Honor the Work of the Holy Spirit

Photo by Johnny McClung on Unsplash

While we see (and will in the near future continue to see) many Charismatic ministries exposed for gross sin, never forget that there are faithful Charismatic leaders who have not strayed. This is a Church-wide problem, not exclusively a Charismatic problem.

Voices are already being raised, saying, “Do you see the fruit of these so-called spiritual gifts? We want nothing to do with prophecy, words of knowledge, tongues, or any other supernatural manifestation. It’s all fake.”

No, it’s not. And heading from one extreme of the spectrum to the other is not helpful to anyone.

The Holy Spirit still says, “Desire spiritual gifts” (1 Corinthians 14:1). His gifts are dear to His heart and should never be despised just because some have misused them. He also says, “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophesying. [Instead] prove (test; examine; discern) all things; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:19-21).

The reasons vary for why people wish to throw out any supernatural manifestation of God’s Spirit. Some have been disappointed by shysters who wreaked havoc on them or their loved ones through false gifts. Some are grieved by leaders who did not discern falsity, or who chose to let it go on when they knew it was fake. Many do not wish to make the effort to discern for themselves whether something is “off.”

There is no excuse for laziness in discerning, by the way. God expects it of each of us individually. In fact, as we draw closer to the end of time, every believer must learn to examine what is said and done for whether it aligns with the Bible. Each of us is required to be sensitive to the whisper of the Holy Spirit, so we are not led astray.

The Lord highlighted these two verses to me recently:

Numbers 11:25 — “And the LORD came down in a cloud, and spoke to [Moses], and took of the Spirit which was upon him, and gave it to the seventy elders. And it came to pass, that when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied without ceasing.” What struck me in this verse was that the Holy Spirit loves to manifest His presence through prophecy. Prophecy is part of the essence of Who He is.

Numbers 11:29 — “And Moses said to him, ‘Do you envy them for my sake? Would God that all the LORD’S people were prophets, and that the LORD would put His Spirit upon them!'” It has always been God’s heart to put His Spirit upon people (and since Jesus ascended, to place His Spirit within us).

Consider how He has further made His desire clear to us in Joel 2:28, 29: “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My spirit upon all flesh. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. And also upon the servants and the handmaidens, in those days, I will pour out My Spirit.” Peter confirmed the beginning of that endowment of the Spirit on Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2. While Joel said, “in those days,” Peter said, “in the last days” this would happen (Acts 2:17). We are still living in those last days, and God is still pouring out His Spirit on all people.

Do not allow the failures of some — or even many — Charismatic leaders to intimidate you into denying or despising the spiritual gifts mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10. Contrary to what some are saying, the Lord has never yet rescinded His gifts from His Church. They are still much needed today, perhaps more than ever. We should value whatever gifts the Lord offers us. To scorn or refuse them grieves and insults Him.
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The Spirit-Filled Guide to Personal Prophecy

The Dream Book: A Practical Guide to Christian Dream Interpretation

Prophecy and You (Part 3)

In our last two posts, we discovered that God wants us to cherish prophecy. It is a precious gift of the Holy Spirit. He also encourages every believer to desire to prophesy (1 Corinthians 14:1, 39). (Yes, you can!) Remember, prophecy is simply speaking forth to others what God has said to us or shown us.

We can increase our ability to hear and see into the things of God. He has already said He wants to share His secrets with us. Consider Psalm 25:14: “The secret of the LORD is with those who fear Him…” and Proverbs 3:32: “…His secret is with the righteous.” Daniel 2:28, 29, and 47 call the Lord the Revealer of secrets. However, we should not be indifferent or passive about receiving supernatural revelation. God wants us to pursue Him for it.

One of the best ways to seek for greater revelation is to pray back to God Bible passages on this topic. Don’t settle for praying them once. Petition Him with them often. Here are a few to get you started:

Ephesians 1:17-18 — “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him: the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, so that you may know the hope of His calling and the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.”

