, “Yes, Lord.”
Then God said, “I know it’s the middle of the night, but I need you to pack up your things and take your wife and son to Egypt,” and he said, “Yes, Lord.”
This is the kind of life-giving obedience, which is so significant in the life of the servant. The trust level, the willingness to do the things God says—it is life-giving and it is cleansing. In their own life they walk in holiness, in their own life they embrace the high calling, particularly when the prophet points it out to them. They bring that sense of purity and cleanliness, that sense of not reaping the consequences for their sin, to the table when they’re ministering to others.
The Bronze Laver
The bronze laver held water that was used for two purposes: 1) To cleanse the sinner and 2) To cleanse the priest.
In the process of the Old Testament sacrifices, they would draw water out of the laver and would wash different parts of the sacrifice before putting them on the altar. There were a number of different symbolic washings used in different ceremonies for the sinner.
But, more important, every time the priest went from the courtyard—where blood, guts, smoke, ashes, firewood, the sin, and all of the stuff related to the altar were—into the tabernacle, where the table of showbread, lamp stand and golden altar of incense were, he was supposed to go by the laver. He was to wash his hands and his feet and whatever else needed it. This depicts one of the critical life-giving roles of the servant.
They are drawn to pray for leadership. One of the most critical areas of their prayer is to provide the means for the leader to get out of the hustle and bustle of administrative work. To be able to wash their soul clean from the administrative, task-oriented mindset, so they can go in to the holy place and experience the presence and light of God and the worship of God is the servants delight. This is the pivotal part of being an armor bearer. It is not just protecting the leader from demonic attack, that’s a part. But what is far more significant is to make it possible, in other words to do the stuff to release the leader from administrative work. Then, with prayer, to wash his soul clean from the junk, so that he is not just physically in the holy place but also emotionally and spiritually able to receive in the holy place.
Many ministers try to carve out blocks of time and say, for example, “Between 2pm and 5pm on Tuesday afternoon I’m not going to have any interruptions. I’m going to go to the word and develop this teaching. I have to do it.” So he gets in there in that block of time, the phone is off, the door is closed, and his mind is going 832 different directions and none of them are the passage he’s supposed to study. He puts his servant to guard the door—nobody is going to disturb him or bother him in any way as he tries to settle his mind and forget about other work that needs to be done. The servant makes sure that he’s left alone and has space. That is the anointing, the particular call on the servant, the be able to wash the busy mind, the hands, the intensity of the leader so when they come in to the holy place they can genuinely meet with God and they don’t carry the baggage of the outer court with them.
The Royal Official’s Son
We see an interesting bringing together of several themes in John with the 2nd miracle Jesus did.
Jn.4:43 “After two days he left for Galilee. Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country, when he arrived in Galilee they welcomed him, they’d seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover feast where they were also present. Once more he visited Canaan in Galilee where he had turned the water into wine and there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick in Capernaum, when this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son who was close to death.
“‘Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders,’ Jesus told them, ‘you will never believe,’ and the royal official said, ‘Sir, come down before my child dies,’ and Jesus replied, ‘you may go; your son will live.’ The man took Jesus at his word and departed. While he was still on his way, his servants met him with the news that the boy was living and when he enquired as to the time his son got better, they said the fever left him yesterday at the 7th hour. Then the father realized that this was the exact time that Jesus had said to him your son will live and so he and all his household believed. This was the 2nd miraculous sign Jesus performed, having come from Judea to Galilee.”
It appears that this Royal official had the gift of service. First, there was a profound connection to family. He was coming about his son. Everybody loves their son and no one wants to see their child die but throughout scripture we see a connection between servant and family that is very deep. Notice that the healing was based on very simple obedience. God said you can go and he took Jesus at his word and departed and at that simple obedience of the servant healing came
Letter to Smyrna
The 2nd letter to the churches in Revelations is to Smyrna. In 6 out of the 7 letters there is a rebuke from the Lord for sin in the camp. This is the only one with no rebuke. Again we see, an Israelite without guile, a church without guile. There is holiness, a basic integrity that comes to the servant.
Look at what is said in verse 8, “To the angel in the church at Smyrna write, these are the words of Him who is the first and the last, who died and came to life again. I know your afflictions and your poverty yet you are rich, I know the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer, I tell you the devil will put some of you in prison to test you and you will suffer persecution for ten days, be faithful even to the point of death and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear let him hear what the spirit says to the churches; he who overcomes will not be hurt at all by the 2nd death.”
Principle of Authority
Notice the themes of life, death and suffering that are throughout this passage. This is a major indicator of the authority that God gives to the servant. As we go to the 7 principles, the 2nd principle is the principle of authority. God gives more spiritual authority to the servant than to any other gift.
The primary reason that God gives that much authority to the servant is that the servant doesn’t want it. There is not in the servant the “empire building germ” that seems to invade every other gift. It is not that the servant has had to do battle to crucify the flesh and to overcome that temptation. It is simply that they are born without the need to establish their own empire, to make a name for themselves. The servant does not lie awake nights wishing that he could be pastor of the church for a week in order to straighten things out. That temptation doesn’t even register. They don’t lie awake nights wishing to be mayor so they could change a couple laws to make life easier for themselves. There simply is not a self-centered inwardness in the servant; even carnal servants are not typically looking for grandeur, or looking to make a name for themselves. So it’s in this willingness to use authority for the benefit of the kingdom, for the benefit of others, we find the central issues for the servant.
Prayer for Leaders
God gives the servant specific authority in 4 areas, higher than the other gifts
1. To care for, minister to, and pray for leaders. They are drawn to leaders. They don’t want to be leaders but they desire to be next to the leader to do the things that will release the leader into his own full capabilities. The prayers of the servant for a leader seem to carry more weight than anybody else’s prayers.
However, gifting must not ever be a cop out. Fundamentally we have the command in 2 Tim.2:1 where all 7 gifts are commanded to pray for those in authority over us. But when a servant is an armor bearer, is in a position of praying for those in authority over them, there is a far greater impact and influence than any other gift.
There is also an application from this principle to a broader area of territorial warfare. Plumbline ministries has begun to learn that the church is not necessarily God’s primary vehicle for being the initial life-giver in a community.
God has established 5 institutions: marriage, parenting, civil government, religious government and business. Different communities have experienced different catalytic institutions. Wherever the first life-giver was, that is where life can flow into the community again more easily.
In Whittier, CA, the life-giving institution was the church. A bunch of Quakers moved from Chicago to California with the express purpose of bringing life and light to the heathen gold miners. They came in and established church, their overt purpose was evangelism. So if you were to do a city reaching effort in Whittier, the catalytic institution would be the church.
There was another community where the catalytic institution was business. This city was established by decree of the federal government, the decree gave a specific amount of land to 4 of the most predatory robber barons in California history. They established a town there whose primary purpose was exploitation. They killed hundreds of people just in establishing the town and caused an immense amount of grief in subsequent years. The foundation led to an evil root as exploitation became legendary and perverseness of the judicial system that was founded by the federal government. Both state and federal government agencies in the courts looked the other way while iniquity after iniquity has been perpetrated by the business community upon laborers.
Because of all the predatory stuff going on, there were a great number of poor people. So the oldest, biggest protestant church there launched a feed the poor program. They ran it for several years but it had been hard, it split the church. It was always in turmoil—lots of effort with little fruit. The biggest Catholic Church also had a feeding program they pushed for years with similar results.
Then the pastor of the protestant church observed that the one group effective in town in ministering to the poor was the Salvation Army. They have an immense spiritual heritage of being able to deal with brokenness in society and he realized their primary fundraising technique was the bell ringers at Christmas. Often they can’t staff these from their own people so they hire minimum wage workers from the local labor pool. This isn’t really ideal as the workers motivation is usually low.
So this pastor went to the rotary club that represents business in the community. Even though the original institution in the community was corrupt, evil and vile, they were still the ones who had birthed the community. So they were the catalytic institution in the community for the life of God to flow.
The rotary club liked the idea of community leaders as bell ringers for that year and decided to do it. Four of the five principles participated, superintendent of public construction, the owner of the new car dealership, the manager of the bank, all the movers and shakers of the community. Having the people know who rang the bells enabled them to raise an immense amount of money for the Salvation Army and thus the poor.
From that point and time, the community has turned around. There has been a flow of life into it—a flow of money, an increase of justice, the churches are better, and the educational system that primarily works with minorities has gone cutting edge, far out-performing surrounding communities. All this happened through identifying the catalytic institution.
Santa Ana is the county seat for Orange County. It went bankrupt a few years back and was considered a financial disaster; they said it would take years to come back. But the believers decided to go to the catalytic institution. They went to the county hall of administration and quietly set up a program where intercessors would walk the halls praying five days a week. Orange County rebounded faster than anyone imagined, finances are good, and the churches in Santa Ana have been richly blessed. Even the notorious gangs there have begun to make peace with each other without any outside influence. So much life flowed from those halls of administration that every city in the county has established city-reaching teams of intercessors. If the anointing of the servant could be matched up with communities where the government is the catalytic institution and a couple of servants went there praying weekly into that, the results would be huge.
Restore the Family
A second area of authority servants have is to restore family.
They have a passion and an authority in prayer to bring an entire family to a place of restoration. It seems that God places more servants in dysfunctional families than in healthy families. They, out of all the gifts, have the anointing and tenacity to be able to bring restoration to the family.
A third area is that the servant has a tenacity to reach those that are difficult to reach.
Suppose you had a 3 month old child asleep in his crib and there was a crash of thunder just outside, the child then woke up screaming in sheer terror. You’d go and pick the child up but the terror was so great the child would think you were a part of it, and so he kicks and screams trying to get away from you. So you hold the child tightly and eventually the warmth and comfort will penetrate the pain, the child will calm down and realize that you are friend not foe. This is easy to do when dealing with a 3 month old—a 3 month old kicking and punching can’t do much damage to you. But there are a great number of adults out there who are deeply wounded and deeply terrified and they need the truth, but are afraid of anyone who comes bringing it. The only way to penetrate their fear long enough to get them to believe you are friend and not foe and to communicate the truth to them is to hug them.
Those with the anointing to deal with these kinds of people are “porcupine huggers.” They’re the ones that have the tenacity and the ability to embrace wounded people, not limited to family but especially within family context, and to love on them through all the pain until they finally realize the truth of what is being said. Time and time again God positions servants to believe in someone no one else believes in. A servant can come alongside someone who is a dangerous, wounded, hurting person and to experience rejection and rebuff time and time again from them for years at a time, and yet finally have breakthrough. A servant can penetrate, be there in that window of opportunity, to be able to speak the truth that liberates and cleanses in that person’s life.
We see this in scripture. One of the best examples is Ananias in Acts 9. When Saul met God on the road to Damascus he was a world class porcupine, he not only hurt, he killed. He was a violent, angry man. God met him but he was still a porcupine. God had many Christians he could have used in Damascus, but He didn’t get an exhorter or prophet or mercy, He went to the servant Ananias.
God knew Ananias would simply obey and that he would have the grace to be a porcupine hugger. So He sent him to Saul, who no one else would go to, in order to minister the liberating, cleansing truth to him. Ananias only takes up a few verses of scripture and yet the result of his time with Saul released this world changer into the Body of Christ at large. We would not have Paul were it not for the servant. Not too many people tell about Ananias in Sunday school and yet all know Paul. Not too many name their child Ananias, but a lot of people are named Paul. The obscurity, the hiddenness, the lack of visibility or spotlight on the servant is typical, yet they have an incredible authority and are a powerful life-giver in the Body of Christ. Without the servant the whole body suffers.
Again it was a servant, Barnabas, which took Paul and brought him to the leadership in Jerusalem. The leadership there said we’ve heard about that porcupine; don’t even think of compromising the safety of the leadership. Barnabas said you guys are going to meet with Paul, that’s all there is to it. Later on it was also Barnabas that took Paul and introduced him to the church at Antioch where he had an effective ministry and was eventually launched out.
The porcupine hugging anointing that the servant has is unparalleled. Most servants, as they look back on their ministry, actually minister to fewer people than the other gifts. A servant may only have 5, 10, or 15 key individuals that they have brought into the kingdom and into restoration, but most of the time those are the hardest cases, the ones everybody else gave up on.
Another example is Barnabas dealing with John Mark. John Mark was a diamond in the rough and he was way too rough for the apostle Paul. Paul with all his anointing and prophetic insight said, “Forget it, this guy blew out on me once, we are not taking him on the next missionary journey. He has problems and we have kingdom work to do.” Barnabas said, “No, I’ll walk away from you before abandoning John Mark,” and so they parted ways and there were some hard feelings. Barnabas was right and he invested his life in this problem child. Later on Paul asked for John Mark to be sent to him, for he eventually saw him as “profitable in the ministry to me.” John Mark would not have become profitable to Paul had the servant Barnabas not poured his life into him. Here on earth, most servants will not have their names in neon lights, but when we get heaven we will see that so much of world history hinged on the servant.
Death Spirit in Warfare
Another area of authority the servant has is in the area of the death spirit in spiritual warfare. There is a time and a place for people to die and Americans can be obsessed with people living longer than God meant them to live. This is not about physical death or normal mortality of the human body, but rather when there is an overt demonic attack. When it is premature, when it is not time for someone to die, when it is the death spirit attempting to take a person’s life, it is the servant who has the highest level of authority to interpose their body between the death spirit and the spirit of the person that is being attacked.
Queen Esther is the greatest illustration of this. Esther, with the gift of servant, instituted the Esther fast which is the most severe of all. When death is the issue, we look to the Esther fast, and a servant doing it has the most authority to turn away death.
Typically it will be the prophet who hears from God whether this is a normal time to die or a premature death. But the servant can be trusted to do the praying, who will do no more or less than God has asked. Again, this is similar to the example of Joseph protecting Jesus by his obedience.
Restoration of the Land
There is a final area of authority that is more esoteric and so less understood, and that is authority over ecology. The servant has the highest authority to restore ecology. When we speak about saving our cities for God, most of the time here in America, we are talking about saving souls, filling the churches, seeing the manifest power of God, crime reduction and restoring the economy of the community all these are valid, good and biblical. But there is more.
Look at the record of scripture from Genesis to Revelations. When God judges a community almost invariably there is ecological judgment; when God restores, almost invariable there is ecological restoration. Whether it’s a small restoration in Israel or a major one of the world during the millennium, ecological restoration is close to the heart of God.
We can see a very specific pattern of demonic infestation causing ecological damage. One of the simplest examples of these is the lay lines. Where there is a line of demonic defilement running through a community nothing prospers. The trees don’t bear fruit along those lay lines, the streets have more pot holes, and the buildings physically deteriorate faster where there’s a demonic presence versus where there is the presence of God. This is measurably, empirically verifiable. Demonic presence causes a deterioration of physical structures, it causes damage to the earth, a decrease in fertility—everything is damaged by the demonic presence. In the restoration, it is the servant that has the highest authority in prayer to call forth the restoration of the land.
In Jeremiah 31:23 we have a passage that deals with the whole area of blessing. We here in America have largely lost the art of blessing. “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says: when I bring them back from captivity the people in the land of Judah and in its towns will once again use these words, ‘the Lord bless you, O righteous dwelling, O sacred mountain.’”
In other words, the sanctifying dynamic in Jerusalem with Christ seated and reigning on David’s throne, and with the devil in the pit for 1000 years, one of the most dynamic, sanctifying components will be the word of blessing, as we bless the land and building. Every pilgrim coming up to Jerusalem will bless the land and bless the building in the name of the Lord.
We bless each other, we bless the church, we bless the city, but scripture clearly indicates there is an art, there is an appropriate time for blessing the land and blessing the buildings. In New York, a Messianic congregation, in a much defiled town, noticed as they crossed into the town, you could tell and feel a shift in the demonic; but as they entered the parking lot of the Synagogue there was a lifting. You could tell there was anointing flowing from the building, you could feel the difference. You could walk from the building into the parking lot and the anointing extended about 25 feet, halfway through the parking lot. On the other side of the building the anointing stopped instantly at the edge of the building. There was a demonic wall on the other side of the building keeping the anointing from flowing.
So they taught the congregation, every time you walk in here bless the land and bless the building. Material things, land, buildings, stuff are made to be able to hold evil demonic power or righteous Godly power. All through scripture it is spoken of defilement being on land, or the blood cries out from the land. The land itself is able to hold defilement. We also see in Paul’s ministry that the napkins that had touched him were able to hold the anointed power of God and carry the anointing from one place to another and heal. So there’s nothing special about the land or the napkin. I want to steer completely clear of new age heresies that the earth is a living thing. But material things can hold supernatural power.
In a church in California they pulled together 1100 intercessors and prophets to deal with spiritual issues. They weren’t primarily dealing with the church they were meeting in, however, they did kick some varmints out before they could meet comfortably. Primarily they were dealing with the state, so there was prayer and intercession, warfare and worship. The presence of so many anointed people left a deposit of holiness in the ground there. The regular members came to church Sunday morning. This particular church did not have a background in the moving of the Spirit, didn’t believe in the gifts, and was not looking for anything supernatural. But that Sunday morning, three people were radically healed of diseases as soon as they stepped through the doors. Diseases that they’d had for a long time. Why? Because the land was so anointed that the demonic infirmity could not tolerate being there. The second week a couple people got healed, but by the 3rd week no one did because the “battery” was being discharged—the anointing on the land was leaking away; it was being used up.
There is power in our words to bless the land and to speak the anointing of God into the land but it has to be sustained. Like a battery it wears out and so every pilgrim coming up to Jerusalem was to speak blessing on the land and blessing on the building. After teaching this at that Messianic congregation, they all blessed as they walked out. The anointing went from 25 feet out to 50′ 6” over into the neighbor’s property. Within two weeks of them not doing any warfare, but just simply blessing land and building, the anointing had broken through that demonic wall on the other side of the church. This is normative, not extraordinary.
Another church in California did this and the anointing of their building extended out into their community. There was a major drug dealer who lived in that city, who sent out truckloads of meth he produced; even the police were in it with him. He had authority and power in the demonic, with demonic protection as well. He set out one day to kill a man who had irritated him but he drove near this church that regularly blessed their land and building. He suddenly pulled into the church and went in to find someone to help him get right with God.
This is normative. If we would come into our American culture and see what is written throughout the Bible that God values the condition of the land. God grieves when the land is destroyed by demonic forces and He wants to restore. God positions the servant with the highest authority for ecological restoration.
When we read about Jehovah Rapha who heals the context is “bitter water,” an ecological problem. Moses threw a piece of wood in the water, symbolic of the cross of Christ, and healed the water. It stayed healed and nourished the people.
If your house is defiled, or if your land is under a curse from someone who lived there 100 years ago, that affects you. If your house is sanctified, if you are blessing your land, blessing your house on an ongoing basis—life and death are in the power of the tongue—it will make you more alive and benefit the quality of your life living in that place or in your church. It is the servant that has highest authority in this area. All have some for this, but it’s the servant that calls forth, brings about the highest level of ecological restoration in a community.
These are the levels of authority we see in the servant, to cleanse leaders and protect them, authority for extended family to bring them all into the knowledge of God, authority to be a porcupine hugger with the really tough cases, authority over the death spirit and to cleanse land.
But if they have so much authority, why don’t we see it released in the church? They must first deal with their personal identity as opposed to their appearances.
7 Last Words of Christ
The 2nd thing He said on the cross was to the thief. One thief reviled Him, the other said Jesus was a righteous man—“I deserve this punishment but He doesn’t.” The second thief then turned to Christ and said, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom,” and Christ responded to him, “This day you will be with Me in paradise.”
Look at the context. Christ at that moment had nothing going for Him in the natural. Three years in ministry and, so far as we can tell in scripture, the only person in all of Israel who understood that His crucifixion was good and necessary was Mary the sister of Martha. As often as He told His disciples, they didn’t get it. His family didn’t get it and the thousands He fed the bread to didn’t get it either. As He hung there on the cross He had no following, He had no institution, He had no organization. His disciples were scattered and hiding and disbelieving. He had gone through three kangaroo courts, was stripped naked, and beaten to a pulp.
The Romans only beat Roman citizens 39 times and the Jews only beat Jews 39 times but there was no limitation on how many times the Romans could beat a Jew. They had in every Centurions group, one man who was skilled at watching physical deterioration, and it was an art form to the Romans to take a non-Roman to the very edge of his life with the flogging. It was not a mere 39 times that Christ was beaten. Also it was highly unusual to beat a man that was going to be crucified because either one was so horrific, both weren’t needed. Christ was hanging there on the cross in extraordinary pain, with no dignity in the externals, nothing to validate the fact that He was the Son of the living God and that He had authority over life and death. Any one of the rest of us would have given Him the rest of the afternoon off, given the intensity of the suffering and that is the test the servant faces.
