Genuine ministry

A recovering of the Testimony, a revival, includes several vital components. We need to remind of a couple of them in relation to the modern concept of ministry.The full and total mastery of the Holy Spirit. Our modern view holds that man is able to direct the activity and workings of a spiritual flow, an anointing.The all encompassing purpose of God is to allow Jesus Christ to become the measure to which any and every experience and operation, spiritual as well as moral, must be aligned.Do our spirituality, character and emotional outbursts resemble the spirituality which He himself lived in and conveyed to the disciples as Life unto God. What did Jesus do among men and how did they react? What does the life which comes from and represents Heaven look like?Do our modern efforts in the realm of and direction towards a revival miss the mark regarding vital steps on the way to regeneration and restoration such as conviction and repentance? Does God renew unconditionally by simple touch and command?

The material creation in Genesis began with “light”, and so also does the spiritual creation. God ‘shines into our hearts’ by the work of the Holy Spirit and then spiritual life begins; 2 Cor. 4:6. Dim or indistinct views of sin are the origin of most of the errors, heresies and false doctrines of the present day. If a man does not realize the dangerous nature of his soul’s disease, you cannot wonder if he is content with false or imperfect remedies. I believe that one of the chief wants of the church in this century has been, and is fuller teaching about sin.J. C. RyleHoliness

The Word of God defines man’s experiences. Man’s experiences cannot allow for re-interpretations of the Scriptures.Anything spiritual is not holy.Anything miraculous is not of Heaven.Anything mysterious is not God’s ways.Two gifts are needed more than anything in this late hour – Discernment and Wisdom.Holiness is not harsh.Truth may hurt, may even break, but brings eternal strength.L. W.

The formula of Revival is:Preachers need to hit the altars and weep because they have no tears.Groan because there is no moving of the Spirit of God. Apologize to God that we’ve kind of manipulated the supernatural. Now, I am not just thinking of miracles of twisted limbs and other things. I think the greatest miracle that God can do is to take an unholy man out of an unholy world, and make that unholy man holy and put him back in an unholy world and keep him holy. But we are more afraid of holiness today in the church than we are of sinfulness. If an unclean man with an unclean spirit does unclean things, if a man that’s vile does vile things because he has a vile spirit, surely the man who has the Holy Spirit in him will live a holy life.From:Weeping between the porch and the altarLeonard Ravenhill

We are trying to marry Christianityto prosperity, and popularity, and personalities. And it isn’t working. Oh, you can preach the prosperity doctrine because that feeds our carnality. Look, why don’t those men that preach that go to the third world to preach it where they need it? I know wealthy people, many of them are lovely people and I believe God lets them have a ministry in supplying needs. But when the church of Jesus Christ is prosperous, she never has revival. It’s when she’s poor. Prayer is the language of the poor. “Bow down Thine ear and hear me, for I am poor and needy.” The self-satisfied don’t need to pray. The self-sufficient don’t want to pray. The self-righteous cannot pray.From:Weeping between the porch and the altarLeonard Ravenhill

The old shaman of the fertility cult and the modern vanity prophet of the Church urges your to pay, and then he will issue a creative word amidst a marvellous, a spectacular show to get you what you want.A prophet, a true minister of the Word, brings forth what you need. You cannot pay him to refrain from telling you the truth. And when you try flatter him, you have told him that he was perfectly right in his assessment.L. W.

The common offer of evangelists these days is this ”You need power; come to the altar and get it.” This has no more moral appeal than taking a car for gas and saying to the attendant, “Fill her up.” This shibboleth brings no moral change or spiritual enduement that would make a sin-sick world and a flabby faltering Church know that the Almighty has visited His people. Obviously He has not.In this hour of aggressive, atheistic philosophy and passive Christianity (so-called), we need a Mordecai with a broken heart but a resolute will to lead us all in sackcloth and ashes. God pity us that we have swung from the Upper Room with its fire to the supper room with its smoke.Leonard RavenhillMeat for Men