Personalize this passage by praying something like, “Father of Glory, I ask You to give me the spirit of wisdom and revelation in knowing the Lord Jesus. Open my eyes to heavenly visions and enlighten my understanding, that I might know the hope of Christ’s calling upon my life and the riches of Your glory. Give me a clearer understanding of my inheritance in Him.”

Exodus 33:18 — “And he said, I beseech You, show me Your glory.”

When Moses prayed that prayer, God graciously responded. Moses did indeed experience a portion of the Lord’s glory, Who passed by Him proclaiming His nature, “…The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and Who will by no means clear the guilty…” (Exodus 34:6, 7). We, too, can earnestly ask, “Lord, show me Your glory.”

1 Samuel 3:10 and 19 — “Then Samuel answered, ‘Speak; for Your servant is listening.’”
“And Samuel grew, and the LORD was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground.”

Make yourself available to hear God. Pray, “Speak Lord. I am listening for You.” Pray that the Lord would give you the ability to hear Him clearly, so that none of your prophetic words would fail to be accurate.

1 Kings 17:1 — “And Elijah … said to Ahab, ‘As the LORD God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall neither be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.’”

I like to focus on Elijah’s position before the Lord — “The LORD God … before whom I stand.” We can pray to stand in His presence, in the councils of heaven, hearing His will, so that we can speak it forth into earth’s realm. For more on this, see my article.

Jeremiah 1:9, 10 — “Then the LORD put forth His hand, and touched my mouth. And the LORD said to me, ‘Behold, I have put My words in your mouth. See, I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant.’”

Ask the Lord to put His words in your mouth. Ask Him to use you in prophetic intercession and decree to pull down things which are not of Him and to plant and build up His will in your family, city, state, and nation. As you seek Him persistently to understand His heart, He will show you what to pray and decree. Your authority to move mountains will increase. But start by frequently praying these verses.

James 1:5 — “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, Who gives to all men liberally and does not upbraid them [for asking]; and it shall be given to him.”

Hebrews 5:14 — “But strong meat belongs to those who are mature  — those who by using their senses exercise them to discern both good and evil.”

Ask God to help you hone your ability to discern. Ask Him to awaken and heighten the sensitivity of all your spiritual senses, so that you are paying attention to the cues He is giving you.  

These are just a few verses to help you get started in receiving prophetically from the Lord. Do you have favorite Scriptures which you use to pray for greater revelation? I’d love to hear them! Please leave them in the comments.

Part 2

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The Spirit-Filled Guide to Personal Prophecy,
by Lee Ann Rubsam

 

 

 

 

Growing in the Prophetic,
by Lee Ann Rubsam
(audio teaching)

 

 

Are You One of the Special Ones?

Recently, I heard a well-known prophet prophesying over a younger prophet. He told the audience, “She is one of the chosen ones.” From there, he went on to talk about just how specially chosen she was. My reaction was, “This is not right. Every believer in Jesus is one of God’s chosen ones.”

Yes, it was good that he spoke encouraging things to her about the ministry she would have. There was nothing wrong with that. But his choice of words illustrated an erroneous mindset we have in the body of Christ: thinking there are different levels of value among Christians, where some are more important to God than others. These are the “special” ones, and then there are the average, not-so-special ones.

We talk and act as if some people earn, or are born with, more favor with God. We unconsciously entertain the notion that God will answer these special people’s prayers, but He might not be so eager to answer ours.

This idea is pervasive in our church culture, and it leads us to develop mindsets such as

• “Ida Intercessor prays three hours a day, so God will hear her. I’ll ask her to pray for my needs … because God is not as likely to answer little old me” (who doesn’t pray three hours a day).
• “If I speak the words exactly right, X number of times, maybe then God will hear and answer me.” (That’s called an incantation, by the way.)
• “Brother So-and-So said God showed him a precise method of prayer that is THE way to get answers. He said God won’t answer us if we don’t do it this way. Maybe I need to get his book and learn to do it right.”