When nobody believes in you, when everybody is looking to the prophet or the exhorter or the others for leadership, when you have no credentials, when the leadership doesn’t even know you’re there, when your family doesn’t even believe in you, when your finances are down and your car is broken and everything looks like junk around you; do you believe in who you are according to the word of God, or do you believe in who you are according to what people say about you and what’s seen in the externals?
Jesus Christ, stepping into the role of a servant, absolutely defied all of the external evidences and with nobody else to believe Him, knew that He was still the Son of God. He knew, “I still have authority to give eternal life to whomever I want to and I declare, not just invite or suggest, but I declare this day you will be with Me in paradise.” He saw Himself as every single bit the Son of God hanging on the cross as He was a week before when He marched into Jerusalem with the “Hosannas” and the crowds around him.
And that is the issue that the servant needs to wrestle with. The servant will not be in the lime light—they are like the atmosphere, relatively unseen, ignored, used. Very few of us wake up in the morning and celebrate that we still have air in the room. We take it for granted. And the servants are usually taken for granted. If they take themselves for granted they will not possess their birthright and the church will be deprived of a great deal of life that is supposed to come unto it.
Servant’s Battlefield
And so we see a series of issues they have to wrestle with. First of all is the issue of dignity verses shame. Who are you servants, are you what do you look like on the external? Are you your broken childhood? Are you your broken marriage? Are you that sinful act in your teenage years? Or is that what you did that you have been washed free from by the blood of Christ?
Are you that dropout, that person who can only get a minimum wage job that has to ride the subway a long way for this unpleasant job? Or are you somebody that God has invested with maximum authority? Do you walk in dignity in spite of how people see you?
That is the battlefield the servant has to work through.
There is also the area of dominion verses victimization.
So many servants have bought into a victim mentality because people have put that on them. And so for the servant to be able to shake off victimization, to shake off the opinions of other people, to shake off the perception that they are supposed to be used and exploited, and to discard all that and to walk in their dominion, to walk in their authority, to exercise that authority and be life-giving—that is the pivotal point. Again, back to the letter in Revelation where Jesus says, “I know the slander of those who say they are Jews but are not and are a synagogue of Satan, do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer.”
The servant draws dishonor, the servant draws slander. There are many people who do not believe in the servant. The servant cannot allow his self-image to be shaped and molded by what people say around them. God designed the servant to go the longest period of time without honor, without affirmation. Some of you who are servant have never been affirmed in your life to the degree of who you are.
My challenge to you is—will you rise above that? Will the affirmation of Almighty God Himself be sufficient, will you believe the truth of the word of God and walk in the dominion you have been called to? Because if you don’t, if you’re dependent upon the honor and affirmation and credentials that other people give you, you will spend your whole life waiting for them and you will probably never receive them. You also will not experience fulfillment in your walk and the church will suffer.
There is a spirit of illegitimacy that tends to cling to the servant when they are put in a position of authority. When they are given a task to do, they do it but there is a tape recorder playing in their mind saying somebody else should be here, they’re not really worthy; it’s not right for them to be in a position of leadership. To the degree you believe the devil’s lies that you are not legitimate, to that degree you will not be able to walk in authority.
So many servants have mastered the skill of punting. So many servants know who the authoritative people are in the church; they can give you a phone number or take you to the person who does deliverance or know just who should pray for you. They are masters of directing to those who are in authority. There is a time and a place for that but there is also a time where it is the trap of the enemy. God has given authority to the servant and the servant must walk in that legitimacy and minister to the ones God brought to them rather than mastering the art of punting and passing the wounded person on to someone else who supposedly has authority.
All of this is summed up in the whole issue of character.
In Isaiah 41:19 we have a list of 7 trees God plants in the wilderness and they parallel the gifts. The 2nd one for the servant is the Acacia tree. God uses the Acacia tree for a very special thing. It is the Acacia tree covered with gold that God used for the table of showbread and for the altar of incense and for the Ark of the Covenant. This is how Almighty God sees the servant. And if there is the gold of pure character overlaying the wood underneath, that person can walk in dominion and do the things God expected them to do, therein lies the fulfillment for the servant. The servant desires to empower others to do their best.
We come to the end of the promise to the church at Smyrna— be faithful even to the point of death and I will give you a crown of life. There are those who see all these crowns as an eternal reward thing. A crown means authority. God is saying, in conjunction with all the other passages that deal with life, that He will give the crown of life, the authority over life, the fullness of life. He will give that to the servant. The servant is able to be the ultimate life-giver to the one that he serves to cause that person to walk in his fullness. And the servant finds the greatest fulfillment, not in having their name up in the lights, but in knowing that they were the life-givers that enabled somebody else to complete their work. Think of Ananias, all the rest of his life, every time he heard about Paul—about Paul leading someone to the Lord, him teaching, or going on missionary trips— he knew he had a piece of the action. Queen Esther lived in obscurity before and after her moment of fame, but if not for her, the world would be a poorer place.
The fulfillment, satisfaction, the joy that the servant gets in providing the necessary pieces, the cleansing and authority for God’s leaders to do the leadership they have been called to. Because of the integrity, lack of guile, trustworthiness and obedience of the servant God gives them unparalleled authority to them. Satan’s only defense is a lie. If he can get them to believe that they are nobody, if he can keep them from exercising their authority, he wins twice, once in their life and once in the church.
To the degree that the servant can hear this word and step up to their God given identity, to see themselves as God sees them, transcend the indignity of the cross and walk in authority based on the word of God, to that degree they are life givers on an immense scale and they to experience the ultimate fulfillment.

Teacher
Behavioral Characteristics
Teacher is the 3rd gift and as with the other two, there are some predictable behavioral patterns and some real heroes of the faith with this gift.
Validates Truth
One of the simplest ways to indentify the teacher is his need to validate truth.
The teacher is very careful not to immediately reject any new thing; neither does the teacher immediately receive any new thing. However, there is a painstaking process of looking at every truth from a number of different angles to be able to ascertain and validate in his own mind and to the body of Christ that this is truth.
Luke’s validation
One of the great teachers in scripture is Luke; another is Isaiah. Each of these men was prolific in their writing. Luke actually wrote more of the NT than any other man. He wrote more than John and even Paul, just by the sheer volume of his research and the care with which he documented. Look at Luke 3:1 because it gives us a good snapshot of the mind of the teacher.
Luke 3:1-2 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the desert. (NIV)
For most people, the first phrase was adequate at qualifying the time period. It says in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. We know exactly who Tiberius Caesar was, we know when he began to reign, and we can count to 15. So it’s not really a debatable issue, it’s clear cut. But even though it’s not a debatable issue, the teacher is wired by God to validate truth, to go beyond the obvious. So to mark the time period in his writing, he verifies it six times just to be sure you understand. In the 15th year of the reign of Caesar, that’s one indicator, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, that’s two, when Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, that’s three, when his brother Philip was tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, that’s four, when Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, that’s five, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, that’s six.
Only after he has checked it from six different angles is he comfortable going on with the rest of the story—that is when the word of God came to John, son of Zachariah.
This is central to the teacher’s DNA. He validates truth. That is why you find teachers so frequently in research arenas; you will find teachers in settings where accuracy is absolutely vital and the people around them can depend on them because of their accuracy. When a teacher tells a story he does not include details that are second hand, third hand, or hearsay. There is a care and a precision in the sharing of an idea.
Validation can cause tension
Now to the outsider, this process that the teacher goes through can be a real source of irritation. Because the teacher makes new decisions very slowly, the teacher processes slowly. With a marriage partner or a ministry partner or a business partner who is much more intuitive and doesn’t need to validate truth with empirical evidence, the tension between the two can be substantial. Yet God did not make a mistake when He made the teacher. He made the teacher to slow down some of the impulsive, intuitive people that jump to conclusions too quickly.
Safe
The teacher is also a very safe person emotionally and many times the teacher is confused with the gift of mercy because wounded people feel very comfortable being around them.
The teacher is able to listen to brokenness, able to listen to any kind of sin without having a critical attitude, and without having a judgmental attitude. As a matter of fact, one of the great teachers in scripture was Levi and it was the tribe of Levi that was set aside for priestly duty. The Levites were a safe people, where any iniquitous person could come to. Any sinner could come to them with any sin and know that they were not going to be rejected.
Family loyalty
There is a deep family loyalty with the teacher. About the only time you will ever see the teacher angry is over an offense done to his family.
Some of the little nuances of personality with the teacher:
Borrowed stuff
They tend to be really poor at returning what they borrowed. Mostly what they borrow is books, tapes, or CDs, but once they arrive to the teacher’s desk they tend to be there for six months to six years. There is nothing malicious, it is not that they don’t intend to return them, it’s just that they don’t. Also, teachers find it very difficult to return phone calls. It’s not that they dislike people, you can talk to them all day long, and they enjoy talking. If you pick up the phone and call them they will usually say, “Oh, I’ve been wanting to talk to you for awhile.” For a teacher to pick up the phone and take the initiative to make a call, whether for business reasons or personal, is difficult.
Often Late
Because of the fact that teachers are slow moving, they tend to have issues with time in that typically they are late to appointments.
Difficulty handling money
They also tend to have difficulties in handling money.
In most marriages between a teacher and another spouse, the teacher will defer to the other spouse in the handling of money. It is very easy for them to punt, very easy for them to partner with someone else and let someone else share the responsibility in most cases.
Resist incarnated truth
In teaching from the word, the teacher really resists using incarnated truth, they resist using human illustrations of how a principle was lived out in an individual’s life.
They have a profound preference for dealing with the word of God, the pure doctrine of the word, laying out the verses, the exposition, the Greek, the Hebrew, the chain references, whatever it may be. They have much greater confidence in the word than in people’s personal experiences.
While this is healthy, while this is designed by God, it can become a real downfall when they insist on excluding the evidence of what God has done.
Perhaps the most extreme illustration of this in scripture would be in John 9 with the story of a man born blind. Jesus healed him on the Sabbath, of course, and the leaders of the day took offense at the fact. They brought the man in and they asked him who healed him and he said he didn’t know and they asked him what happened and he explained. The leaders then told him that according to the book, the man who healed him must be a sinner because he healed on the Sabbath, therefore it was not acceptable. That was basic theological position.
The man came back with an experiential answer and said that may be true, and that may be your theology, but the reality is I was healed—“I was blind, now I see.” There had never been any record before of a man who was born blind being healed so they said, your experience doesn’t matter, we know the word, and the word says you’re not supposed to work on the Sabbath. The guy worked on the Sabbath. Therefore He is not a good person therefore you need to accept that. The man said, excuse me I can see. They said, “You aren’t listening to us we’re theologians.” He said, “You aren’t listening to me, I can see,” then they called for the ushers to throw the man out. The obdurate resistance to accept the testimony of what God has done in someone’s life can be a downfall to the teacher.
Accept the fact that the teacher is designed by God to go to the word first but there needs to be a willingness to accept the new things God does in other people’s lives.
Needing to see the end to begin
One other major issue with the teacher is the unwillingness to begin a process until they can see the end of it.
There is a fear factor that can immobilize the teacher and keep him from walking out the will of God. We understand that much of the time God does not give us the big picture, He gives us the next step or the next two steps and expects us to walk those out before He reveals what comes after that. This is anathema to the teacher. The teacher is designed to see the big picture, to see the end before he begins, to see all the components fitting together, to understand the inner relationship of everything. While God made the teacher that way, God does not always honor the teachers need to see the big picture. There’s a faith issue from time to time that God challenges the teacher with—compelling him, requiring him to walk out the truth he has even though he doesn’t see the big picture.
Selective responsibility
On the carnal side, (I want to phrase this very carefully), when you have an immature, undeveloped teacher, lacking character, of all the gifts, they have the tendency to become the most self-centered and they specifically seek those that will be enablers in the home so they don’t have to step up to their own responsibilities.
Now this is dealt with routinely in teachers if they come to maturity. But when you see an extraordinarily self-centered person—basically a boy who never grew up—check to see if some of the other characteristics of the teacher are there.
Sense of humor
On a brighter note, teachers, no matter how theological or educated they get, tend to maintain a wonderful sense of humor. They’re always the one initiating the practical joke and being very quick with the one-liners in the midst of a group relationship.
Last to speak
Other than the jokes though, in a group relationship, the teacher tends to be one of the last ones to speak.
He sits, listens, gathers all the evidence, observes what goes on and then at the end, after he has summarized in his mind, processed everything, he is apt to give one or two sentences that will bring clarity to the entire picture
Teachers in Scripture
Those were external characteristics, behavioral stuff. Let’s go to the word now and see some of the people who God has used. I already mentioned the tribe of Levi, their teacher gift made them very suitable for the priesthood.
Samuel overly loyal
You have Samuel the prophet, who wrote a goodly portion of scripture. One of the teacher characteristics that is exemplified in Samuel is a profound loyalty. Even after King Saul had sinned grievously and Samuel was the one who had to tell him, not only was his dynasty removed but even his very kingship was removed from him, Samuel grieved for him. God Himself had to speak to Samuel and say, “Enough already, it’s over, quit grieving for Saul, let this thing go and go anoint the new king, David.”
Luke’s loyalty to Paul
We see the same thing in Luke. Luke was the last man recorded who was associated with the apostle Paul. Demos had forsaken him, loving this present world, Cretans was in one direction and someone else was in another direction. He sent everybody off in different directions and all he had with him was the faithful, loyal Dr. Luke at his side, caring for him, loving him at the end.
Another great leader that was a teacher is Ezra, who wrote, apparently, not only the book of Ezra but also first and second Chronicles. Isaiah has already been mentioned as a teacher in scripture.
Mary not over-reacting
The greatest tribute, the greatest accolade God ever gave to the gift of teaching was when He selected Mary the mother of Jesus, a teacher, to carry that responsibility. The teacher has caused a great deal of irritation to the visionaries because they will not go forward as quickly as the visionaries think they ought. Yet the strength of the teacher is that they do not reject either, and the phrase that Luke records (a teacher) records of Mary—“she pondered all these things in her heart” displays this. It all didn’t make sense. To go from an angelic appearance, to a virgin birth, to a stable in Bethlehem doesn’t make sense. If God could send angels, could He not provide a room at the inn?
There is something seriously wrong with this picture in the natural. Most of the other gifts would have done something strange in that situation and yet God could trust Mary to not overreact, not be too quick to judge. She could walk out this strange and unusual calling for which she had no model at all in history and God trusted her with the Christ child. The gift of teaching is truly a noble and wonderful gift.
Dry Land and Vegetation
As we go to the sevens in scripture, beginning as we do on each one of these with the book of Genesis and in the creation story we see that on the third day God created dry ground, dry land and vegetation.
Gen 1:9-13 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning — the third day.(NIV)
Double affirmation
This is the only one of the seven days of creation where God twice pronounced it good. The gathering of the waters together in one place was good; the creation of vegetation was good. There was a double affirmation of the value and wonderfulness of the teacher.
There are several things to see in this passage. We’ve already mentioned the slowness with which the teacher processes and in the seed bearing plants, the trees, again we see a slow process. A seed does not become a fruit bearing tree in 15 minutes or an hour, it takes time.
We also see a key component for the teacher which is food. The trees were initially created and vegetation was for man to eat. Man was originally a vegetarian until after the flood when God gave Noah and his descendents permission to eat meat.
But in addition to the food, the spiritual nourishment the teacher provides, there’s also a healing component here because the vegetation is where we get the medicinal herbs for healing. In the priestly duties of the tribe of Levi, we have not only the offering of sacrifices for sin but the whole process was a process for healing. A process of healing the relationship not just with God, but with the person’s fellow man because when a person was a sinner he was excluded, he was outside the camp, he was not permitted to associate with others in the camp. There was not only the spiritual healing and the social healing, there was also the physical healing.
It was the priests, the Levites, the gift of teaching that had the responsibility to deal with medical issues in Israel. They did the diagnosis and determined when someone was contagious, they also were the ones that inspected the healed lepers and everybody else who was of whatever disease and declared that they were clean. It was they who adjudicated the Mosaic Law regarding clean and unclean foods and the term Jehovah-Rapha was given in the context of preventative medicine, in dietary and social behavior that would keep them from illness. So with the teacher is the desire to not only communicate truth, but to communicate truth that heals, that feeds, that equips, that restores.
There is a far more profound issue here and that is—on the third day we have the first manifestation of life. Life in the trees is a little bit different than life in the blood, which comes on the 5th day, but still it is life compared to the first day when there was light and the 2nd day when God created atmosphere.
Generational
So the gift of teaching becomes the 1st of the 3 generational gifts. When we refer to a generational gift we refer to a gift that carries a greater ability, a greater anointing to reproduce, to do things in its life that will continue on to succeeding generations.
Very simply, the light God created on the first day and the natural law is the same light we are dealing with today. The atmosphere is essentially the same. The sun, moon and stars are basically the same. But all the trees, plants, all the vegetation that God created on that 3rd day are dead and gone. It is out of the seeds of those trees and the roots and all the other ways that trees reproduce that we have the vegetation that we have today.
A step farther, not only did life come into the world on the 3rd day but death also came into the world on the 3rd day. Both the trees and the seeds of the trees are able to die. But it is not an ordinary death; it is what we call redemptive death. The first death to come into the world was redemptive death. Christ expressed it in the gospel of John; He said unless a kernel of grain falls into the ground and dies it cannot reproduce. The seeds from the trees that die, that fall to the ground are designed to die in such a way that they produce new life, a new plant springs out of the seed and the new plant is always larger and infinitely more productive than the seed it came out of. The plant always exceeds the seed.
Part of the anointing upon the teacher’s life is to do things in his generation, to walk out his gifting in his generation in such a way that the life is released for succeeding generations. That the truth will continue to feed for succeeding generations, and the healing will continue to flow for succeeding generations.
Put very simply, as we trace the different teachers throughout scripture we will see a very high proportion of generational blessings and curses attached to the teacher. When a teacher fails to possess his birthright it is not just a neutral event; when he sins it is typically not just a neutral event but there is a predisposition for the teacher who fails to fail in such a way that it brings generational curses into his family line.
By contrast, the teacher who possesses his birthright, the teacher that walks in integrity and wholeness and overcomes the weaknesses of the teacher does not just succeed in his own generation, does not just touch the lives of those around him while he is alive. He is able to bring into his family line, both his physical seed and his spiritual seed generational blessings that will pursue subsequent generations one after another. The generational blessings and redemptive death are central to the gift of teaching.
One other significant clue in this passage is the passivity of the trees. Unlike the atmosphere that blows, unlike the waves that move in the ocean, unlike the light on the first day that penetrates the darkness, there is passivity about the trees. A tree is planted, it stays there, and it doesn’t do much of anything. The tree does not intentionally plant its seeds, it just scatters the seeds and whatever happens happens. Trees do not harvest themselves; vegetation does not harvest itself and present itself to mankind to eat. It is just there. That is a picture of the priestly role once again.
You contrast the prophet and the priest and the prophet takes the initiative to confront that which is wrong. The prophet is the one who goes out and gets in people’s faces and says this is not right you need to change. The priest is not called to do that. The priest waits in the tabernacle, the priest waits for the sinner to become convicted, for him to come and bring his sacrifice and say “I need help” and then the priest is there willing and able to help in the entire process of restoration. This passivity regarding sin is for the most part a righteous component of the teacher’s DNA.
Jehovah Nissi
This is the 3rd compound name of God and refers back to when Israel had just come out of Egypt. They had been slaves for quite some time, we don’t know how soon after Joseph’s death they became slaves but it’s somewhere from 100 to 300 years. During this time they developed a very profound victim mentality. At the time of the exodus, even though they had pillaged the Egyptians the night before and gathered up gold and silver and wealth and weapons and they were—in reality—free and wealthy, they did not have a dominion attitude. We see that a little later on when it was time to enter the land, they sent the spies in. The spies said we see giants so the people said we quit and want to go home, we’re better off being slaves in Egypt.
That victim mentality was there, they’re freshly through the Red Sea, the Egyptians are killed, they are free and the Amelikites come around and begin to attack them. This is the story where Moses went up on the hill with the staff of God and he began to pray and Aaron and Hur held his hands up all day. As long as he was able to hold his hands up with the staff of the Lord, Joshua was able to prevail in the battle down below. There was no great victory, they simply fought to a stalemate and the Amelikites pulled back.
