Reveal the Lamb: The High Calling of the Five-Fold Ministry

Full Transcript

0:00:01 – Tammie Southerland
Whenever you look at prophecy in scripture, it’s a was, it is and it is to come. That’s who he is. By the way, he is the spirit of prophecy. He is the greatest intercessor you will ever know. He’s unchanging and anything we walk in in him is coming to know him because we’ve gazed on him. And so when I look at you, I should see him. We talked about this in the circle earlier. When I look at you, I see him. Whenever you walk in a five-fold reality, you should be literally exuding him.

Let me tell you something about myself. I love Jesus. That’s really it, like point-blank, it’s I could end there. I love him. I am just passionately in love with him and I have a really good reason to be, because the scriptures actually tell us he who has been forgiven much loves much, and he gave me a clean slate when I never should have had one. He literally came in and he blotted out. You know, it wasn’t just like like there’s a lot of trauma involved, but it’s crazy how trauma can turn you into a person that you never wanted to be, and so he gave me himself in exchange for trash, and so I’m in love.

And when we talk about ministry and gathering together and these kinds of things. I always just want to plumb-line it. I love the fact that we get to minister and I love all the concepts of ministry five-fold and in gatherings and strategies and all those things. But more than that, I love him and it breaks my heart sometimes when we get so far away from him and we catch up, catch our eyes on all the strategies. It literally makes me weep, it literally causes me to go to my knees and groan because he is so much more valuable than that. And so as we come together and I get to be the first night and so it’s always that awkward, you know, first session where you kind of have to break through things, but as we come together, we’ve already begun to break into what he’s called us to with the worship and the prayer and the invitation to come forward. Now we just to get to go up, now we get to encounter him. And tonight, you know, I want to talk about two things that are absolutely essential to a new wineskin five-fold ministry reality, and that is intimacy and knowing him as the seven-fold spirit of God, the fullness of who he is. And so we talk about five-fold. Right, raise your hand. We’ve had a lot of conversation about five-fold. Right, we talk about five-fold and here’s the problem. Sometimes we get a chip on our shoulders and we think that we have figured out the blueprint of how to do the thing, and now we have our wineskin, and now we’re getting the wine and everybody else just needs to catch up. Right, I’m saying we, okay. So here’s the thing. I don’t know.

Maybe a couple months ago I was just weeping before the Lord in prayer, spending time with the Lord in prayer. I am the bridge builder, by the way. So I’m not house churches, I’m not like all local church, I’m like, let me just stand in the middle and bring everybody to the throne, like, can we just go up? And so I’m in my church and we’re doing a present-stripping church, we’re doing prayer. We’re getting to three nights a week where we’re doing extended times of prayer and my heart is breaking in the prayer room over I don’t know what, and I hear the Lord say five fold is absolutely nothing without the seven-fold. Five-fold is nothing without the seven-fold. So the five-fold ministry we’re very, very familiar with right Apostles, prophets, preacher, teacher, evangelists. This is gonna be difficult to do this on this little thing. Sorry, I’m gonna do this, get me Okay. Yes, I told you I fly around. I have many things going on. That’s good. No, it’s good, okay. So five-fold ministry we’ll hit that real quick.

I want to read the passage of scripture to you and then we’re gonna talk about the seven-fold spirit of God and how they connect together and how that is actually gonna bring us into a place where we’re gonna see a move of God like we’ve never seen before, because we’re fully submitted to Him, our eyes are locked in on Him. Okay, so we know this. Ephesians 4, 11 to 13,. And he gave the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. Okay, that’s verses 11 and 12. That’s the one we ramble off. Okay, yes, we have to have the entire, all five. And it’s not a triangle, it’s a circle. There’s nobody hierarchying at the top of it. But this is the next verse Until we attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood or womanhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

So what’s the purpose of the fivefold? The purpose of the fivefold is to attain unity in the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God. Okay, to know Him, to behold Him, to be captivated by Him, the knowledge of the Son of God. So the purpose of this ministry connection is to emulate together a greater knowledge of the Son of God until we attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to maturity, right to grow us up into maturity and to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. So, do we have the fullness of Christ? Yes, by the way, the answer is yes, yes and no. Have we fully realized the fullness Christ? Not yet, because we don’t know who we are. So we see both.