All the while, we forget that Jesus encouraged us to come to the Father like little children, our hearts full of trust in His love for us. And there is the key – realizing we are beloved sons and daughters, not worker bees in God’s hive, who get ignored or pushed out if we don’t produce as much, or in the same way, as somebody else.

Once again, we’re trying to gain God’s attention based on works, rather than relationship. We tell the rest of the world that salvation is about relationship, not good deeds – but then we turn around and think once we are in the Kingdom, that from thereon in, we have to earn our way.

Maybe we need to keep saying this until it sinks in:

I cannot earn the Father’s favor. I already have it, because I am His child.

Can we mature into praying more effectively? Of course. We can learn from seasoned intercessors. It’s good to become more disciplined in our prayer life, to train ourselves to use the Bible promises in our quest for answers, to grow in following the Holy Spirit’s leading on how to pray. That’s definitely part of the picture. But we should never allow ourselves to think that the right method or being a special somebody is the key to receiving help from our Father.

If Jesus is your Savior, you are a child of God. There are no children in His family whom He loves better and favors more than others. You have uniquely valuable gifts and purposes to fulfill, lovingly planned out by your heavenly Father since before the world began. And He will answer your prayers just as eagerly as He answers “important” people’s prayers. Because you are important, too.

 

The Intercessor Manual,
by Lee Ann Rubsam

 

 

 

Encouragement from God’s Word,
by Lee Ann Rubsam

Personal Spiritual Warfare (Part 2) — Where Did That Thought Come From?

Winning our personal spiritual battles starts with knowing that every thought which enters our mind is not necessarily our own. Nor is every emotion we feel.

Some thoughts do come from our depraved nature, and those must be continually put to death. Eventually, as we gain ground through absorbing the Scriptures and spending time with the Lord, we develop more and more of a “renewed mind,” as mentioned in Romans 12:2.

But there is another source of wrong thoughts: evil spirits. They study our lives, including our words, and thereby figure out what our vulnerable areas are. They then inject thoughts into our minds accordingly. These thoughts are cleverly styled to sound like our own, but they are actually coming from outside ourselves.

This means that when we have an evil thought, instead of being shocked by how bad we are for coming up with such a thing, we must recognize that it perhaps did not originate with us, and we don’t have to buy into it. We immediately reject it, rebuking the evil spirit which planted it. It only becomes “ours” when we accept it and begin to flow with it. A thought caught and rejected in the first couple of seconds has no power over us. It is not sin until we agree and then run with it.

The apostle Paul gives us some ideas about how warfare over our thoughts works:

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal [soulish; according to the natural man], but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds). We are casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. — 2 Corinthians 10:3-5.

Paul indicates that we cannot succeed in winning the war for our thoughts in our own strength (“warring according to the flesh”). This is why simply pushing away a wrong thought usually doesn’t work: it will keep on coming back, along with a flood of other evil thoughts to reinforce it. Instead, we must use the authority we have in Christ Jesus through His name, depending on the Lord to back us up.

When we recognize a thought which is not compatible with how the Lord thinks, our job is to immediately reject it, and then command the enemy to be silent and flee from us, in the name of Jesus. James 4:7 instructs us, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” The condition is that we stay yielded to the Lord. We put to death our own selfish inclinations. Then, when the enemy tries to manipulate our thoughts, we can speak confidently, “I resist that thought and the spirit behind it. I command the enemy to be gone from me, in Jesus’ name.”

When we are yielded to the Holy Spirit, depending upon Him for His power to be at work within us, our warfare is truly “mighty through God” (2 Corinthians 10:4). However, although we depend upon the Spirit to aid us in spiritual warfare, we cannot passively expect Him to do it all. If that were the case, there would be no warfare about it for us. Instead, He has given us supernatural ability so that we can cast down the wrong imaginations, and we can take every thought captive to make it line up with obedience to Christ (v. 5).

