Don’t Be a Successful Failure
There are two kinds of success: temporal and eternal.
You can have your rewards now, or you can receive them later. Far too often, genuine moves of God that were begun in the Spirit ultimately failed because people focused on building ministries rather than advancing the Kingdom of God. Building a ministry is a temporal success at best. Yet when a person is Kingdom-minded and Kingdom-motivated, his or her work will be eternal. The Word of God provides for good success that will abide forever. God gave Joshua the master key to obtaining that good success. Here is how He described the key:
This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success (Joshua 1:8 NKJV).
What I invest in and give my life for will create eternal rewards that bring me the greatest fulfillment and com- fort. The key to Kingdom prosperity is observing the commandments of God. Through obedience, the windows of Heaven are opened.
For us to be blessed in this life is the will of God. Second Peter 1:3 says, “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who has called us” (NKJV). But we must make sure we go about it God’s way. If not, we will be shortchanged and suffer great loss. Contrary to a great deal of modern-day teaching and preaching, Jesus actually taught that we are to lay up treasure for ourselves.
Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be (Matthew 6:19 NLT).
The Greek word for treasure is a word that means “deposit.” As the master teacher, the Lord is teaching us how to secure our investments for eternity. No broker can offer that! God wants us to do well and prosper. Poverty is a spiritual force in the arsenal of the enemy.
In the past several years, I have met pastors, missionaries, businessmen, and others in America and around the world who belong in what I call “Faith’s Hall of Fame.” They recognize that their lives are not their own. They have been bought with a huge price, and they know it. They live their lives in appreciation for the price that has been paid for their spiritual freedom. They walk through life in a constant recognition that the Lord’s goodness is the source of their blessing and not their own works.
These are the kind of men and women who have true Kingdom qualities of leadership. They fear and reverence God, they love the truth, and they never allow themselves to be bribed. “Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens” (Exodus 18:21). Washington, D.C., needs to get this message because the combination of corruption and a lack of these resolute qualities is destroying our foundations.
We have seen men and women selected to serve in our churches and ministries who have great gifts and talents, yet they do not possess these qualities. The truth is, without these characteristics in their lives, they prove to be hirelings. When the wolves come, they flee. If you can be bought, the devil will pay any price necessary to purchase your service and gain his influence over your life.
These hirelings are not the army of God that I am talking about. The real army of God is made up of ordinary people who know they serve an extraordinary God. They may not be worth anything in a world that loves the praises of men, but they are treasures in the Kingdom of God. They don’t realize it, but all of the frustration, failure, and disappointments of the past years have been their boot camp, a place of divine preparation. Like the oyster that creates a beautiful pearl through a painful irritation, they are emerging as vessels who have been prepared for this very time. Quite soon you will see this army of God rising to gather the final end-time harvest.
The Presence of God
The key to victory in these days is not the power of the flesh but the presence of our God. What makes this army something to be feared is not the individual soldiers in the army but the presence of God in their midst. Security is not the absence of danger but the presence of God—no matter what the danger. The arm of flesh will always fail (Jeremiah 17:5); God takes great measures to teach us this valuable truth. The Word of God makes it clear that every great man or woman of God must go through an “emptying process” in order to be used by God.
Moses’s school of preparation was a 40-year stint on the backside of the desert. Before he entered that place to be used by God, he had been schooled in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was a great orator and producer of great deeds. But when God had finished his training program, he could not even carry on a decent conversation! One Jewish Rabbi described that dramatic change in Moses with these words, “When Moses says, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?’ God answers not by telling Moses who he is, but by telling him who God is, saying ‘I will be with you’ (Exodus 3:12).”
After you have been in the school of the Lord and He has you prepared to serve Him, you may feel totally inadequate to do anything at all. That seems to be the story of my life. If you are full of yourself, there is no room for Him. Pride is the armor of darkness, and lies are what hold it in place. There is nothing greater or more powerful than truth and nothing weaker than lies. One of the greatest breakthroughs you can ever experience is to recognize how utterly helpless you are apart from God. However, as Paul says in Philippians 4:13, you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.
God’s presence in our midst is our victory. Psalm 9:3 says it this way, “When my enemies are turned back, they shall fall and perish at thy presence.” The sign of the presence of God in the Old Testament was the ark of the covenant (also known as the ark of His presence). Over and over again, when the ark was taken onto the battlefield, Israel was victorious.
The ark of the covenant gives us clues as to how to gain the victory assured us.
The ark of the covenant was simply a wooden box 45 inches long, 27 inches wide, and 27 inches high that was overlaid with gold inside and out. The wood speaks of our humanity, and the gold speaks of our faith and His divinity. When Israel had the ark in their midst, they won their battles; but when they allowed the ark to be captured by their enemies, they suffered tragic loss.
Within the ark were three items of key significance:
The tablets of stone: On these tablets were inscribed the Ten Commandments, which represent our covenant with The Lord and the written Word of God.
Golden pot of manna: This speaks of the Word of God that is quickened to us by the Holy Spirit, or what we often call the rhema, as opposed to the logos. The logos is the written Word of God, but the rhema is a quickened word from God.
Aaron’s rod that budded: This was an old dry almond tree branch that speaks of the power of God’s anointing upon us and the ability to bear fruit instantly.
Within the ark, we find the mystery and the reality of what makes great men and women of God. They are people of the Word, which focuses on three things in order to reap the full benefit God intends: you must read the Word, study the Word, and meditate on the Word. It must reach the place in your life where it becomes the meditation of your heart that will, in turn, become rhema. This sets the stage for the presence of God to be upon you, which is the anointing that destroys the yoke (Isaiah 10:27).
Ministers of God’s Word cannot depend on their own abilities or their own personalities. The day of the rock-star minister is over. We have had our idols in leadership far too long, and it has prevented people in the world from meeting the real Jesus. There is a “spirit” that can come upon leaders that can kill a move of God and transform it from a living reality into a dead monument. Yes, God uses men, and we give honor where honor is due, but that honor should never be the cause of pride. There is a serious responsibility upon leadership to keep His presence paramount in all that we do in His name. Our success is not about men’s greatness; it is about the Holy Spirit’s presence in our midst.
Remember Gandhi allegedly said that he really liked our Christ, but he did not like Christians because they were so unlike their Christ. We should read those words and weep. It is His presence that causes mountains to move. If we were a people determined to walk in the presence of God, we would see others drawn to His presence— not to us. In Revelation 6, when men refused to repent of their evil and wickedness, they ran from His presence into the caves, “and said to the mountains and to rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?’” (Revelation 6:16–17 NKJV). They did this in order to not look upon the face of the King of kings and Lord of all lords.
For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life (2 Corinthians 2:15-16 NKJV).