We need more invasions from heaven, and priests who will come and minister before men only after they had first ministered to God in the holy place. We need priestly ministry, ministry from men who have first made sacrifice for themselves, who have first offered up their flesh, their own ambitions, their own vanity, and self-deceit, their own fear and greed and man-pleasing. We need men who have a heart to endure the ‘wearisome’ requirements of God, and who will submit to the painful dealings. We need men who are prepared to see blood spurt, and wounded flesh writhe and kick and gasp for breath. We need men who will stand steadfast and immovable, who will let death be worked in them to the end, who are willing to suffer the reproach and embarrassment of inner parts being exposed. Such men are rare. They are God’s priests, who alone are qualified to wield God’s sword, sanctified by blood. They alone have the disposition and utter fearlessness required to cut into the flesh of God’s people, and to expose the inward hidden parts of our being, to wound flesh and let its lifeblood flow out. Art Katz

Ordination covenantTozer did not take his ordination lightly. Afterwards he found a place of solitude on the old campground and there poured our his heart to God in reflection and prayer. The covenant he made before God on that occasion he later formalized and published in one of the first issues of Alliance Life he edited:O Lord, I have heard Thy voice and was afraid. Thou hast called me to an awesome task in a grave and perilous hour. Thou art about to shake all nations and the earth and also heaven, that the things that cannot be shaken may remain.O Lord, my Lord, Thou hast stooped to honor me to be Thy servant. No man taketh this honor upon himself save he who is called of God, as was Aaron. Thou hast ordained me Thy messenger to them that are stubborn of heart and hard of hearing. They have rejected Thee, the Master, and it is not to be expected that they will receive me, the servant.My God, I shall not waste time deploring my weakness or my unfitness for this work. The responsibility is not mine, but Thine. Thou hast said, “I knew thee—I ordained thee—I sanctified thee,” and Thou hast also said, “Thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.” Who am I to argue with Thee or to call into question Thy sovereign choice? The decision is not mine but Thine. So be it, Lord. Thy will, not mine, be done.Well do I know, Thou God of the prophets and the apostles, that as long as I honor Thee Thou wilt honor me. Help me therefore to take this solemn vow to honor Thee all my future life and labors, whether by gain or by loss, by life or by death, and then to keep that vow unbroken while I live.It is time, O God, for Thee to work, for the enemy has entered into Thy pastures and the sheep are torn and scattered. And false shepherds abound who deny the danger and laugh at the perils that surround Thy flock. The sheep are deceived by these hirelings and follow them with touching loyalty while the wolf closes in to kill and destroy. I beseech Thee, give me sharp eyes to detect the presence of the enemy; give me understanding to see and courage to report what I see faithfully. Make my voice so like Thine own that even the sick sheep will recognize it and follow Thee.Lord Jesus, I come to Thee for spiritual preparation. Lay Thy hand upon me. Anoint me with the oil of the New Testament prophet. Forbid that I should become a religious scribe and thus lose my prophetic calling. Save me from the curse that lies dark across the face of the modern clergy, the curse of compromise, of imitation, of professionalism. Save me from the error of judging a church by its size, its popularity or the amount of its yearly offerings. Help me to remember that I am a prophet—not a promoter, not a religious manager, but a prophet. Let me never become a slave to crowds. Heal my soul of carnal ambitions and deliver me from the itch for publicity. Save me from bondage to things. Let me not waste my days puttering around the house. Lay Thy terror upon me, O God, and drive me to the place of prayer where I may wrestle with principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world. Deliver me from over-eating and late sleeping. Teach me self-discipline that I may be a good soldier of Jesus Christ.I accept hard work and small rewards in this life. I ask for no easy place. I shall try to be blind to the little ways that could make my life easier. If others seek the smoother path, I shall try to take the hard way without judging them too harshly. I shall expect opposition and try to take It quietly when it comes. Or if, as sometimes it falleth out to Thy servants, I should have grateful gifts pressed upon me by Thy kindly people, stand by me then and save me from the blight that often follows. Teach me to use whatever I receive in such manner that it will not injure my soul or diminish my spiritual power.If in Thy permissive providence honor should come to me from Thy church, let me not forget in that hour that I am unworthy of the least of Thy mercies, and that if men knew me as intimately as I know myself they would withhold their honors or bestow them upon others more worthy to receive them.And now, O Lord of heaven and earth, I consecrate my remaining days to Thee; let them be many or few, as Thou wilt. Let me stand before the great or minister to the poor and lowly; that choice is not mine, and I would not influence it if I could. I am Thy servant to do Thy will, and that will is sweeter to me than position or riches or fame. I choose it above all things on earth or in heaven.Although I am chosen of Thee and honored by a high and holy calling, let me never forget that I am but a man of dust and ashes, a man with all the natural faults and passions that plague the race of men. I pray Thee, therefore, my Lord and Redeemer, save me from myself and from all the injuries I may do myself while trying to be a blessing to others. Fill me with Thy power by the Holy Spirit, and I will go in Thy strength and tell of Thy righteousness, even Thine only. I will spread abroad the message of redeeming love while my normal powers endure.Then, dear Lord, when I am old and weary and too tired to go on, have a place ready for me above, and make me to be numbered with Thy saints in glory everlasting.Amen

