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Graham Cooke Tuesday Afternoon 2
1 Peter 2:4-10
You also as living stones are being built up
You are a choice stone…
This stone is for those who believe, but is a stumbling block for those who do not believe…
You are chosen to be of royal priesthood. People for God’s possession so that you may proclaim the excellences of Him who has called you out of darkness into His light. You have now received mercy.
The question in change is: How can we sow for tomorrow when we are still reaping today from things we did in the past? There are mindsets; people have mindset.. Romans 8 says that a mindset on the flesh is death. Everyone has mindsets…part of our leadership role is to teach ppl that that mindset won’t get you anywhere. You need to change your mindset.
Sometimes ppl are bothered by something they did in their past. I remind them that God doesn’t care now and that you have to let it go. If you want to be dead to it you’ll be a new creation. If all you’ve thought about it has brought you to this place, well, then have another thought. Think again. What could you think about? Have another thought. Repent. Change the way you think.
We don’t’ realize that when we try to control ppl we are not allowing the holy spirit to work in ppl. We need to think about our attitudes.. what is the Kingdom attitude about homosexuality? What do you do if God brings a pedophile to your church. Who are we for everyone? What is God like? What would you do if God brought a general who used to be in the occult? What do we do about these things?
Who is Jesus for you? What kind of church are you supposed to have? What is the corporate anointing on this house? Every church has a specific anointing…they need to figure it out. IT’s important to get a hold of ppl’s dreams b/c that will help you with what God has for the church.
You are precious in the sight of God. I know that I am loved outrageously. I will go through what I have gone through again b/c what I have inherited far surpasses any pain that I have experienced. The places that God has taken me in the spirit….
Jesus worked with three ppl before He left them…it takes at least three years for a paradigm to change in the Body. We need to look at the future…who will we be in the next year? We need to keep our change continual.
The course change is gradual so that it’s not even that noticeable. There is an art to change. People will move towards it b/c they love it. When God prophesied to you it’s because he is saying, “this is who I see you to be” He’s seeing you in the future and speaking from a place of reality. A reality in the future. You need to go into that future and figure out what kind of person you need to become to fulfill that role. Follow that prophetic destiny. You start becoming that person….you take on the characteristics in the present that God declares for the future.
Abraham has a visitation (gen. 17-18)..from this point you’ll be here…Sarah laughed…God asks, what are you laughing about? God stops and says to the angels, ‘shall I declare to Abraham what I am going to do since I am about to do this?” He starts relating to you in the way you’ll be in the future. When God speaks to your future then he starts to behave towards you as if it is the future. He links the present to the personality He sees in the future.
A lot of our ppl are present-past…they let the past affect the present. Baggage vs. luggage. Your bags have always been packed by someone else. Can you imagine going on vacation and allowing your bags to be packed by your worst enemy? You get to florida and its all winter clothes. That’s what it’s like to live with the past in the present…your bags are always packed by others. You need to pack your bags in anticipation of what’s going to happen and always leave room for things to bring back. That’s the difference btw baggage and luggage. God is not obsessed by sin; he is consumed by life. God doesn’t see sin because of Jesus. He doesn’t see what’s there—he sees what’s missing. Everything is seen through grace. Btw that judgment and the next we are living in a time of grace. We don’t see what’s wrong we see what’s missing.
Lust—it’s not about that sin…what’s missing? Holiness. So prophesy holiness over that person. The last thing you need is to be told that you are in sin…we know that…you are consumed with what you are not. You need to be encouraged to be who God is making you to be. Don’t let yourself be disinherited.
“The Lord wants to drench you in holiness”
“The Lord has a dream about you that requires you to be drenched in holiness.”
We are on this journey and God has given us a whole bunch of ppl. Some are present-past and some are present-future. We need to all be present-future. We draw the line btw the present and the future…
In any group of ppl you have three types of ppl: Enablers, Initiators, and Resisters. Ppl who make things happen, help to make things happen, and those who hinder it. You cannot build your church on resisters…they are like the poor—you’ll always have them.
If you want to talk about dreams, talk about it in small groups and start with ppl that have a dream and make sure you know what it is. Initiators are pioneers and they’ll make things happen. They are go-getters. They’re happy with starting with nothing. Quite often they are frustrated. I like that. I’d rather have 50 frustrated than 500 apathetic. But I’m okay with frustration b/c it means that they care about something. Sometimes I wont’ go to a church b/c there’s not enough frustration. Frustration means that ppl are ready to pay a price. He builds our frustration to a point that we’re willing to do anything…get out of a boat and walk on water. The last thing I want to do is try to be a catalyst in a damp place. Instead you need to pray b/c it’s not time. You have to be ready to make that move…
With a building prophet you get a different ministry than an encouraging prophet. A building prophet prophesies the next level and then helps you build a staircase to get to the next level. The encourager comes, encourages, and then goes.
