LLI Fellowship

When the Lord chooses to open our eyes to the spiritual climate in our land, for most of us it will seem like we are opening them for the first time.  The Lord is going to prepare a new generation of people that will “walk” in faith more then in any generation that I have witnessed in my lifetime.  

I believe that the rising generation will be framed in modern history as a generation that operates in a living faith.  They will be a generation known for their ardent love of God and as those who seek the Lord with their whole heart without the the complication of trying to mingle American lifestyle with being a true saint of the Lord's kingdom. 

In turn they will place His Kingdom first in their pursuits. In this new work, these serious minded faith-walkers will require a higher level of training; they will have to be trained to walk in faith by their spiritual fathers, literally!  They will pursue ministry in their own indigenous way.  It will be a ministry marked by faith-filled activity not mere "christian" rhetoric.

Here in America, meeting the felt “needs” of our boomer parents, their children that comprise generation next, and the babies of the post-modern post christian generation is our chief aim. It's our validation.  We allow our modern marketing and data gathering tailor our method of presenting the same call that Jesus of Nazareth gave the world 2000 years ago.  

Most of us instinctively know that meeting the perceived needs of our culture is not necessarily in-line with the entity of scripture and our spiritual forefathers in concert with will of the Spirit of God. But vainly we press on diligently doing what the modern bible colleges and seminaries teach on the latest experiences in church growth techniques. These institutions presuppose the world according to our christian likeness (business centered) or we teach from the perspective of relevency to all the felt needs of our weak and needy society to add numbers and acceptance rather then really deal with the issues that mark our time. 

In our effort to attract and retain these dualistic and compromising christians, I believe, unfortunately, we miss the mark of what church was intended to be. What our Lord died to secure. From the time of the days of Peter and his spiritually drunken friends who just released the words given after their baptism in fire. They didn't even know that their laughing and their singing in the marketplace was going to initiate the most awesome work ever developed in the world of men.

They simply offered "only" the message the Spirit gave them. The message was offered to a lost and dying generation of Jews who had just executed their Messiah for purposes only known to the mind of God Almighty.  They saw Jesus alive from the dead. This was their qualification to their office as apostles. These apostles had an exclusive allegience to the resurrected Yeshua, their friend and Master. 

This allegience would put their life and future in juxtaposition to the greco roman lifestyle of the first century Palestinian world we seem to know so little about.  We seem to know so little of the continued influence of the ancient Roman empire. In reality we continue to live in the Roman-ness found in our Western world. 

The answer is clear, it flows effortlessly off the tongue of our young well schooled children, but do we really know that it means to glorify God?  We intellectually understand that we are here for no other purpose then to bring glory to God, but what does it mean? To you and me today?

By creating a casual approach to the recruitment and discipleship of those who say, “I want to be saved from my sins” we have created a way of faith that is permenantly stuck in baby land.  As we offer this approach, we at the same time face a war of such a magnitude that it requires at the very least an “all hands on deck” approach.  

We wage an all time epic war against darkness with the spiritual babies we created in dumbing down the message that was once for all delivered to the saints. In its wake we have left the church to be managed by the spiritually immature, filled with believers that act and think like infants.

How did this slide come to be? 

What have we done wrong? We must realize this reality of our past and our work of undermining the message that Jesus preached. For most of the older generations it is too late for them to change. Sadly stuck in the quagmire of materialism and the various ailments and sicknesses that permeate our drug managed culture.

Even in the most spiritual of churches, one can observe a hypersensitivity to the “here and now” and the constant pandering to compete with the work of the churches next door. Even if an assembly has a new and fresh anointing working in their assembly, the people still seem stuck in the past ways of launching forth disciples of Jesus Christ.  Some are unable to detach themselves for the way and the order of the denomination and their training institutions.

Many are trying to copy what the TV evangelists and mega church leaders have done to build big enterprises, without asking the question, “is this work successful in God's estimation or just in the estimation of the church's management team? Still some are so thoroughly steeped in the ways of culture that they just can't seem to break away from the basic thought process of becoming of a follower of Jesus.  Of course many true men and women of God have done amazing work to bring life but their followers seem to miss the central point of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In leaving the cross out the message they preach and the reality of our personal sin and the sins of our fathers, they create a sterile approach to what it cost the Father to make us His own sons and daughters.  It cost the Father of heaven and earth everything.  His poured His wrath upon His only begotten Son, He turned His face away from the One He knew from eternity past. 

When we miss the real work of the cross of Jesus,all of our attempts to bring a positive and changing message to needy sinners falls short of their God intended goal. The fruit of our work is then left without a real understanding of the nature of God and His Son – Jesus Christ.  

Coorsponding to this problem of a weak message is weak leadership. Our training of the next generation leaders must be like the method that Jesus employed.  Eating of the Master's dust. Pastors and elders must model what it means to personally follow Jesus. They must model exclusive love to Christ and in turn they raise the bar of the quality of their students. They too will leave all to follow Jesus.   