Predator defined
This is a pivotal story because it defines the predator/victim spirit in scripture. The Amelikites are predators. The predator is not an overt empire builder; the predator is not someone who battles someone else to gain territory or to gain authority. The predator is best described as a coyote, skulking around the edges, looking for the easy kill, taking advantage of anybody else’s weakness.
Throughout scripture this is the only place we see the Amelikites overtly attacking. In every other case they are a two-bit player following somebody else. The Philistines come up and Amelikites are there, the Moabites come up and the Amelikites are there, the Midianites come and there they are, just seeking to take advantage of somebody else’s battle.
The predator spirit in a demonic context is basically a bully. A bully does not pick on someone his own size, a bully is not a strong fighter, a bully is simply looking for easy pickings, someone to intimidate. In this case, Israel—with their slavery spirit, their poverty mentality, their victim spirit—was an easy target.
At the end of the battle, when Moses had extended his staff and God had honored the faith that he had, God said a couple of things. First of all He uttered a vow that stands to this day. He said, “I will be at war with Amalek from generation to generation,” and it was in that context that He gave the name Jehovah-Nissi, the Lord our banner. Ex.17:14-16
This is significant on a number of counts. It is the primary name of God that we use when we are doing battle against a demonic predator spirit. Many times we have engaged such a demon, commanded it to go, and used the normal warfare tactics, but nothing moves until we invoke the name Jehovah-Nissi.
Remember that it was 400 years later that God spoke to Saul and told Saul that he was to attack the Amelikites and to completely, totally exterminate them. He was not to leave one animal or one person alive. This was the vengeance that God wanted to execute on the predator spirit. Saul did not fully carry that out. It was Samuel, the teacher, who had to take a sword and kill Agag, king of the Amelikites. And again we suspect we are dealing with the same issue 100’s of years later when Esther was queen and Ahasuerus was king. Haman attempted to kill the Israelites. Again, a predator spirit attack, and Haman is called Haman the Agagite. We suspect that he was a descendent of Agag. So it took Esther, a servant with her authority over death, combined with Mordecai, to put to death Haman and all of his ten sons, again indicating God’s wrath against this predator spirit.
Extending Principle
What is significant about this passage is that it is the first time that Moses actually wrote the script for what would happen. Track the progression in Moses’ confidence: God showed up at the burning bush and said you’re the man and Moses said, nice idea but I don’t think so. God said alright, I’ll give you Aaron temporarily to prop yourself up.
In the first three plagues God spoke to Moses, Moses spoke to Aaron, Aaron spoke to Pharaoh and took Moses’ staff and did the miracle. But slowly Moses was gaining confidence and on the next three miracles God did not use Moses’ staff at all. God spoke to Moses, Moses spoke to Aaron and the two of them together did the miracle. At this point Moses was graduated and for the next three miracles he didn’t need Aaron. God spoke to Moses, Moses spoke to Pharaoh and then took his own staff and did the miracle. God didn’t need Moses or Aaron for the 10th plague.
As they left Egypt, Moses, who secular history tells us was a skilled military commander, led Israel the logical way out. God stopped them and said, I want you to come back into this culvasack where you’re trapped so as to entice Egypt to attack. Egypt did and Moses cried out to God. God’s response to Moses is fascinating. God said, why are you crying out to Me? God expected, in that situation, for Moses to write the script. God expected Moses to take the initiative to do something. He probably could have replicated any previous miracle, he could have taken his staff and called down hail, he could have done anything, but he wanted God to write the script, so God grudgingly said, alright take your staff and part the Red Sea why don’t you. It was immediately after this we have the incident with Amalek and for the very first time Moses walked in Biblical principle and extended a new application.
Moses said, alright, I know that I’m the leader, I know I have the staff of God, I know Israel is not supposed to be defeated by the Amelikites. I know we don’t know how to do war. So he wrote the script, he went up on the mountain and held out the staff. He did have to have a minor adjustment in two men holding up his hands. But when it was all over God affirmed him and said, I want you to be sure and write this down and I want you to be sure that Joshua hears about it because he will do something like this later on.
This issue of being willing to extend principles is a pivotal issue for the teacher. The teacher wants to see an actual example in scripture; he is very uncomfortable extending the principle from one application to a new application. Yet, to be effective in warfare, to step up to the calling that the teacher has to deal with the predator spirit attacking the church, the teacher must be willing to extend principles.
Here’s an illustration of what it means to extend principles. There is absolutely no record in scripture in any way shape or form, no hint, no command and absolutely no example of clergy performing a wedding. There are passing references to marriage but nothing of the clergy’s involvement. Yet, it is customary in most of the Judeo-Christian religious groups for clergy to perform weddings. So theoretically, someone, somewhere, has reasoned from principle to arrive at the conclusion.
If we can do it with this situation, then we need to reason from principle in other areas too.
Again, in scripture there is no pattern whatsoever of children being nurtured in a church setting. So the whole Sunday school, youth group, Christian school movement is based on people who have reasoned from principle and said, even though we don’t have a model in scripture, we have principles we can extend in this direction.
So the teacher must embrace that as Moses did with the Amelikites. The teacher must be able to reason from principles and not insist on a case history from scripture before he is willing to act.
There is absolutely no mention in the NT about how the Apostles juggled ministry and marriage. We know Peter had a wife, yet there are many principles we can draw from to make application from.
For spiritual warfare the teacher has high authority over the predator spirit. However, he must be willing to take each case and be willing to extend principles and not try to follow an established pattern, or a set formula for spiritual warfare. Jehovah Nissi, the Lord our Banner.
The Table of Showbread
The third article in the tabernacle, the table of showbread, has a prophetic significance for the teacher. Every week they put out the twelve loaves of bread and there was incense sprinkled among it. Then at the end of the week they took those loaves and the priests ate the week old bread. Christ addressed this issue in the NT when He said a good teacher of the law will bring out of the storehouse old and new.
The teacher vastly prefers the old. He prefers that which has been established, which has been validated. The teacher sees a truth that has been established for several hundred years as much more credible than a new idea that came out. One teacher said that with all the research that has been done down through the years, there is no new truth that has not already been discovered. This of course is crazy but some teachers are in this place.
There is a more important aspect to the Table of Showbread and that is found in Lev.21—a passage that deals with wounded and maimed priests. In the ceremonial work of the temple there were some distinct limitations.
Lev 21:16-22 And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron, saying: ‘No man of your descendants in succeeding generations, who has any defect, may approach to offer the bread of his God. For any man who has a defect shall not approach: a man blind or lame, who has a marred face or any limb too long, a man who has a broken foot or broken hand, or is a hunchback or a dwarf, or a man who has a defect in his eye, or eczema or scab, or is a eunuch. No man of the descendants of Aaron the priest, who has a defect, shall come near to offer the offerings made by fire to the LORD. He has a defect; he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God. He may eat the bread of his God, both the most holy and the holy.
God separates out service from intimacy.
A crippled priest was not allowed to do service, no exceptions. Yet, as drastic as that statement is, God immediately follows it saying that no matter how damaged the body of a Levitical descendent is there is never any limitation on relationship with the Lord. That is shown in the eating of the food. There were two categories of food: the holy food was the priests’ portion of the offerings and the priests’ portion of the sacrifices, and the most holy food refers the bread on the Table of Showbread.
This applies to all of us but most especially to the teacher because the teacher tends to feel unworthy about his role in leadership. The teacher also seems to be looking for more validation, more credentials, more degrees and God is saying your excellence is not in your service but in your relationship. Again, no matter how damaged, even though the priest could not do any work the whole of his life; he was still entitled to the full quota of food. No limitations on the amount of sustenance from God and no limitations on intimacy. He could eat the most holy bread. Also on the table of showbread, sprinkled in and around the twelve loaves on the table is incense which refers to prayer.
This again highlights a major battle for the teacher. Simply put, there is a way to study the word of God that develops a professional relationship with God. It is a doctrinal approach. It produces a great deal of truth and people who embrace it are absolutely saved, they will be in heaven with us, they’re accurate in their exposition of scripture, but they’re just incomplete in their application of scripture. God designed the teacher to walk in intimacy, not just to be a computer on two legs. God designed the teacher not just to validate truth but to experience relationship with almighty God. To be involved in an active prayer life, a prayer life that is two way, with God speaking and then responding, for there to be worship, for there to be celebration, for there to be intimacy.
When the teacher rejects emotion, when the teacher rejects relationship, when he rejects intimacy with God and remains in a professional, cerebral, detached, doctrinal study of the word of God he has squandered his heritage. His heritage is first and foremost intimacy with God, secondarily someone who is serving, equipping, and providing doctrinal truth to the body of Christ.
The service was optional; the intimacy was an irrevocable right. No matter how wounded, how damaged they could still have intimacy with God at the very highest level, the most holy bread from the table of showbread. The tragedy of this day is teachers that will settle for knowledge and don’t even know they’re missing intimacy with God. Intimacy is a major birthright of the teacher.
Principle of Responsibility
We’ll look at this principle from two points of view. Selective responsibility and being willing to impose responsibility on others:
First, the carnal, immature, undeveloped teacher tends to practice selective responsibility. Meaning that there are areas where they excel and areas where they don’t even attempt to fulfill their responsibility.
To use an extreme caricature, you can have a pastor who spends 40 hours a week preparing his sermon. He has the Greek and the Hebrew, his notes and historical references, a hand-out in the bulletin, and an overhead with graphics. Yet he hasn’t balanced his checkbook in 6 months or changed the oil in his car in 2 years. That seems to be the most common segmenting of responsibility for the teacher.
They do A+ work at work and F- work at home. You can frequently tell the teachers house by all the maintenance that isn’t done. This isn’t all teachers but a hallmark of the immature teacher who has not developed the character necessary to support his giftedness.
Letter to Pergamum
A far more important issue, a pivotal issue for the teacher is his unwillingness to impose responsibility on others. He is hard working in most contexts but finds it difficult to compel someone else to do what is right.
The teacher would like to explain, to reason, to persuade, to give time to the individual to embrace the truth to where he is self-motivated to do what is right. This is good to a degree because the teacher is in the priestly context, the teacher is the safe individual and the one who communicates truth yet taken to an extreme it becomes not only unhealthy but deadly. We see this in the letters in Revelations to the church at Pergamum,
Rev 2:12-17 To the angel of the church in Pergamum write: These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives. Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality. Likewise you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it. (NIV)
Now track with me with all the players here. We have a righteous remnant within the church. I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives.
There they live, in a very negative context, where Satan lives and has his throne. This was a literal throne, it still exists today, a great stone throne with occult symbols written all around the base. And in that extraordinarily defiled city—with not just flakey witchcraft going on but where the throne of Satan was with overt, concentrated, public satanic enthronement—they were still righteous. This is a hallmark of the teacher; he is not easily swayed from the truth. God made them that way. God affirms this righteous remnant, that not only kept their theology sound in the midst of occult practices but they were willing to go to the point of martyrdom and not renounce their faith. This is noble, admirable, wonderful, and yet, he says in the subsequent verses…
Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: You have people there – and that’s the rub. The righteous remnant itself was not participating in the rituals of these followers of Balaam. They themselves were not participating in the immorality, not eating the foods sacrificed to idols but they had people who were. There were people in the congregation that were walking in this iniquity and the righteous remnant did not have the intestinal fortitude to confront and say this must stop or you must go.
Under the guise of love, under the guise of teacher and their priestly office, they continued to teach, to exhort, to suggest, to love, to encourage and nothing changed. Notice verse 16: Repent therefore. He is not speaking to the follows of the Nicolaitans or of Balaam. He is speaking to the so-called righteous remnant, the ones who are so sound in their faith, that they would die before recanting their faith; people who are sound they can go toe to toe with occultism in their city and not have their theology tweaked.
But the Lord says, against your profound theology, I have a problem with your leadership style. He commanded them to repent for their lack of cleansing the church, for their allowing those people to be there. Vs.14 …you have people there… the presence of sin in the camp is what God holds against the righteous remnant.
It is not enough for the teacher to be personally righteous; it is not enough for the teacher to be willing to die for his faith. God calls the teacher to step up to a measure of leadership. The teacher who is a husband and cannot direct his wife, a father who cannot direct his children or a pastor who cannot direct his church is forfeiting much of God’s pleasure and blessing. A harsh word but it is here in scripture.
Notice the rest—Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.… Understand the dynamic, the teacher wants to love people into the kingdom and that is right and true and proper to a degree. Roman 2:4—it is the kindness of God that draws people to repentance. But there is also Is.26:10, even though God shows grace to the wicked, they do not repent.
The key phrase is down in the letter to the church at Thyatira speaking about Jezebel where God says I have given her time to repent of her immorality but she is unwilling. It is appropriate to give people time to repent, it is appropriate for the teacher to move much slower than the prophet. The prophet will explain it once, then take them outside and stone them if they don’t get it. It is appropriate for teachers to show love and kindness but there comes a point where God says you’ve taken too much time, you’re in denial, you just don’t want to step up to your leadership responsibilities, therefore I will come to you and I will fight against them.
The teacher says he doesn’t confront because he loves them and God says I gave you time to confront in a teacher sort of way to heal the sinner and if you do not confront to the degree you can heal the sinner, I will have to come and destroy the sinner in your midst. So your statement that you don’t confront because you love them is actually phony, because if you loved them you would spank them so I wouldn’t have to destroy them.
This issue of responsibility is the issue upon which the teacher will rise and fall.
God does not give the teacher the option by and large of being an ivory tower theologian. He does not give him the option of being detached from society, of just spinning his ideas in the privacy of his office. God calls the teacher to be engaged. There is a time for showing kindness, but there is also a time for purging sin in the camp. On this issue the teacher rises and falls.
Moving on to the end of the passage we find the fulfillment for the teacher. It says vs.17…To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.
Two things here: First, many teachers have a real dryness in their spirits. They have been feeding the flock, doing the studies. They have been dispensing truth for everyone else but there is a dryness, a lack of intimacy and just no feeding for their spirit, only feeding for their mind.
God has designed everyone, including the teacher, to be nourished by the rhema word of God, to have the word of God be quickened to them, to have the word of God come alive, to speak to them, encourage them, equip them and nurture them and water the dry spots in their soul and spirit.
God says this will only happen, this hidden manna, the manna that you need, teacher, for the dry spots in your soul will only happen as you’re willing to step up to your responsibility. The teacher plays a game saying he doesn’t know enough and uses study as an excuse to procrastinate. God says no, as you incrementally walk out what you already know, as you put in practice the truth that has already born witness to your spirit, then I will release to you the rhema word, the hidden manna, that waters the deep spots that are so dry within your spirit.
The second issue is the white stone with the name. Throughout scripture a name is a position of identity and a name given by God is always a pivotal point in a person’s life. Jacob to Israel, Abram to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah—everyone of those was a major identity change. It gave the individual dignity, purpose, and understanding of who they were.
Many teachers are not sure who they are and are tentative in their leadership.
We see a great call of God on their lives, they acknowledge the prophets have spoken over and over that there’s a call of God and they have this and that and the other. God has called so many teachers because of their priestly anointing into positions of leadership. Yet time and again we see teachers taking two steps to the right and two to the left, equivocating, not able to step into that identity, not able to receive the view that God has of them, to understand who they are in Christ, not able to receive that new name God has given them.
The beginning steps for a teacher who does come into his calling is to engage his emotions to celebrate who God is and what He has done.
This is the upward and downward spiral of what produces spiritual brain rot or cures spiritual brain rot in an individual. This applies to everyone but is central to any teacher who has grown up in a system that has a professional relationship with God not a personal one.
In Rom.1:21 it says although they knew God they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him. But their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of immortal God for images after mortal man and birds, animals and reptiles. Vs.24—therefore God gave them over to the sinful desires of their heart to sexual impurity. Vs.26—because of this God gave them over to shameful lusts. Vs.28—futhermore since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God He gave them over to a depraved mind. Vs.33—although they knew God’s righteous decree that they which do those things deserve death, they not only continued to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. This is the downward spiral.
The first consequence of sin is that we think a little less rationally. Once we allow a little bit of brain rot in where we are not thinking as rationally as we used to, the next sin, the sin we wouldn’t have committed yesterday, becomes a little plausible today. We can reason our way to committing the next sin which causes more brain rot and all the way through this downward spiral.
God kept giving them over in their thinking and they spiraled down and down into iniquity that they couldn’t imagine committing a few years earlier. And they end up with approving of those that practice them. In Proverbs 30 it says a prostitute, eats and wipes her mouth and says I’ve done no wrong; she’s eaten the food that her lover brought. Initially no women can move into prostitution without a sense of guilt, without a sense of shame, of shame and inappropriateness. But after a season the heart becomes much calloused to where there is no discomfort or guilt. This is the bottom of the downward spiral.
Yet most of us are not at the bottom. The concern is the beginning of the spiral. Vs.21—although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God, nor gave thanks to Him. Their thinking became futile. The baseline between brain rot and wholeness is being able to recognize God’s finger prints in your life and being able to celebrate them. When the teacher becomes purely cerebral and has no emotional engagement with God he already has one foot in the downward spiral. He positions himself to fall into more and more sin as his brain rots at the same time he imagines himself to be wise.
As a core value we need to be able to recognize God’s finger prints, to go through life every day seeing the presence of God, seeing the gifts of God and then emotionally celebrating them. This begins the upward spiral, but only the baseline.
In Rom.12:2—do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. What happens when we renew our minds and heal the brain rot? We will prove what is that good, and acceptable and perfect will.
If God were to reveal His full will to us, we would probably scream and run the other way. So God can only reveal His will to us incrementally. Every time He reveals a piece of it and I walk it out, it brings another measure of healing to my mind to where I can better approve of the character and nature of God. Then He can reveal another piece and then another piece, and it stretches me and I learn to walk it out and it brings another measure of healing.
But the beginning place is that recognition of God’s fingerprints around me, not issues of His will but His presence. It is the teacher more than any other that has to do with the manifest presence of God. Another translation for the bread on the Table of Showbread is the Bread of His Presence. God wants to be present in the life of the teacher. The carnal teacher, the immature teacher, the deluded teacher, wants to validate truth, verify truth with his natural wisdom but God says in 1 Corinthians that knowledge puffs up. You can study the word forever and master all the data but if you don’t see God and celebrate Him you’ll completely miss the truth.
Christ accused the Pharisees of the same thing, He said you study the word, you think you know everything because you know the word but you completely missed Me and I’m all the way through it. This is vintage carnal teacher.
As an individual celebrates God and experiences the power of God and experiences the presence of God in the outside world, as he sees God’s fingerprints and is able to rejoice over what God is doing at that point, God can then begin to reveal His will to the teacher. And the teacher can begin to walk it out and to accelerate the upward spiral until they are able to enjoy the manifest presence of God.
Teacher’s Battlefield
This redemptive gift wins big and loses big. God has called the teacher to teach the world about the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father, to have that kind of intimate and personal relationship. When the teacher fails, when the teacher embraces doctrine instead of intimacy with God, it not only defrauds the church but it leaves the teacher in his life hungry, with a brilliant mind and a very dry spirit. Totally missing his birthright to know who he is—this birthright of walking out God’s will and revealing the manifest presence of God to the rest of the body of Christ.
Teacher is a noble gift, the gift that God gave to Mary the mother of Jesus, to Samuel, to Isaiah, and to Luke, all of whom revealed the manifest presence of God.

Exhorter
Behavioral Characteristics
World Changer
The redemptive gift of exhortation seems to be God’s primary choice for the world changer. So many of the strategic things that occurred, whether in secular history or in religious history, have been at the hands of an exhorter.
Yet this gift, as the others, can fail miserably if they do not understand the “make-or-break” battlefield that God has placed before them.
Behaviorally this is probably the easiest gift to spot. Someone once said an exhorter is a party looking for a place to happen.
Relational
They are very horizontal in their focus, very relational; they do not know a stranger. They know how to sit down next to an individual they have never met and find the key to his heart in a very short time.
They have the ability to cross every type of barrier, every social line, every economic line, every racial line, even every religious line, to relate to people wherever they are at whatever time.
An overweight lady went with family to Disney Land. When she got in, she let the others run along as she sat on a bench. Within minutes, she had built a relationship with the person next to her and shortly afterwards was witnessing to her, and the person was actually pleased to be witnessed to. The rest of the family went on the rides while she stayed at the entrance moving from bench to bench easily befriending each person she came across and witnessing to them with ease. This is vintage exhorter.
Exhorters have the ability to understand people, to relate to people, to make people like them. They have the ability to transition from small talk into sharing the gospel. There is nobody that does evangelism like the exhorter. There is an unparalleled anointing upon them to go into difficult situations and share the gospel.
