Death is coming

The closer death creeps up upon me the less I am able to understand the reasons for life or living.

Yes I have experienced a close family member dying and unlike television it takes decades to handle such a thing. To think I am going to put my family through such a thing when I finally leave is more horrific to me than the thought of death itself.

My life was and is still a learning experience but when all said and done what am I to do with all this accumulated learning over my lifetime if I just die. There is no logic or reason to this.

Long ago I became aware that the God story that is sold to the majority is just a nice story to give mankind with a message of a basic layout of how nice life could be if everyone followed these ideas. Not many in life do and if one thinks about it the good and evil structures actually depend on each other. The good that can be experienced in life is only understood as good when there is it's opposite to compare it to. This is not rocket science only common sense in reality. I am not saying we need to experience bad but understanding in it is needed to appreciate the great things many of us can have in our lives. From birth to death there are many ways mankind helps his fellow man. How many ways can you help?


Saturday, April 17, 2010

Church Leaders And Prophetic Teams

By Mike Wong

We have seen powerful and accurate prophecies which great strengthen people of God. The Lord is determined in helping the church with the increasing anointing of prophetic gifts. But we also see the misunderstanding and the misuse of the gifts often brings chaos and problems for the body of Christ. As the Proverb says, Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: but much increase is by the strength of the ox. Therefore, the way to keep the church in the way of the Lord and prosper is not to avoid prophetic ministry, but instead, we try to do it in unity and in agreement with the principles taught in the Bible.

God ordained different positions and roles to play in church in order for the body of Christ to operate properly. These include but not limit to apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. There are clear spiritual orders for us to follow and authorities we are required to submit to. Especially when we are dealing with prophetic ministries, all of us need to be clear what we are supposing to do and the motives behind which should not be carnal or manipulative.

While we must care for all that God has commissioned to us, we must give extra care to the prophetic ministry. Prophecy is characterized by the divinely inspired information which reveals God's will, God's plan and even God's feeling and emotions. For this reason, it is capable of greatly encourage someone, but in the case of misuse can also greatly damage a person or a community. One concept we must not miss which is that prophecies cannot be treated as authoritative as the scripture. Prophecies are God's inspired thought presentation human words. It is often mixed with the words of the vessel being used to deliver the message. No matter how anointed the prophetic person is, he only prophecies in part.

All prophecies must be tested against biblical truths. A church leader must not be intimidated by his prophetic team. He needs to provide guidance and rules for the team to follow so that they can work together for the good of the congregation. On the other hand, the leader must not have any insecure feeling or even envy towards the prophetic ministers due to the respect and authority they receive for their ministry.

In Kansas City, there is a church supervised by Pastor Mike Bickle. He experienced a lot about the prophetic and is now very mature in working with prophetic ministries. But there was a time that he did not understand everything the way he does now. At that time, a lot of prophetic words are allowed to be shared in the Sunday services. The prophetic people were not guided or administrated properly because Mike thought that these people must know exactly what and when to say the words since they can listen to the Lord. But it turned out this was not the case.

Prophetic people are often given with the anointing long before they have the wisdom and maturity to operate in it smoothly. Prophetic people are also weak and broken people, but they received the grace of prophetic gifts. The leadership needs to give clear guidance to help them do their ministry. The pastor does not need to be more prophetic than the prophetic team of the church, but he must be gifted in leading the church than the team because God assigned this job to him. If necessary, the leader will have to strongly correct them without compromises.

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