God's Fellow Workers

As I was praying this past week, the Lord gave me a word from I Corinthians 3:9-15. It starts out in 3:9, "For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, you are God's building." The Holy Spirit quickened several things to me.

First, we are God's fellow workers in that we are in this thing together with God. I believe there is a growing need for being fellow workers in the body of Christ. This is to say that we take joint ownership of what God is doing in our church and around the world. God is calling us to enlarge our borders, our areas of interest and influence. We live in challenging times, but also times of unprecedented opportunities. These challenges we face require a greater sense of community and vision.

Secondly, in verse 10 Paul says that, "I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it." Paul goes on to say that the foundation we are building on is Jesus Christ. Because of the turbulent times we live in, we must build every aspect of our lives on Christ. Paul emphasizes not only how we build it, but more importantly, the kind of materials with which we build with, whether it is wood, hay and stubble, or gold, silver, and precious stone. Is what you are building temporal or eternal? Will what you build survive the challenges and changes we are facing today?

Paul said in verse nine that we are not only the builders, but we are God's building. So, God is not only interested in how we build our home, church, job or ministry but also how we develop ourselves spiritually as God’s temple. We need to allow God to develop us into gold, silver, and precious stone in order that we can be in a position to be used by God for His glory. God is calling us to build in ourselves and those with whom we work something that will stand the heat of time and the pressures of our rapidly changing world.

There are new demands that are coming on us and the church that require us to be careful how we build. If we are to build something that will last, we have to believe God for and nurture people of character. The only way we are going to build something that lasts is if we, as "God's fellow workers," take care to improve ourselves, take ownership of the work of God, and together seek to draw in people of like character, God's character, into the building of God. It is the character of the people that is going to enable us by God's grace and power to reach the full potential and destiny that God has for us in these last days.

May the Holy Spirit today renew your vision of the greatness of our God and what He desires to do in and through us for His glory.

Andy Clark

Levi Generation

Mark 2:13-17

“Then He (Jesus) went out again by the sea; and all the multitude came to Him, and He taught them. As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, "Follow Me." So he arose and followed Him.

“Now it happened, as He was dining in Levi's house, that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many, and they followed Him. And when the scribes and Pharisees saw Him eating with the tax collectors and sinners, they said to His disciples, "How is it that He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?" When Jesus heard it, He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."

As we look at this story, we see three groups of people that we still see today. The multitudes are ordinary people with no real, strong sense of direction and easily swayed by public opinion. The scribes and Pharisees are easy to recognize. They are the leaders who covet power and wealth and influence the multitudes to fulfill their agendas. The tax collectors and sinners are those just out to have a good time.

Jesus interacts with all three groups of people because His heart is for the world. But out of these groups, His focus in this story is on the people group with whom we as a church spend the least amount of time, what we consider to be the outcasts of society. Out of the multitude that came to Him to be taught, Jesus “saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office.” Levi was not seeking Jesus. He was caught up in making money and pleasure and had no time to run after this prophet from Nazareth. But Jesus saw beyond the multitude and saw something in Levi, called him out and stepped into Levi’s life of sin and corruption.

It is so easy to get caught up with the people who surround our lives and are attracted to us that we fail to see the Levis whom God brings into our path. They are not pursuing us or interested in what we have to say. We walk past them every day. They are doing their business and caught up in the pleasures of life. But like Levi, they are the key to a lost world for whom Jesus died. And like Levi, they need someone to see them, stop and speak into their lives.

I believe in these last days that God is going to raise up a Levi generation to call people from the highways and byways of life. This generation of soul winners will not come from the leadership or rank and file of the church. They will be men and women who have been snatched from the jaws of hell by the grace and call of God and who have a passion to seek and to save those who are lost.

Lord help us today as we walk through life to see the Levis who come across our path and who are your instruments to touch this last days’ generation with your grace.

Andy Clark

www.equipping-the-nations.org

Wait For Instructions

Psalms 25:5 “Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; on You I wait all the day.”

