I keep seeing Scriptures that we have taught
the sheep for years now also applying to the shepherds. In fact, they
should have always applied to the shepherds (five-fold ministers), but
it has been implied by many shepherds that it was meant for the sheep
only. One of the Scripture verses that I first saw this way was
Hebrews 13:17, which says “Obey your leaders, and submit to them;
for they keep watch over your souls, as those who will give an
account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would
be unprofitable for you.” There is nothing to indicate to us
that this was meant for the sheep only, but we sure pounded this home
while many shepherds did not apply this to themselves.
Genesis 2:7-8 “Then the Lord God formed
man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life; and man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a
garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He
had formed.”
Another Scripture that I am being dealt with
for the Church today is the passage above. We know that we all have a
purpose, and that purpose must be God’s purpose and not our own. We
teach that to fulfill the purposes of God, we must be planted (placed)
where God wants us. As you can see in the above Scripture, the first
thing that God did after He created man was to prepare a place for him
and then He placed him there. This does not only apply to which church
we are in, but also to whom God places us together with. This could
mean our organization, our network, and our friends. We have all made
some mistakes in this area primarily because we only saw the “placements
of God” as applying to the sheep. See verse eight again: When God
finishes “forming” us in this restoration of five-fold ministry,
then He “places” us. This “divine placement” will lead to the
reformation of the Church because He not only places sheep where He
desires, but also five-fold ministries. These five ministries must
work together as a team for the purposes Jesus intended. We will need
to know where and with whom we will work as a team. Therefore, we must
know the absolute will of God and make an everlasting covenant in the
place where God places us. Once we recognize this is of God, our
responsibility is to obey the Lord in every aspect of His purposes for
placement. Adam did not remain in the place that God had prepared for
him bec ause he was disobedient to God’s instructions and obviously
did not understand the purposes of the Lord.
Many times in ministry we get so involved
with our own vision, goals, ministry, or schedules that we do not
readily see the purposes of God for where He places us.
Psalm 68:6 (Amp) says, “God places the
solitary in families and gives the desolate a home in which to dwell;
He leads the prisoners out to prosperity; but the rebellious dwell in
a parched land.” He gives us families so that we are no longer
alone. I am not speaking of the natural families that we have, but the
family of God in which He has placed us. This family is a “covenant
family”, and that is what makes it unique. The world enters into
covenant relationships with an attitude of “if it doesn’t work to
my benefit, I’ll divorce myself from the covenant and pull out”.
The Hebrew word for “placed” is “suwm”
or “siym” and carries the following definitions: “To put, place,
set, appoint, ordain, establish, found, determine, fix, station, set
in place, plant.” It also means “To transform into, constitute,
fashion, bring to pass.”
Now, let’s look into some New Testament
Scriptures.
Please read I Corinthians 12:12-18 and then
reread verse 18 which says, “But now God has placed the members,
each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.”
The Greek word for “placed” is “tithemi”
and carries the following meanings: “To set, put, place, fix,
establish, ordain”. In other words, His desire is to not only
put His Body together His way, but to also fix (which carries a
meaning of “glue”) and to establish (firmly plant and build a
reputation) and to ordain (to arrange unalterably and to give
authority).
I firmly believe that God does not always
give us a choice in His decisions. We believe that the Church is not
democratic in its government, so neither should the ministry be. When
He calls and chooses and places and plants us, it is not our
responsibility to say “why?”, but many times we do. There are
times when the Lord should not be asked to explain His every move. We
do not always need to know the reason that He does what He does. We
only need to say “yes sir” and obey. God does not do anything
without purpose.
We must remember this Scripture well, John
15:16,"YOU DID NOT CHOOSE ME, but I chose you, and appointed
you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should
REMAIN, that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give to
you.”
Now, let’s bring this on into the
five-fold. 1 Corinthians 12:28 says, “And God has appointed in
the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then
miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various
kinds of tongues.” When we look at what man has appointed or
placed in the Church and then see what God placed there, we most often
see a contradiction. In most instances, we do not have a choice. The
Lord does not seek a vote of our opinions. He does not even ask us if
we feel that we are compatible. According to the passage in I
Corinthians 12 that we looked at, He often places us together with
those who are quite different from us. He sees the differences as
making up for what another lacks. He just bluntly tells us that if we
were all “seers”, then we could not hear a thing nor could we
transport what we saw anywhere as we would have no feet. I love the
simplicity of the Bible. Man complicates it through theology and other
neat religious thinking. The religious mind sees the differences as
faults and challenges to their beliefs.
