TO POSSESS OR NOT TO POSSESS IS THE CHOICE
by Meri Burlingame

A few weeks ago as I left the building after morning services, I "saw" a principle that explained some of the things God was doing in that congregation. While the context of what I saw was related to the local congregation, it has become clear to me that it also has much broader application for us as Christians in this period of "transition."

I have been a part of this congregation for about 2 years and have watched God bless it in a number of ways, and have seen the increase of the power and flow of His Spirit both as it moves through pastoral leadership and as it moves through the congregation on a Sunday morning. God has richly blessed them financially and after four years of focusing on "building the people" the land they bought is now paid for and they are confident that God is directing them to begin to build something on the land that will facilitate the life of the body of Christ.

As I left the building, I could see the hand of God upon the congregation and a measure of the great blessings that lay ahead for them. But with that I saw something very striking to my consciousness. This congregation was at a place where they had to make a choice. If they continue to go in the direction that they have been going, they will build a very solid, well grounded church, which the Lord would bless. It would be a "fortress church in the wilderness" isolated in the world, a place of refuge and security. However, they would not possess the land.

If they want to possess the land and get the victory over the five areas that have been declared by the church and its leadership as the areas that God is most interested in affecting the lives of the people in the community, then a different direction would have to be taken.

Under the fortress church mentality, leadership truly can trust that God will step by step show them what He wants them to do. They are basically "self-contained." On the other hand, the "kingdom church" cannot function on its own. It requires assistance from "apostolic leadership" in the "larger body of Christ." Those in a given locality may never receive the "revelation" of the answers to the way to get victory over the local principalities and powers. The local leadership may not have the "empowerment" and/or gifting to facilitate the equipping of the local body to do the work of the advancing the kingdom.

When dealing with a given locality, community, area, region, there are certain "forces" at work that can inhibit the release of knowledge and understanding within that area. However, when leadership is called in from other areas, they are free to minister and release the power of God that no one in the local area was either free to do....or called to operate in.

In this time of transition from the wilderness church to the Kingdom Church that occupies the land, there is the need to be equipped for ministry, and even the "equippers" need equipping and need "equippers" to come in and release to the people gifts and calling that might not be present otherwise within a given area. Similarly, there may be areas of healing and restoration to which the people in the local church don't have access. As with healing, so with teaching, deliverance, even evangelism.

The old mentality of the "church" was that we have everything within us that we need. As we move into the awareness of the Kingdom, we become more aware that the body of Christ is "broken" and is spread all over the globe, each with its own gifts and calling. God is working with a "corporate body" today full of living stones and His goal and purpose is to bring all the stones into their appropriate places. At this point, there are stones scattered in places that are beyond the understanding and knowledge of local leadership to even know what to do with and in some places local "leadership" doesn't even know where some stones are hidden.

Some of these will only be found and responded to with the gifts and callings of those who are invited in from other areas to minister. It is kind of like a parent needing assistance in dealing with the various needs of their own children. In the natural, we don't hesitate to allow teachers to teach our children, doctors to tend to physical ails, dentists to their teeth, ophthalmologists their eyes.....etc. When the needs get even more specific, we go to greater specialists trained in more precise areas.

So with the Body. God has specialists that will minister the many facets of His power and presence to His people. Some who minister in the area of healing might be only used by God to heal certain types of diseases. Why? I don't know except that He has planned His body in such a way that IT NEEDS EACH OTHER. The foot needs the eye, the ear needs the baby finger nail. Rip a fingernail off and the whole body hurts. Let an ear suffer and the whole body will be in agony. So in the Body of Christ we need each other to build up the body, to put the right pieces in the right place at the right time.

There is much talk about times and seasons, and this is a season of transition from the "independent congregation" to the "corporate Body of Christ". Many individual congregations have been greatly used of God. They often utilized leadership from around the world and may have sent people out to other congregations unlike anything in the years past. And yet, even that is different from what God is calling us to today. It is the identity that we are going to have that constitutes the corporate Body of Christ which is able to possess the land rather than any specific form of church order or structure.

It is the corporate identity as members of the body of Christ which in part means recognizing that we are all parts  of a Body that was 'broken" that will bring forth the humility that gives us freedom and access to all the gifts and callings that God has put within His Body. Only such a "church" will be able to drive out the demons that the Lord drives into their hands as they seek to occupy the land of their inheritance and do so as a corporate entity.

The warriors that had possessed the land of their inheritance before crossing Jordan were to remain with the rest of the nation until all had possessed their own inheritance. Not only that, these 40,000 warriors went AHEAD of the priests who bore on their own shoulders the Ark of the Covenant.

Today there are those that "go ahead of the Ark of the Covenant" who have possessed some measure of their inheritance who are sent ahead to assist the rest of the body to possess theirs. When they marched around Jericho, what group of 40,000 was out there in front? Was it the warriors or the priests? The warriors who had already inherited their land were out in front. The priests didn't have any land to inherit; they were only given cities to live in. And they were responsible for "carrying the presence."