While the servant may have a higher anointing for the hard cases, for porcupine hugging, and even spending years at a time with these people, the exhorter is the one that God uses for the major ingathering time and again.
Can disagree without alienation
The exhorter is capable of having significant disagreements, even loud arguments without alienation. It is amazing how the exhorter can express his or her feelings with another individual and have a significant exchange over solid differences of theological views, or pragmatic administration views, and yet still maintain relationship.
They are skilled above all others at creating and maintaining relationship at all costs.
They need people
The flip side of that is that they do not like being alone. They thoroughly need people around them and short times alone are about all that they can tolerate. Even in small activities they prefer to have another person or several people with them, even if it’s just going from point A to point B.
Master Communicator
The exhorter tends to be the master communicator of all the gifts. While the teacher can teach, the exhorter is generally more eloquent; while the prophet can be passionate, it is the exhorter that can craft the word of God more skillfully, to touch more hearts, on a broader basis, with less alienation.
There is a significant power relationally upon the gift of exhortation.
They are very flexible, very quick to see opportunities, which make them very quick to abandon the plan at hand to take advantage of what God is doing now.
Not intimidated by the new
They are not intimidated by new ideas and new truth; in fact they gravitate towards them.
Visionary
The exhorter is one of the visionaries among the gifts and tends to see a broader picture than even the prophet does. The prophet can see farther and deeper but the exhorter can see broader. The exhorter is focused on the largest number of people that can be helped and ministered to by the work of the body of Christ.
Can govern by relationship rather than principle
If there are some downsides to the superficial behavior of the exhorter it is that they tend to govern by relationship and by persuasion not by principles. When they are in the administrative setting they tend to take the opinion polls, get a feel for what the board thinks before they aggressively announce the course they are going to take. This is not wrong in and of itself; it is just an observation that the carnal exhorter can tend to fall short of where God wants him to go if he is dependent upon the approval of people.
The prophet is quite at the opposite extreme, but not necessarily a healthy extreme. For the prophet, it is a commitment to abstract truth. If this is right and God has said it, the prophet is committed to go and go now regardless of whether anybody follows.
Visionary but attuned to people
The exhorter on the other hand is more attuned to the feelings of people; the exhorter is more attuned to the time frame that it takes for someone to embrace a new idea.
So many times, you will find a prophet bringing a new word into a community causing a certain amount of reaction and alienation. This new word is picked up later on by the equally visionary, but more tactful exhorter, who is able to take that same word, re-craft it, and presents it in a more acceptable way to the congregation and to bring people along the pathway. This is good, this is vintage exhorter, this is admirable, and this is wonderful. Reconciliation that takes place in a city is typically headed by an exhorter or a teacher. The teacher leads because they are a safe person with their priestly anointing. The exhorter leads because of their ability to establish relationship with people.
But as good as this is, if the exhorter has to choose between going where God calls them to go and losing some people, if he chooses to keep the people instead of obeying God, he has fallen short of his calling.
Exhorters in Scripture
As we look at scripture, we see at least 3 magnificent exhorters: Moses, Jeremiah and Paul. Each of these changed the world in different ways, in different times, each intensely relational, each accomplishing much more than their peers could accomplish. They typify what God does through them and in them. They also reveal the kinds of things God has to do to equip and prepare the exhorter to be the world changer He has called him to be.
Day Four: Sun, moon and stars
Gen 1:14-19 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Works with many people
The diversity of what God creates is a marvel; one magazine said there are 250,000 different kinds of spiders. You would think that for ecological balance a mere 100,000 would have been adequate. But God is an extravagant God who creates out of the joy of creation. Out of all of the extravagance of the diversity of living creatures—the diversity of trees, of flowers— nowhere did He create as much diversity, as much expanse and as much intensity, as in the stars.
We have been studying the stars for generations, and yet the more telescopes we make and even send into space to see beyond what we can see from here, the more that is revealed. There is such diversity and vastness, the infinite endlessness of galaxy upon galaxy. And now with all our technology, it is still humanly impossible to map the stars in one single galaxy, let alone the galaxies upon galaxies.
This is part of the picture of the exhorter. The vastness of the exhorters call, the diversity of those who will be included, and just the sheer numbers God has called the exhorter to deal with. More than any other gift, God has called the exhorter to interface with a vast number of people.
Passive governing
The second component on the fourth day is the sun. The sun was to govern the day, and the moon the night. In the Hebrew, “govern” is a strong emphatic word meaning to govern. Yet governing, being in a position of dominance, running a command and control operation, is not the primary thing on most exhorter’s hearts. They are very likeable people, much more into relationship than into dominance for the sake of dominance. The understanding here is that the exhorter governs passively more than aggressively; he governs in a group setting more than individual confrontation. In other words, if you get out of line, the sun does not roast your house to the ground the following day. There is no individual assault, no forcing you to obey. The sun does what it does day in and day out without singling anybody out for particular judgment.
It is in the passive provision of sunlight that we see the governing, the regulatory power of the sun. Imagine a tree. A tree has good soil that it is drawing from. Much nutrition is in the soil, plenty of water, a strong root system, and branches and leaves. Everything is there for the tree to function, for the tree to reproduce, for the tree to grow. Everything is there except the sunlight.
It requires the sunlight hitting the leaves for photosynthesis to take place.
As huge as a tree is, a giant oak or redwood, it is still dependent upon the sunlight. With all the nutrients and water, it still cannot accomplish its task without the sunlight. The sunlight regulates, governs, and controls the amount the tree grows. In areas of the world where there is more sunlight, the vegetation is lusher. In areas with less, there is less vegetation.
That is the governing power of the sun. The other half is the moon that governs the night.
The moon does not provide light for photosynthesis; rather the significant contribution of the moon is the gravitational field that controls the oceans.
Because of the moon’s pull that waxes and wanes throughout the month, twice a day incomprehensible volumes of water are moved from one side of the ocean to the other creating high tide and low tide.
Humanity cannot even begin to approximate the movement of that amount of water. As the water moves up and down, some parts of the world have tides as high as 10 or 12 feet. That moves the air in the atmosphere up and down twice a day and it provides a cleansing affect. Much of the weather patterns in the world are controlled by the moon, the tides, and by the interaction between it and the sun.
The vertical dimension is the key to understanding the exhorter
With that analogy, we come to the exhorter and his role in governance. He does not single people out with a heavy hand but in provision. Even the geometry of the illustration is indicative because so far, everything has happen on earth or in the immediate atmosphere but now we have left the earth, the trees, the water and we have left the atmosphere of the first three days. Now we are in outer space and that vertical dimension is the key to understanding the exhorter.
By nature, superficially, the major behavior of the exhorter is horizontal. The exhorter relates to people, operates in the arena of people, enjoys people. The exhorter cracks the code to people and gets in their hearts. He inspires people, mobilizes them and exhorts them. However, beyond that superficial application we have the question of what it is the exhorter is supposed to give to people. What is that catalytic truth, what is that piece of understanding that people need? The answer very simply is knowledge of God.
The exhorter must bring the knowledge of God
The exhorter must get to know his God, he must understand from the pages of scripture and experience in his own life, Who God is. It is the missing truth about the nature of God or God’s application in each situation (or in each culture or in each contemporary event) that is the missing piece the exhorter brings to the table to govern, to control, to modulate, to regulate the work of the body of Christ.
Now let us test this against the Biblical model. We look at Moses. The secular view of Moses is that he led Israel out of Egypt and that was his claim to fame. That is so superficial. The reality is that Moses’ job was to reveal God to Israel. Even at the burning bush his question was not, “how” do I get Israel out of Egypt, but “what do I tell them, who are you?” And beginning with that statement, “I am who I am” and going on to the miracles he did—the rod that became a snake, the hand that became leprous and all the rest— it was a time of teaching the people about God.
God did not have to use ten plagues to get Israel out of Egypt. Centuries later when it was time for Israel to leave Babylon and return to their land, God made it very simple. The king said, “You can go; in fact, here is wealth, here is money, and here are the temple treasures. Here is tax-exempt status and here is tax money to offer sacrifices for me, go.” God could have done that with Pharaoh.
The only reason God hardened Pharaoh’s heart to cause there to be all the difficulties and all the months of turmoil and the ten plagues was to teach people about their God.
Imagine, all they had was a 400-year-old memory of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There had been no new revelation, no prophetic words, no intervention, no promises, and no manifestation of God for over 400 years. They had truth, they had promises, they continued to cry out to God, and it was because of their proper cries to the God of Israel that He answered them. Yet it required an understanding of the nature of God for them to move beyond being slaves with a heritage to being free men who walked in dominion.
The issue in Israel was not an issue of power; the issue was in knowing their God and knowing the call of God on their lives. As you look at Exodus 1 and verse 8: “Then a new king who did not know about Joseph came to power in Egypt. Look, he said, the Israelites have become too numerous for us, come we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous… He dealt shrewdly with them.” He did not understand the covenant and the problem was Israel did not understand it either. They did not remember the covenant they had with the previous Pharaoh. They did not have to be enslaved but out of ignorance—ignorance of their legal right, ignorance of their God, ignorance of their heritage and the promise of their forefathers—that is what caused the slavery. Moses came, not to bring the power of God but the knowledge of God; this is the role of the exhorter.
Therefore God caused the ten plagues. Each one was a teaching tool, each one was an opportunity for the Israelites to get reacquainted with the God of their forefathers.
This vintage role of the exhorter was carried out by Moses.
Dan 11:32 speaks of turbulent times in the future and says those that know their God will do great exploits. The issue is never the power of God—that is always there. The issue is whether people know their God. More than any other gift it is the exhorter that is called upon by God to know the nature of God that applies to the current situation, and to apply that missing truth of God to the situation and then to mobilize the troops.
Mobilize Troops
The mobilizing of troops is represented by the moon and the gravitational pull moving the tides and the winds blowing one way or another. The exhorter is the people person, the mobilizer. He is a gatherer, a networker. The exhorter is the one God uses to inspire people to do things.
The carnal exhorter, the exhorter that does not know his God, inspires people around a vision, around an activity, around a doable plan. God has called the exhorter to inspire people because they know their God.
So much of what goes on in the church today is no different from the business realm. In the secular arena individuals can mobilize people, inspire them, and accomplish things. God is not looking for organization; God does not need human intervention or human help for His power to flow in the world. However, God is looking for exhorters who know their God, and out of this knowledge, he will make known to the church the purposes of God, the power of God and the truth about God for the season in which they live.
The exhorter is gifted of God in so many ways. One of those ways is to be able to see God in scripture. It is not difficult for them to open the word of God and find the jewels the rest of us have overlooked.
Exhorter’s Battlefield – Time
If the church so desperately needs to know their God, if the exhorter is good at seeing God in scripture, and if the exhorter who knows his God is the world changer that God goes to, and if this is the birthright of the exhorter, why do we have so few of them?
It is tragic but the answer is so simple—it is lack of control of time. Again, you go back to Genesis 1, there was the evening, and the morning the first, second and third days because God decreed that it was so. But the things man has traditionally used to chart time, the sun and the moon, were not created until the 4th day.
Time is the battlefield of the exhorter. When the exhorter’s time is under control he is able to pull back from the horizontal, pull back from the activity, from leading people, from relationships, in order to have time allocated to go vertical and seek God. There is absolutely no short cut for the exhorter. There is no way for him to get to know his God without sizable chunks of time. There is no way he can get an impartation or take a pill to get to know his God.
The birthright and anointing will not become reality until the exhorter allocates significant chunks of time to be in the word to get to know his God and to know what it is that God wants to reveal to the given generation.
So many fall short here. Their intentions are wonderful, but this is their battlefield. They are anointed to see truth in the word of God if they can pass this test.
They intend to spend more time in God’s word but so often procrastinate one hour at a time. They intend but do not get around to it, they plan to, hope to, and want to, but because of the tyranny of the urgent, because of the people around them, because of the opportunities to do things in different ways and in different times, they completely fail to possess their birthright. It seems like a harsh statement, a difficult thing and yet it is a simple reality.
Without time to know God exhorter is ineffective
Now contrast the exhorter with the prophet, using a caricature; the extremely carnal prophet and carnal exhorter. The carnal prophet is willing to confront, he does not care about relationships. He thinks that anybody ought to enjoy getting slapped upside the head with the truth. Therefore, they are willing to confront anybody, anytime, anyway, regardless of how much it hurts the other person. It usually does not take more than about two weeks for word to get through the church that so-and-so is dangerous, so this prophet who has truth and is willing to confront cannot get within 30 feet of anybody.
The other side is the exhorter, who has the key to everybody’s heart. The carnal exhorter can relate to everybody and does relate to everybody. He is trusted, a safe person, fun to be around, can get close to anybody, and can tell anybody anything. However, because the carnal exhorter’s fear of alienation, not wanting to hurt anybody’s feelings, or because of the carnal exhorter’s lack of knowing God, there is nothing to put into the hearts they are able to unlock.
The exhorter who does not know his God is like a Rolls Royce with three wheels. It does not matter how much good there is in a Rolls Royce, without the forth wheel it is useless.
The exhorter must know his God and the only way for him to do that is by allocating chunks of time. The only way to make time is by saying “no” to people, relationships, and activities.
Jehovah Shalom
Jehovah Shalom was given to Gideon in the context of the issue with the Midianites.
The Midianites were in the land. Israel was being judged for their sins. They were crying out to God because of the oppression of the Midianites. Gideon was pressing wheat in a wine press and hiding. God showed up to him uninvited and said to Gideon, “the Lord is with you mighty warrior.” To paraphrase slightly, Gideon said, “Yeah, right. I’ve heard about God, I know what He used to do, His interventions, what He did for our forefathers. I’ve heard of the miracles of yesterday but I haven’t seen Him lately, all I’ve seen is the Midianites.” God worked with him quite awhile that day, showing signs and giving prophetic words and Gideon made the statement Jehovah Shalom.
Peace by seeing God as intervening
What is significant about the story is not that God is peace; He’s always been that. What is significant is that the only thing that changed was Gideon’s perspective of God. He was still in the wine press, the Midianites were still in the land, there was no army, no battle plan, no victory, and everything was purely theoretical. The one thing that had changed was that before, in the morning, he saw God as a distant God, a detached God, uninvolved, a God who had abandoned His people, a God who did stuff in times past and was currently involved in Israel’s politics. At the end of the day, he saw God as present in his life. Because of his perception of God, because he saw God as a present-tense God, an intervening God, a God who had a plan to deal with the Midianites, who was willing to deal with the Midianites and was willing to deal with him, he had peace.
A classic exhorter situation
The circumstances are not the issue; the issue is how you see your God. He brought to Israel a message that God is present, God has a timetable, an agenda, and a strategy and that brought peace. However, there was more. That same night, while he was still reveling in the peace that he had knowing that God has a plan for the nation, God turned it up a notch. God said, “I want you to take your father’s bull, and tear down the altar of Baal in front of his house, and the Asherah pole. Take it up to the hill across town. Build a new alter, a proper one. Chop the Asherah pole and use it for firewood, sacrifice the bull” (Judges 6:30).
He cheated a little. He was afraid of the town’s people so he did it all at night, thinking he could get away with it. The next morning there was a mob at the front door ready to lynch him.
Why was it that the Asherah pole and altar to Baal were in front of his father’s house? It was not coincidence; Gideon’s father was the head idolater in town. Therefore, Gideon is hiding in the house in fear because now he is going to die and the Midianites will still be in the land.
His father goes to the door and the mob says give us Gideon so we can kill him. Out of the blue, the father says, “this doesn’t make sense, if Baal is so powerful why don’t you let Baal kill Gideon?” The mob actually agreed. Gideon is now in shock—my father was a Baal worshipper just yesterday and now he defends me, and now a whole mob changes their minds.
God is intervening for you
God set the situation up to teach Gideon another important lesson. The day before, he learned that God was an intervening God who cared about Israel, and now he learns that God intervenes and cares about Gideon as well. That became the central issue for what happened next.
The whole issue of putting out a fleece did not have anything to do with finding out the will of God. God’s will was plain, He had spoken. Gideon even says in Judges 6 “if you are really going to deliver the Midianites into my hands,” so he knew what God’s will was. His question really was—“God are you an intervening God? Are You going to stay with me all the way through?”
Authority through experiential knowledge of God
The issue was not about God’s will but about His character. “Can I trust You to keep me alive when I obey You doing something that is insane in the natural?” It was out of these experiences that Gideon came to know his God personally and experientially. It is out of that experiential knowledge of the nature of God that Gideon came to have authority.
2 Cor.1:3 says we are to comfort one another with the comfort we have received from God. God does not need to work through people. He demonstrated that on the road to Damascus and with Gideon and with Jonah. He is perfectly capable of working one on one with any person and restoring order to their life.
Yet God’s preference is to minister to someone and then see him or her take that incarnated truth, their experience of the truth of God, the things that they know from the word that have become reality in their life, and use that to minister to the next person down the road. That is God’s plan A.
Earned Authority
For example, a minister can share good truths from the word to an alcoholic, yet he has not walked that out and so they are just theoretical. Nothing can compare to a recovered alcoholic who has taken those truths and walked them out and experienced the power of God in the midst of their addiction setting them free. They may use the same verses as the minister, but they have an authority that only comes through experience. This is what God wants for the exhorter.
Therefore, God took this exhorter, Gideon, through this difficulty in order to give him earned authority. Incarnated truth was in his own life because he had been tried over who God was in his life as well as for Israel. He could thus stand in front of the army and say, “I’ll take these 300 men and defeat the Midianites,” and the 300 men said okay. That is not natural. That is the earned authority of an exhorter. One whom God has designed to be a leader, based on incarnated truth that came through pain and suffering in his own life.
Jehovah Shalom – Authority to Mobilize
The words Jehovah Shalom, the Lord is peace, is not just an issue of peace, but also an issue of someone who knew their God and did great exploits because of it. This is the birthright, the heritage, the calling upon the exhorter. Unless you know your God, unless you have that experiential walk with God, unless the abstract truths from scripture have been incarnated in your life, you will not have authority to mobilize people. Unless you take the time away from people to know your God personally, you will have very little depth in the vertical and so you will be ineffective in the horizontal.
In scripture
God took His world changers and forced them to get to know Him. Each one of them we look at was forced by God to have a season of time alone with Him in order to know Him and be mighty in what He had called them to do.
Moses spent 40 years alone on the backside of the desert. During that time, God molded and shaped him.
Jeremiah began his ministry very busy, at the city gate and city dump, he was in the temple, the palace, taking his clothes to the river Euphrates to wash, he was in the public eye, busy. God knew he needed to know Him more intimately and so there came a season when God told him to go into hiding, into total isolation. In that time of isolation, he wrote some of his best prophetic words. Here God prepared him to lead the remnant that remained in the land after the Babylonian captivity.
Paul, got born again, filled with fire, and preached the day after he was saved in Damascus. He was run out of town, so he went to Jerusalem and started preaching there. God eventually had to show up to Paul and say, “Hey, cut it out. Take some time off to get to know Who you’re preaching about.” God took him out of Jerusalem and out of ministry—ministry Paul did not want to give up—and took him to the backside of the desert. If we understand Galatians correctly, the timeline was 3 years in the desert and another 14 years of isolation in Tarsus or somewhere before he was taken up to Jerusalem, before he established relationship and was launched into ministry from Antioch.
Even with all that knowledge of God, that revelation that nobody else received but him, God pretty much had to lock Paul up in prison for him to do his best work. Paul’s style was: 3 weeks and a riot, a new church plant, and on to the next community. God arranged for him to be in prison for years at a time, and there in the prison with no email, fax, or cell phone and a limited number of visitors, he was able to write some of his best work.
The problem is this—there are a very few exhorters who God forces into maturity. There are those like Moses, Jeremiah, and Paul, who had no choice; God called them and forced them into isolation and forced a revelation of who He was upon them. Nevertheless, the vast majority of exhorters in the world cannot gamble on God intruding in their lives. The vast majority of God’s world changers will have to get there by personal choice. They must choose to say no, to take dominion over their time, and to take time with the Lord in order to get to know Him.
For failure to make that choice they can squander their entire birthright. They can be very popular, loved, and effective in secondary things. Very good at mobilizing people, reconciling people, leading people to the Lord, a useful contribution to the Body of Christ, and lauded when they die because everybody likes them, but the fact that they have done good and accomplished much does not mean they have possessed their birthright. Because if they do not know their God, if they have not taken time to get to know the specific revelation of God for this period of time, then they will fall short of their birthright. God has called them to greater things than just a little reconciliation and some organization of leadership.