And anytime you look at scripture, it’s the both and it’s not that either. Or right, pia, this, this, this is Pia Joe. This conversation goes way back. The both and not that either. Or Whenever you look at prophecy in scripture, is that it’s a was, it is and it is to come. That’s who he is, by the way. He is the spirit of prophecy. He is the greatest intercessor you will ever know. He’s unchanging and anything we walk in in him is coming to know him because we’ve gazed on him. And so when I look at you, I should see him. We talked about this in the circle earlier. When I look at you, I see him. Whenever you walk in a five-fold reality, you should be literally exuding him.

It’s the problem is, we actually start to identify ourselves by our gift and as quickly as we do that, we are headed for a train wreck. Because he is all of these things and more and so the unity and the knowledge of him is coming into the maturity of encountering him and coming to know who we are in him. And the problem is, we can build something without him. Did you realize, and I’m sure you do that when we build in his giftings, absent intimacy, absent encounter, we actually begin to build the Tower of Babel? That’s what we’re building. We’re building a kingdom unto ourselves.

He gives the gifts without repentance. He gives wisdom without repentance. He imparts himself to us. He is the humblest man you will ever meet. He is the God of all creation. He is the one who could strike you dead in a moment, yet meets with you in your mess and and for some crazy reason, he entrusts us with giftings that we can use to harm ourselves and to harm others. He’ll give us a gift. Let us build all the while. I do believe there are tears being grown from heaven calling us back up higher, and he’ll do it in his mercy. He’ll wait on us in his mercy.

And so, as the Lord began to kind of unpack this, he began to take me back to what is really my favorite portion of scripture. Most people’s it’s not, it’s the whole book of Revelation. Like I just eat it. And, by the way, look at what you have done from childhood. Where have you been hungry? From childhood, I was like eight years old eating Revelation and and Ezekiel and I grew up Methodist. Btw, that’s like a 15 minute church service, especially if you’re white in a little country church. And my mom’s like what are you doing? Why are you reading those books? You have no idea. I was so hungry to know him. I wonder if there was a prophetic gifting on my life. Pay attention to those things with your kids too. Pay attention to them in your own life. And so I love the book of Revelation.

And so let’s go look at, without further conversation about building fivefold, let’s look at him. I’m gonna talk about the seventh fold, but I want to look at him. I want to look at him. I’m gonna bounce around a little bit, okay, you all right. Okay, revelation five and I saw on the right hand of him, who sat on the throne and a book written inside and on the back and sealed up the seven seals. Now, if I had, if the Lord leads me, I’ll take you to Daniel 12.

Daniel 12 actually tells you what this book is. By the way, this is the book that the man Daniel, the Jewish man Daniel, received from God and did not know what was written in it and the Lord told him to seal it up. So when you began to see John, a weep and weep and weep because no one’s found worthy. This is a Jewish man who knew that the book was sealed in the book of Daniel 12 and had not yet been opened to understand what would happen at the end of the age. So he saw the book and I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice who is worthy to open the book and break its seals, and no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the book or look into it. And I began to weep greatly and no one was found worthy to open the book or look into it. And one of the elders said to me stop weeping, behold the lion that is from the tribe of Judah. The root of David has overcome so as to open the book and the seven seals. And I saw, between the throne, four living creatures and the elders and a lamb slain, a lamb standing, as if slain, with seven horns, seven eyes and seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And he came and he took the book out of the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he’d taken the book, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each one holding a harp in a golden bowl full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints, and they sang a new song and the song was worthy.

You see the weeping and the groaning that was taking place because John was. He was an apostle, right, Talk about the apostolic. He had been formed into a witness of Christ. That couldn’t kill him. By the way, the word apostle means sent one. The word witness means martyr. The word faithful witness means faithful unto death. Jesus was a faithful witness all the way unto death. So John the apostle had seen all of these other apostolic brothers martyred and killed. He’d been boiled in oil and he could not be killed. So he finds himself on an island in exile, because they didn’t know what else to do with the beloved.

You see, this was the beloved who was once called the son of thunder. He was the one that wanted to call down fire on Samaria because they wouldn’t let him in, and Jesus called him a son of thunder. And then, all of a sudden, we find him being the beloved. He’s the one whom Jesus loved. He’s the one who Jesus told Peter to get on. Don’t worry about what’s going to happen to him, because Peter was like what about John? Is he going to be a martyr? He was like don’t you worry about that? Well, here we see the one who was called the son of thunder. Don’t worry about that.