The problem for most of us, though, is that our natural tendency is to carry out life according to the flesh. This means we go by how we feel and what we perceive by our natural mind. We are not vigilant over our thoughts. We don’t pay attention to the steady flow of what we’re thinking, so sometimes we don’t recognize that the mental trail we are taking is off the Lord’s path. This is especially the case once we have developed a pattern of agreeing with wrong thoughts. Those patterns, or mindsets, can deepen into mental strongholds, which we will cover in the next post.

Previous: Part 1 — Intro
Next: Part 3 — Mindsets and Strongholds

 

The Intercessor Manual, by Lee Ann Rubsam

 

 

 

Your Intercession Questions Answered, by Lee Ann Rubsam

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The Intercessor Manual Now in eBook Form

I am pleased to announce that for those of you who prefer e-books, The Intercessor Manual is now available for Kindle at Amazon.  You can also purchase it in a variety of formats at Smashwords.

The Intercessor Manual provides answers to many of the questions God’s prayer warriors struggle with and wonder about.  In this book, I share with you from a prophetic perspective what I have learned over many years as an intercessor and intercessor leader.  Whether you are seasoned in your call to intercession or whether you are just now beginning your prayer adventure, this book is sure to bring valuable information your way — some of which you may not encounter anywhere else.   As with all my materials, you can expect solid biblical support for the concepts presented, along with an honest, no-nonsense approach that is practical to the max.

Topics covered:

• Your Call to Intercession
• What Intercessors Do
• The Bible Helps Our Intercession
• The Power of Your Prayer Language
• Prayer that Counts
• Breakthrough Intercession: Receiving Our Answers
• Spiritual Warfare
• Our Spiritual Armor
• Worship and the Intercessor
• The Prophetic Connection
• Maturing in Prophecy
• Intimacy with God
• Avoiding Deception
• You Don’t Have to Be Weird
• Pastors and Intercessors
• The Pastor Specialty
• What Can You Expect as an Intercessor?

In addition, my booklet, Hotline to Heaven: Hearing the Voice of God is included as an appendix, along with my article,  Hearing from God Through Dreams.

The Intercessor Manual in printed or e-book format can be purchased directly from us at Full Gospel Family Publications.

For the Kindle format: The Intercessor Manual at Amazon.
For a variety of e-book formats: The Intercessor Manual at Smashwords. 

Where’s Waldo?

LeeAnnRubsam.com

Remember Waldo?  When my children were small, they enjoyed finding him hidden in crowds of hundreds of people who were doing odd things.

Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking that Jesus has a lot in common with Waldo: in the church crowd He is often very hidden and hard to find (not to mention God’s people sometimes doing odd things).  I sometimes wonder, “Where’s Jesus?”

You know, it’s easy to have the right intentions and to start out with noble motives.  We want to win the lost for Jesus.  (So far, so good.)  In some circles, we talk extensively about “building the Kingdom,” and we spend a lot of time and effort on teaching everyone how to do it — great, and I love it!  Church growth is a necessary component of Kingdom building, so we get focused on expanding our numbers.  We long to have meaningful purpose for our lives, so personal destiny becomes a huge deal.  We pursue signs and wonders, because nearly  everyone is tired of powerless Christianity — believers and nonbelievers alike.

But I have a question troubling me in the midst of it all: where’s Jesus?  While we’ve heard countless sermons on the Kingdom of God, fulfilling our destiny, and how to rule and reign as King’s kids, when was the last time we heard much about Jesus Himself?  Where’s Jesus?  And what good is the Kingdom if somewhere along the way we have forgotten the King?

We should be teaching on building the Kingdom, equipping the Church to fulfill its mission, bringing growth to the local church, winning the lost, and growing in the gifts of the Spirit.  It’s all pretty important, isn’t it.  But there is a danger to avoid.  After a while, without us even noticing what has happened, we become more excited about what we are doing for Jesus, or the authority we have in Him, than we are about Him.  Or we get bogged down in the nitty-gritty of what Jesus Himself asked us to accomplish and lose the big picture of Who it is all for to begin with.  A subtle shift in focus takes place, and before we realize it, we have veered off course.  Isn’t this exactly what happened to the Ephesian Church?  So much so that the Lord soundly rebuked them and warned them to repent (Revelation 2:1-7)?

