This weeks devotionals will be somewhat practical, and are directed at how we are to position our hearts in ministering to others. Let these words arrive at the door of your heart as encouragement. I will share with you based on the struggles that I have seen in my and other ministries over the years.
 
Certainly these truths and principles will apply outside of a five-fold mindset, however, these are common encouragements that I am making in that arena. Let’s revisit Jesus as our all-in-all, and springboard from there into encouragement.
 
Jesus our Apostle: Hebrews 3:1 Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession.
 
Jesus was sent by the Father to distribute the love of the Father. Jesus releases and blesses the earth with the love of the Father by implementing the church and pointing toward maturity.
 
As we pattern our apostling after Jesus we should be humble. The degree of humility in you, will be directly proportional to the impact and sustainability of ministry through you. When you feel like you are uncomfortably humble, even at the point of being walked on, you are right at the door of seeing God produce much fruit, camp out right there.
  
Do not be self-authorized. Do not step out of God’s forming mechanism, the local church. Do not go out of the church, build yourself and then come back into the church as a self-proclaimed leader saying, “I am authorized by God and am not under the authority of a local church.”
 
If that’s you – God’s agents will hunt you down. There are no rogue warriors that sustain ministry, nor should there be anywhere in the body of Christ. Does an eyeball say, I am leaving and I will come back and you will see how important I am. Nor does an eye, plucked from the body continue to serve the body by seeing. Without being connected to the life stream of the body, the brain, the eye dies to that body. We are all under the headship of Jesus and the order and structure that He has built, the body of Christ.  
 
Your anointing pales in comparison to your character. Ministers are built in the church by the hand of God as they go through the rigors of development in the systems built in that particular church. Five-fold ministers are not found, they are made. These are the checks and balances that the Holy Spirit puts in place for our safety.
 
Jesus our Prophet: John 4:19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.”
 
The Prophet Jesus, proclaims the kingdom of God. So, prophets, (those who speak prophecy which according to Paul ought to be all of us) know who you are and who you are not. There are no more Old Testament prophets. You are a New Testament prophet. OT prophets pointed at the law, NT prophecy points to Christ and answers the question, “Who is Christ in you?”
 
OT prophets were told to share specific words and were held accountable to death for being specific. NT prophets receive an impulse from the heart of God and they put words around the impulse of love from God. And 1 Corinthians 14:3 gives the parameters of expression.
 
Listen carefully now, NT prophecy is your words, not God’s words. So do not say “God says to you…” or “Here are the words the Lord gave me for you…” Or even, “Thus saith the Lord…”
 
How about starting your prophetic words like this, “I think” or “I feel” or “I feel strongly that” – be very careful about saying, “God said…” unless you are referring to the Bible. You can say, “the Lord said to me”…but be careful about saying to another – “the Lord is saying to you…”
 
That ruffles your feathers, but truth is truth. How do I know? 1 Corinthians 14 tells us to weigh what is prophesied, if it was God’s direct words there would be no weighing necessary. There was not one drop of weighing a word in the OT. But we are encouraged to weigh the words in the NT. Honestly, the reason we say, “Thus saith the Lord…” is because we personally want to add weight to our words and make them more important to the hearer. Do not worry, God has enough weight already – you do not need to add more.  
 
This devotional has a lot of application in it. Have mercy on me, LOL, I am simply handing out some safety guidelines to help with the preeminence of Scripture and our relationship with it.
 
Father, help us in our ways. Please keep us pure in the application of Your Word in ours and other’s lives. Help us to be humble and gentle in all things, let the fruit of the Holy Spirit bubble up in us and love others well. We need the gifts that You gave us, help us to steward them well by creating the kind of safe place that Jesus made when He was ministering to the broken-hearted and lost. Jesus, You make all things possible for us through Your great sacrifice, thank You so much.
 
Blessings,
Pastor D