...and took the blood and with his finger put some of it around on the horns of the altar, and purified the altar. Then he poured out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar and consecrated it, to make atonement for it. He also took all the fat that was on the entrails and the lobe of the liver, and the two kidneys and their fat; and Moses offered it up in smoke on the altar. But the bull and its hide and its flesh and its refuse, he burned in the fire outside the camp, just as the Lord had commanded. (Leviticus 8:15b–17)This is the opposite of what man would do, which shows how much heaven is antithetical to earthly reckoning and consideration. We would have saved the thing that God destroys, and the things that we would have cast aside as disgusting and worthless are the very things that God calls the sacrifice. The flesh and the hide, which we would have savored as of great value, were burnt with the dung. They were not only to be burnt, but burnt outside the camp; such is God’s disgust for flesh. What men esteem is an abomination in the sight of God.The things that are a sweet savor to God are the inwards, the inner parts—not the outward things. God is not interested in the outer hide and the flesh; He counts that along with the dung. The inside, in the inner man, worked by Him in the hidden places, born of inward wrestling are the offerings of a sweet and pleasing savor before God. We have been guilty as contemporary Christians of offering our personalities, our winsomeness and our fleshly abilities to God, simply because we do not have the inward parts to offer, never having learned to rest or wait before God. We have despised the suffering, reproach and obscurity in which alone the sweet offerings are formed deep within us. We have not esteemed such things as God esteems them, and have preferred to do without them. We need the obedience and vision that will enable us to take our hide and flesh outside the camp, and to exclude it from the holy place, as well as from the pulpit. Art Katz

You cannot tell where the priest ends and the sacrifice begins, for the priest and the sacrifice are one. And the priest that is a priest indeed, and who himself is a sacrifice, is one who has got ‘fat,’ an accumulation or residue, or the inward workings of God in the hidden place. He knows God in the hidden place behind the veil of circumstances and outward feelings. God has dealt with him in ways that cannot be explained to men, ways that are scandalous, and that men look upon as reproach, ways that leave one utterly alone to suffer and endure. They are humiliations, things that God has wrought in you in the stillness and the quiet, things that are calculated to bring you to Him. Few have opened themselves to God for that dealing in that inner place, where something can be built up of a sweet savor. Most of us are protective, and we do not allow God or anyone else into that place. We have protected ourselves from the suffering and pain of it, and therefore, our whole life is lived on the outside.Art Katz

ObedienceThen he (Moses) presented the second ram, the ram of ordination; and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the ram. And Moses slaughtered it and took some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron’s right ear, and on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot. (Leviticus 8:22–23)”Hear, O Israel!” is the beginning of all of the commandments of God. Hearing is obeying, and obeying is doing. From the ear to the hand, from the hearing to the doing, there must be an unhindered response. Until God has the whole of us in every kind of act, however much it contradicts our natural disposition, then He does not yet have a priest. Blood on the toe suggests Divine control over the direction of our lives. Until we are prepared to remain in those tedious and demanding situations in which God has placed us, then the blood of consecration is not upon our toe. Our ‘goings’ as well as our ‘remainings’ have got to proceed out of a death to everything other than the word of the Lord. Art Katz

The book of Acts, Chapter 13, commences with a group of people ministering unto the Lord. In that mode of being, the Holy Spirit could say, “Set apart for Me Barnabbas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” These men were set apart, or consecrated, in a separation of such an ultimate kind that they would have been just as content to remain in the place of worship at Antioch as to be sent into the purposes of God. They had come to a place of death to themselves, even the religious desire to serve God, and to see fruit, and to be used, that it was all the same to remain as to go. It was a separation from the deepest and most subtle elements of ambition that hide themselves in the last place in which they can find refuge, namely, a religious and spiritual ambition to do for God. God has said that we will ‘die’ if we go before the time, and untold numbers have done that, and died—a short spurt, a little flurry of activity and recognition, and then lost to obscurity. The seven days of waiting is the final death to that last impulse to do for God, and to be found doing. When we have passed those seven days, then we are safe to minister in a priestly way for God, free from any consideration of the effect and benefit for ourselves. If there is something in us that wants to be heard, then our service is not priestly. We are a generation that is so ministry-minded, so doing-oriented that we have no concept for, and no disposition to see, the extraordinary investment that God requires in the preparation of His servants. God sets His premium on what we are, not what we do. If the doing does not flow from the being, then it is not apostolic.Art Katz