Well, here we see John, who cannot be killed because his proximity to Christ is so strong and so beautiful. I actually believe that the witness in him pressed out death and commanded it to not touch him. And here he finds himself in the place of weeping and groaning, because there’s two things going on he’s longing for the lamb, he’s longing for his friend, and this is what he’s going to reveal to his friends, in Revelation 4, we see that he was called up higher so that things could be unveiled to him, so that he could see and hear and understand what had not yet been seen or heard or understood. You see, john didn’t care if he was an apostle. He wanted to be a son, he wanted to be a beloved, he wanted to come up higher. He was lovesick, he was longing, and in that longing something opened up to him that had not yet been open at any other point in eternity.

Listen to me Friendship with God, intimacy with God. Fivefold ministry is for the purpose of bringing the entire body of Christ into the knowledge of the Son of God. The ultimate goal of an apostolic calling is to lay down your life so that someone else can come to know the beauty of the one you have literally given your life to. I just love him. So he’s weeping. Nobody’s found worthy to open this book. I gotta go there.

Let’s look at Daniel 12. I gotta go there. You gotta see this. I’m telling you. I try to preach this message without going to Daniel 12, because I’m like y’all don’t want me to hear read a bunch of more scripture, but we’ve got to go there. He wants again. Right, who cares? Listen, she’ll never get up. I’m just going to let you read the rest of this later.

Listen to this, verse seven.

I heard a man.

Daniel heard a man. You can hear a man. He was above the waters of the river and he raised his right hand and left towards the heaven and swore by him who lives forever, that it would be a time times a half a time, as soon as they finished shattering the power of the holy people, that all of these events would be completed. As for me, I had heard but could not understand, for these words are concealed and sealed up to the end of time. So, when you’re looking at John, looking at Jesus, looking at a scroll in revelation five, he knew this story, he knew this scripture from a young man, he knew the word and he knew Daniel was not allowed to see it. Many will be purged and purified and refined, but the wicked will act wickedly and none of the wicked will understand. But those who have insight will understand. From the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished, there will be an abomination of desolation that will be set up for 1290 days. How blessed is he who waits and attains the 1335 days. But as for you, daniel, sorry, go your own way to the end, then you will enter into the rest and rise again for your allotted portion at the end of the age.

I want to read that to you because I really want you to understand the reality, what John has gotten invited into. I Want you to understand the reality of what you are invited into when you willingly choose to fall in love with the lamb. And I want you to see I’m going to show you in just a minute. We talk about the lion of the tribe of Judah and you’re gonna get to hear my friend Whalen Henderson. I can’t wait to y’all hear whaling Whalen and I will get so stirring on the lamb and the lamb that was slain we will leave you all and just go levitate. But Whalen Said this and it’s so powerful that you don’t get the authority to roar like the lion until you’re able to identify with the slain suffering of the Lamb of God.

So in this portion of scripture told you, I fly around. You see, behold the lion that is from the tribe of Judah. The root of David has overcome as to open the book and it’s seven seals, and I saw between the throne with me, four living creatures, the elders and a lamb standing, as if slain was seven horns, seven eyes and seven spirits of God. Seven eyes and seven spirits of God sent out into the earth. And he came and took the book out of my right hand or the right hand of the him who sat on the throne.

Pause, we don’t see prophetic art, the slain lamb with seven eyes and seven horns Seated in the middle of the throne. But he is. He’s the slain lamb With seven eyes, all seeing the sevenfold spirit of God, all power and all authority, yet still fully sacrificing himself. Do you know that the blood of Jesus still cries out? We talk about Jesus the intercessor. Jesus is the greatest intercessor we will ever know. He doesn’t sit in intercession all day long saying and I pray for you, and I pray for you, and I pray for you. He may do that, but it is his blood.

The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. It is his blood that cries out from the ground, greater than the blood of able, day and night and night and day, greater than the blood of any martyr that ever went making Intercession for us. Because it says in Revelation 12 that they overcame by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony, not loving their life, even unto death. You see, it’s the blood of the lamb Testifying before the throne of God that brings you into the greatest Invitation that you could ever be invited into. And it’s not just getting a ministry, it’s not just building something. It’s come up here so that you may see what will take place after this.