Now, let’s whittle this down to one
individual. 2 Timothy 1:11 says “... for which I was appointed a
preacher and an apostle and a teacher...” I have heard many,
many Christians, both saints and ministries, read this Scripture and
say “Paul was three of the five”. He was a pastor, an apostle and
a teacher. So, was he confused as to his placement in the Church? Does
this Scripture mean that we can be whatever we choose and when we
choose to be? There are some ministries who call themselves “Pastor”
when they are home and then when they travel, they call themselves “Prophet”
or “Apostle”. Perhaps we have become schizophrenic when it comes
to knowing to what we have been called, ordained, set into, placed
into, etc.
There are too many Scriptures that we read in
which we see that Paul states that he was called as an apostle to take
this one Scripture and say that it means that he was three of the
five. The word translated here as “preacher” (note that it does
not say “pastor”) is the word “kerux” and does not mean “shepherd”,
but means “herald”. Scripture also tells us that one qualification
of an elder is “able to teach”. All elders, all five ministries,
should be able to teach. This qualification alone does not make one a
five-fold teacher. We must know our placement that comes from the Lord
and give ourselves to that. This does not mean that we cannot exercise
any other gift, but simply means, for example, that we can win souls
for Christ without being a five-fold evangelist.
What would the Church be like today if all of
God’s people were in the place or the relationship that God has
prepared for us and stayed there until God might move us?
Now go with me to I Kings 17:1-9. For the
sake of space, I will ask you to turn there and read this passage
before going any further. This is my favorite passage when teaching on
the provision of the Lord.
Here we have Elijah in a place of drought. He
knew that because he prophesied it. God then tells him that he needs
to be placed somewhere else in order to receive provision. If Elijah
were a modern charismatic, he would have said something like, “Lord,
my family is here. My job is here and all of my friends, so couldn’t
you just send me your provision here and save me a move?” Yes,
God could have done that if that was His desire and plan. But God’s
plan was to place Elijah elsewhere. God promised him water and two
meals a day. (Anytime God provided for His people in Scripture, He
only fed them breakfast and dinner, never lunch. “Three meals a day”
must have been invented by a restaurant owner.)
So Elijah obeyed God and prospered. After a
while, though, his brook dried up and God had to place him elsewhere
for provision. Sometimes our brook dries up when those who were to
provide for us get “funny” on us, fall, or just simply enter into
disobedience and God in His faithfulness will move us into another
place for our provision. Jesus told His disciples in the tenth chapter
of Matthew, (paraphrase mine) “If the city into which you go does
not provide for you, shake the dust off your sandals and leave”.
This is not a message on “leaving” anything, but a message on
knowing the placement , calling, establishing, ordaining, appointment
of God for our lives. When we know, then we come together and make
covenant to let the Lord know that we know His placement. We make the
covenant “until death do us part” (natural or spiritual) and not
“until disagreements do us part”. Elijah had to be where God put
him in order to receive His provision.
The people of God are so easily offended
today that many ministries have stopped telling the Church the truth
in order not to offend. We must remember that God has called those of
us in five fold ministries to walk together as examples to others. We
are called to be examples in the restoration of godly relationships
and how they work, even in times of disagreement. This means that we
must practice those principles of God with each other that we teach
our flocks to practice. Any and all offenses must be immediately
confronted and settled. We must ask the Lord to deal with us if we are
one of those who are easily offended.
So, can we make decisions to “place”
anything in our lives? Acts 19:21 “ Now after these things were
finished, Paul purposed (placed) in the spirit to go to Jerusalem
after he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, saying, "After
I have been there, I must also see Rome." Notice where Paul
placed this thought; not in the flesh, but in the spirit. Our
placements are not derived from the desires of our flesh, but from
submitting them to Holy Spirit.
Finally, look at Deuteronomy 1:8 with me...“See,
I have placed the land before you; go in and possess the land which
the Lord swore to give to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to
Jacob, to them and their descendants after them.” There is much
land that the Lord has placed before us in our time and we must go in
together and possess it. The Church has not walked this way in a long
time and we will have to work (W.O.R.K.) out the wrinkles along the
way.
In His Covenant Love,
Apostle Richard