Waiting inaugurates the priestly ministry, but it is not the end of it. Waiting needs to be characteristic of our whole mind-set and disposition before God, not only for the time of ministry, but even in the process of ministry. Can you believe that one can be waiting, even in the midst of speaking? While you are speaking, you are waiting on God for the next statement. It is a remarkable disposition of an inward kind, even while one is active. This kind of waiting is virtually unknown to modern consideration, but needs to be restored. There is a conjunction between the willingness and the ability to be unseen and unheard, and to wait, that has everything to do with the power, the glory and the authority that is exhibited when we are called to be employed. One never knows when that calling will come, or even if it will come, but one has got to come to a priestly place where it makes no difference. To wait on God silently is as much to render Him priestly service as to go and speak, and only priestly service is effectual service. Art Katz

There is a cry of God for the restoration of priesthood that alone will save us from the superficial demonstrations that are ostensibly performed in His Name.Art Katz

True BlessingAfter the last sacrifice, and after the last waiting, and after the last waving of the sacrifice then,...Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them... (Leviticus 9:22a)Can you imagine what those hands looked like? They were steeped and impregnated with blood and gore, right into the fingernails and every pore. He would have looked more like a butcher than a priest. At the incident of the fashioning of a golden calf, God asked the people of Israel which of them would be on the Lord’s side, and it was the Levites who separated themselves from the rest of the profaned Israelites, and came to Moses, thereby standing on the Lord’s side. They were then required to put their swords on, and go in and out of the camp, and every man was to slay his friend, his father and his neighbor. By this act the priests were consecrated to God, and in fact, the word ‘consecrated’ means ‘hands full of blood.’ So here is Aaron lifting up his hands to bless the people. Only priests can raise holy hands above men and command blessing from heaven. Only the priest has the authority, only he has been in the presence of the Most High. One of the reasons why our attempts at blessing do not convey a blessing is because they are not priestly, and they are not priestly because they are not bloody. It did not cost anything, there was no sacrifice. It was easy and facile, the mere intonation of words that speak of blessing but do not constitute blessing. It was not a hand that has been dipped in blood. A priest is not a priest if he cannot pronounce blessing, and what is his blessing if it is only a mere verbalization without bringing the palpable blessing in fact?

Nothing reaches the heart but what is from the heart, or pierces the conscience but what comes from a living conscience.William Penn

If the Church fails to be radically sacredThe world will become radically profane.Art Katz quoting an unknown theologian

Accredited Ministry Truly accredited ministry is through suffering. Accredited ministry represents a tremendous victory, set in a background of great conflict. A determined effort is made through the age to discredit spiritual ministry, and to do so through the one engaged in that ministry. . .One who counts for the Lord, is a joint of supply, who can be of value in any way to the Lord’s people, and stand in His testimony, will know the enemy’s effort to render those spiritual values nil by discrediting. . . All ministry that is to be accredited will be bound up with suffering; a decision we have to make is as to the object of our ministry. A good many things can be taken into consideration, but there comes a point where all other things have to be ranged on one side, and one thing on the other side - the real spiritual value, without alloy: that which is wholly of God and not at all of man. In the measure in which that is true there will be suffering. To stand utterly for what is spiritual is a costly thing. There must be a willingness to be dealt with by the Lord, in such a way as to keep the ministry living and pure. All ministry which issues from such suffering is going to count. It may not be welcomed or desired by the mass, but where there is need and a call for that which we have gained through suffering, there will be response. But the treasure is in vessels of fragile clay; the vessel is being broken day by day.T. Austin-Sparks

Self-esteem, self-ability in some pernicious shape has defamed and violated the temple which should be held sacred for God. Life-giving preaching costs the preacher much – death to self, crucifixion to the world, the travail of his own soul. Crucified preaching can come only from a crucified manE. M. BoundsPower through Prayer