Come into the revelation of the throne room. Understand that the lamb that was slain has all eyes and all power and all authority, and if you will sit in the fullness of the counsel of the Lord, you will see like he sees, you will hear like he hears, you will know what he knows. And we won’t wreck this thing in our generation. He’s worthy. You see, the book was a book of judgment. This book is a love letter to us, but what is being untapped is can only be opened by the only one that is worthy To break the seals of judgment, because he is perfect and pure and holy, without spotter, blemish, full of love. So even in his wrath he is full of love. It’s the love letter, and and so as we begin to enter into what he’s called us into in this hour, we have to get our eyes off of what we want to see and what we want to do and get our eyes on the same lamb, because we don’t get authority to roar, to correct, to fix things, to build things, without identifying with the suffering of the lamb who was slain. You see what boggles my mind I have been sitting on this for all week long it’s the humility of our God. Like I don’t, it’s mind boggling to me. Perfect and all power and all authority. It could strike me dead at any moment. Yet I’m invited to come boldly To his throne and not just receive mercy, but to be unveiled, to get to gather the mysteries of heaven. This is the invitation.

You see, we talk about intercession. We think there’s a group of 12 grandmas sitting back in the back room, or 24, 7 up in the I hop. There’s more, there’s so much more than that. And let me tell you this we’ve been missing the pieces. We’ve got 24, 7 and we pray around the clock God raised up five fold, god raised up five fold, god raised up five fold. And then we’ve got five fold. It’s like, here we are, we’re doing the five fold, but man, I, we like all that prayer, so we’ll just let our hop, do it.

But it’s supposed to come together, it’s supposed to be unified, it’s supposed to be one, because there is no true five fold flow without the seven fold spirit of God, there is no true Intercession without grabbing a hold of the prayers that we pray and going and doing them, and none of these things. We can’t disciple a generation if we’re not grabbing a hold of the wisdom of God on how to make God Together in the biggest time of crisis our world has ever known. So the purpose of the five hold is to know him, to behold him. The blueprint we’re fighting to implement Is so beautiful. When we actually beg for the wisdom of God, we actually begin to long to obtain the fullness of the knowledge of God. But if we don’t come to the knowledge of the Son of God as destructive. So I keep talking about the sevenfold. We see the seven eyes of God right. So that’s the sevenfold spirit of God.

Let’s look at Matthew 25 before I go there. So we think about a lamp stand right. We think, we think okay. So we look at the book of Revelation. Each one of the seven churches have a lamp stand right. So this is actually a menorah. Sevenfold, seven lamps.

If I had a place to show you if you’ve ever seen the seven branched lamp stand. It is not just a candlestick. And when we look at Matthew 25 and we see the parable of the virgins, they don’t have a cute little lamp, they have a lamp stand. And this lamp stand represents to them, in their culture, the sevenfold spirit of God. It is unseparable. And if we look at and we probably will in a minute Zachariah, we see this lamp stand lit. We see it in Isaiah. But when we look at the parable of the virgins in Matthew 25, we think they got a cute little lantern. Did they just trim their little wick and they go to sleep?

No, there is an utter importance on this fullness of God. We have a hard time understanding of the Trinity I’m talking about sevenfold and seven eyes and seven horns. I know, I know it’s time to mature. This is the fullness of the counsel of the Lord. It says in Acts 20 that Paul gave to them the fullness of the counsel of the Lord and then he came into persecution. So when we sit in the counsel of the Lord and we get his fullness, we actually put ourselves into a position to be formed into a faithful witness that may cost us our lives.

I’m talking to us. You want a new wine skin. You want new wine. We’re going to return to the ancient paths. We’re going to begin to truly understand what the apostate looks like. We’re going to be truly begin to understand what a being, a prophet, looks like, what it looks like to actually disciple and pastor a generation that may very well lay down their life for their faith. When we go out and we evangelize, we’re going to quit just telling people to say a sinner’s prayer, because we’re beginning to understand, because we’re sitting in the counsel of the Lord, that we’re inviting them to lay down their lives for Christ. We’re going to begin to teach people to count the cost.

I love what I can’t remember. Who was it that said earlier today talking about I’ve been in the Middle East Talking about a new way? It’s not a new way. This is the old way to do discipleship, to do evangelism. They listen in biblical times. I’m going to read you Matthew 25 in a minute.