These are all types of leadership God has placed in the body in this hour that the church might be able to bring forth out of the land the fruit that belongs to the Lord! That fruit, of course, is a multifaceted body which glorifies Himself, that is adorned with Righteousness, that shines forth with Joy, and that speaks forth Truth, and that walks along the highway of holiness.

Many leaders as well as individuals in this hour need to ask themselves, "What do I desire? Do I just want the blessing and approval of God or do I long to be a intimate, integral part of His Work upon the earth?"

In 1993 I was driving onto the freeway when I saw a choice that lay before me. While I knew clearly what that choice was, it only has been within the context of what I have seen these last three weeks that those choices are now clearly understood. That day on the freeway I saw that I could be permanently separated from my estranged husband and continue to live with my mother, raise my two girls, and be richly blessed of the Lord, never having to look back. OR I could return to the family home with the two girls and finish what the Lord told me He had begun. When this last "option" was put before me, tears flowed in my eyes as I thought of the many within that family who had no knowledge of Jesus Christ, who were locked in the bondage of sin and the price I had already paid in 10 years of marriage. The choice was a simple one.

Today I understand more clearly. To have gone on and made a new life for myself would not have been wrong. It would have been a way that God would have blessed. But it wasn't the fullness of what God had planned for my life The call and destiny of God to possess the land had been planted deep within my heart. I knew that "the heathen were my inheritance," that the family that I was a part of was "my inheritance" along with the islands of the sea. 10 years ago I had little or no idea what the price of this journey would be nor did I understand that it was a totally impossible thing for me to accomplish until the coming of the apostolic.

Over those years I kept looking for apostles. Some of the prophets around me told me I had to go out and seek apostles to team up with, but I didn't know where to look. As I sought the Lord I had the confidence that what He was asking of me was just to keep looking to Him and in due time I would be hooked up with whatever people He purposed. Here and there I saw someone with what I recognized as an apostolic call and vision. But no one seemed to understand what it meant.

In each of the lives of these apostolic people I saw, the apostolic vision ultimately fell by the wayside as other trials and tribulations came into those men's lives. Little did I understand that what I had seen was just a glimpse of what was yet ahead, whose Kairos had not yet come. And it is a good thing I didn't: for I would surely have lost hope if I had thought it was going to be yet another 8-10-15 years in coming to fulfillment.

It has been 7 years since that choice was made as I pulled onto the freeway in 93. Today much more is in place for the accomplishment of the purposes which I saw that day. Have I possessed the land? No.....it can't be possessed alone. It is a corporate work. Over the past years various areas of my own heart have been possessed, and even in the last few weeks, victory has been won over ground that the enemy through his access to had the ability to twist and turn me as he worked through people and circumstances in my life.

What will it take to possess the land? In order to get the victory over the five areas that the local congregation has seen that God says is the local "church's to inherit, it is going to cost everyone who chooses to go that way everything in their lives both personally and corporately. It isn't something that the local congregation or even the local "community" can accomplish by itself. It will take the resources of the larger body to be released to it and received by it for the local body/community to even know how to deal with the issues and forces that presently possess the land. If they don't choose to go on in and possess the land, the vision will fall to the ground until the Lord raises up other apostolic people whose desire to possess the land of their inheritance and are willing to pay the price.

To possess this land will mean needing those represented by the 40,000 warriors to go ahead of the ark; it will mean having priests who are prepared to carry the Ark of His Presence itself and the other items of His presence that must be borne on the shoulders of priests who have sanctified themselves and have put on the garments of righteousness. It will mean that those who are called to blow the trumpets will know how to call for the Body to rise up and attend to a given work in a given time and given battle/location and many other aspects of "ministry.

God is still allowing us to make the choice. He gave the children of Israel the choice to go in and possess the land or to yield to their fears and stay where they were. God continued to give them shoes that never wore out, He provided manna from heaven and water from the Rock. The fire by night and the cloud by day did not depart from them even though they liked the way things were better than to risk all to possess the land. And that generation passed away except for two before the younger ones were directed to go in and possess the land.

Even Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land because of his attitude concerning his role before the people. When he struck the Rock when he was told to speak to it, he violated the foundational principle upon which leadership in the promised land is built...... fellowship/intimacy with God and with his people. When the Rock was first smitten, Moses and the leadership went out from the camp, but the second time when they needed water from the Rock, it took place in the midst of the congregation. The church that will possess the land will have no separation of leadership and people: they will be one, in fellowship with the Rock of their Salvation, their total provision. Leadership will call forth the provision that is needed and teach people how to release all that is provided for them and for others in Christ. Since the Rock has been smitten, all provision in the Cross now only needs to be called forth and released, another major operating principles of the church that will possess the land of its inheritance.

Meri Burlingame
 

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