The whole purpose of discipline or chastisement, which is to say, the painful dealings of God against our flesh, is to break the power of the need to be gratified now. The definition of a son is one who can defer his gratification for the reward that comes after. You do not need to receive a pat on the back after you have preached, "Well done, that was a great message!" A lot of us will collapse at this point, and compromise our message, even fishing for the compliments and the acknowledgments of men. Only a son can give total obedience to delivering the word without in any way modulating it so as to receive the gratification of applause and affirmation. If you want to see God and obtain His holiness, then this is the way.Art Katz

The Work of the Lord What is the work of the Lord? What is Christian service from God’s standpoint? It is contributing to the fulness of Christ. It is in the measure of each several part ministering to that end, that all things shall be summed up in Christ, and that He shall be the fulness of all things. That great Divine goal has many ways and many means of attainment, and it is not a matter of whether you or I are serving the Lord in the same way as someone else. That is not the point at all. We standardize and departmentalize Christian work, and we think of the activities of ministers and missionaries and suchlike functions, and we call that work of the Lord; we think of that when we speak of going into Christian service. . . The work of the Lord is, and can be, no more than contributing to the fulness of Christ and ministering of that fulness to Him and from Him. How you do it is a matter of Divine appointment, but that is the work of the Lord. . . . You might aspire to be an Apostle Paul - probably if you understood a little more you would not! But you see, whether Paul is doing it along his Divinely appointed line, in his Divinely appointed way - or Peter - or John - or this one or that one - the object comes first, the way afterward. . . The beginning of all service in relation to God is the servant himself. What makes a servant of God? We think of a servant of God being made by academic training, Bible teaching, by this or that form of equipment, and we think when we have all that, when we have been through the course and have in our minds all that can be imparted of that kind, we are the Lord’s servants. But that is not the way the Lord looks at it at all. . . The Lord is going to require that He shall be able to say, “Behold, my servant,” and the servant to whom He will call attention will be the servant who is the impression of Christ. Yes, Christ registered, Christ presenced, Christ apparent, in the servant. . . God is far more concerned with having His servants in a right state than He is with having them furnished with all kinds of academic qualifications and titles. . . . You can use the Scripture and it may have no effect at all, or you can use it and it may have a mighty effect. A great deal depends upon who uses the Scripture. It is the man of God who can use it in that way and be attested as the true servant of the Lord . . . It is with you and with me that the Lord is concerned; it is with what we are, it is with our personal knowledge of Himself. It is that we may have within us the secrets of the Lord, that it may be true of us as it was of the Lord Jesus and of others that the key to the situation spiritually is in our hands. T. Austin-SparksJanuary, 1949

Characteristics of Service to God We may not be Jeremiahs, Isaiahs, or Pauls, but we are called to serve the Lord’s interests, and there may be very much more sovereignty behind our lives than we are aware of. It may be only as we go on that we shall become conscious that the Lord evidently brought us into being for something - that there is something stirring in us that gravitates in a certain direction which is prophetic of how we are to serve the Lord. We find things taking shape in a certain way, with a corresponding deep exercise of our hearts about that. We come up against our own lack of qualification, our own unsuitability, and we are thrown right back upon the God of resurrection. We find that the very fact of our being thrown upon the Lord for everything is a sovereign act, with a view to safeguarding everything for the Lord. It is the safest thing, and perhaps one of the greatest evidences that things are of the Lord, when we feel, on the one hand, that we must, out of an inward compulsion, serve the Lord, and yet, on the other hand, that if there is to be anything at all for the Lord it must be all of His doing. But let us note well that there is the vital turning point. Whatever we may have sensed before, until that day comes when the self-element gets right out of the way, until all the sense that we can do it and want to do it is thoroughly smitten and we are in the place where we really know that if there is going to be anything at all, it must be of the Lord, nothing can really arise. But when that day comes, then all that purpose which has been waiting stored up will begin to break out and take charge of our lives in a new way, we shall know that we are girded by God for something - not perhaps what we would have chosen. It may perhaps be for the most difficult thing ever given to anyone to do. . . once the Lord has set His hand to do a work, He will sovereignly carry the vessel of that service to full accomplishment so long as the vessel remains suitably yielded in His hand. T. Austin-SparksMarch, 1950