In biblical times, when they presented the gospel to someone they knew that they could possibly die for saying yes, they were not making converts, they were making disciples that would become witnesses even unto death, and so when we look at Matthew 25, we’re seeing a full lampstand. At the time, the kingdom of heaven will be like 10 virgins we just read about at the time in Daniel 12 and Revelation 5, before the seals were open. At that time, the kingdom of heaven will be like 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five of them were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps not their cute little lamp, their sevenfold lampstand but did not take any oil with them. The wiser ones, however, took oil and jars along with their lamps, and the bridegroom was long, a long time in coming, and they became drowsy and they fell asleep. At midnight the cry rang out here’s the bridegroom, come out and meet him. Then all the virgins woke up, trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise come and give us some of your oil. Our lamps are going out. No, they replied, there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and go buy some from yourselves. We know the story. They came, they tried to go buy oil, they came back. They couldn’t get in.

I want to make a point here. This is not a little lamp. This is the same lampstand imagery that we see in Zechariah and Isaiah and Daniel in Revelation. Everywhere we see a lamp, we see a seven branched stand. The center of that stand is the branch. It is the Lord, it’s the spirit of the sovereign Lord. Do you recognize that language? The spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me. Right, the spirit of the sovereign Lord is the center of the branch.

And so when it says they did not have oil, it means that they did not have intimacy that had been consecrated and purified before the Lord and intimacy with him and in longing for him. It actually means that they didn’t believe that he would come. When it says they didn’t have the oil, because if you go into the Old Testament and you look into the temple system, there’s a continual burning on the altar and there’s a continual consecration and pressing and purification of the oil. This process doesn’t stop. Again. When you read the scriptures, approach them from this direction, because this is why they were written. They knew this when Jesus shared this parable.

And so the ones who are wise have consecrated a continual flow of intimacy to keep the full sevenfold lampstand burning, even after they fell drowsy and the midnight hour came. Here’s the thing it does not condemn the drowsiness, it doesn’t condemn the weariness. It says that they all fell asleep. It says that they were all virgins, which means they were all unto him in some way in their life. But the problem was that the five of them understood intimacy and they had longing in their heart for his coming. And the other ones kind of just went along their way and they said well, you know what, we’ll show up tonight, we’ll see if he comes. If he doesn’t, oh well, we’re just going to go to sleep. And it was at the midnight hour, when they least expected it, that they heard the cry of the bridegroom. You see, it says in Revelation that the spirit and the bride say come.

Another one of my favorite scriptures, and that is the reality of the heart of a virgin, the heart of one who’s longing for her bride, for bridegroom. It’s this constant groaning on the inside. It’s Romans 826. It’s the groaning, the wordless longing on the inside of a bride and a bridegroom that can’t wait to be together and see when they had oil with them they would have consecrated, purified it, prepared, it made it a reality that it would last even through the darkest hour, because they were hungry and longing and waiting on the one that they believed would come, no matter what time it was. But the other five did not.

And here’s the problem. We’re living in an hour where we think we can just kind of smooth sail it through and we can build our thing and we can show up, but we aren’t willing to consecrate ourselves before Him. And I want to tell you something. I know we’re preaching this a lot right now, but it’s true, you can’t buy my oil. I was shocked several months ago.

I was just looking at you know how Jesus flipped over the tables of the money changers and my eyes fell in the scriptures, where it says that they sold the doves. They sold the dove, they sold the dove. And Jesus come in and he flips the tables. We think about the money, we think about all the things, but Jesus said I’m sick and tired of you trying to sell my spirit in order to create intimacy or a manufacturer or something. And he’s coming in right now and he’s flipping tables everywhere we look. Yes, he’s giving us a new formula, but it’s not about the formula. It’s about the man who’s releasing from heaven consecrated oil that will cause your lamp to burn even in the darkest hour. You see, when I want to talk about the hours of darkness, it’s dark. Yes, it’s the joy of the Lord that causes us to be strengthened during the darkest hour. They couldn’t give them their oil. I was like 11 too. I’m gonna look at it.

