Move Into The New
Angela Gulartie
January 1, 2009
"2009: Move Into The New!"
Grace and peace to you this day!
As I stand on the threshold of the first day of this new (Roman) calendar year, I am reminded of where I was a year ago, and the difference in where God has carried me to on the spiritual path today.
At this time last year I had just completed a year of intense work at my job as a criminal defense lawyer, with great success and credit going to God for the victories sustained in His service, rendering legal aid to the poor and to the oppressed voiceless of our society. (See, Isa 1:17 Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. And, Isa 58:6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke?)
I had spent a most satisfactory year in continuing my Internet Ministry and doing fairly frequent Internet teaching through writing.
I was affiliated and doing work with some local ministries and working in various capacities with some ministries abroad as well.
I had headed up three different "small groups" of women where the focus was on teaching "present truth" in a prophetic flow of the Spirit and activating the gifts of those I was acting in the capacity of a pastor to.
I was the "house prophet" to a fourth group, a house fellowship group of serious intercessors.
Yet, despite all of this, I sensed that it was time for a change, that there was something more God wanted of me and for me. I also sensed that there was some hidden bondage I could feel but not name, something that had wrapped tightly around me, velvet skein by velvet skein. And then, I experienced a deliverance from that bondage. That deliverance was the beginning of a significant year of transition.
It began in January of 2008 while I was at the "Starting The Year Off Right" conference at Denton, Texas. One of the speakers, I don't recall now who, began to describe what happened to leaders in the Body of Christ as the expectations of others who viewed them in a certain light began to activate and collectively join together in the Spirit realm. Those expectations, done innocently and without any negative intent whatsoever, formed a silken cocoon of restraint and bondage upon leaders.
You ask, how could this be? It's simple: The power of agreement, coupled with an unspoken hope that others will do for us, what we think we are not able to do for ourselves. And that requires an unspoken belief about "who" the "others" are, in terms of our vision of their roles and their responsibility.
So, for instance, if I am faced with a dilemma, and I think I can't hear from God, I will go seeking after a Word from a prophet or someone who I think hears more clearly from God. But when I do that, I create in the Spirit, a marker that says, 'You have a better relationship with God than I and it's your responsibility because you are in five fold ministry, to tell me what He's saying for my life".
And so instead of seeking to improve my relationship with Him, I will rely on the strength of someone else's relationship with Him to know what to do.
What's wrong with that, you might ask?
Nothing, up to a certain point. To occasionally seek out the wisdom or confirmation from a brother or sister in Christ is an important part of learning to work together as a Body. But what has happened in the Body on the road to getting to that point of occasionally doing that, is the creation of a Body of Christ that has two sets of people: Those who "hear", and those who are relying upon that hearing, without seeking to develop to a point where they hear for themselves on a daily basis.
Beloved, such should not be.
Ephesians 4:11-14(a) says this: "And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the Body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the statute of the fulness of Christ: that we henceforth be no more children......
Did you read that, saints? We have forgotten that God's purpose for the five fold ministry - the apostles, prophets, teachers, pastors and evangelists - is a limited one! His ultimate purpose is for each and every one of us who is not in the five fold ministry to come into spiritual maturity - to stop being spiritual children - and to come into such a personal knowledge of the Son of God (translate, "relationship with Jesus") that we become perfected and are able to move into unity of faith with the rest of the Body.
One of the primary purposes for those of us in five-fold ministry is to facilitate that process of leading others into spiritual maturity.
A clear example of this is what we do with raising our children. I could have, as my child grew through the years, continued to wash his clothes and cook his meals. But if I was going to raise him into maturity, I would stop doing those things for him and instead, teach him how to do those things for himself so that he would not have to rely on me.
It's the same thing with relationship with God. Those I have worked with could continue to rely on me for their "word" from God, or their healing, or whatever it was they needed. Or, I could work with them to open their own gifts, to learn how to hear God for themselves, to practice spiritual warfare and to learn by the Spirit, understanding that it was going to be more difficult and time-consuming at first for them to do that, than it would be for me to give them the answer or heal them through laying on of hands.