The Candelabra
The issue of the tabernacle is where God sharpens the focus of the knowledge of God they are supposed to have. The 4th item of furniture is the candelabra, the 7 lamps that shed light upon two things: the table of showbread and the altar of incense. It sheds light upon the gift of teaching and upon the gift of giving. The gift of teaching tends to have an analytical, cerebral, doctrinal approach, a professional relationship with God, not a personal one. God calls the exhorter to know his God and to reveal to the teacher the rest of the message, an experiential relationship with the Most High God. The giver tends to be religious rather than spiritual, tends to adopt forms and functions, ceremonies and activities rather than the reality of a faith walk with God. It is the faith and vision, the reality and experiential walk of the exhorter that sheds light upon the giver, brings balance to their walk, and brings wholeness.
The exhorter is God’s world changer, he is pivotal. And when the exhorter does not possess his birthright, he not only squanders his own fulfillment, but the lack of provision damages the rest of the body, especially the teacher and the giver. They both need the understanding of Who God is, and that will come primarily through the exhorter. The body of Christ is dependent upon the exhorter becoming everything God has called him to be.
Letter to Thyatira
The 4th church
Rev 2:18-19 To the angel of the church in Thyatira write: These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.
This is a marvelous description of the exhorter. Love and faith are hallmarks of the exhorter. In the armor of the believer it parallels the gifts, and for exhorter it is the shield of faith. Almost in the same way faith comes easily to the prophet it does also to the exhorter. They have faith, not only for themselves but for others, to inspire them. When they have that incarnated truth, that earned authority, they have faith for themselves and for the group.
God says I know your love, your relational abilities, your faith, these are good things; your service, perseverance, and you are doing more than you did at first. The exhorter works longer and harder than probably any other gift. They are not couch potatoes. The ones in ministry tend to be people who are intensely busy. They put their money where their mouth is, they are diligent, they always do more, often functioning on very little sleep. They rise early in the morning and up till late at night, wearing many hats, involved in many projects, doing an abundance of things and God says I know all that.
Rev 2:20-25 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching, she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds. Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets (I will not impose any other burden on you): Only hold on to what you have until I come.
The issue of Jezebel has become a distorted issue in the church and it needs to be restored to basic simplicity.
An individual can have a Jezebel attitude in them apart from demonization. It comes from a very simple source; it begins when an individual is wounded by their authority. It can be a man or a woman. The wounding can be overt such as a man molesting his daughter or passive such as a father who is missing from the picture. The fact that there is a wound does not necessarily mean a Jezebel spirit will result. There are many different ways an individual can respond to the pain of wounding.
However, when an individual makes the vow, consciously or sub-consciously, “I will never be hurt again by authority,” they have crossed over the line because then they have a need to control. This wounded individual begins to control situations around them fairly or unfairly, using manipulation or overt power, it does not matter which. Where there is control for the sake of safety, you have a Jezebel attitude at work. In the extreme demonization with the Jezebel spirit, you have someone who is a pathological controller, he is controlling for the sake of control, whether they need to control or not. This creates havoc in the church.
The presentation here in the church of Thyatira was the absolute worst scenario, not only was there control for the sake of control but there was immorality and occultism. In order to control effectively this Jezebel had tapped into the deep secrets of Satan.
However, the issue in the church is not the Jezebel spirit, the issue is the exhorter. The exhorter does not like rejection. It is important to understand when working with the exhorter that they have in their mind an “us vs. them” scenario. Someway, somehow the exhorter divides the whole world into insiders and outsiders. The exhorter does not mind opposition from outsiders, in fact the exhorter almost rejoices in it.
Look at Paul’s writings, he shrugs off very briskly the opposition as long as it is from outside. However, when someone from inside the camp, someone at Corinth questions whether his apostleship is legitimate, the ink flows for page after page after page because the exhorter cannot tolerate rejection from inside the camp. The exhorter is almost more sensitive than the mercy to rejection or any sort of criticism from inside the camp.
The insider who would seek to challenge the exhorter, to stimulate them, to motivate them to walk a more holy walk needs to walk very gently because they will be deeply wounded by a criticism from inside the camp. When the same thing is said by someone who is psychologically outside the camp, he or she would be able to brush it off.
Therefore, in this context, the exhorter is unwilling to confront sin in the camp because he is unwilling to experience the reaction and rejection that is inevitable when you confront a full-blown Jezebel. There is no clean, neat, tidy way to evict a full-blown demonized Jezebel from the church. The only way is to hit it head on, take your lumps, and get the job done. The exhorter will take two steps to the right, two steps to the left, dance around it, reason, and make all sorts of excuses to keep from experiencing rejection.
When the exhorter places relationship ahead of purity, he has destroyed his ministry. When the exhorter is not willing to risk offense, not willing to risk reaction from inside the camp, he is paralyzed and whatever good he has, all of his relational abilities and his knowledge of God are not going to be effective.
God says He Himself will come, that He has given her time to repent and she is unwilling and so God will judge and He will do it with suffering. “I will cast her on a bed of suffering and make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely.”
This brings us immediately to the principle that affects the exhorter and that is the principle of pain and suffering.
Principle of pain and suffering
None of us like pain and suffering and all of us need to deal with having a right response to pain. More than any other gift, the exhorter has to wrap his arms around that issue. So many times, there is an out, a way to look at a situation and to side-step it. So many times exhorters come up to the very edge of greatness, come to the point where the entire table is set, where the prophetic words have been uttered, where the opportunities are present. They have to go through one final test, which is to confront sin in the camp, but for failure to do so in the proper season, the hand of God’s favor is removed.
When the hand of God’s favor is removed, instead of repenting and dealing with it, the exhorter will resign the church, go somewhere else, and start all over again. He will experience God taking him up to the limit and not allowing him to step into his full authority until he is willing to risk rejection and to embrace pain and suffering. It will come either way, you can either embrace the pain and suffering that makes you a better person, brings you to wholeness, and into authority, or stand and see the pain and those who suffer intensely when the consequences of sin come to fullness.
A pattern of having enablers
The exhorter is God’s world changer more often than not but they can miss their opportunity if they are unwilling to embrace pain and suffering and unwilling to experience rejection.
There is a pattern that flows out of this in the administration of churches pastured by exhorters or para-church ministries headed by exhorters. This is common because they are visionary, so frequently they are the leader. Often they have a heart for reaching the city and have a passion for seeing great change take place and so they are in those positions of leadership.
Yet time and again, tragically in the Body of Christ, organizations headed by an exhorter are staffed primarily by enablers. The exhorter has surrounded himself with a group of people that are willing to cover for him, willing to pick up his mistakes for him. In the name of love, loyalty, and Christian character he uses them to keep himself from growing, to keep him from reaping the natural consequences of his own poor judgment of his own immaturity—trying to avoid pain and suffering.
God allows the natural consequences of poor judgment and violating God’s principles for administration and for leadership. He allows those consequences to be visited upon the exhorter to help him grow and become holy and know his God. But when the exhorter surrounds himself with enablers who take the rap, suffer for him, and fix the surface problem, the root problem in the leader remains unfixed.
The call is great but there is no short cut. God demands holiness in the exhorter and He demands a knowledge of God that only comes from spending time in the word of God.
Why have you forsaken me?
As we look the 7 last words of Christ on the cross the 4th thing Christ said was “My God, My God why have You forsaken Me?”
That sense of isolation and abandonment by God cuts so very deeply to the exhorter gifting. This again fits into the pain and suffering. We see the exhorter not willing to face alienation most of the time; he is not willing to face isolation, rejection, abandonment by people, especially those he loves. Yet that is exactly where God takes him. Is he willing to do what is right even though it may mean a season of alienation?
God’s promise, Rev.2:26-28 to him who overcomes—to the exhorter who is willing to walk by principle, not by relationship, to the one who overcomes by knowing his God and speaking the reality, the truth of Who God is into that particular time and season in society—God will give authority over the nations. He will rule them with an iron scepter, he will dash them into pieces like pottery just as I have received authority from My Father.
It is not wrong for the exhorter to desire to lead great groups of people or to be a mobilizer, recruiter, reconciler, or to do all of these good things. It is in his DNA. Yet God wants it to come about supernaturally, not naturally, for a man to be willing to walk on principles, to risk the alienation of everybody if necessary. He wants someone like the apostle Paul who was willing to be persecuted by his own people, to be run out of town after town for speaking the truth. When God finds that kind of person, He will supernaturally give him much more authority over much larger numbers of people, over the nations. God will give him much more governance than he could ever achieve in his simple humanity.
Dying to activity and people’s approval
God calls us to die first and from that death will then come life. For the exhorter whom we so desperately need, dying to people, their perceptions, dying to activity, to relationships, to other people’s approval in order to find time to know God, and dying to people’s approval in order to be holy, these are the major barriers. When he embraces that pain and suffering, then God delights, rejoices in releasing to him authority over a vast number of people.
The history of the church is marked by the exhorters who have embraced pain and suffering, they have become world changers. But the church has also been scared by the world changers who would not walk in holiness, the ones who did not know their God, the exhorters who would not confront, so they did not fulfill the call of God on their life. They died frustrated, settling for the good instead of the best and the church suffered acute lack.
1 Tim.2:1 all of us are to pray for those in authority over us and to specifically challenge the servant, who has the highest authority of anyone to pray for those in authority. We dare not sit self-righteously in the pew and condemn the exhorter who is so busy doing good things, who does not have time to know his God. Rather we must be diligent before God for our sake as well as for his and crying out for time control and a proper first fruits of time and for the opportunities for this man of God to get to know his God because as they know God, so will we.
We owe an incomprehensible debt to the exhorters in the history of the church as well as in our generation.
We miss much when we who are not exhorters fail to cry out to God for His conviction and His anointing to fall upon the exhorters. They hold the keys to an understanding of God that will unleash all the rest of the truth. Without the exhorter’s role we are like the Rolls Royce with only three wheels, and without the exhorter controlling his time, he is like that.
The stakes are great. Each gift has a greater anointing; each has more to contribute, each falls harder when they fail to possess their birthright. Every gift that fails the church hurts worse.
It is time for us to embrace the command to pray for those in authority as we never have before, because our well-being rests upon our authorities, especially the world changing exhorters who are standing in the wings.

Giver
Givers in scripture
As we look at the gift of giving we see some of the heroes of the faith in scripture. It is interesting to look at the greats in scripture, see what their spiritual gift was and see why it was that God gave them that gift.
One of the most astounding givers in scripture is Abraham and his grandson Jacob. We also have Job and Matthew.
There is more about money in the gospel of Matthew than in the other three combined just because, as a giver, he was alert to those teachings of Christ, picked them up and communicated them to us.
Behavioral Characteristics
Hard to peg
Of all the seven gifts the giver is the most difficult to peg by behavioral characteristics. Givers say repeatedly that there are so many of the characteristics of the other gifts they resonate to, but none of them quite completely fit.
The diversity, adaptability, and flexibility of the giver are legendary. Therefore, they do not fit easily, conveniently into a nice neat pigeonhole. While some of the other gifts can be identified with three or four phrases, the broad range of competence and personality characteristics of the giver somewhat defies categorization.
Therefore, the characteristics have to be taken with a much lighter touch and much more generalization than with the descriptions of other gifts.
Generational Worldview
The first and foremost of God’s design of the giver is to have a generational worldview. There are very few givers that do not fall into this package. By a generational worldview, they are focused not entirely on their own generation but are intentionally trying to prepare the way for their family after them.
Example of Abraham
We see this put very nicely in Abraham’s life in Genesis 15:1—After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”
This was put in the context of warfare. He had just engaged the various kings that had defeated the kings of Sodom and the surrounding confederation. It was the first time he had ventured into warfare; he had made an enemy for himself of many of the kingdoms that were defeated. In this context God says do not be afraid, I am going to protect you politically, militarily.
The reality is this was not Abram’s primary concern because he immediately responded in Gen 15:2-3—Abram said, “O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”
In other words, he was a wealthy man, God promised him peace, security, and yet none of the things he had for himself were gratifying. He was concerned about the fact that he did not have children, did not have posterity to whom to pass his blessings. He had a generational worldview.
By contrast, you have Hezekiah
In Isaiah 39 we read of the prophet coming to Hezekiah with a very firm rebuke. Understand that in another passage God said he was the greatest king in terms of obedience and seeking God. God put him ahead of David and Solomon. This is God’s evaluation. A very righteous man, who led one of the greatest restorations in Israel’s history, yet he lacked a generational worldview.
Isa 39:5-8 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the LORD Almighty: The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your fathers have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left,” says the LORD. “And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” “The word of the LORD you have spoken is good,” Hezekiah replied. For he thought, “There will be peace and security in my lifetime.”
Here is a man that lacks a generational worldview. Here is a man who was told by the prophet he was going to die and he turned his face to the wall, wept, and pleaded with God saying he did not want to die, that he was not ready, that there were still things he wanted to do in his lifetime. His authority was so great, his passion was so intense, his intercession so effective that God sent the prophet back saying, not only will I allow you to live another 15 years, I’ll even move the sun back in the sky to prove I will do that for you.
A man with this degree of authority in intercession only had a vision for his own life. When the prophet came and said your children and grandchildren will be in a horrible position in Babylon, he shrugged and said that’s okay because at least I will die in peace. A good man, a wonderful man, a righteous man, he led Israel in revival, but he did not have a generational worldview.
Givers by and large, intuitively are thinking family, are thinking long term, and are doing things in their life to position their children and grandchildren for success.
This is one of the hallmarks, one of the core components of the spiritual DNA of the giver.
Nurture
Following closely to this is a spirit of nurture. They desire to create a family environment, to have family there and family comfortable being in relationship with others.
One of the interesting paradoxes with the giver is that they have an immense heart for evangelism and yet they do not like to be the ‘fruit picker.’
Time and again, you will see them providing the resources or the means for the word of God to go out. They have a concern for evangelism, they want the unsaved around them to hear, but they stop just short of sharing it themselves to the point of fruition. It seems very difficult for the giver to do the actual final stage of fruit picking.
Independent
Another characteristic is that they are very independent. If you think of a candelabrum with seven candlesticks, there are three pairs of gifts that work well together. The prophet and the mercy are naturally drawn to each other, the ruler and the servant are a wonderful pairing, and the exhorter and the teacher really need each other and draw from each other. That leaves the giver standing alone. God did this intentionally.
There are those who curse the independent spirit of the giver and yet God designed that into them. God designed them not to be needy. God designed them not to look to other people for help, to have no welfare spirit within them, and to be able to look at a problem and handle it without being needy.
Not easily conned
They are also individuals that cannot be hustled. Because God designed them to give, they have to accrue money before they can give. God wants the giver to give in the right way and not to be manipulated. It is relatively impossible to hustle a giver. You cannot manipulate them or guilt trip them or finesse them. They are going to give when they are ready to give, where they are ready to give and all the tools that normally work for extracting money from any other gift are relatively ineffective with the giver. God made them independent for a purpose.
Can relate to a wide range of people
The giver is also able to relate to a wide range of people. Women givers in particular have an extra sense, an intuitive sense for that which is false in other people.
The wife as a giver is very protective of her husband and her husband’s ministry and senses when there are people coming in who have hidden motives. The giver very much resists manipulation of information, does not like to have stuff withheld from them, does not like to be surprised, and can sense when there is an individual coming into her husband’s life that has a hidden agenda. Good or bad, righteous or unrighteous, the giver is sensitive to manipulation of information and hidden agendas.
The giver tends to be very private in their own life, very concerned about protecting the reputation of their spouse and the rest of the family.
Not confrontational
In terms of spiritual warfare, the giver is prone to delegate that, they are not opposed to it in principle; they just do not like to do it personally.
The giver is not confrontational by nature. In a financial project and in means of making money, the giver does not usually do an assault on the circumstances; he does not usually look at the obstacles and knock them out of the way. Rather the giver is very astute at finding the ways, the opportunities, and the unseen options and can assemble different components that other people have seen but not connected.
The giver is opportunistic in seizing the available moment rather than being confrontational in knocking things out of the way, so therefore they are willing to delegate the warfare to anyone else who is willing to do it.
Money flows to them
In terms of money, one of the amazing things about the giver is the way money flows to them. They have a capacity to read the fine print in business deals and find the opportunities other people miss.
There are issues of timing that are simply supernatural to them and their ability to find favor in the eyes of other people—in terms of money—are again a supernatural part of their DNA. Not something they have had to learn to do, not something they have been taught, it is just something that drips off of them.
There was a lady with no capital or resources, who was a giver. She desired to be in business, looked around town, and found a small business she wanted to buy. She had no money. She went and talked with the owner off and on over 3 or 4 months. Without putting pressure on him, simply because of the favor on a giver, God put it on that owner’s heart to sell her the business with nothing down and let her run the business and pay it off even though she had no experience running that kind of business. This kind of supernatural thing happens all the time with givers.
They give well, invest wisely
They not only give well but God designs the resources to come to them.
They give well, very wisely. Other gifts give impulsively and generously but the giver gives very wisely.
Usually the giver does not want to give funds for a start up. They want to see that a ministry is established, that an individual has credibility, that whatever it is, is a valid investment, and that there will be an eternal return on their investment. They do not like to provide startup capital, they prefer to invest in a something that is already doing well.
They also tend not to invest in the poor. Most of the time their attitude is that the poor are poor because they have mishandled their money and giving them more will cause more money to be mishandled. They reserve their giving to those wise at handling their money.
On the negative side there tends to be a frugality with the family that tends to lead to some reaction in many cases. The family sees the giver who is very generous in outside giving yet lives very economically and frugally at home.
On the carnal side, there is a tendency for the giver to see his money as a point of security, or to see the extended family as a point of security.
Tendency for the giver not to learn from the past
They see each situation as unique. Even though from other people’s perspective they have personally stumbled and fallen several times in the same place, the giver says it is not the same place, but a completely different situation. This creates a great deal of tension between the prophet and the giver because the prophet can extrapolate from eternity past to eternity future. They can see patterns and insist that the patterns are valid and that they have application in this situation. The giver really resents when somebody confronts them over issues more than a week old. They do not like to see patterns; they see each situation as unique.
Does not like absolutes
The giver also hesitates to see absolutes in circumstances and even in the word of God. They like to keep all options open as long as possible because of their immense creativity. In a carnal or immature giver, they can be very loose with God’s absolutes because they like to keep their options open.
One of the greatest pitfalls for the believer is thinking they can finesse God like they can people. The ability of the giver to work with individuals, to bring individuals into appropriate alignment for them to be able to make money, to persuade people to do things they would not normally do in a business arena, is immense.
It is a marvel what the giver can do and accomplish in terms of motivating people. But you cannot bring that same finesse to God’s law. God’s absolutes are absolute. God is not manipulated and in the spiritual realm, what you sow you reap.
In dealing with people, the giver is able to invest a nickel and get five dollars worth of return. He is able to get a disproportionate return for the effort he puts in. However, in the spiritual realm he is not able to manipulate God the same way.
Can sustain ideological tension
One of the greatest strengths, however, of the giver is the ability to sustain ideological tension without bringing it to closure. This again is in stark contrast to the prophet. The prophet likes to bring everything to closure. If we have a problem between two people, it is very simple. Somebody is right, somebody is wrong, let us take it to court and bring it to closure.
The compulsion the prophet has to drive things to their conclusion and determine right and wrong is part of the prophet’s DNA, part of the way God made him. There is a deep conviction about right and wrong, and yet the pragmatic approach that the giver brings enables him to be a peacemaker. He is able to work with people that have extremely conflicting worldviews and theologies and not have to bring it to a point of closure.
This is particularly amazing on church staffs. You will find only in a church with a giver pastor that kind of contradiction—where the youth pastor holds an evangelical view, the senior pastor is charismatic, and the pastor in between does not have much to do with either. In most pastoral staffs, that kind of theological difference would blow the team apart and yet the giver has an incredible God-given ability to function as a team, maintaining differences in tension without bringing them to resolution. No other gift, not even the exhorter, can maintain that much tension around a goal-oriented ministry without bringing it to closure.
These are some of the behavioral characteristics, some of the spiritual dynamics below them and God’s purposes for the gift of giving.
With seven gifts to choose from God could have chosen any one for Abraham, the father of the whole nation of Israel. The things that Abraham did, what he contributed to the nations, flow from his gift and God choose the gift of giving for Abraham as the father of the nation.
Day Five: Sea Creatures and Birds
Gen 1:20-23 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning — the fifth day.
Diversity
The first thing we see here is diversity. One of the reasons it is more difficult to determine the gift of giver is the diversity of things in which they are involved. There seems to be no limit to the areas where they can be effective in their gifting and no limit to the areas where they can make money, where they can exercise the different facets of their gifting and so they do not fall into a predictable job category.