There is a ‘Kingdom of reality’ that needs to be demonstrated by God’s people. And if we need to be anything as the Church, it is foremost to be eminently real, eminently loving, eminently living in the truth, speaking the truth, walking in the truth, doing the truth, being true. It is much more than merely “being correct,” or scripturally and doctrinally sound. It is something that should be suffused right into the marrow and the knit of our makeup. It needs to be in our eyes, in our speech, in the inflection of our voice, our posture and our talk. Art Katz

The respect for the Spirit of God as the Spirit of truth makes way for the Spirit of God as the Spirit of power. The contemporary Church has reversed it; we have celebrated the power, the signs, the wonders, and relegated the truth to a distant consideration, if indeed, any consideration at all.Art Katz

"Characteristics of Service to God"Started to chop this up into parts for comment and realised, I couldn't. It is the whole of what is said here that resonates.Question:Where is this and the other dated post from?Is this Art Katz? Bounds? Sparks? Couldn't be you, could it, Lars? You are much younger than that... :-)

Thank you, Mike, for help.I need to watch more carefully to have all facts in order.Sparks made those comments back in 1949-1950.I could not have said it then, born in 1950, I cannot say it today even if I wanted to.Lars

Thanks Lars.I cannot say it today even if I wanted to.Nontheless, it got said...again, thanks to you.(Edit: The aforementioned post's have been updated, thanks Lars)

The Cost of Special Service to God A thing which is to serve the Lord in a specially vital way is not born easily, and is not brought into being without some unusual suffering and travail. There is much bitterness of soul to be gone through, and many tears. For a time, a drawn-out time, it appears that there will be nothing. The barrenness, with its attendant heartache and sorrow, seems long to remain. And yet there can be no philosophical acceptance or fatalistic capitulation. The Lord is a factor in this situation, and there is a “hoping against hope,” a wistful look toward the “God Who quickeneth the dead and calleth the things that are not as though they were” (Rom. 4:17). . . So it is, when the Lord determines to secure for Himself that vessel of peculiar purpose, and cuts off all the many activities, works, and occupations which, while being in the same household of faith and in some relation to Himself, are largely by the energies of nature and the ability of man. When and where there are not those usual accompaniments and outworkings, those issues and results, the evidences and proofs; then there is criticism, taunting, pointing of the finger, and grievous imputations.The very acts of Divine sovereignty are given a twist to mean just the opposite of God’s thought. So, one system of things taunts the other. Well, well, so be it. It ever was; it ever will be. . .. . . When the Lord wants something for an hour of peculiar need, the methods have to be out of the ordinary. To those concerned He has to say, “Others can; you cannot.” We are entering more and more deeply into such an hour at this time. The general thing is not meeting the situation. The Lord must bring through something which will “come to the kingdom for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14). T. Austin-Sparks

Revival – an absolute necessityRevival will spring forth from a radical understanding of the need of abandoning entertainment as the main goal and object in Christian gatherings. Revival will spring forth from a radical understanding that regular Christianity does not hold enough power to attract attention as alternative culture, not eve as counter culture.This said as we define culture as a common agreement which cannot be altered on what Christianity is to be defined as.Revival is a radical break with what is commonly accepted, and therefore commonly hindering a genuine testimony. Revival is a radical break with the common agreement which states that we do not have to follow too hard after the Lord.Revival will spring forth from a radical understanding that our standards are set far too low.Revival will spring forth from a radical understanding of the necessity and the nature of the Cross of Christ.L. Widerberg

The Essence of Ministry We have thought of the service of God as a matter of preaching and teaching and doing a multitude of things for the Lord. They may only be the framework; they may only be the outer casing, like the bark of a tree. The Lord may pour His life through such methods and means, or He may not let us do any preaching or teaching. In the case of some, He may have the greatest measure of fruit without ever any preaching being done at all. Fruit is the spontaneous expression of a deep-rooted oneness with Christ, and there may be very much satisfaction and glory to God through people who are never allowed to preach or teach or do any of those things which we call Christian work. But to express Christ, to live Christ, to manifest Christ, to let everything around feel Christ and be touched by Christ through our presence-that certainly is to the glory of God and the satisfaction of His heart, and that is service. For what is this fruit? It is the life of Christ manifested, and God help both the preachers and the teachers and the workers, and those to whom they preach, if there is not a manifestation of Christ coming through what they are saying and doing. The real heart of it is this deep union of life with the Lord, and it is this kind of service which satisfies God.TASJuly, 1954

