The conditions in the world are not going to get any better. But the Spirit-filled church under the lordship of Jesus Christ is our hope. The church is the restrainer of evil and the conscience of the nation.
The reason for lack of power and purpose in the city church, or ekklesia, is because of the lack of agreement with God’s plans. Only men and women of prayer and the Spirit who have no hidden agendas truly know and understand God’s plans. Only the pure in heart can see God, and His glory will be revealed through them.
As I see it throughout nearly 40 years of ministry, two of the greatest hindrances to unity and agreement in the city church are revealed in the following Scriptures:
“For all seek their own, not the things which are of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:21, NKJV).
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“For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves” (Acts 20:29-30, emphasis mine).
The mixture of wolves and false ministers along with a lack of true fathers in each city has greatly diluted the power of the church’s witness. Much of the body of Christ is moved by the fame and popularity of false ministers with ulterior motives, but God is the one who anoints and appoints.
“Draw[ing] away the disciples after themselves” is the scourge in much of Christendom today. Building a personal following, as Paul warned the elders at Ephesus, is the death knell of the true glory that will birth a God-given unity that produces power in a city.
When I was a younger minister, I was striving for a bigger ministry, a bigger platform, greater anointing and greater open doors, and in a concentrated time of fasting and prayer, the Lord said this: “You would cease to be a man after my own heart if I gave you all that.”
This word completely changed my heart toward ministry. It put the fear of God in me, and I wept like a baby when I realized God in His great love was protecting me from myself. What a good Father we have!
After this encounter I began to enter into a deep rest and a greater love for my fellow ministers and their success more than my own. It produced another degree of Christlike maturity in me. When elders in a city from different assemblies start walking in this kind of love and humility and wanting the success of others before their own, the move of God will have begun.
I understand that God uses everyone He can in all their imperfections. But the pinnacle of what He is after is maturity in love in a city church or ekklesia.
There are other aspects to this that will have to be for another conversation or article.
Let us seek to mature in the love of Christ as leaders and saints. If not, we will all be found guilty of seeking our own, and not the things that are Jesus Christ’s.
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Bert Farias‘ books are forerunners to personal holiness, the move of God and the return of the Lord. They also combat the departure from the faith and the turning away from the truth we are seeing in our day. His recent five-book bundle, written under a fresh anointing, is a forerunner of what the Lord is doing in His Church today. His newest release, “Turning Your Trials Into Gold,” is a powerful testimony of how God raised up Bert and his wife Carolyn from a sick bed and near death during the pandemic.