Also within the home of the giver, you tend to see a lot of different interests, a lot of different projects. It is very unusual to find a giver with a single focus. Typically they have their fingers in many pies, many different projects. There are lots of different activities. They have very diverse interests in life.
Life and Birthing
Far more significant than that, the giver’s day was the first day where God created life in the blood. We talked about the first generational gift, the gift of teaching, where there was life in the trees and vegetation. However, there is a new kind of life here—life in the blood. So life and health issues become central to the gift of giving.
There is a concern about the preservation of life; there is a concern about the quality of life, a focus on being prepared for old age. There is a need for safety. However, most important, there is the spiritual authority to protect new birth.
Many have been in a church where a worthwhile program has been conceived and birthed. Then, early on in its existence, in 4 to 8 weeks, the new program just fizzles and dies. This is an overt demonic attack. There is a particular package of the demonic, which devours new birth.
It is the giver, as an intercessor, that has the greatest authority to nurture, protect, and guard the new program, the new birthing. It is not necessary for the giver to protect it all the way through its life. However, during the early stages of birthing, nurturing and establishing a new ministry, the giver has extraordinary authority.
Generational
We also see in this passage that there is a generational anointing for the giver. Meaning that the things the giver does, good or bad, are more apt to be carried on in their physical or spiritual seed.
The sun, moon, and stars God created on the 4th day we still have with us. All the animals God created on the 5th day have long since died and we are seeing the reproduction of the reproduction of the reproduction of those birds and animals. Therefore, this is the second of the generational gifts.
Creating, Social Structure, and Blessing
More importantly, this is the first day that God spoke blessing. Wherever there is a firstfruit it is significant. Vs.22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.”
When it said man was made in the image of God it is referring to three things God did during this week:
First, He created, second, on the sixth day, He created social order where He established man and woman, parameters to a garden, and he brought purpose, moral law, and regulations. Third, He blessed. This is what separates man from animals.
First, on our side, we do not create but we make. We are obsessive compulsive about making. We have research and development labs all across the country. Day after day books and pieces of music and new gadgets and things and toys and events pour off the presses of the manufacturing plants of the world. We go to the beach and we make sandcastles and draw our names in the sand. We go to the forest and carve our initials on the trees. We make, we leave an imprint, and we change. We are not designed to leave things alone. We make far more than we need. The birds make nests in the air but they only make what they need. We make and make because it is in our genes, it is part of the image of God within us.
The second thing we do is organize social structure. Put three people together in a room for three hours and when you get done you are going to have a club, an army, a business, or a government or church. We organize social structure obsessively from the PTA to the New World Order there are always pecking orders and rules and regulations and objectives and goals and plans.
The third part of our heritage, one third of what makes man different from animals, is the ability and the power to bless. The church has largely abandoned this. It is the occult world that has largely taken it up. The effort they have invested in studying the power of cursing is frightening. Those who work in deliverance have discovered the most bizarre, complex, sophisticated, technically detailed forms of curses. They are merely taking the human birthright and perverting it.
Scripture says life and death are in the tongue, not just death. For every single thing we have seen in the arena of curses, there is the power to bless. If the church had spent as much effort in studying the art of blessing as we have in our culture studying the art of making and social structure, imagine what the world would be like.
Giver’s Birthright
There are three different kinds of blessings. There is the blessing given to the giver, the one given to the ruler, and the one to the mercy.
The beginning blessing, the firstfruits blessing, the foundational level of blessing is the birthright of the giver. Couple this together with a generational worldview and the generational anointing. God has designed the gift of givng to give to the world far more than money. God has designed the gift of giving to release generational blessings into their family line.
They have authority to bless, the authority to bless generationally, the authority to be a life-giver through the power of blessing. This is a key component of the birthright of the gift of giving.
It is high time we prized it and brought it back into the church. Think of the generational blessings that flowed through Abraham. Because of what he did and because of the authority he received from God and the blessing he passed on to his son Isaac, the world is a different place 3500 years later. All because the generational blessings were accrued and dispensed by this man with a gift of giving. This is the heritage of the giver. People see the giver in terms of money but that is just a pittance, just a superficial thing—it is the generational blessings that are the birthright.
Jehovah Rohi
Ps.23—“ The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not be in want.” It is here, not Jehovah Jireh, which we go to invoke a name of God for financial, material provision.
Notice the sequence, because the four things here in this package are hugely instructive about the growth sequence for the giver.
Provision and Security
He begins with the provision: “the Lord is my Shepherd I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul.”
From a Shepherd’s point of view this passage has not only provision but also it has safety.
He leads me beside quiet waters. Sheep are easily spooked and they do not like to drink from a turbulent stream. Therefore, there is security, peace, and quietness in this pool of water he brings the sheep to to drink.
He makes them lie down in green pastures. The ease with which sheep are frightened is legendary and they are only going to lie down to chew the cud when they have a sense of safety and security. So we have these two themes surfacing again, there is provision but there is safety, nurture. There is an environment where the provision can be enjoyed.
Holiness
This is what God does first for the giver. God initiates, He primes the pump, and He provides the provision and the safety and security for the giver. Then He requires from the giver a response and the response is holiness.
“He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.”
As we go through the rest of the passages dealing with the giver, we will see the issue of holiness on more than one occasion. This can be the downfall of the giver, not that they are evil but that they are casual about holiness. Yet God requires it.
Relationship
The third step then is relationship and this is pivotal. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for You are with me, Your rod and your staff they comfort me.” Again, we will see in other passages that relationship, that relationship with God, is the missing link usually for the giver possessing his entire birthright.
The giver was made to be independent, made not to be needy of other people, but God did not intend the giver to be independent of God. God did not intend the giver to go through life with his expertise and his money, using that for his own security and provision. God requires relationship with God.
Therefore, God will take the giver through the hard times. In those hard times, the giver will have to choose whether to look to himself for his security or to his God for his security.
God’s desire is not to hurt the giver but to allow the threat of impending danger to cause the giver to turn to God for his security. He is not hurt here—he walks through the valley of the shadow of death, and he fears no evil, for God is with him; His rod and staff comfort him. There is no warfare here, there is no assault, attack, or harm, and there is no damage. It is all perceptual. Because of the yearning for safety, the giver can be excessively prone to see problems anywhere. Whether the problems are real or imaginary, God allows them to intrude into the life of the giver so that He can draw the giver, not to find material protection but to have no fear and find comfort in the rod and staff of the Lord.
The giver must be able to find his security, his peace, his comfort, in the face of threat, from his relationship with God.
When he does find that, when there is the holiness and the relationship with God, the payoff is immense, it is generational. “You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Generational blessings pursue the man and pass on to subsequent generations.
So we have the sequence: provision with safety, holiness as a response, the Lord brings trauma into the individual’s life to try and force a relationship with God and if the person enters into a relationship and makes God his point of safety, then God bestows an extravagant anointing.
What is the descriptive phrase, the title Abraham has in scripture? He was the friend of God. One of the greatest strengths of the giver becomes his greatest battlefield. That independent spirit that is good, fine, righteous, and blessed by God and a core part of his DNA can turn around and destroy him if he becomes independent of God and does not have relationship with the Lord. God designed the blessings to flow into the giver through a friendship relationship with his God.
The Altar of Incense – Worship
This altar is symbolic of intercession and worship. Again, we see a significant division between the mature giver and the carnal, immature, undeveloped, and untaught giver. For the one there is religion and the other there is relationship.
Religion versus Relationship
It is so easy for the giver to fall into a religious spirit where they do the right things and go through the motions and where they have a form of godliness but they lack the power thereof. You will frequently see an undeveloped, untaught giver very active in doing stuff, very active in jumping through the hoops, very conscientious in doing the appropriate behavior. That is a shallow substitute. God intends for relationship to be expressed by intercession and worship.
Gratitude
It seems to pivot around the issue of gratitude. Gratitude seems to come hard for the giver. They seem to perceive the world as owing them something or that it is appropriate for things to come to them based on their hard work.
The idea of being grateful because they received something they did not expect to receive, or because God gave them more than they expected, does not come easily to the giver.
It is something that is birthed out of relationship and where there is the proper wholesome relationship as described in Ps.23, then the giver is able to enter into intercession and worship, celebrating with his emotions his relationship with the Most High God. (Giver along with teacher and ruler are cognitive gifts.)
God defines acceptable worship
Another problem with worship that crops up frequently with the giver is his propensity to define what satisfactory worship is.
The evidence is not conclusive but the behavior is indicative. It is not for sure Cain was a giver, but his behavior in terms of the offering has been replicated in many givers. Cain attempted to determine the kind of worship that he gave. His attitude was that God ought to be pleased with it because it was good. Presumably it was firstfruits and definitely something he had grown with his own hands through the sweat of his own brow. It was organic, high fiber, low cholesterol, it was a good sacrifice. But it just so happens, it was not the sacrifice God wanted.
Throughout the prophets we see this theme repeated where God says “I don’t need all of your busyness and all your sacrifices.” Ps.50 says, “Do I drink the blood of bulls and eat the flesh? I do not need stuff. What I want is your heart; to obey is better than sacrifice.”
Repeatedly God confronts this attitude because people have made a sacrificial offering thinking it must be acceptable to Him, but God says no. He wants our heart first. Where there is religious activity without relationship, God is neither fooled nor bribed, nor is He pleased.
Worship and intercession are central to the DNA of the giver, but they must be rooted in relationship and not in religious observance, otherwise they become negative rather than positive.
Letter to Sardis
In Revelations 3, we see some of the same critical themes repeated. This is one of the most negative of all of the passages to the churches.
Giving the Heart, not Sacrifice
Rev 3:1-2 “To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.”
The giver is rarely overtly evil. He has a reputation for being alive because he does the right religious things, and yet he is not in pursuit of holiness. His righteous actions are a substitute for personal righteousness. God says I know your deeds you do have a reputation for being alive but you are dead. Vs.2 “Wake up, strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God.”
Again, that attitude of determining what is right. That tendency of the giver to say, “I’m giving this and this and this, therefore God ought to be pleased; so we can overlook the rest of what I’m not doing.” But God says, “I don’t think so, I have not found your deeds complete.” The giver points at what he does and God says no, I want to talk about what you have failed to do because you are not in relationship.
Rev 3:3 Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent…
The repent again is a heart word. He did not say repent and obey, he says obey and repent, it is not enough to do the actions, you must have it out of your heart.
Rev 3:3-6 “… But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes will, like them, will be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
The whole area of being dressed in white is described in chapter 19 of Revelations. It refers to the righteous deeds of the saints. God commends the givers who are walking in righteous actions.
Principle of Stewardship
The principle the giver has to wrestle with is stewardship. The immature giver, who does not understand God’s plan, tends to see his gifts to the Lord, his tithes and offerings kind of like we see taxes. “I receive a salary for the year and I give the government the portion that they demand. After I have paid my taxes, the government has no say in what I do with the rest. I can buy Cadillac’s or candy corn, it does not matter to the government.”
This is not a stewardship mindset, but an inappropriate mindset the giver can bring to his finances. God has one simple standard for the giver. He does not want 10% or 10% plus offerings—God wants it all.
Everything God gives to the giver is for a stewardship purpose. The funds that come to the giver are for kingdom purposes. When the giver gives out of his abundance, out of what is left over, easy and convenient, he may be meeting needs here on earth but he is not accruing generational blessings, he is not receiving the honor of the Lord.
God has said He does not need our offerings, He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, all the gold in the earth. He has unlimited resources. Many people have seen the creativity of God in providing funds from whatever source He determines.
God gives the arena of giving to these individuals in order for them to establish relationship and in order for them to accrue the generational blessings they will pass on to others. The money is not the issue; the money is merely the playing field where their relationship with God becomes established and enriched.
Just to see a well-rounded picture of how a giver uses his money look at Job 31. Job was a giver. As you go through the book, delete all of the arguments with his friends and just pull out the autobiographical portions where he is talking about his own life and what he does. It is hugely instructive; Job was a mighty man of God in terms of understanding how to be a steward of God’s funds.
Job 31:16-34, 38-40 “If I have denied the desires of the poor or let the eyes of the widow grow weary, if I have kept my bread to myself, not sharing it with the fatherless- but from my youth I reared him as would a father, and from my birth I guided the widow- if I have seen anyone perishing for lack of clothing, or a needy man without a garment, and his heart did not bless me for warming him with the fleece from my sheep, if I have raised my hand against the fatherless, knowing that I had influence in court, then let my arm fall from the shoulder, let it be broken off at the joint. For I dreaded destruction from God, and for fear of his splendor I could not do such things. If I have put my trust in gold or said to pure gold, ‘You are my security,’ if I have rejoiced over my great wealth, the fortune my hands had gained, if I have regarded the sun in its radiance or the moon moving in splendor, so that my heart was secretly enticed and my hand offered them a kiss of homage, then these also would be sins to be judged, for I would have been unfaithful to God on high. If I have rejoiced at my enemy’s misfortune or gloated over the trouble that came to him- I have not allowed my mouth to sin by invoking a curse against his life- if the men of my household have never said, ‘Who has not had his fill of Job’s meat?’- but no stranger had to spend the night in the street, for my door was always open to the traveler- if I have concealed my sin as men do, by hiding my guilt in my heart because I so feared the crowd and so dreaded the contempt of the clans that I kept silent and would not go outside. If my land cries out against me and all its furrows are wet with tears, if I have devoured its yield without payment or broken the spirit of its tenants, then let briers come up instead of wheat and weeds instead of barley.” The words of Job are ended.
Here is a man who understood stewardship. He understood that God had given him wealth in the community for him to minister to the needs of the community. He did not see his funds as a point of personal security for himself. He saw a responsibility to the community at large, to people who did not deserve it, to people who would not be a worthy investment from a financial sense. He understood his life was to be a steward in every way. He walked in high justice, high holiness, and great ethical behavior in everything that he did.
Giver’s Battlefield
Therefore, the battlefield with stewardship has to do with the whole area of faith.
Faith = belief, God’s will and risk
Faith is different from belief. Belief is purely mental, faith revolves around risk. You can believe that something is right or wrong, you can believe that God can or will do something, but if you have not experienced it, if you have not been at risk for it, then it is purely a mental position. This is not wrong. All of us have a vast number of areas where we believe God can and will do certain things. Most of us have had the experience of seeing people healed of cancer. We believe God can heal cancer but until we have had cancer and have had to depend on God for healing, it is purely belief. It is mental; it is not faith.
Presumption comes when we put God at risk based on something we do not know is His will. We desire Him to rescue us, we have set our own agenda, and we have put ourselves at risk and then demand that God come through. True faith is when we know what the will of God is, we believe that He is able to bring it about and we are at risk. We commit ourselves to some kind of course of action and if God does not intervene, does not come through then in fact we will be hurt.
That is what the giver has to deal with. God is not interested in how much money the giver can accrue through his own natural wisdom. God desires to provide money supernaturally. God is not concerned with how many needs the giver can meet through his vast wealth. God is desirous of establishing a relationship with the giver through God’s supernatural intervention in his life.
This is the battlefield. This area of stewardship smothered in faith, the ability to put yourself at risk and to allow God to intervene.
Jacob’s Battle
There is a tragic, heroic story in scripture of a giver who fought this battle all the way to the end. Jacob was not lacking in generational vision. Apparently, from a child he knew what his birthright was. We do not know what his mother told him, or where or when or how, but he was driven to obtain his birthright. He wanted the best; he did not just walk away from it. With his mother’s cooperation, he lied, cheated, and stole the birthright from his brother.
Another time he swindled the first-born blessing from his brother. All the way through his life, he was striving to get the things God promised him and therein lays the problem. He could not trust God to deliver.
Whether he is at Paddan Aram doing genetic engineering at the water troughs to cause his sheep to grow better, or at the Nile wrestling with God, not letting go until God blesses him, wherever he went through his life he was trying to help God out.
God said ‘go back to your land everything is okay’ and he went back terrified of Esau and tried to help God out by sending all these cattle and sheep to bribe Him. Everywhere he went he was trying to help God out. Yet he made it into the great chapter of the heroes of faith. Hebrews 11 speaks of the faith of Jacob in that he blessed Joseph’s two sons just as he was dying. We know from the record in Genesis that he blessed the younger with a greater blessing than the older.
Why is that the hallmark of faith? Why is that the high water point of Jacob’s life minutes before he died? Because this is the only thing, he ever did where he did not try to help God. He was walking in the prophetic and he was swimming upstream because the probability of those two grandsons of his being mighty men of God was slim in the natural. They were the sons of Joseph but they were also the sons of an Egyptian. The indications are that as he became wealthy and famous and in a position of power, Joseph abandoned the faith of his fathers. After he was promoted to be the prime minister of Israel, he married the daughter of a priest. His first son Manasseh he named a horrible name, he said “forget my father’s household” as though he was leaving his father’s household and going the Egyptian way. Later we read it was his “divining cup” that was put in Benjamin’s sack. He had turned to practicing divination. These two sons were raised by an Egyptian mother who was the daughter of a priest. Therefore, it was improbable that they would inherit the blessings Jacob spoke over them. At the end of Jacob’s life he did one thing that was by faith and generational.
The giver has the independent spirit, a great survival instinct, but God calls that independent spirit to partner with Him, to be at risk, to allow God to move in him and for him in a supernaturally. Dependence on God alone is very difficult.
Independence
When the giver is not looking to God’s will and has a lifetime of looking to himself first, charting his own course, doing the things that come natural to him, it is a very small step to cross the line into disobeying God.
We see this in Jacob’s life in Genesis 35. God called Jacob to go to Bethel. There was a reason he was to be there. Bethel was a land strategic to the kingdom and God ordered Jacob to move from Shechem where he had no business being in the first place, to go to Bethel, and to live there.
Bethel was the place God appeared to him when he was running from his brother. Where there was the ladder from heaven, the angels going up and down, and the articulation of the covenant.
God said I want you to go there and live there. The only problem was that Bethel was not really a good place for all the flocks he had. Shechem had better grazing land. So because Jacob had a habit of manipulating, of finessing people, and had spent twenty years doing end runs around Laban, it was second nature for him to disobey God. Therefore, he went to Bethel, settled there briefly, and offered sacrifices and God showed up and renewed covenant with him, then he left.
From the day he disobeyed by moving out of Bethel trouble and turmoil pursued him. He was not very many days out of Bethel when his beloved wife went into labor and died giving birth to Benjamin.
God called Jacob to a high level of faith, to partner with Him, to be at risk. Because Jacob handled his own issues and was not used to listening to the voice of the Lord, he ended up going over the line and overtly disobeying. This damaged the rest of his life and brought him grief.
I Thirst
The words at the cross—the fifth thing Jesus said was “I thirst”.
Being Needy
It is so difficult for the giver to be needy. It is difficult for the giver to depend on anyone, to even express his or her needs for a moment. The giver likes to meet his own needs; this is healthy to a degree. It can become corrupt when the giver cannot receive from the hand of God things he does not deserve.
Again, there is the story of Jacob. Stunning, shocking, shameful, tragic, he is running away from his brother and is destitute. He lies down at Bethel, his head on a rock and God appears to him in Genesis 28 and gives him a unilateral covenant, one sided. God said he would do this and this and this for him. God gave him generational blessings with no strings attached with nothing required from him, nothing conditional. God initiated and gave to him.
Yet even in his poverty, as someone who was running, he could not receive. He woke up the next morning and said, “God I need to renegotiate the covenant, I’m going to give you this, and this if you give me this.” He did not need to offer God anything and the things he asked were smaller than the things God was giving him unilaterally. It is a tragedy when a giver cannot receive from the hand of God.
God has designed the giver to have intimate relationship with Him, to walk as His friend as Abraham did, the highest title a giver can have.
God intends that the strength, safety, security, and provision of the giver flow out of relationship.
This is seen in a glorious passage in Genesis 21. Toward the end of his life, Abraham was living in the vicinity of the Philistines. He had already had one bad encounter with Abimelech but this was a different kind of encounter.
We must understand that Abraham had nothing for security. He had 300 or so shepherds and servants he could rally but they were not an army. He had no legal right in the land, he was a Bedouin. He had no walled cities and no alliances. He was utterly vulnerable. Abimelech was king of the Philistines and had all of those things.
He came to Abraham and said, “Abraham, God is with you, He is more than everything that we have, and we beg you to make a generational peace treaty with us.” It was out of Abraham’s relationship with God that the most powerful king was intimidated and terrified and so wanted to make peace. He was afraid of Abraham’s relationship with God. This is the giver at his finest. This is relationship flowing in provision, security, and generational blessing. Abimelech understood it was generational. He wanted a covenant not just for his own life but also his decedents.