Maybe like me, instruction manuals are an anathema to you. They are usually long and complicated to read, and I would rather figure it out myself anyways. There is a reward in being able to figure out how to put something together or do something on my own without instructions. I think it is part of our God-breathed, creative nature to build things and figure things out. The corrupted and sinful part is that we want to do it on our own without help. Like a child, we tell our Heavenly Father, I don’t need your help on this one; I can do it myself.

As Christians, our manual, the Bible, is often hard to understand and apply to our lives. In fact, oftentimes it runs smack dab against our reasoning and the norms of our day. To understand it we have to take time to pray and meditate on it. When we do come to understand, it requires us to die to ourselves and do things that require effort that we don’t really want to do. It is so much easier just to do what we think is best and what everyone else is doing. So, we run through life brushing off the counsel of our Father, the source of all wisdom, knowledge, and understanding.

David, though, at an early age seems to have fallen in love with God’s law. Beginning in Psalms one and then as a thread throughout his Psalms is the constant refrain of his passion for the law and the powerful effect it had on his life and success. In an age of grace it is hard to understand how someone as successful as David could be so in love with the law that seems so strict and binding. Yet, David seems to revel in the freedom and success that the law brought into his life. For to him the law was not a burden but a revelation of the nature and will of the One he loved so much.

Jesus said in John 16:12-13, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth.” And again in John 8:32, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." In our dark world today where truth is subject to the whims of mankind, Jesus has sent us His Spirit to bring us into His unchanging truth and a deeper revelation of Himself and the Father. We need more than ever to enroll in the school of the Spirit and the Word.

Psalms 27:14

“Wait on the LORD; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the LORD!”

Your brother in Christ,

Andy Clark

What Do You Hear?

2 Samuel 5:24-25
“And it shall be, when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the mulberry trees, and then you shall advance quickly. For then the LORD will go out before you to strike the camp of the Philistines." And David did so, as the LORD commanded him; and he drove back the Philistines from Geba as far as Gezer.”

In the midst of the business of life, when challenges and problems press in on you, and the enemy of our soul, our family, our job and our future seems to be hammering at your door, what do you hear? Do you hear the negative voice of the world screaming at you through the media, friends, family and circumstances? Is there a Goliath in your life threatening to cut off your head and feed you to the birds?

I believe David’s success as a shepherd boy, a psalmist, a general, a fugitive, and a king to conquer all his enemies and to usher Israel into an unprecedented time of peace and prosperity was founded on David’s ability to hear and respond to the voice of God in the midst of crisis. We see a good example of this in I Samuel 30 when David and his band of men return from battle and find their city has been burned with fire and their families and all they possessed had been taken by the enemy. The Bible says the men were so distressed over the loss of their sons and daughters that they talked of stoning David. David himself was weeping at the loss of his wife and children. But instead of wanting to stone someone, the Bible says “David strengthened himself in the Lord his God and… David inquired of the Lord.” (I Samuel 30:6,8) The result of David’s response in the midst of crisis was at God’s instructions, he not only defeated the enemy and recovered everything the enemy had taken, but he plundered the enemy.

Many have started the New Year with prayer and fasting in order to prepare their souls to hear the voice of the Spirit. It is a powerful way to begin the New Year. But let us not slip back into our old ways but maintain a posture of hearing God’s voice to enable us to conquer and plunder the enemy in the coming year. In the opening passage God speaks to David that when you hear my army advancing, it is time for you to advance quickly. When I move, you move. When I act, you act. The Lord promises David, when you do this, “I the Lord will go out before you to strike the camp of the Philistines.”

I believe 2012 is a crucial year for us to hear the voice of God, observe what He is doing, and act quickly when He speaks and moves. Whatever you are facing today, God is greater than your challenge and has a plan to enable you to overcome. Daniel 11:32-33 says, “The people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits. And those of the people who understand shall instruct many.”

May you hear God’s voice in a new way today and may His grace and enabling power cause you to walk in victory and into His destiny for you.

Andy Clark