We don’t want renewal that doesn’t last. We want to take a battle to get the ground and a battle to keep the territory. That’s a different fight. So building prophets establish something—we don’t just talk about it. We are here to pave the way. Here are the steps you need to take next. We need to get a hold of the dreams of our initiators…they are pioneers, they are frustrated, they want to get out there and do something.
God never had a problem naming ppl but he had a problem numbering them. All of David’s mighty men had a name. They had a name and a name for something. Don’t ever number your ppl b/c numbers are irrelevant. God changes names out of something significant happening. You should always name the ppl you can build on. Name the initiators. Who will get out there and make things happen? Who will help to pull these things forward? Who are the ppl you can get behind?
Who are your enablers? They help make things happen. They may not have a lot of initiative, but they’ll get behind stuff when they see it staring. Point of the spear are the initiators and the shaft are the enablers. You need both and they work together.
Who are these ppl? These are the ppl we’ll start with. You can not build on resisters. It’s like building on a sponge. You have to start with ppl that are moved by something. You’ll build on the initiators and enablers. They have a level of ability and desire.
Resisters…are newly faithed and are learning to walk out their freedom and their faith. There should always be legitimate resisters b/c we’re helping to set them free. We need to bless them to a point that they can walk out of the bondage. Illegitimate resisters are the ones who need help to walk out of the pit but won’t give you any authority in their life. They want a place in ministry but there are places in their life that have not been dealt with. You know the ppl who have not gone through the fire. You get a witness in your spirit.
You need to start with a small place. Start to enfranchise the ones that we know are trustworthy. Look at their dreams and establish them. Then start branching out. It grows exponentially. It doesn’t take long to turn a church around. You just need focus. Start with what you got and work from there.
It is important for us to be set free if our ppl are going to be set free. Church leaders need to be able to set ppl free from the money game, the power game, and the prestige game. We have to be released form that. We’ve got to find faith in God for the corporate man he has given us. And there is a kingdom place God wants to open us up to. He doesn’t want to keep us isolated from the kingdom. He wants to build the church for the kingdom. If we leave out the kingdom we don’t fulfill the heart of God. God mentions the kingdom more than the church. The kingdom is more important. We have to have a philosophy that says other churches matter. We need to have a ppl that have an apostolic mindset so that they are looking out to the rest of the city. A network is the means to an end not the end itself. We spend our lives building the kingdom. We need to create an environment to grow up in the kingdom. We have a network of 8000 churches in 44 countries out of a bunch of students years ago. From the Pentecostal all the way to ppl who couldn’t spell prayer.
We wanted to do an evangelistic campus crusade…on the third night the holy spirit fell and we never did that crusade but we were all speaking in tongues that night. Then we got thrown out of every church in the city b/c we were considered to be too radical, but this was England in the ‘70s. if you could spell apostle you were radical. We were feeling uneasy about starting a church. The only place we could get was room for the blind and the deaf. God is funny eh?
So we didn’t know what we wanted. We knew what we didn’t want. So we kept asking God and had endless dialogue for about a year. Then we saw that the New Testament is mostly about relationships. So we started living like it spoke of…encouraging one…loving one another…years later there are 8000 churches. They’re all still together. We’ve not had anyone leave us. We found a way of living with God and living with one another. Our prayer has never been ‘holy spirit come. It’s holy spirit don’t leave us’ It’s not how do we get him here, it’s how do we get the holy spirit to stay.
God lives in our relationships and in the way we live. God often describe himself as Abraham Issac and Jacob. That’s a three generational punch in his heart. Fathers need to become patriarchal , or in the new testament apostolic.
God had them dismantle everything we knew and to sow ourselves into the greater kingdom. So the work of 25 years…We are working with the Lord to sow this into the soil to see something bigger. In our own city we began to see other churches and where they were struggling and we’d help them. We’d lend them our best worship team for six months knowing that some of them might not come back. We’d lend them some of our best leaders, knowing that some of them wouldn’t come back. And God really blessed us outrageously.
We do leader development all the time b/c you have to keep leaders up to pace with the growth. We have to have leaders ready to step up when we grow. You don’t develop leaders after you grow. You do it beforehand so you have leaders ready when you grow.
The Lord would begin to give us names and we’d say, they’re not ready yet…but then this course of leadership exploded with the presence of God. God gave us a quickening spirit…what would normally take 5 years he did in one year. How does God redeem time? He speeds up your development. What could take 5 yrs he does in one.
We sent out our worship team that we had developed for years… and God used these ppl he grew up in three months…and they could lead us into a deep place of worship.
By the end of that time, we had more worshippers than we knew what to do with. God did things we had never expected.