So there's a two fold problem that arises in the Body. with that. When people get used to you "doing for them", they don't learn the skills necessary to go directly to the source - God - and learn to do for themselves through their relationship with Him. That's the first problem.
The second problem is that their expectations will bond together with the expectations of others who see someone in the five-fold ministry in a certain way with a certain function, and those collective expectations and often, the "ministry machinery" that gets built up around that, gets in the way of the minister being able to shift gears and move into the next phase of God's plan for their lives. So, the ministers get stuck. They get trapped in bondage and they get trapped, if they are not careful, by a need to stay within the machinery they have built.
God's solution of course, is that those in five fold ministry are to train and equip others into spiritual maturity - meaning that they can do for themselves by going to God, what they have been reliant upon others in the past to do for them.
And this is what I've done with those who God has given me. Every single one that I have worked with is in a different place now, than they were when they started. They can hear from God. They can activate a flow of the Spirit to heal. They know what their primary gift is. They might not be perfected at all of it, but they are on the road and if I were to be hit by a bus tomorrow, they could carry on quite well without me. That, beloved ones, is equipping the saints.
So, back to the main point. At the conference, the speaker called to the altar, all those who felt like they had been trapped in bondage by the expectations of other people. At that point, I realized he had given a name to what I had been feeling, but not known enough to name. And I practically flew down to that altar, I ran so fast!
The deliverance that I experienced when that bondage was broken, was so tangible that I could literally feel the bonds snap in the Spirit, and a physical sense of weight was lifted off of me. I thank God for His mercy and His revelation which always provides the "next step" of His perfecting me.
And so thereafter, things in my life began to change.
The first significant one was a 90 day moratorium off of everything and everyone. I didn't read anyone else's spiritual "stuff", I was "off" the Internet, I wasn't even allowed to tell anyone what I was going through. It was me, and God, and all He told me to do, was listen to Him.
I would not describe that as easy. In fact it was a lonely time, because I suddenly was in isolation from people, and I had no idea what would come next or when it would end.
At the end of the 90 days, I was taking my daily hike around the hills where I live. Suddenly God broke in on my prayers to Him, and He said to me these words: "What is the most important thing to you? Look into your heart and see!"
Somehow from the way He worded it, I knew He meant, what were the most important priorities in my life, after my relationship with Him. Because He already knew, and I already knew, that in this life, for me, He came first before everything and everyone. If that hadn't been the situation, I never would have been obedient to suddenly and immediately obey His instruction to "disconnect" from everyone else and follow Him into the desert.
And so I looked deep within my heart, a process only made possible by the 90 days in the desert that I had just gone through. And the answer I gave Him was the last thing on earth that I would have expected.
Before that 90 day process, if you had asked me that same question, I would have blithely given you this as my list of my priorities: (1) Prophecy (2) Teaching (3) General Ministry, (4) my son (5) work.
But in this timing, freed from expectations of others, having my heart exposed and my vision cleansed from my time in the desert, this is what I saw and this is what I answered Him: "The most important thing in my life is my family!".
Not ministry, not teaching, nor prophecy, all of which I dearly love and all of which are part of my assignment from Him. But, family came first.
When I think back on it, the answer as to how I could have gotten off-track was fairly simple, Scripturally speaking: Jer 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?
So, we tend to deceive ourselves. And in my life history, there was much fertile ground for that deceit to take root in: Alcoholism and violence in my nuclear family, my mom fractured by enduring the rigors of war as a young woman and then leaving behind all of her family to come to America; further fracturing as I was swallowed up in the rebellion of the hippie/drugs movement birthed in 1968, fed by my college years at UC Berkeley, a radical hotbed of unrest, rebellion and lawlessness; further fractures in my family unit as my marriage eventually ended in divorce. No wonder it was soothing and easier and rewarding to take refuge in God's work! And there was no question it was a work I was called to.
But God knew better. He has an order and a priority, and we cannot use His work as a refuge to run away from His priority. And for God, family is the first priority. Relationship with Him is built upon an understanding that we are His family- service in ministry must take "second place" to that. And out of that provides the role model for our lives - after relationship with Him, we must place relationship with our family as a priority, before ministry.
