Last week we covered the topic of “Spiritual Warfare’s Forgotten Side.” In short, it is the fight to bring our society closer to God. Today, continue exploring that subject focussing on how we make an influence.
Before we get started, let me just admit that I’ve tried writing two or three other pieces and preparing them before I travel over the weekend to visit family. I planned to have them all lined up and ready for launch so that I could work on some other stuff while they just came out easy peasy. Yeah, that was the plan except that God didn’t like it and told me to scrap it all and start from the beginning.
The reason these other things that I’d written and even recorded needed to be gotten rid of was because I was trying to do something that I wasn’t called to do. I was trying to launch a series that would enable them to come out regularly and give me free time for other tasks I wanted to handle. My reason for doing this turned out to be due to “The Fuel Project”, a YouTube ministry, is releasing their new series, Trench. I didn’t realize this was the case until I listened to the Holy Spirit’s conviction and understood what was happening. I was abandoning my calling to write a different type of message to the listeners He’d given me and instead attempting to create an Ishmael. This is a terminology that John Bevere uses to describe trying to do ministry work in your own strength and vision when it is supposed to be done in accordance with God’s authority, power, and order of operations.
During my spiritual recharge time, I went through the “Called” course on John Bevere’s free resource the “MessengerX” app. You can find it on your Google Play Store and the Apple Store or even watch it online from their website. I will provide a link to the online lesson so those of you who are interested in it can give it a look. In that course, he has ten lessons and each lesson will have a follow-up challenge that is meant to help you meditate on what you’ve learned in that episode.
But what is more important than anything is that the course explains that each and every one of us has a calling on our lives from God. The first half of the course establishes that we have a calling despite what we may or may not feel. While the second half is about how to identify it followed up by how to keep ourselves from reducing effectiveness or outright killing the ministry that we are part of. Once you are done with this Thoughtful Thursday I highly recommend you check out the “Called” course via the links that I have provided. Expect God to blow your mind through the revelations and reevaluation of your life that may follow from it.
Now to the main topic of the day, Cross Tags. Some of you, namely my parents who listen to the podcast and read these, have heard me use that term before. It is my own phrase that has a specific meaning.
When I first thought of this phrase I was thinking about how Christians are to be identified with Jesus Christ completely and serve Him as our “Commander and Chief.” We are given the armor of God for a reason and that is to fight the spiritual war but if we do not follow the orders that we are given then we are out of line. This will disqualify us from having the support that we need to be effective. The calling of God on your life and my own life will be unique to each one of us but it is our spiritual marching orders.
As a military kid who has relocated a few times I have personal experience in the importance of getting the right set of orders. They tell you exactly what you need to do and where you are to go and report for duty. These instructions also include how long you will be staying in a certain area the date you will be leaving for somewhere else and when you are departing from the current location. When the military needs to move a family they will send in guys who will do all of the packings and moving for you. The family’s job is to make sure that nothing gets missed in the process being done.
Please do not get so focused on the moving analogy because my point is that you are provided with the required support in all areas that it is needed. However, in order to receive this support obedience is a non-negotiable issue. As Christians this means we must obey God completely or we have disobeyed Him.
“Cross Tags” came to me as the title for an autobiography I wanted to write about my life as a Christian military kid. At the time I though it was going to be my first book. Looks like God had other plans for me like He always does when we don’t consult Him in our life planning. If we are being honest I would have never thought that my first published book was going to be just taking the blog series about the armor of God and putting it into an easy-to-share format. When I wrote “Welcome to the Armory” I merely desired to make sure that what God wanted me to write was written for people to read. My focus, while writing, was on God and that is what needs to happen in our lives to be active in the forgotten side of spiritual warfare.
One of my friends is doing a double major in college and was thinking of changing his political science to business. You might not feel like that is a bad thing to do. But you do not have the other piece of vital information. My friend is going into ministry. When I heard his thoughts I told him not to change his course but to stay on his current path because it would allow God to reveal to him the connection between political actions and the spiritual world. But I have to trust that as people follow His promptings they will be influential in the way they must be for the greatest Kingdom Impact.