I believe with all my heart that there is a Great Awakening coming, and perhaps it is already in its beginning stages.  Within that Awakening, we will see millions coming to the Lord, the miraculous unleashed, holy living revived, and the Church moving in a supernatural authority such as this world has never yet seen.   But I believe it must start with the restoration of Jesus to first place in the heart of His Church.   Whenever He is not the driving reason, the focal point, we end up with something off-kilter.  In whatever we promote, love, or focus upon, it’s either all about Jesus or it’s not genuinely about Jesus at all.

What can we do, besides cluck our tongues about the present state of things? How will the restoration of Jesus to His rightful place be accomplished?  By the sovereign move of the Holy Spirit.   But “sovereign” moves of God do not generally come by themselves.  God raises up a remnant who understand His desires — a remnant willing to  speak and pray into existence what their physical eyes are not currently seeing.

I determine to be one who speaks through the written and oral word what I understand to be spiritual truth — whether it’s the current consensus or not.  One of the most strategic ways of speaking those truths is in the place of intercession — speaking the heart of God back to Him in prayer, until Jesus is no longer a side issue, but the issue.

Lord Jesus, be all.  And may Holy Spirit breathe upon Your Bride until she awakes out of her coma.  Truly, may the Kingdom come and Father’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Be exalted and honored to the utmost in it all, King Jesus.

How I “Do” Worship (Part 2)

When my worship leader friend asked how I did personal worship, I explained that it was something that just came about naturally as I prayed.  I don’t worship for X number of minutes and then proceed into intercession or spiritual warfare or any other kind of prayer.

Worship is a natural outflow of relationship with God.  For me, it happens quite unconsciously throughout the day, along with other types of prayer — thanking the Lord for little things that He does for me, telling Him how much I love Him, thanking Him for being so good, kind, faithful, and merciful.  When I am asking Him for something, I tell Him I know He will do it for me because of His goodness.  (Answers to prayer are more about His giving nature than they are about our strenuous praying or our persistence — although persistent prayer is encouraged in the Bible.)  When I am tempted to doubt, I tell the Lord that I know His character and that He will never fail me.  I mentally put my hand in His and cling to Him in trust.  Letting the Lord know we trust Him is a big part of worship.

I like to use His names to worship Him — He Who is able, He Who sees me, My hiding place, My exceeding joy, God of my praise, etc.  If you are interested in the names of God, I have prepared a list of them for you — over 600 names by which God reveals His good nature to us.

I said in Part 1 that we have God’s Presence already with us, if we believe on Jesus as our Savior, but that there are things we can do to increase our awareness of His Presence.  Continued worship and prayer throughout the day is the key to sensing Him with us.  James 4:8 assures us that if we will draw near to God, He will draw near to us.

We can cultivate the habit of worship through practicing what Ephesians 5:18-20 says: “…Be filled with the Spirit [by] speaking to yourselves in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  We can train ourselves to look for things to be thankful for throughout the day.  After a while, thankfulness becomes second nature, but sometimes we have to actively practice it at first.  Reciting or reading aloud encouraging portions of the Bible, such as the Psalms, gets our thoughts on the Lord and creates worship for His goodness in our hearts.

Creating a worshipful atmosphere in our home or car through music that exalts the Lord cultivates a sense of His Presence in us. Modern technology devices such as the iPod make it possible for many of us to listen to whatever  we like all day long.  I listen to very little music that is not of a worshipful nature.  I find that whatever I listen to sticks in my head for days afterward, so if I keep to mostly worship music, I have that which exalts Jesus replaying in my mind.  I end up “singing and making melody in my heart to the Lord.”