Letting Our Ministry Go “Ministry” is the cause of so much trouble. “My ministry,” getting a place for our ministry, being able to fulfill our ministry. Oh, let it drop.The Lord will test us on this matter. Are we going to hold on to our ministry, our place, what we believe to be our Divine calling - hold to it in the strength and tenacity of our own will, our own fleshly conviction that that is what God has called us to? Oh no! If God has called us to anything, He will hold us into it, and we must let go to Him if there arises a situation in which that is necessary. The Lord will see that the ministry is fulfilled and the position occupied that He wants for us. The thing that is far more than the ministry, and out of which the ministry must come, is that I should be a Christlike man, . . . and we can show Christlikeness in just letting others get into our place in ministry, being very meek about it, not fighting to keep our position. The Lord will look after the rest.TAS July, 1955

Qualification for Platform Ministry If you only take the matter of ministry itself - I mean public ministry - you find it is the most controversial point in all Christianity. More trouble has arisen over platform ministry than over anything else. But. . . no one has a right to minister, no one has a qualification for ministry, who cannot quite easily sit back and do no ministry at all if the Lord wants it.It ought to be just as easy for a minister. . . to take a back seat, and wait for the Lord, as it is for the natural soul to want to be on that platform. TASNovember, 1956

Ministry Born Out of ExperienceIf you are in any way engaged in ministry, or the work of the c Lord, no matter how much you study, how much you read up the subject matter, however diligent you are in your research, it will count for nothing if there is not behind it an experience which makes resurrection - that is, a deep experience which makes resurrection the only way out. The Lord has no place for mere mechanical teachers and preachers, reproducers of matter secondhand. The Lord’s principle is to bring everything right into experimental relationship to the person concerned, and so it is kept in power and freshness and reality. TASMay, 1957

Ministry Born Out of Adversity Do believe this: If you want to be able to help people, to enrich them, to bring them into the wealth that is in Christ, to deliver them from their poverty - and God knows how poverty- stricken His people are, and how little they know of His wealth if you want to help others to a knowledge of this wealth, it is by way of the light which comes through resurrection. In more simple terms, if you are going through a deep and dark time, you may have very rich treasures of darkness. The right attitude toward our times of death and darkness is that this can mean wealth-the Lord means more riches out of this thing for others; something for their enrichment, is going to come out of our times of spiritual death. It is effective light that enriches, that brings into wealth. TASMay, 1957

The Cost of Utter Devotion Devotion, utter devotion, to God’s purpose concerning His people is going to make the uttermost demand upon any servant of God. It is going to test and find out our spirit of service. And if we are going to serve God in this utter way, it is going to bring us to the point where we have nothing left to fall back upon, either of personal interest, position, or blessing; it is simply a matter of God, and God only! If God does not do it, we are finished; we have nothing to live for! We have no alternative; we have no second line; we are in this matter of the Lord’s purpose and interests to the very last drop of our blood. . . And we must be prepared to be brought to the place where we are ready to get right out of the way ourselves - altogether out of the way, in every sense - if only the Lord can reach His end. We don’t matter. . . ”What matters is that the Lord has His end in His people, and if that is not reached, then I don’t know what I am alive for; I don’t know what I have been saved for.” TAS

The Prophet as Troublemaker It is essentially a part of the ministry of a prophetic instrument to cause trouble. It is inevitable; it is the very nature things. For the very function of the prophet came into view when things were not right. If things had never gone wrong, had never needed adjusting, correcting, or bringing to some greater measure of spiritual fulness, there would have been no need of prophets. We should know very, very little about prophets if things had gone right on as they should have done. The function of the prophets was to keep and hold before the people of God His full thought concerning them, especially in the face of certain things that worked very definitely against it. And it is just because of that clash and conflict that the trouble arises. TASJuly, 1960

