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Grand Promises and Caves - By Mike Woelk
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Posted by: teamjesus
Many in the Lord's Church are going into an extended time of hiddenness. It is not for us to know whether we will emerge in this life. Hiddenness is no restriction to God;
witness the apostolic epistles from the dungeons of the Roman Empire. In fact Jesus
remained a hidden man (John 3:8-9 "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the
sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who
is born of the Spirit," and 8:59 "Then they took up stones to throw at Him; but Jesus hid
Himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by)
even throughout his very public ministry.
It is ours to learn to walk in hiddenness. Jesus said that He was the bread of life, that
we must eat His flesh and drink His blood to have eternal life, that it is the Spirit who
gives life, that the flesh profits nothing, that His words are and life. People who are
hidden eat what the ravens bring from the throne and nothing else.
If you do not learn to live hidden from the world (Daniel lived out a hidden life while
walking publicly), you will be devoured by the roaring lion or thrown into the fire to be
burned.
For a long season, we have had what can only be described as grand God-Promises.
These are the Promises akin to the "great nation" promise which came to define
Abraham's entire life. But the grandest of God-Promises can only manifest in the
smallest and quietest of servants. The process of becoming small and quiet is thorough
and painstaking, beyond the manipulations of the servant. The Lord can accomplish this
in us as we are hidden away with Him. This is our present call.
I have been through this before, most recently beginning in 1993. At the time I was not
aware of it, probably because I did not want to be. The church I was pastoring was
actually overseen by a principality who had been using wonderful saints against their
knowledge. No one was finding Christ, and its pastors' marriages and careers were
being regularly ruined. Rather than leaving, which the church's pastors had been doing
for 25 years, and rather than going along with the process in order to get along, I
eventually took action which regretfully led to the exodus of the entire church of thirty
souls. I knew God was in it despite my imperfections, and I fully expected a
rennaissance. After all, we had those grand God-Promises!
We worked in hiddenness those four years. People who had grown up in this town
could not put a picture to the building when I would describe to them where it was. Less
than five visitors per year came to that building unless they had been invited.
As we reached out, a handful of elderly infirm people, mentally ill people, very
dysfunctional families, and a few others gathered around us. After the mass exodus,
we had plenty of time for them! Their needs were like millions today-too weighty to be
served by the weak church in our culture. Why else do you think that a "Christian"
nation pays upwards of 50% of its income in taxes to care for these people? Should not
10% to the church meet this need?
In retrospect, during that season the Lord did not neglect to refresh the Grand
Promises. He took a number of opportunities to encourage us by restating them even
more distinctly and grandly.
One mistake I made during that season was to go through those years without
accepting the fact that I was even then walking in the fullness of God's call. Those
years were not the foundation of greater things to come. Many of the events of those
years were those greater works. To pick up a mentally ill man and take him out for a
soda and a good visit by the river is one grand manifestation of the revealed love of our
great God for the lost and broken around us.
It surely is the fullness of the presence of God to patiently and compassionately teach a
lonely and discouraged single mother for the tenth time in as many months the
blessings and principles of witholding herself from the soft words and shoulders of some
predatory male. But I was not eager to walk that way with no eye to "higher" Promises,
and it is a great mercy and mystery of God that He would even have committed such
work into my hands.
Here is His grand promise to me: the mass deliverance, salvation, Christ-community
incorporation, empowering of multitudes of people, and the transformation of the
society around me. The Lord says about those four years, "Mike, I certainly did
promise. It is true. I was showing you the love and consecration necessary to
accomplish that vision for ten to fifteen people. Did you see? What do you think is
required for such love to manifest a millionfold?" Sadly I must add that our work in just
those fifteen lives fell far short of the Promises He has given me for multitudes.
From 1998 to 2003 the promise was presented again, but with greater and more
dramatic detail. There came a new whiff of life, the fresh earnest of revival and
transformation. Promise and vision was planted into the hearts of a growing circle of
hungry and restless saints who gathered around us. In A Divine Confrontation, Graham
Cooke sees three phases of such vision: renewal that brings fresh passion and hope to
a dull Church, revival that brings revelation and demonstration of the manifest presence
of God in the Church, and reformation which is the God-effect of a revived Church on
the world (I call it transformation, a full and complete societal transition to something
totally new). We enjoyed a measure of renewal in those years, but that is all. Make no
mistake, the vision I have is for nothing less than thorough transformation of the corner
of our culture for which I am responsible before the Lord.
At the end of these five years, once again we have accepted the challenge of not
getting along to go along. We again have forsaken a system of operation which was
milking its weak participants of what spiritual strength they had. I am not referring to
our particular church or to our organization, but rather to an entire organizational,
operational, and functional church structure which pervades Christian life in America
and the West.
The problem is not the structure itself; the Holy Spirit is simply no longer resting
corporately on the church as we know it. He certainly is present in varying degrees and
manifestations from person to person or gathering to gathering. But now it is time for
many to go aside, to withdraw themselves from the active perpetuation of a structure
which is using its spiritual, emotional, and physical resources to keep itself alive. It is
time to see what God is saying. It is time to let the old die. It is time to go to the
desert. It is time to sell all and prepare ourselves to buy the field hosting the pearl of
great price.
He is even now beginning to rebuild, but we are given virtually no idea what the
structure will look like. We are each and all only a single stone. Ours is only to be fully
available to the hands of the Great Stonemason. Ours is only to touch those who we
support, those who support us, and those we shoulder with in the building.
This is a time of pain. Old structure is being torn out. Even though man is not to cut
stones for the building of the Lord, the Lord is indeed a stonecutter. Individual stones
are being knocked out of old places, s****ed and cleaned of old mortar, cut anew for a
different place, and set into the wall in the perfect timing of the Lord.
Much of this is about building His own dwelling place which can sustain the fires of
revival and transformation without burning down, which has so often happened in
revival. I do not believe God wants to pour out His Spirit in a revival which will burn hot
for a few months or years and then subside into cold, wet embers, as has happened in
Wales and now threatens our nation. So let us submit our hearts, our resources, even
our physical bodies to His purposes in us and with us during this hour.
May I encourage you to humble yourself before the mighty hand of God in this very
hour. Drink the cup that is given you. That same Spirit which was in Christ Jesus dwells
in you. You are able to drink the cup He drinks. Commit grand vision into his care.
Commit calls, anointings, and giftings into His hand. You, along with our Lord, knowing
that the Father (has) given all things (both Grand Promises and obedience unto death)
into your hands and that you have come from God and (are) going to God, get up from
your supper, lay aside your garments, take a towel, gird yourself, pour some water into
a basin, and begin to wash the feet of those the Lord has given you to love and shepherd in these difficult times.