In raising up leaders to fulfill the Great Commission that Jesus pronounced over His church, we must not confuse our hearers.  The postmoderns we seek to reach all see through our vanity and self absorptio.  They will not be duped by mere words, they want and desire real action. 

Without real apostolic fathers the rising generation leadership will be very reluctant to move forward with Christ's agenda, an agenda that He blesses with His mighty power. An agenda bought and paid for with His blood, an agenda where people get truly saved and grow up to maturity.

Make no mistake, we are living in a new spiritual economy. In our times, the Lord Jesus, in concert with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is reintroducing His message of a “complete surrender” to perform His will and His will exclusively. 

For those called to bring the church back to the ancient landmarks and redig the ancient wells, in this new work, we can only be defined by action and that action must inspire a generation to walk in the way of “true” faith. 

Those being drawn by the Lord to plant churches, established under His control, are not content that their “decision” made at the alter of a church is the end of the search for meaning, but is the beginning of an epic struggle to find God's heart and follow the way of His Spirit. 

Lost sinners can not be free until they know how to walk in the Spirit, in maturity and in confidence. We, like our real forefathers must fight, wrestle, and sometimes we even crawl through some very narrow and scary places in order to find our way home to God's glory. 

The work of grace operating in the hearts of today's maturing believers, no matter what age, is a real and righteous work of the realness of a living faith in the person of Jesus. We must not repeat what we have done for the last 50 years in the church, the work of mass commercialization of chrstianity. 

In order to inspire maturity, we must follow Jesus wherever and whenever He goes in a world gone mad. The shaking of nations is happening right now. The gods of this world are resting control of the next phase of world governance. 

In light of what we already know, we must tap into the “deeper things” of Christ, to hear His voice, and to pursue only God's will for His church. We must be willing to walk into any situation. Face insurmountable circumstances that He leads us to defeat by faith. Even if it means isolation and abandonment for a season, so we can learn firsthand the faith of Abraham. We must allow His power and grace to supply us with supernatural provision. To take complete satisfaction with full measures of His presence that will carry us through to mature faith-filled living.

In bringing many sons to glory, just as Our captain, we must suffer in pursuit of His glory, to gain His mind and to win the war of faith and stand “strong” in our times. He is revealing very clearly to us, the ancient ways of faith.  No more time for silly stuff. Our imagination has to be sanctified. When we get an accurate sight of the Christ of scripture, we will be ashamed of our lackluster performance of His way, truth, and life. 

To get us in line with His way, I believe that the Lord is transporting many of us back in time, spiritually speaking, to watch closely and see in living color the details of the walk of faith exhibited by our obedient forefathers to walk as they walked. 

For our forefathers, a living faith in the God who speaks, was their great equalizer in the face of trial and potential extermination. They had to play the “faith” card each time their backs were up against the wall. Why does it seem that they always submitted to the Lord's will when we tend to slip into carnality when times get tough? 

Isn't one of the good reasons for their persevering faith simply due to the speed of events? Things didn't happen as fast as they do in the modern world. 

In our times if we want something we go out and get it. This makes us babies spiritually. We don't know how to wait for anything. The concept of “waiting” on God is not understood. We are quickly learning that Our God oftentimes sends righteously ordered delays to sharpen our faith focus so we get it right, and then we can be trusted to the next thing more in line with His leading and not our own carnal expectations.

To combat our mortal decline, we must raise up a church that caters to the faithful, not just the spiritual infants and the unbelieving goats that mark many of our so-called christian churches. We have no time to gather folks who are not ready to climb the summit of Pisgah. 

Our father Moses was rewarded with this blessed and glorious look before he was taken away by His Lord. Moses had a heavenly mind. His heart was broke over his moral failure to perfectly obey a three times holy God. His glance into glory was earned by a sincere request and the Lord deeming him faithful friend. The Lord even added an extra benefit, He brought Moses back to the promised land when His Messiah was glorified on top of the Mount of Transfiguration.

If we take a really long look at the way our forefathers walked by faith, we glean so much from their sincere struggle to obey God and pass the test. We take the lessons learned from this faith struggle and pass these truthsand lifestyle onto the next generation. By means of a simple and serious study in the book of Genesis, we gain volumes of information into the meaning of what it means to walk by faith. 

To illistrate, look with me at the heart of Abraham in the latter portion of his life. Our father Abraham summarized his walk with Jehovah this way, “The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my birth, and who spoke to me, and who swore to me saying, 'To your descendants I will give this land.” Abraham was about to summon his servant to find a wife for his miracle son, Isaac.

In selecting the right wife for his son, Abraham believed God and His Angel were sufficient guides to do the hard and laborious task of traveling all the way back to Haran to get a wife from the line of Shem verses just an easy grab from the descendants of Ham living in Canaan. By believing that his “seed” would one day dwell among and occupy the same land where Abraham was still a sojourner and pilgrim, Abraham knew his rights and his covenant promises. He know his decision was important to the perpetuation of faith seed in the earth.

Let us do likewise,

Jonathan