God said, do you know why I’m blessing you? b/c I trust you with the kingdom. It’s one thing to trust the Lord and it’s quite another thing to be trusted by the Lord. He made us into a catalyst; a generous catalyst that could give things away knowing that God would always provide. Our apostolic abilities was not for just our network but for all churches whether they liked it or not. We’ve given hundreds of thousands of dollars away, leadership, etc. We’ve supported two churches salaries. It’s a fascinating thing when you give yourselves away to the kingdom—you get outrageously blessed.
Give away to another ministry. Sow something. Always sow something that you want to grow into. I teach my children this as a principle. I told my son to sow into other drummers that he wanted to grow into. So he found some really good drummers and served them and sowed into their music and he has become quite an outstanding drummer. He’s taught this band about sowing and reaping and they are all pre-christian. Always sow into the area that you want to move into. You can never stop sowing. Never eat your seed. You need to be sowing your seed. You want to reap out there somewhere…the place where you’re moving into. That’s why it’s so important to get ppl to dream outside of themselves.
Don’t’ make the mistake of trying to make change from the pulpit on Sunday morning. If you want transformation then you start with the ppl that are already hungry for it. If you want radical renewal you start with the ppl who are already frustrated. You don’t start with ppl that want things to stay the same.
We need to create momentum to the place that we are going. So we need to start with ppl that are already yearning for something more. When they start to move, trust me the resisters will move.
There was one church I was going to and the Lord wouldn’t tell me anything about this church. 30 minutes from the church the Lord showed him a picture of a church and said, “son we’re going to punch a hole in it and let it sink below the water line and let all the rats leave and then patch it up again.” This was a church of 700ppl. Over the next few wks we lost about 540 ppl. You can only lose the ppl who are not with you anyway. The truth is they don’t belong with you. They belong somewhere else.
So we punched a hole and patched it and several months later they were back up to 1100 ppl. The problem is the catalysts were outweighed by the resisters. We had a leadership that wanted everyone to be in unity. But in those circumstances it just isn’t possible. We had a bunch of ppl dedicated to making sure this ship didn’t go anywhere. But now it’s moving and going some place and we have ppl on board that want to go to the next level and beyond.
Every person has a box which is a vision of what the church is to you. What are the threats against you? What are the things that keep you from seeing how God sees the chruhc? What is your box? Start thinking out of the box. The only time God put himself in a box, he said, “you touch this box and I’ll kill you.”
Go some place beyond the box. Create momentum. When you have the enablers and initiaters turned around then you move out to others. They’ll grow up.
Occupy yourselves with the things that matter and you’ll see change in three years. Three years is the minimum time—it’s a quickening spirit. If we give ourselves to this change then God will attract a quickening spirit. There is a divine acceleration in the world right now. And we need to attract it into our locality. How do we do that? We get a bunch of ppl in harmony moving in the same direction. That bunch of ppl will create a momentum in the spirit that will attract acceleration.
We must redeem time as a matter of absolute urgency. We must get in the program with the holy spirit. We must show ourselves faithful to the course so that the Lord will quicken our growth. Train ppl to run with God. To move with speed and pace. There are ppl in your church right now who are longing to run. Most ppl are probably fed up with where they’re at right now. What is the level of boredom? What is your level of boredom?
I adore the church. I love the church. With all her idiosyncrasies. I have never been so excited in my life. We’ve gone through astonishing transition. We are passionate for each others dreams and we have an obsession with the presence of God and we are in love with the Kingdom so that we tear down everything that is not of the kingdom. We have a sense of responsibility for the region. We have a quickening spirit upon us. God trusts us with the Kingdom.
My goal in coming here…well I know that the stuff so far that I’ve said you are not strangers to…you’re just realizing that you’re not mad. I’m confirming what’s in your hearts already. You’re realizing that this is possible. New testament prophets are mostly of confirmation anyway—confirming what you’re already hearing. The Lord is saying, now is the time. The dream in your heart, it’s time to have it fulfilled. This is possible.
I believe there is a season of divine acceleration available. I believe that your church could make 5 years growth in one year. God will redeem your time. You need to position yourselves to receive it.
So in the next year or two there is a divine acceleration…you have to manage it in the right way…manage it with the holy spirit. We’ve got to get a place where we’re not playing catch-up but we are there and present and the holy spirit needs to fall on us.
I know that there is a level of frustration here and that is your catalyst. That is a season of divine acceleration. To have God do something quick. He needs our cooperation.
The first time I heard of divine acceleration it was by one of my mentors. That guy was actually mentored by Smith Wigglesworth. I asked, so how do I get God to move quickly in my life? He said, well you need to die at a faster rate than you are dying right now. You need to see who God is for you and what God wants to become. Come and present yourselves to God and say I want you to be that for me and I’ll pay any price.
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