Characteristics of the Leader God's leaders are not essentially leaders because of certain natural qualifications. . . They go to school with God, and in a hard school the kind of qualities required by God are inculcated. Another general thing about leaders chosen by God is that they, while being very human, are, in many respects, a class by themselves. They are pioneers, and pioneers are lonely people in more respects than one. In some ways they are difficult people. Their standard and measure has to be ahead of others, and as human nature generally likes not to be disturbed, but would seek the easy way, the pioneer is often a bit too much for people. He is restless, never satisfied, always pressing and urging forward. The keynote of his life is "Let us go on." His is not the easy way, and because human nature does want the easy way, the leader is not always popular. The whole nature of man is either downward or to a quiet and happy mean and snugness. The pioneer is therefore not always appreciated, but often very much otherwise. He is so much contrary to this mediocre gravitation. A part of the price of leadership is loneliness. TASSeptember, 1962

There is a need of a recovery or reappraisal of the true nature of that into which we have come when we have come into Christ.Bigness has substituted greatness.T. Austin-SparksCalled unto Fellowship with His Son

There are counterfeit revivals well executed, well calculated to deceive the most wary. These are deceptive and superficial, with many pleasant, entertaining, delusive features, entirely lacking in the offensive features which distinguish the genuine ones. The pain of penitence, the shame of guilt, the sorrow and humiliation of sin, the fear of hell—these marks of the genuine are lacking in the counterfeit. The test of a genuine revival is found in its staying qualities. The counterfeit is but a winter spurt, as evanescent and fitful as the morning cloud or early dew—both soon gone—and the sun but the hotter for the mockery of the cloud and because of the fleeting dew. These surface revivals do more harm than good, like a surface thaw in midwinter which only increases the hardness and roughness of tomorrow’s freeze.The genuine revival goes to the bottom of things; the sword is not swaddled in cotton, nor festooned with flowers, but pierces to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow.E.M Bounds

I found an item in this thread, perhaps more significant than may others pondered and discussed in the many threads.TerryQualification for Platform Ministry If you only take the matter of ministry itself - I mean public ministry - you find it is the most controversial point in all Christianity. More trouble has arisen over platform ministry than over anything else. But. . . no one has a right to minister, no one has a qualification for ministry, who cannot quite easily sit back and do no ministry at all if the Lord wants it.It ought to be just as easy for a minister. . . to take a back seat, and wait for the Lord, as it is for the natural soul to want to be on that platform.

The matter of usefulness ultimately linked to sacrificeI plead with you therefore, brethren, by the compassions of God, to present all your faculties to Him as a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to Him. This with you will be an act of reasonable worship. And do not follow the customs of the present age, but be transformed by the entire renewal of your minds, so that you may learn by experience what God's will is--that will which is good and beautiful and perfect. Rom 12:1-2

TRUE GREATNESS LIES IN character, not in ability or position. A.W. Tozer

The real essence of prophetic ministry is the recovery of the fullness of Jesus Christ, which has been lost. It is the recovery and reinstating of the testimony of Jesus in the Church.T. Austin-Sparks

The real essence of prophetic ministry is the recovery of the fullness of Jesus Christ which has been lost. It is a recovery and a reinstating of the testimony of Jesus in the Church.The gift, the function, the anointing, of prophecy is the recovery of the full testimony of Jesus.T. Austin-Sparks

Genuine ministry – Counts it as great gain to bow down and serve.L.W.

This thread is in itself genuine ministryTerry

The dominating objective of the Lord for His people is full growth, the full measure of Christ. Every apostolic letter has that object in view, and every one of these apostolic letters deals with some factor related to full growth. If that is true, then surely it is incumbent upon us as the Lord’s people to have His goal before us, and to be found in the same spirit as was the apostle who said, “…that I may apprehend that for which also I was apprehended of Christ Jesus”. The force of that statement may not have come to our hearts. The apostle has there said in very clear and precise language that when the Lord Jesus laid hold of him, it was for something more than that he should just become a saved man. It was in relation to a goal with which there was bound up a prize, and unto that there was to be an attaining. He said that everything for him was regarded as of value only in so far as it would help him to reach that goal, and nothing was of value at all which in no way contributed to that end. So should the Lord’s people be, at all times, on full stretch for the purpose for which they have been apprehended. Everywhere in the Word of God His thought for His people is set forth as being that they should come to a full measure, to full growth, to the measure of Christ.T. A-S.

A Prophet weeps before he uses the whip.The theologian despises tears and personal correction, and becomes a terror to a needy heart.L. W.

Ministry:To be in Christ.To be far beyond ourselves.

Genuine Ministry:Bringing deliverance as the sharpest knife.

Genuine ministry never finds its foundation or fulfilment with the cleverness of man but with a history with God.L.W.