And so that day as I looked into the depths of my heart as it was revealed by God, I gave him an answer that surprised me, but didn't surprise Him. I believe this process is set forth in Proverbs 20:27 (NKJV): The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inner depths of his heart.
And as I gave God my answer, I saw in the Spirit, that my spiritual path was taking a 90 degree turn, and that my life would undergo radical changes as a result.
And so it has been, this past year, and it continues on into 2009. There have been many "seed" changes, meaning, the changes have been birthed in the form of seed that has germinated, but is still yet young.
What does that look like in my life? It looks like this:
I've given up much of my former position of giving individual prophetic words to others as part of my Internet Ministry, and begun to focus more on teaching others to hear for themselves.
I've allowed God to realign my ministry relationships with other groups.
I've let go of my pastoral leading of my small groups, and am facilitating those groups into pastoral relationship with another ministry as led by Holy Spirit.
I have moved into a state of almost continuous joy, a state I last lived in when I was 14 years old. Wow! What a blessing! It makes it worthwhile to have "given up" or "let go" of everything I just talked about!!
I have experienced God's reclamation power in my family, as I have resumed communication with, been privileged to visit, and now pray daily for, an uncle, three cousins and their children, (family I had not really had contact with for 20 years!). And this has opened the door to a new flow of God's power in those member's lives, a flow I am excited about because I know how God works and I know that flow will increase!
I have experienced God's redemptive flow of blessing and healing of relationship with my ex-husband, and I am seeing significant changes in his family line as a result of God's work at a new level, brought about by united prayer in faith of various family members including me! Together, we are all working on kicking the devils of addiction and alcoholism out of his entire generational line, (translate - "deliverance") instead of just addressing it on an individual basis. For the first time ever, his nephew is studying God's Word, and studying it quite intensively! And his mother, well, she's begun to move at new levels of prayer and power in the Spirit - and will continue to see an increase in the escalation of this over 2009.
And in my personal life, well, I've seen a significant increase in my ability to access God's anointing for healing purposes, and a significant increase in my ability to bring in His Presence when I minister. One of my friends said to me recently, "When you minister, I see flames of fire in the Spirit!". And so it goes, for when we let go of "our old", God is free to move us into "His new".
But it doesn't stop there. He's put me into some new relationships with others in the Body of Christ. He's increased my ability to see into His Valley of Vision for a much further range of time than I ever had before - many years, in fact! And He's led me to "move forward" by enrolling in school on a part-time basis, so that 4 or 5 years from now, when I finish my degree, I will be able at transition from law into the health care field, where I plan to work at least another 30 years in His service.
And while l am in school, working among those who by training and culture are immersed in a background that typically does not know Christ, I expect that I will continue to "shine the light" that comes simply from having Him be the focus of my life, the most important relationship that I engage in.
So, I just want to encourage each of you, as we move into 2009: Let go of your old patterns and plans and structures. They probably won't do you much good in the new, anyhow. We must make room for God to move us into the new! And as we do so, we will experience a flow of blessing unlike anything we've ever experienced before!
If you would like to set this process in motion, pray the following prayer with me and we will stand in agreement together for His work in your life:
Father God, I come boldly before Your Throne of Grace this day. I confess as sin, and repent, for holding on to the past. I freely release to You now, my place in every old spiritual structure that I have held onto past Your timing and plan. I confess as sin and repent of, holding on to that which is comfortable, familiar, secure, but which is part of the old and not of Your "new". I confess as sin and repent of every emotional anchor from the past that Your Word tells me to let go of: Resentment, grief, fear & worry, regret, and all my personal judgments that "things should have been different." I freely relinquish those to You, Father.
And Father, I release the flow of Your Spirit into every area just named. I give You permission to move me into Your new for me, and I pledge to cooperate with You in this process. I ask that You give me eyes to see and ears to hear Your leading! I ask that You illuminate my heart, and allow me to see anything which would stand in the way of my moving in agreement with Your Plan for my life.
And Father, I bless You, and thank You, and give You Glory that You will accomplish this as I am obedient to Your Word and Your leading.
Amen!