So when we think about the lamp, sand and the seven fold spirit of God, this is what we’re thinking about. I want you to picture the seven branches, the center one, and whenever I read this, I want you to see that the center branch is the spirit of the Lord. Zachariah says that he is the center branch and there are two olive trees on each side of it. Isaiah 11, 1-2,. And the shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse and the branch from his roots and bear fruit. Listen, and we’ll bear fruit. I’m not talking about the fruit, I’m not over there in the fruit of the spirit in Galatians, but the spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

So when you think about the seven branch lamp stand, you think about the lamps that cannot be removed from the churches. In Revelation You’re thinking about those seven flames that are burning. And this is the seven flames that are burning and without the full counsel of the Lord and the fullness of the seven flames being lit by the Lord himself. Talk about the witnesses later. The olive trees are the witnesses in Revelation. There’s something that comes from being a faithful witness that creates oil. We might go there in a minute.

The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding. So the spirit of the Lord is the center, the spirit of wisdom and understanding. You see, these seven spirits, they’re coupled. It’s all the spirit of the Lord. They’re coupled. So wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord. So if you take these and you separate them out, one at a time, and they’re not connected with one another, you get an imbalance. You will actually step out of the spirit of wisdom is the wisdom of God, but if you aren’t seeking him for his fullness and creating this intimacy with him when you’re living with him as an intercessor before him, you will get imbalanced and you will begin to walk in man’s wisdom and discard the wisdom of God Because you’re not asking him for understanding.

The spirit of counsel and might, not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord. Again, zachariah, we know that very well. But before he reveals that, he’s actually revealing the sevenfold spirit of God in the lampstand. We can move in the counsel of the Lord. We can get all the strategy. That’s what the counsel of the Lord is. We get all the strategy. It says in Acts 20 that he gave the full counsel of the Lord and it cost him his life. But if we don’t get the counsel and the might, we don’t have the grit to walk out what we’re hearing and seeing.

These things have to be connected the knowledge and the fear of the Lord. It was the tree of knowledge of good and evil that caused the greatest tragedy to ever fall upon the planet Earth, because there was no fear of the Lord. There’s curiosity, right, there’s curiosity Because there was no fear of the Lord. The question was able to rise up in Eve’s heart and take root in Adam’s. You see, if we don’t have the fear of the Lord, we’re going to wreck this thing.

So the seven eyes and the sevenfold spirit of God are these aspects of his spirit that have gone out into all the Earth. You see that he’s become the message that he preaches. When we look at the slain lamb in Revelation, we see not just Jesus who’s standing there with his hands in his side. We see the man who’s the son of God, who has fully identified himself with the message that he came to the Earth and preached and he has become fully. The slain lamb that has seven eyes and seven horns is seated on the throne making intercession for us day and night, and that’s why he’s the only one worthy to release the authority and the roar, to break open seals at the end of the age and finally release justice. It’s not just judgment, justice that all the Earth has been groaning for, romans 8.

And you see, the thing is, what does that have to do with us? Everything, it’s everything to do with us. When we start to cut and separate these things, we start to divvy them out and make them this ministry or that ministry or that thing or this thing, we actually just start recreating idols and things in our own image and calling them God. And this is what he’s saying. Sevenfold is higher than fivefold, because in listen, in eternity I’m not going to be a prophet, I’m not going to be a apostle we can debate on which one I am Reima, I don’t do boxes and it turned out he I’m going to be a daughter who has locked eyes with a lover of my soul. He sees. One thing I ask, and that will I seek, is to do well with him Eternally. And if I can’t sit with him forever, it’s not worth it. Anyway, I don’t care. It’s not even about trying to gain the whole world losing my soul. For me it’s like I got to be in his lap forever. Like, if the millennial kingdom and he’s in a throne somewhere in Israel, I better be up in that throne room. I ain’t playing. I love my family. Y’all moving to Israel, that’s where it plays out. I will be with him.

I had an encounter with the Lord in 2007. Like it was insane. Like fasting prayer, it was the call. Like I got taken up. It was a bridal revelation. Like I mean, it was a hundred and some odd degrees in the stadium and my husband was like hey, hey, and my sister and I was like man, she’s marrying Jesus. Well, he was over. That was no Damon, no more, it was just Jesus. Love my husband.

But this is the calling, this is the high calling. It’s calm, calm, we say come unto me All your weary and heavy laden, I’ll give you rest. But the rest is found in him. It’s found seated with him, it’s found gazing On him. Your prayer life is greater than the list of things you need God to help you do today. Your prayer life is a place of encounter. It’s a place of mystery. It’s a place of unveiling. Listen, it says in Romans eight that the whole earth groans. All of creation groans for the unveiling of the sons of God, and the sons of God should be groaning for the unveiling of the son of God. This is the calling, this is what we were created for. If I’m not hungry, make me hungry. If I don’t want this, make me want this.