The struggle every giver comes to is whether he will be safe and secure in the natural, or trust in his relationship with God.
Everything hinges on the giver’s relationship with God. Lacking holiness and intimacy the giver will not possess his birthright.
His birthright is to be able to invoke life-giving generational blessing for his family and the community around him.

Ruler
Rulers in scripture
The redemptive gift of ruling is one of the easiest to identify of the seven.
In scripture, there are many heroes with this gift: Noah, Solomon, Jeroboam, Nehemiah, Boaz, and Joseph of the O.T.
Church Vision Breakdown Example
To understand the role and vital position of the ruler in the body of Christ, let’s consider an exaggerated and simplistic illustration.
To start with, some people divide different skill types as:
· the visionary
· the implementer
· the maintainer
Imagine your ordinary church on Main Street that has congregational rule with a board of some sort. Typically, on that board you will not find an implementer; usually you will have the visionary and the maintainer types. Your visionary is the pastor; he has got one or two other visionaries on the board.
The Visionary
The pastor gets an idea, this splendid thing God’s shown him that the church needs to do. He can see 25 years into the future, knows what it’s going to look like in its fullness but may not know how to organize very well. Therefore, he brings this idea in its broad, glowing, generalities to the board.
The Maintainers
Immediately, the maintainers get stressed because they are already up to their ears in work and this new idea sounds suspiciously like more work “somebody” needs to do. So they begin cautiously to ask pragmatic questions: “Who’s going to do this,” “Where will the money come for that,” etc. The visionary has not thought through all of the mechanics so he brushes those questions aside. The discussion gets tabled until next week. The following week he still has the vision, the maintainers still have the questions, and by the 3rd week, he is really frustrated by the maintainers whom he sees as obstacles keeping God’s work from going forward. Therefore, he ends up abandoning that vision. But it is no big deal because within three weeks he has some other big vision and the process starts all over again.
The Implementer
If you do happen to find an implement on a board, after two or three years he usually resigns in frustration and goes to another church, a church that really wants God’s will because (as he sees it) they all are obstructionists on the board who have no faith, no vision and are not able to embrace the will of God. That is not the case at all. Maintainers are simply doing what God designed them to do. The only problem is they do not have an implementer on the board–someone who can take the vision, take the idea, the abstract concepts, that 20-year plan, and break it down to incremental steps. This ruler, this administrator, this leader, (none of these three terms fully captures it)–he is, among other things, an individual who can implement. He can take a vision, break it down into pieces, and put together an effective plan to accomplish it.
Other gifts can implement
He is not the only one who can do administrative work. The prophet can because of his awareness of right and wrong. He can put together a program, build a program, and repair a program. The exhorter can also because of the effectiveness of strong relational skills. The gift of mercy, because of his ability to anticipate pain, can see where things are going to lead and do a reasonable job of administration. Nevertheless, ruler is the best fit.
But Ruler is a whole lot more than just someone who implements a vision.
Behavioral Characteristics
Thrives on pressure
Quickest way to spot a ruler is to find someone who is under a lot of pressure and loves it. He may complain a bit but if you watch his life, every time some pressure is taken off he finds some more to put on himself. They thrive under pressure, crave it, and need it. The wife is often under the delusion that he is too busy because he has to be. Therefore, she looks forward to the vacation when he finally has two weeks off, but he just finds lots to do there too, and recreates with great intensity. The same thing happens in retirement.
Pressures others
Next characteristic – they not only like to be under pressure, it is important to them for those around them also to be under pressure.
One ruler took over a plant and walked around the first day and noticed everyone seemed at ease and so immediately laid off 10% of the work force so people would have some pressure. A few weeks later he noticed people still weren’t under panic and laid off 10% more.
There is a time and a place for rulers to put people under pressure and it can be done effectively in a short-term operation. Nehemiah, a ruler, was very skilled at putting pressure on people to build the wall. This was okay for 52 days. Solomon also put immense pressure on people, but he kept it up for the 40 years of his reign. However, as soon as he died and Rehoboam became king the citizens came and said, “Please lighten up.” It was over this issue that the kingdom was divided.
Joseph Example
A most tragic example of a ruler who had an empire-building spirit and a need to do more and more, creating even more pressure, and endlessly pursuing the objective, was Joseph when he was the prime minister over Egypt.
God gave the dreams to Joseph to save the lives of people. He implemented the plan, stored food to save lives–that was God’s commission. Because he did not understand the limitations God places on the gift, he pursued the aggrandizement of the kingdom mercilessly. He sold the wheat back that he had taken. As they ran out of money, he took their cattle, then lands and then finally enslaved them for food. He impoverished the nation by stripping from everyone his or her capital resources. It may be because of this sin on Joseph’s part, operating in the gift of ruling without moderation, that God allowed Israel to be enslaved in subsequent generations. It was a Hebrew that enslaved the Egyptians mercilessly and then later the reverse.
Can Motivate
The ruler has the skill to motivate people. He can push them to get a task done, even push people beyond what they think they can be pushed. Unfortunately this can easily be abused. Not everyone is a ruler, not everyone thrives under pressure.
Good at Time Management
The ruler is skilled at time management. He is busy, but only as busy as he wants to be.
Difference between Ruler and Prophet
There tends to be a tension between the prophet and the ruler on three counts.
· Ruler is not into the real details. If a job is being done 80% well, things are functioning, the ruler is happy. The prophet is focusing on the 20%.
· The second natural tension is the why question. The prophet is obsessive compulsive with the why; how does it work, what makes it get there? The ruler does not care how it works, just show him where the accelerator is so he can go farther and faster.
· The third reason is the issue of ethics and integrity. The prophet sees righteousness as central, the ruler, if carnal, will let the end justify the means.
Needs Loyalty
One of the core components to a group the ruler brings is loyalty. If the ruler is in the number two position working for a visionary, which is the ideal setup, it is essential the visionary back the ruler when there is a problem. When there is a mistake, they need to own the problem together. If the visionary ever makes a mistake and causes the ruler to be the scapegoat, it is over. The relationship is so broken it is nearly impossible to repair.
The ruler gathers a core group that he trusts. Their loyalty is more important to him than their competence.
Nehemiah was in a situation where there was huge disloyalty. He was sent as the governor of an area with ultimate authority. Yet the nobles, those who should have been alongside him, were continually undermining him. Therefore, he turned to the handful of servants, those he brought with him from Babylon, those he could trust and deployed them in key positions over the nobles that would normally have been put there.
The ruler will look first and foremost for loyalty and relationship; he will worry about competence later.
Competent
When working with a ruler, it is important not to micromanage him. He does not need help figuring out how to get from here to there. He knows.
Not into Blame
Rulers are not into blame, not themselves or others. When something goes wrong, he figures out how to fix it. This can make working under them safe.
Empire Builders
Rulers are empire builders. It is not evil but part of their DNA. It can become evil when exploited. They are designed to look at anything and want to make it bigger.
Pastors with this gift are almost invariably looking to buy land, build buildings, and implement more programs. They tend to run a high debt structure because their vision tends to run ahead of finances.
No Welfare Mentality
Nevertheless, there is no welfare mentality with rulers. Like the giver, they do not look to others for solutions. They anticipate owning their own problems. Therefore, they can be independent without being malicious.
Often a visionary will initiate a city-reaching effort and get frustrated as many ruler pastors, who have the most to offer, don’t come to help. It is not that they are bad or that they lack a vision for the city, it is just that their DNA is not to be needy. They do not think in terms of needing anybody else’s help. It takes a careful teaching and focused expression to share that while they may not need other people, others need them. For this ruler pastor to bring his church alongside others is difficult unless there is a profound trust relationship. It is next to impossible to get him to bring his congregation under a committee. He may do it with an individual if there is trust. They are content just to do their own work.
Can Use Imperfect People
Rulers have a great ability to use imperfect people. This is one of their greatest strengths. The downside to this is that the ruler can be task oriented and fall short in the area of nurture.
Not always nurturing
We see this in Nehemiah. He had an objective to build the walls and in doing so put a lot of pressure on people and encountered much opposition. Sanballat and Tobias opposed him. The elders and nobles tried to undermine him. Logistical problems with the rubble, a lack of skilled labor–he had priests and jewelers’ daughters out there building the wall. But he persevered. His intention was to do the spiritual thing at the end. He was aware of the spiritual problems in the community and he did deal with it at the end. However, his mentality was task first, nurture later. It came back to bite him. What his opposition could not do, sin did. He had to stop the building in the middle and deal with the sin of exploitation where the wealthy in the city exploited the poor to the point they could hardly survive.
So the tendency to use people in their imperfection can cause the ruler to be task oriented at the expense of being nurturing and shepherding.
Where the Ruler is needed
Why is this ruler who is so needed and gifted almost never on a board in the average church? A lot of it is perception. “He’s too busy.” He is only as busy as he wants to be. If he commits to do it, he will do it and do it well.
Expertise with people, projects, and expanding
The next reason pastors give for not recruiting rulers is that they want an ideologically (concerned with ideas) driven person on their board. However, there can be both. Not everyone on the mission’s board has to have a passion for missions. The expertise of the ruler is working with people and projects. He can help implement. Rarely do they have a detailed vision in a particular area. He just wants to expand and knows how to.
Third reason is that many times there is sin, or carnality in the life of the ruler.
The forth reason is the issue of loyalty. The ruler will not volunteer; he does not want to be there not knowing if the leader wants him. Therefore, he will wait to be asked.
Day Six of Creation: animals and mankind
Gen 1:24-2:1 and God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground — everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning — the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
We see huge diversity. You can find rulers involved in every imaginable kind of ministry and project.
Spiritual life created
On the sixth day, God created a new kind of life. There was life on the third day in the trees. There was life in the blood on the fifth day. However, on this day, spiritual life was created. This is central to understanding the call of God on the ruler’s life.
Dominion created
God also created dominion on this day. He gave man dominion over animals, birds, and fish. The Bible shows this when Jesus had the fish get a coin for taxes. This is what Adam and Eve had before the fall. The same with Noah. The serpent did not surprise Eve. They communicated with animals daily.
Resources
Resources are on this day as well. Plants are given as food to animals and man. The animals were given to serve man in expanding the garden. Man’s directive was to be an empire builder and expand the garden.
Again, there is a generational blessing on this day, not just physical but also spiritual. What Adam did in his life good or bad was passed on. Here generational curses and blessings were conceived. It is the highest of the three levels of generation anointing and it belongs to the ruler.
Authority to Bless
It is here we have the second of the days of blessing. God blessed and He gave dominion. There is an authority in blessing which passes on authority to other people.
All of us have seen blessing that has no authority. Someone speaks some blessing over us and there is no change. However, others have possessed authority in a transferable manner and when they speak a blessing something happens. This is the blessing imparted on the sixth day. It is the authority of the ruler.
Ruler’s Birthright – spiritual generational blessings
The rulers calling, his birthright is to accrue that level of spiritual dominion, not just over animals but over spiritual issues and to impart to the spirit of his physical and spiritual offspring those generational blessings that will pursue the spirits of those people. Immense authority and dominion is granted to the ruler.
Moral Law
Also on the sixth day was the implementation of moral law. It was the first time God gave a moral commandment: “you shall not eat of the tree…”
Team Work
Finally, on the sixth day we see teamwork–Adam and Eve sharing dominion as co-regents to expand God’s plan.
Jehovah Tsidkenu – The Lord our Righteousness
Jeremiah 23:6 …This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness.
Think of a continuum line from -100 (bondage) to 0 (obedience) to +100 (freedom).
• God has not called us to obedience only, it is merely a point we go through on the way to freedom.
• You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
• When the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
The difference in these three principles has to do with amount of willpower needed to do what is right.
Example: Joe is at -50 as an alcoholic and so lacking sufficient willpower to do what he knows is right. Sam is also an alcoholic but he is at +2. There is still some desire to drink but he has just enough willpower to resist.
Living at +2 is the pits, it’s white-knuckle Christianity. At +100 it takes no willpower. There is freedom.
Let’s look at this deeper.
Principle of Freedom – Earned authority to pass on blessing
This is the birthright of the ruler, where he must stand or fall. He is to possess the spiritual dominion to release powerful generational blessing to other people and the churches that they pastor.
The tendency for rulers is to be focused on the task, to say 80% is good enough, to walk in a measure of compromise, and to not have integrity. Wherever they do not have integrity or have not walked in holiness or freedom, they will not walk in spiritual authority.
They may be empire builders and build an incredible empire but that is not their birthright. Their birthright is to earn spiritual authority in the heavenlies, to have dominion over spiritual things and be able to release that to generations. This begins on the bedrock of righteousness– Jehovah Tsidkenu, the Lord our righteousness. On this issue of righteousness, he will stand or fall.
The principle is freedom. Unless he walks in spiritual freedom, he will not have that moral authority that is necessary. We see this not just in terms of spiritual authority but also in actual leadership.
All of us have a sense about when others have righteousness or integrity. Most people are averagely compromised but we resonate to a holy man. We intuitively recognize that here is earned authority, here is integrity, here is someone I am willing to risk following.
You can build an organization through administrative skills, structures, bribes, through motivational speeches or through a true ruler, someone with God’s anointing, who is first righteous. People will desire to follow that individual because of his righteousness. Even unrighteous people desire to follow him.
Therefore, in addition to leading others that righteousness becomes the seedbed from which the generational blessings will be empowered in the individual’s life.
The Ark of the Covenant-Validating the Ruler’s Authority
Three things in the ark validate the authority of the ruler.
The first was the Ten Commandments, the moral law of God. When the ruler is under the moral law, operating in it, walking in righteousness, he has authority.
The second thing was Aaron’s rod that budded. This is a different type of authority, that of sovereign appointment. When the ruler knows he is handpicked by God, he operates a greater authority in both in the natural and spiritual.
Third was the golden pot of manna. For a ruler to be effective he must have provisions for the people following him just like on the sixth day there was vegetation for food and animals to help with labor. It is the ruler’s responsibility to provide and he who provides well can lead effectively.
Letter to Philadelphia
Revelations 3:7 These are the words of Him who is holy and true…
Again and again, God drives home the theme the ruler and righteousness are inseparable. It is on this issue the ruler will stand or fall not on whether he can borrow money, build buildings, or mobilize people in the natural.
Rev 3:7-13 “To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars-I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you. Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on the earth. I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will he leave it. I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on him my new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
Vs.9 I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars–I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you.
Do not need validation
There is an interesting dimension to the ruler, another reason it is difficult to recruit them to your team. They do not need the affirmation of other people. When they have made up their mind they can do a particular thing, they can do it even when no one is affirming them. There is a desire within them for vindication but they can wait a very long time for it. They can wait for God’s time to say that they were right.
Many people can be mobilized to join you by giving them affirmation, telling them how wonderful they are and how much the kingdom needs them. That just goes right over the head of the ruler. He cannot be recruited by human affirmation because he gets his from a different source.
We can also see partnership with God.
Vs.7, 8 … What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.
Does a lot with little
One of the marks of the ruler is that the results of his godly work are disproportionate to the resources. Look at Nehemiah building the wall in 52 days. This is the heritage of the ruler. When partnering with God, doing what God has called him to do–not just “good” things he sets his hand to–he gets disproportionate results.
Look at the promise in vs.10: Since you have kept my command to endure patiently; I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on the earth.
This is a stunning verse. There was a book written in 1910 that researched and found that when these areas were overrun by the Turks this was the only church that survived.
Jesus’ last words on the cross – It Is Finished
The ruler tends to walk into the same trap as the giver. Their very excellence, their ability to do things in the natural causes them to fall short of God’s plan.
God’s heart and desire is to partner in the spiritual realm and do the supernatural.
There are two applications to the phrase “it is finished.”
Freedom from Sin
First, the penalty for sin is finished. Jesus paid the incredible price for every sin of all time. When the ruler can grasp this message and apply it to his own life in holiness. When he can come to a position of freedom and speak that message to his followers and to apply the blood of Christ that was shed at such a high price to every single sin, then there is great dominion and great spiritual authority for the ruler.
Holiness, freedom, generational freedom from sin is the central piece of the birthright of the ruler.
Doing the best thing
There is a second application. Jesus finished the work of which He was called. He got the main thing done. Realize Jesus could have done a lot of good things. He could have spent 70 years healing the sick. Jesus had time management. He said no to the good things to do the best things.
In Mark1, people came from miles for ministry. Jesus had got up early and went out to pray. The disciples finally found Him saying the people are waiting and He said, I am moving on down the road.
Because He knew His job was leadership development and that He had three years to prepare 11 world changers, He walked away from the crowds. Certainly, some were were angry, having walked all night to get healed and He was gone. This is another of the huge battlefields the ruler has.
A ruler will always be busy, will always find things to do. The question is not whether he is busy or productive, the question is whether he is doing the thing God has called him to do.
Solomon lived out this tragedy and it cost him and his generation. He did what David said and he got rid of enemies, built the temple, and established his throne. Then he did the king thing that they do and built himself a palace and one for his Egyptian wife he was not supposed to have. At 20 years, he had met with God, received wisdom, had generational blessing pursuing him because of his father David, had an incredible mind, and looked around for things to do because he was maxing out.
He started civil engineering, building aqueducts and projects, cities, roads. Then he turned to the sciences and studied them until he maxed out. He established commerce and a commercial network around the world. He turned to writing, wrote books, proverbs, and got bored with that. Everything he touched he maxed out and he got bored. Finally, he turned to sensuality and died a pathetic man having wasted his intellectual competence worshipping idols and being indecent with women.
What was God’s call on his life? The biggest mistake Solomon ever made was in not asking this question. There is one recorded time when he sought the face of God. He went up to Gibeon and offered 1000 sacrifices and God showed up. In a wise, stewardship way, he asked for wisdom to do what God called him to do. As far as is recorded in scripture, he never again sought God for His will.
Solomon had a commercial network that spanned the world. Everwhere commerce goes, communication goes. The entire world heard about the king of Israel. What would have happened if the entire world had heard about the God of Israel?
People came from around the world to know the wisdom of the king of Israel and they could have gotten to know the God of Israel. He had wealth, wisdom, a worldwide network, and priesthood at its height. Worship was at its highest level ever in Israel. Solomon could have launched a world evangelization effort. Everything was in place–money, priests, networks–and he had the administrative ability for such a task. No man has ever had so much in place for this. But because he did not ask God what he was supposed to do and just did the king thing that they normally do, he missed it and so did the world. Vanity of vanities he said. He could have released generational blessings to the world.
Rulers have to seek God for His will and “finish”
Rev.3:7… These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David…
How does a person accrue the spiritual authority to widen and deepen the stream of generational blessing in their life? It is by honoring God, going beyond obedience.
We see this in the life of David. He took the initiative to bring the ark. God did not tell him to. He had a heart after God. Then he wanted to build a tabernacle. He wanted to honor God. God said, “Because you wanted to do this I am going to give you a generational blessing that is eternal.”
God desires that we would all live like this–to go beyond obedience and do what you are called to do and find ways to honor and bring glory to God. Then He will delight in dispensing generational blessings.
Noah, a ruler, also lived this way and all mankind benefited from the covenant that God made with him. Solomon failed and released into the kingship curses instead of blessings. Jeroboam(1 Ki.11:38) with the gift of ruling, had a promise of God for this but missed it. Joseph brought a generational curse by his exploitation of the Egyptians. Boaz released blessing.
It is not the structure, organization, or activity. The birthright is to release blessing to the whole body of Christ, blessings that will pursue us from generation to generation.
Rulers can only do this if they seek God, find out what He wants them to do, and then walk in holiness, and seek to honor God.
No other gift has this level of spiritual dominion. What the ruler does will bring either blessings or curses on all your physical and spiritual seed.

Mercy
Behavioral Characteristics
Few enemies
Mercies rarely have enemies. It is easy for them to get along with anybody in any context. They have many people that admire and respect them for all that they do.
Biblical Examples
Ruth, King David, Apostle John are some. The very crown jewel of God’s creation with the gift of mercy was Adam, the first man.
Safe
They are a very safe person for those who are wounded. People can come to them, share their hurts, pain, and woundedness, and know intuitively the mercy is a safe place, even if they are almost a stranger.
One of the diagnostic questions you can ask when looking for a mercy is, “Do people come up to you frequently and bare their entire soul without being asked?”
Sensing
They have the ability to take the initiative. In a room full of strangers they can sense who the wounded people are no matter how good the plastic smile on their face is. They can see right through it. They just know who is feeling rejected.