John 15:7 promises, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you shall ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.”   “Abiding” is not the mystery we sometimes make of it.  It is simply staying in a continual attitude of worship and communion with the Lord.  Abiding (dwelling in a state of worship) brings about answered prayer.  It also causes peace and joy to rule in our hearts.  These are wonderful by-products of worship.  We grow in abiding by practice — but as we develop the habit, we don’t have to think about it as much.

When we focus our attention, adoration, and affection on the Lord, no matter how we do so, this is worship.  It flows from a continual attitude of thoughtfulness for His heart, His feelings, His desires, and a care for what makes Him happy.  It is not about “doing,” but about “being” — being in a perpetual awareness of our wonderful God Who loves us so dearly and responding to His love with our adoration.  Let your worship flow.

How I “Do” Worship (Part 1)

How I “Do” Worship (Part 1)

LeeAnnRubsam.com

Many years ago, a worship leader asked me, “Lee Ann, being an intercessor, how do you do personal worship?  Do you worship and then do spiritual warfare and intercession, or what?”

I was a bit surprised by the question.  You see, I don’t “do” worship at all.  Worship is not a compartment of my prayer life that I load onto the front end of my time with the Lord, or that I sandwich between other compartments.  Worship is the dominant thread of my fabric.

I’ve heard many teachings on how to “do” worship — and, for that matter,  on how to “do” prayer.  You may have heard them, too.  I was taught that there was a protocol for approaching the Lord that had to be strictly adhered to, if we were to get our prayers heard.  First, we had to approach Him from afar through worship.  This was called “entering His courts” (as in, the outer court of the temple) and it “brought us into His Presence.”  After getting God to be pleased with us through our worship, we were to confess our sins (which equated to the altar for burnt offerings in the Old Testament temple).  Finally, if we had done these things adequately, we could move on to presenting our petitions to God, expecting to be heard because we had followed the correct protocol for approaching the King.

Frankly, all this bothered me from Day 1.  I used to wonder if those who taught this way had a very distant relationship with the Lord.  You see, it is all ritual, and in addition, it is Old Testament Law, not the New Covenant in Jesus that we are meant to enjoy today as believers.  How sad!  It need not be this way.  Understanding Old Testament symbolism is wisdom, but trying to live OT patterns in the New Testament life does not always equal biblical truth.

First of all, we do not have to take steps to come into God’s Presence.  We ARE in His Presence, continually, if we believe on Jesus as our Savior.  In fact, His Presence dwells in us, because we are now the temple of the Holy Spirit.  Now, there are ways to increase our awareness of His Presence, but ritual will not bring you into it.  We will talk about the awareness factor later.

Secondly, the Old Testament ritualistic progression of coming into His Presence never, ever got the average person into God’s Presence.  He got as far as the altar to sacrifice for his sins, and that’s it.  From there on, only the priest could enter the Holy Place, and only the high priest EVER got into the Holy of Holies where the Presence of God tangibly manifested upon the Ark of the Covenant.  So, why are Christians using this model of approaching God in the first place?

Everything has changed since Jesus made the final, full atonement on the cross.  The temple curtain that separated the Holy of Holies (where the Presence of God rested) from view was ripped from the top to the bottom when Jesus cried, “It is finished!” and yielded up His life.  Jesus made for us a forever-way into continual dwelling in God’s Presence.

When we understand that we have perpetual access to God’s Presence, our worship radically changes.  We don’t have to “do” worship to get on God’s good side or butter Him up so that He will answer our prayers.  “Doing” worship for what we can get out of God really insults Him.  It brings Him down to a much baser level than most of us would operate at.

Worship is meant to be a natural outflow of our love relationship with Him, not a tool to accomplish something.  Yes, there are beneficial by-products of worship.  I discuss those at length in my series, Worship and the Intercessor.  But worship is not something that we should do for what we get out of it.  Our mindset needs to change.

Let’s take the legalism, the insincerity, and the self-serving out of worship.  When we get hold of what real worship is — the kind that is “in spirit and in truth,” our whole relationship with the Lord will be transformed.

We’ll get to the practicalities of how true worship works tomorrow. 

How I “Do” Worship (Part 2)