The word myopic kept coming up in our circle. Earlier, and it was several years ago, we had a house of prayer in a church in Clemson. We did all the campus things, like I’ve done all the ministry things, kids all the way up, just done it all, whatever. And I’m sitting in my house at the close of that season and the Lord says to me you’ve become myopic. I was like what does that even mean? You have a myopic view. I’m like I don’t even know what that means. He was like you can’t see beyond the hand in front of your face right now. You see, despair and discouragement had dropped on me because I took a plow and I pushed it as hard as I could to build something and it didn’t look like what I thought it was going to look like. And really, at the core of who I was, I just wanted everybody to look at Jesus.

But what it played out was a church and a prayer room and this ministry and a college ministry and we got to do youth now and we got to do kids now because we’re doing Sundays now and before I knew it I was swirling all in the doing and had lost my ability to see and had no idea. And I would lay on my face and I would weep and I would cry. I just want to be with you, I just want to be with you, I just want to be with you. I’d go at home and I’d go sit on my back porch and I’d be like I just want to be with you. And then I finally realized, when he said this, that the myopic view had come, because I had lost my first love.

I have lost the longing and the depth of intimacy, because I got into trying to establish something that he’d given me, a blueprint that nobody had seen before. It was a five-fold ministry blueprint. It was his blueprint. You see, ascended intercession is what I’m talking to us about, seated with him in heavenly places, and holy humility will restore our sight. You see, it’s the process of breaking. He will give us something and then ask us to give it back to him over and over and over again, because he doesn’t ever want us identifying with our gift. Hey, listen, if you pray for humility, if you pray that you will never do anything outside of him, if you ask for the fear of the Lord, you better get ready for your dreams to go and then he’ll raise them back up again. He loves to kill and resurrect, and kill and resurrect. I think he just really enjoys it.

Revelation 4, god’s given us back our sight and I believe that all of the revivals and you know we ride on the heels of those who went before us I’m talking about, like I realized recently I was doing my ancestry DNA and found out that I have a massive like female reformer 10 generations back. Like she stood up in Scotland and prophesied to the men and told them that they didn’t release the ones that were being persecuted from prison, that they were basically all going to hell. I mean, it was like raw stuff. They actually published her word, released the men and didn’t kill her, which was amazing. During that day, you see, we were riding on the prayers and the heels of those that went before us. When I saw that, I was shocked Like no wonder.

But if we don’t learn how to walk, if we don’t learn how to pull what he’s saying and doing from the throne, it will kill us, it will crush us. I don’t want to lose my kids and my family to ministry. That’s always been a prayer of mine. You know. We say I don’t want to gain the whole world and lose my soul. I don’t want to like, I don’t want to be the greatest revivalist to ever live, to my kids go to hell. It’s just not okay with me. So I’ll endure the crushing. So come up here and I will show you. Beholding is learned by not getting what we want. I want to say that again Beholding is learned by not getting our instantaneous miracle or our instantaneous ministry established for us.

Weakness makes you a lightning rod for Heaven’s dream. It is the strength of the Lord, not our own strength. So Revelation 4, we, most of us, know it. And after these things, I looked and behold, there was a door standing open in Heaven and the first voice I heard was the sound of a trumpet Speaking to me, saying come up here and I will show you what must take place. After these things, and immediately I was in the spirit and a throne standing in Heaven and one seated on the throne. And it begins to express what he saw and what he heard and what he encountered when he came up. I believe what the Lord is inviting us into tonight is coming up higher. He wants us to come up.

Hannah’s life was transformed through groaning for what she could not obtain on her own. Hannah started out wanting a son to show up, the rival wife who could produce, and she couldn’t. But through her weakness, her prayer changed from God give me a son to let me give you one. And this is what he’s calling us into. He’s brought us fully to a place where we’re saying no longer, hopefully, after tonight, god, just give me this ministry, just give me this thing, just let me establish this. Shifting that intercession, because that is intercession. You’re praying for it, shifting that intercession from give me, give me, give me to. I am so broken, I am so tired, I am so exhausted. Just give, let me have whatever it is that you want me to have, so that I can give it back to you.

0:49:40 – Speaker 2
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