The Greatest Unfinished Business Of The 20th Century
Is That the Western Church
Has Never Allowed God to Supernaturally Retool Her
By Don Lamb 12/19/08
If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you.1:23 (NIV) Proverbs
"He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction.” Job 36:16 (NIV)
“Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus." After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. Acts 4:29-31 (NIV)
Over the last 30 years, the Western church has simply kept adjusting her means, methodology, and visions to what she can accomplish at her existing level of experience and faith, and by doing so, has unconsciously forfeited receiving new anointings and visitations that God wanted to pour out on her. As darkness increases, and strongholds take deeper hold of cities, this kind of approach constantly wears down people’s faith and expectations. Consequently, the next generation receives the experiences, methods, and faith-levels that the previous one walked in. As a result, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the kind of limiting and restricting effect this progressive cycle has on future leaders as they develop their own visions and methodologies.
This is why the Lord Jesus insisted that the Apostles tarry in the upper room until they were “endued with power from on high.” Because, if they had gone out immediately they would have adapted their means, visions, and ministries to their limited anointings and the measures of the Spirit which they brought with them through their pre-resurrection time with Christ.
Jesus clearly commanded them to be retooled, to stretch their faith, and have them trust Him for something greater; for a work of the Holy Spirit far beyond their previous experience. He called them to wrap their faith around His promise and not adapt their expectations to their current experience by stepping out right away in the level of anointing they had already possessed.
Consequently, the Lord comes to us and says: “I no longer want you to adapt your methodologies, efforts, and visions to your current level of faith and anointing. It is not a level that I can use for this next season. Tarry in your Jerusalem and receive a greater effectual power through my Spirit. Allow me to retool you. If you do this, I will be able to do far more than you can imagine. But if you spend all of your time doing what you already can accomplish, you will never be retooled. You will stay chained to the tactical problems and issues that afflict your people, ministries, and generation. I will not be able to release the strategic mantles and tools that will bring broader transformation.”
“To receive this retooling you will have to force yourself to pray more, listen more, and overcome the undercurrent of busyness and activity that fills your generation. You will be ridiculed as lazy and out-of-touch. You will appear mystical and impractical. But I will come to you and retool you if you are willing. I will give you tools your generation has never seen. I will pour out mantles that will set whole cities and regions free. But you must alter the way you do ministry. You must return to the “upper room” for eighty percent of your ministry and do the hands-on work twenty percent of the time. If you stay in the current routine you are in, you will never be retooled.”
Now, God will always allow us to develop methodology and means based out of our current faith level but this is not what He prefers. Most leaders base their methodology, not from Scripture, but, from the level of faith and experience they have in their real-time world of ministry. Or they apply methodology from what they see others doing. As a result, there is this comparative ceiling; this limited expectation of what can really be accomplished.
Many church historians like to poke fun at a Charles Finney for thinking that the Church could bring in the Millennium. But I believe Finney came to that conclusion based out of the experience of seeing tens of thousands of hardened sinners converted, not from studying the scriptures first. Most of us like to say that the origins of our methodology are from the scriptures, but more than likely all of our methods and expectations and formed by our experience.
It is time to overcome this cycle. We are desperately in need of retooling. I hear the Lord saying to all of us, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28, 30 (NIV) This is not just for salvation, it is for ministry as well.
In addition, the Lord has this law of faith that stumbles many hard working believers. I call it the, "according to your faith it will be done to you" principle. (Matthew 9:29) Now this doesn’t mean that we strive, wrestle, and groan for greater measures of faith to impress God and get retooled. But it does reveal something critical. If a believer is not aware that his current faith level can be transformed and retooled he will always accept that what is going on around him is the standard and he will live a “restricted” life. Jesus loved to run into people who said, “Lord increase my faith” (Luke 17:5) or who found a way to get past their unbelief like the centurion, who identified with the “authority” of Christ and said – “just say the word, and it will be done.” (Matthew 8:8)
Our faith level must be elevated, retooled, and “unrestricted” to receive the greater mantles, anointings, and outpourings necessary to transform our cities and regions. But our greatest hindrance is that we have never actually received our first confirmed observable retooling as a Church. Consequently, there is a huge spirit of comparative unbelief and fear that rests upon us. “What if we revamp the way we do ministry by focusing on receiving greater anointings and invasions and do less of “what everyone else is doing” and the retooling never comes?” We will look silly and lazy; especially, since our people aren’t paying us to “prevail in prayer” but to minister and meet needs.
I must confess that this is probably just another spiritual theory or doctrine to many who are reading this, and that it has never been actually borne out fully in my life by a full-fledged breakthrough except in small awakenings during my lifetime. But I have a sneaky suspicion that this is true for thousands in our day. Yet, I still remain convinced that God has written this on many hearts, though we have never completely risked throwing off the never-ending reinvention of ministry based out of current experience. Therefore, instead of “freeze-framing” our life in His presence until He lifts us to a higher level of effectual power to reach the masses, we plod along hoping that what we are doing will someday work.
But if we take our cue from the Apostles, instead of our own generation, they received their first retooling at Pentecost, and subsequently never turned back and never felt ashamed to ask for greater retoolings after that. They went from “glory to glory.” They learned that the future was not bound by their current experience or faith levels. They learned that “He who began a good work in them” was constantly willing to retool them for greater works. May we quickly “humble ourselves under His mighty hand,” so that He can retool us and “lift us up.” (James 4:10)
LORD WE SURRENDER TO YOUR RETOOLING AND RESTRUCTURING GRACE. WE REPENT FOR ALWAYS PUSHING AHEAD IN OUR CURRENT LEVEL OF FAITH AND ANOINTING AND NOT ALLOWING YOU TO RETOOL US.
THANK YOU LORD FOR BEING WILLING TO RETOOL US.