Transparent
Typically, a mercy has a huge number of acquaintances, many people they enjoy and who enjoy them, but there is just one or two that are close intimate friends. And they share everything about themselves with that friend. There is no holds barred, complete transparency.
Craves intimacy
The intimacy the mercy craves transcends soul contact to physical contact. More than any other gift, they are designed by God to want and need touch. John at the last supper is an example. It is important to understand this for young men. Our culture does not always affirm this. They can be told it is evil. It needs to be affirmed in a right way. Some mercies fall into homosexual lifestyles because of this lack of affirmation. We must separate out the sin and God’s design. Mercy was made for intimacy–body, soul, and spirit.
Slow to make transitions
This is not a slowness of the will as it is with the teacher. Teachers need to study something for a long time before they are willing to embrace it and act it out. For the mercy it’s a slowness based on emotional processing. When there is a need to make a change of church, community, or job, it takes awhile for mercy to disengage emotionally, move into a neutral zone, and then re-engage in another place.
Sensitive to the Spirit
When a mercy hears from God, they frequently will have difficulty explaining the why. There is a dramatic contrast between prophet and mercy. The prophet tends to know the mind of God whereas the mercy tends to know the heart of God. The prophet is very apt to explain why you should go here, do this, do that, not go here or there; they are wired by God to understand those things in an analytical kind of way. The gift of mercy is designed by God to know His heart and to operate on a very subjective, intuitive basis.
As they think about going to the right, they sense in their spirit that the presence of God is not there. As they think about going or not going in any particular direction, there is an increase or decrease of the presence and the peace and the heart of God. It is very difficult to explain. It is difficult to convince a more analytical type that we should not go this direction because it just does not “feel” right. Yet that is the God given, appropriate, honorable language of the gift of mercy–to literally feel the heart of God and make major significant decisions based upon the cords that bind their heart to the heart of God.
Do not abuse a mercy by trying to get them to explain why this or that is the will of God.
Hates confrontation
Along those lines, the mercy hates to confront someone else. It is the hardest thing for them to tell someone they are wrong. Their DNA is to keep people from hurting, to protect people from pain. When they have to confront, it is very difficult. It usually takes them an hour of beating around the bush. This can be a major downfall for mercy.
We see this in David. With his first brood of children, scripture says he never once reproved them, and some of them turned out pretty bad. Love alone will not raise children–there also has to be some confrontation and boundaries. David also avoided a major part of his job, which was to operate in the judicial realm as king of Israel. This is evident in Absalom taking the kingdom from him. Everyone that came to Jerusalem for judgment from the king apparently was jutted aside whenever possible, but Absalom was there to talk with him or her. David did not like being put in a position where he had to choose between two people and say you are right and you are wrong. Mercies do not want to hurt people’s feelings, which leads to the next point.
Can be indecisive
The mercy is also very prone to being indecisive when they are immature. This indecision is based on not wanting to hurt somebody. It is easier for them to make a decision when it is a no brainer.
God has a cure to help mercies. God used John, a second-born mercy, to write the book of Revelations. John, out of all the apostles, was completely absorbed in the heart of the Father. Because he could not bring himself to disappoint God, he was in tune with the heart of God. He saw everything through the emotions of God–he was not absorbed in the pain of the people. This is a key for the mercy. To the degree he is wrapped up in other people’s opinions, he will be ineffective because a mercy is always trying not to hurt somebody. However, when they are in tune with God, they can move boldly forward and let the chips fall where they may. Without this, they become a people pleaser and in most cases, an enabler.
Victim Spirit
Many mercies, whether in leadership or not, have a victim spirit. They attract abuse and exploitation, and because of their kindness and their “niceness,” they are willing to allow injustice to happen to them.
There is a demonic component called a victim spirit that overtly attracts infirmity, financial devouring, or physical abuse or sexual assault to someone, especially a woman, and especially a mercy. Nevertheless, the issue is not so much the demonic, because the demonic is empowered by a mindset. A mindset is able to justify why it is right for things to be wrong. We see this consistently in the battered women syndrome–where a woman thinks that somehow it is her fault her husband beats her. This is an extreme example.
In a smaller context, we see mercies that are abused by leadership. They are worked unreasonably on their jobs and they put up with it and tolerate it because they do not want to inflict any pain on the individual that they are serving.
There are mercies that will not leave a job that is exploitive because it might cause pain to the predator that is exploiting them.
Unless the mercy knows his God, the default position for them is to be exploited, and for their mind to justify the exploitation in ways that God did not intend.
Loyalty Anger
There is a deep strain of anger that flows within the mercy, yet rarely appears–usually only in the context of loyalty for somebody else. They take up an offense for a third party. If you offend a mercy they will most likely brush it off and forgive whether asked for or not. However, if you offend their friend or family member, he is much more apt to be angry with you and hold on to that resentment.
We see this with James and John as they approached a Samaritan village. They tried to get hotel rooms for Jesus and all of them, but the clerk said he would not allow Jews to stay, so they wanted to call down fire on him. They were offended that someone would treat Jesus that way.
This is a hint in terms of the warfare in which the mercy gets involved. In general, they do not like warfare. In the natural, in dealing with people, they avoid it. Like when there is a church split, they do everything possible to avoid choosing sides. In the spiritual, in confronting demons, though it is not their primary desire, if they see the pain a third party is in because of demons, they will become angry and do battle. It is almost invariably in a third party context where they are drawn into warfare.
Drawn to the prophet
Mercies are drawn to prophets. The opposites seem to attract. The decisiveness of the prophet balances the indecisiveness of the mercy. The mercy delights in passing the buck, letting the prophet make the hard choices, letting him do the confrontation. By contrast, the prophet desperately needs the softening influence of the mercy.
Pre-disposition to worship
The most important characteristic on the surface for the mercy is the pre-disposition to worship. He loves to worship and enters in easier than the other gifts when he is mature.
These are behavior gifts. Now we will consider below the surface DNA.
Day Seven: God Rested and Blessed the Day
Gen 2:2 –By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
Draws from and adds to all the other gifts
First, we need to see that mercy is in the seventh position, meaning that the mercy draws from all the other gifts. Every gift contributes to the richness of the mercy and the mercy contributes to all seven. They are the crown jewel of God’s creation, the most complex, the most sophisticated, the most sensitive, the most wonderful of the things God created in the heaven and earth.
Being
Notice the difference between the six days and the seventh day. On the first six God was busy doing but on the seventh day all He did was just “be.” Even though the mercy is capable of many things and is continually having tasks and expectations hung on them, and even though people try to fit them into pigeon holes of activity, the heart and soul of the mercy is just to be and enjoy the presence of God.
On the seventh day God, Adam, and Eve were not just resting, marking time, waiting for the first day to come around again so they could work, but it was a time of celebration, of enjoying and of savoring. Writers have to do many drafts. When it is finally finished, they give it one more read just to savor the hard worked for, finished product.
This is the third of the days that God blessed; it was the highest form of blessing. On the fifth day the giver day, there was the art of blessing, recognizing God’s design and calling it forth, generational blessing. On the sixth day, we have the spiritual authority being imparted in blessing from one generation to another. In the seventh day, God blessed time and He made it holy. The blessing mercy brings to the body of Christ is the blessing of holiness, being able to impart holiness to different things and situations.
Notice what was made holy first. God sanctified time–the first thing in scripture He sanctified. By the law of first mention, this has great significance.
An immense number of curses can be attached to time. Arthur had one on finances every May. They did everything they knew to break the curse off the finances but it was not on the finances, it was on the timeline. Once he broke the curse off the timeline and sanctified that time, the money was then able to flow in that month. Families can have a death curse on their timeline, for another example. The gift of mercy can lift up worship and sanctify time easier than the other gifts.
God does not want us just to live normal–flatline– but wants us to have peaks in our timeline. The nation of Israel had 7 feasts throughout the year, 3 of them in which they were supposed to go up to Jerusalem. Therefore, they would have periods of anticipation–seasons into their timeline that were more holy than any other times. Times where their spirit was rising in expectation, where they could come into the presence of God more easily than other times throughout the year. We can also establish patterns of sanctifying time throughout the year.
A Mercy’s Calling to sanctify time
The gift of mercy’s calling is to sanctify time in his own life and in the lives of others. It was the first thing that God sanctified and He did it with blessing.
Principle of fulfillment
The principle that applies for the mercy is fulfillment. The compound name that corresponds is Jehovah Shammah, the Lord is present. The item of furniture in the tabernacle that corresponds is the mercy seat.
Jehovah Shammah – God is Present
This compound name is at the end of the book of Ezekiel. After 39 chapters of judgment, there are nine chapters describing the temple and its restoration during the millennial kingdom. After describing the building, the layout of the land, the priesthood, the river that flows from the altar, the conclusion, and the final statement of the entire restoration of everything that will be done in the millennium, is the name Jehovah Shammah. Once again, Almighty God will be present in our midst and that is the climax and culmination of it all.
Levels of Holiness
There are three levels of holiness.
1) Looking at the Mosaic Law there were those things that were ceremonially clean, clean until something touched them. This is basic holiness. Avoiding sin and staying away from that which is defiled.
2) Then there is a more significant level. This is called “most holy.” This is something that could not be defiled. Something most holy sanctified the unclean thing that touched it.
First in this category is the brazen altar. Every day the first sacrifice was made to sanctify the brazen altar. The brazen altar from then on was most holy for the rest of the day. It would receive unlimited defilement. When they did the sacrifices, not all of the meat went on the offering, only the dirtiest part. The kidneys which had all the toxicity, the fat from the innards which is the toxic waste dump of the body, the covering over the liver, everything that was symbolic in the natural of sin as well as the sin of the individual was placed on the altar. And no matter how much defilement was put there, it was most holy, so it sanctified the sin that touched it. Likewise, the altar of incense was most holy.
When the unclean woman touched the tassel on Jesus’ prayer shawl, she was healed. When He touched lepers, they were healed. This is the most holy level in which the mercy walks.
3) Then there is the holy of holies behind the veil where no sin was allowed in. If the priest went in having sin in his life, he immediately dropped dead. There was no negotiation.
God has called the mercy to walk in that arena of most holy. The blessing that the mercy imparts is not the blessing of affirming design and releasing it, or of having authority to impart authority. It is the blessing to be able to sanctify the environment where they go–to be most holy to sanctify time, buildings, land, people–for holiness, virtue to go out of them into the defilement and to turn the defilement into holiness.
Now the other side of the coin is the principle of fulfillment.
Mercy’s Birthright
Three levels of fulfillment we can each experience.
Physical
There is fulfillment on the physical level, the body such as sexual intercourse and drugs.
Soul
On the next level, the soul, there is a much broader spectrum of fulfillment possible. There is the fulfillment of competition, of accomplishment, of family relationship, of friends, of power, of achievement, athletics, artistic ability, writing, celebrating, of all the expressive arts… This is much more gratifying, deeper, and much more mature than mere physical fulfillment.
Spirit
Beyond that, there is the fulfillment for the spirit. And there are three levels of fulfillment here. The first is when the spirit of man is able to interface with another person. If you speak at a church where there is a hardness of heart and, not only can you not connect with the people’s spirits, even their soul’s have a wall up–it is no fun. However, if you speak somewhere and you feel some of the people open their spirits to you, it is exhilarating to connect–a fulfillment happens.
Another level is when the spirit of man interfaces with a demonic spirit. There is a terrible price to pay for this, nevertheless, a rush happens that can be addicting.
But the greatest fulfillment of all is when the spirit of man connects with the spirit of God. It is the mercy more than any other gift that goes to this place the easiest. All of humanity is called to that level of intimacy. Some can get to this occasionally with the right music at the right church, and some can do it often. But the mercy can do it the easiest.
The reason mercy can do it so easily is that God has designed for him to come into His presence to absorb the holiness of God to increase the mercy’s authority. So that out of his holiness, they are able to sanctify the realms around them. Moses on the mountain spent so much time with God his very body began to reflect His glory.
God calls the mercy to cross over that threshold and experience intimacy with God. Therefore, there can be a release of the holiness of God in his spirit.
It is out of that position of having come into the presence of the Father and absorbing that glory that they are able to return to our community and walk with the authority of releasing that blessing of holiness. To be able to make holy, those things that are unholy, this is the calling of the gift of mercy.
Letter to Laodicea
Sadly, not every mercy with this calling possesses their birthright, though. In fact, the letter to Laodicea is fairly grim.
Rev 3:14-22–To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm-neither hot nor cold-I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
Walk in Dominion
Two words not normally linked are dominion and the gift of mercy. We think of dominion with the prophet, with the vision of the exhorter, or we think of it with the authority of the ruler.
Nevertheless, dominion was given first to the gift of mercy. It was Adam, who walked with God, experienced His glory, and enjoyed God, that God gave the dominion mandate to expand the garden throughout the world. God commanded him to use that authority to make holy the whole world.
Vs.21 to him who overcomes I will give the right to sit with Me on my throne.
Once again, mercy is called to dominion. Then it says, “Just as I overcame and sat down with My Father.”
The gift of mercy often does not walk in dominion because they have not resolved the fathering issues in their life.
Dominion through identity
From a purely psychological profile, there is dominion and there is domination. The people that are wounded seek authority in order to dominate other people. It is basic emotional wholeness and a solid identity that enables an individual, in any context, to move into dominion that is life-giving to those under him. Our dominion and desire for dominion that is wholesome are rooted in our identity, and not in our authority. And our identity comes primarily from the way we were fathered.
Belongingness
It is a father and the way he responds to his children that builds the identity in the children. The mother plays a significant role but the father’s opinion is so crucial. When the father has been diligent in establishing the child’s identity, there is a freedom, wholeness, and a willingness to risk established in the child. Psychologists call it the “sense of belongingness.” When a child has had a secure relationship, his identity affirmed and his need met by his father, he looks at the world as a positive place, a place where he can risk and accomplish things. When a child has not experienced the provision and the relationship, then there is a fear factor, some insecurity, and a root of abandonment, so they are not able to risk; they are unable to walk freely in their dominion.
The mercy that has not been properly fathered is so apt to be a people pleaser, so apt not to stand on values, but to do whatever it takes to make the people around them happy with their presence because they are trying to fill the lack of fathering in their spirit.
Therefore, we see the harsh words in this letter.: Vs.16 So, because you are lukewarm–neither hot nor cold–I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
Dante said the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintained their neutrality. This was God’s attitude toward the carnal, immature, sinful mercy. You need to have values, to be willing to stand for something, somewhere and not just be people pleasers. God tells them to ask Him for the gold of good character, the white clothing of righteous acts, and most of all, salve to put on their eyes so they can see.
Re-fathering
In context, if you remove the paragraph markings artificially put there, immediately after the salve phrase God moves into relational things. First of all, “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline.” Hebrews teaches us the connection between fathering and discipline.
For the mercy that has no perspective, they will see all pain as bad and run to avoid it. So the discipline of God is wasted. God wants to build relationship, maturity, and wholeness through the discipline.
Then there is verse 20 that is primarily used as an evangelistic verse but is really more geared toward believers. Vs.20–Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.
This is not a “doing” verse but a “being” verse. It is not that the Lord will come in and equip this person to do great things in the kingdom, but that God will come in and have relationship and intimacy. He will be a Father and heal the woundedness.
All of us have come from a dysfunctional family at some level. We all have deficiencies in our identity and they are rooted in not knowing the Father and allowing Him to re-parent us. And it is from fathering that we are able to step into dominion.
This is illustrated in the life of David with his gift of mercy. As you look through the references to his family line, as you go through the genealogies in the book of Chronicles, there is the strong suggestion that he was conceived in illegitimacy. It appears his seven older brothers were a part of his father and mother, but that he was the child of another woman. This is also suggested in Ps.51. We do not know if this is pictorial language or refers to illegitimacy, but he says “in sin did my mother conceive me.” This theory is also reinforced by his own sensuality. Basically, David had a problem with women a long time before Bathsheba came along. He had physical sensuality with a lack of emotional connectedness with women as he constantly took wife after wife, enjoyed her for a season, had a child by her, then seemed to discard her and pick up another wife. This was permissible for kings to a certain degree, until he happened to see Bathsheba who was already married.
David not only had a problem with fulfillment in sensuality, but he also failed to have courage in his soul. As mentioned before, he had an inability to confront, to deal with his children, to discipline them. Also his profound inability to deal with Joab, a relative of his, is an example. The best he could do is throw up his hands and say, “You sons of Zeruiah are too much for me.” He left it to his son Solomon to kill Joab. David did not even have the courage to remove Joab from his position of leadership. But the story does not end there. Somewhere along the way in his reign, God met David in a new and different way. God began to bring healing to him and the strength of dominion into his life.
As you read the story of Solomon and look at the proverbs, you will find that David learned the art of parenting. Repeatedly in Proverbs, especially in the first few chapters it says, “When I was young my father taught me this and that.” This man, who botched his first batch of children, learned dominion and fathering. Solomon, his son, was able to move in even greater dominion than he could. And with him we see the same is true in terms of the physical, sensual fulfillment. Later on in David’s life, his circulation was too poor to keep him warm at night, so they found a new wife for him, Abashag. She kept him warm and yet he left her a virgin. After Bathsheba, he was committed to no more wives. He was totally committed body and soul to Bathsheba. His moral freedom was so great he could have this beautiful young woman keep him warm in bed, and yet leave her alone sexually. This is the power of dominion of one of the greatest mercies of all time.
Spiritual fathering is somewhat of a new word in the body of Christ. There are 300 verses in the New Testament alone about Father God, 150 on His relationship with Jesus and 150 on His relationship with believers distinct from Jesus. In the next 5 to 10 years, there should be a flood of books and conferences on spiritual fathering. It is not only about fathering but also about God’s strategic time in history to release the gift of mercy.
Solomon built the temple where the presence of God came down and where no one could stand because of the glory. He was able to do it because David, a mercy, was re-parented by God and then able to impart that to his son.
We are in a Kairos time where God is bringing His fathering to heal everyone, especially the mercies. It is time for the mercy to know who the Father is, and who they are in the Father. And for the mercies then to be able to walk in their full identity, to walk in the dominion that is their birthright in this last age of the church, and to bring the manifest presence of God forth in a holiness that will sanctify others, and to release the holiness of God into the camp in a most holy way.
We walk seeing in part, knowing in part, and having deep within us knowledge that there is more.
Intimacy
In the Garden of Eden, man had his finest moment. There were no worship services but simply man enjoying God. When a young couple is in love, they do not need money for a date, or some activity to do. They can go sit on a log by a stream, look in each other’s eyes, kill four hours, and have a greater level of intimacy than they will ever have in bed, because a soul intimacy is a higher intimacy. This is what we had in the garden, man enjoying God. There was no secular and sacred, just God and man enjoying life. This was the high point of humanity.
Everything we have done from the garden on is man’s desperate attempt to get back to that kind of simplicity and that kind of anointing. It is man’s desperate attempt to penetrate all the barriers that separate us from God and to come to the point of enjoying God.
The mature mercy is the one who can come into the presence of God easily, and know that once they are in the presence of God, they do not need to do anything. They do not need to intercede, ask questions, or get a prophetic word. They just want to be there and stand in the glory of God. They desire to fill their spirits with that contagious glory of God, the Shekinah glory of God that makes their spirit glow with the holiness of God, and then to bring it back to the rest of the body. That is where the church is poised now. God has stirred up this desire in this hour. The heart cry of the church is for intimacy.
A sequence to intimacy
The intimacy message works only in sequence. A girl is not fit to be married until she has been fathered. If she brings to her wedding day a lack of fathering, she expects her husband to be a husband on one day and a father on the next. We have a generation of believers who do not understand the distinction between God the Father and God the Son.
Many that preach on the bride of Christ try to get us to come as the bride to have our fathering needs met in Christ. God is bringing a course correction into the church now. He wants us to seek the face of the Father, the manifest presence of the Father, and for the Father to finish repairing our dysfunctional parenting–to grow us up into our identity. Once we have established our identity–we know who we are because of our relationship to the Father–then we can walk in dominion, and from a position of dominion we interface with God as the bridegroom. Then there is a proper, holy, wholesome intimacy there and the glory of God is able to fall upon the entire world.
It begins with spiritual intimacy and it will be channelled through the gift of mercy. The crown jewel of God’s creation is called to walk in dominion. The dominion they are called to walk in is to release the holiness of the glory of God into the world. That will give them their greatest fulfillment and it will meet the greatest need of all mankind. However, to do that they have to be fathered.
The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters that cover the seas. It is the mercy that will step into dominion and lead the body of Christ.