The calling of God carries with it the divine authority of God. In the “Called” course John Bevere gives testimony of when he once was flying to an event at the beginning of his ministry that God was calling him to and asked John while he was reading his Bible if John wanted to be sent by himself or by God. During that time God showed John how the disciples and apostles performed miracles that displayed God’s power because He had sent them. They were sent empowered because they had obeyed His commands to wait in Jerusalem until He gave them the needed power. That power was, and is, the Holy Spirit coming alive and active in them on the day of Pentecost.
He comes to each and every Christian to be their power source and guide in life. Just let that sink into you for a moment. Obedience to God in your life by fulfilling the calling He has made for you will cause you to move forward in His authority. This means that you cannot be moved unless He orders it to happen or you decide to defect and leave.
I am currently reading “The Bait of Satan” which is also by John Bevere and he has a course about it on MessengerX. Satan’s bait to bring us out of the calling of God to make us turn away from Him is nothing more than offense and being offended. And I find it such a good book to follow up the “Called” Course with because it talks about how Satan tries to make us turn away from God. When John Bevere talks about the calling of God on our lives he says that nothing in the world can take us away from the calling of God. But he follows it up with a caveat that we can easily walk away from or ignore the calling. Before John Bevere spoke under the anointing of God’s place and time he was told by one of his wise preacher friends that God was going to reward him by placing the callings that others had ignored onto his life in addition to what was already placed on him. Satan knows that obedience to God carries with it the authority of God and our enemy wants to keep us from having that authority in our ministry. That is why he works tirelessly to stop us from fulfilling the calling and if he can get us offended at the basic principles of what God has called us to do then we will be more likely to reject it.
There is a group of Christianity labeled “Progressive Christianity” which is a collection of churches and Christian Influencers who are trying to merge the ideals of subjective morality and subjective truth with Christianity to make it more accepted by main stream society. Before anyone gets into a “rage tweet mode” let’s remember this is not anything new in history. There will always be Christians who are trying to conform to the pattern of this world to remain relevant and popular. John Cooper has spoken about this movement several times on his podcast expressing deep disappointment at this group because it causes the idea of sanctification to become irrelevant with their merging of incompatible ideologies.
Sanctification is just a fancy way of saying that we are being made holy by the continual renewal of our minds in Christ through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. This means that we need to get rid of our sin and all the things that ensnare us. 1st Thessalonians 4:3-6 makes it clear to us that God’s will for our lives starts with sanctifying us. This concept is what offends most if not all people today because it means they need to stop indulging in the sins of the flesh that they enjoy. It is painful to do this and that is why Christ said we need to deny ourselves and pick up our cross daily. When he said that He meant that we need to put to death the things of the flesh and also warned that it would be painful internally when we did this. Crucifixion has been agreed by scholars to be the most painful way to die and in the same way, when we choose Christ it feels that part of us has died.
Here is why I believe there is a fight to remove sanctification from Christian culture. The process changes our nature to be more in line with God’s and that means we hate sin in our lives. In the New Testament we find that Christians are called to hold each other and themselves accountable to holiness in our living. Episode 7 of the “Called” course talks about “Calling Killers” and the one that exists at the top of the list is unrepentant sin. If there is a sin that has not been dealt with it shall cause our downfall and seriously reduce our impact when we are brought back to our calling. Satan wants us to fail in our calling. Not multiply in our reach and influence for the Kingdom of God finishing out life as a strong example of humble obedience to Him.
We have covered much today and I know that there is a lot to take in so let me summarize it all by going back to the title, “Wear your Cross Tags.”
In simple terms it means this; just as dog tags in the military identify a soldier a Christian who wears their Cross Tags is one who is fully committed to one main goal in their life, sanctification. Their goal is to become so aligned with God that they are willing to go through the process of receiving His nature. They have accepted that this process will bring them through times of pain and struggle but their foundation is on the desire to know Him. From the foundation of truly knowing God and obeying Him, they march according to His orders under His authority to further the Kingdom of God and to multiply their reach for His sake. When they encounter a chance to get offended they don’t let themselves get offended and when they speak they don’t worry about if it offends others. Instead, they are primarily concerned about if they are speaking the words that God has given them to speak. In all things they seek God first and allow for the Holy Spirit to be active in guiding their lives. Knowing that where God has placed them they shall not be removed until God orders for them to move elsewhere and work in that new place.
I just want to pray that this word has impacted you and that you have gotten something out of it.
This was a long post and it seems like God might not let up on that as He develops me more into what He wants me to be. I recommend you check out my podcast where I record these much like an audiobook. That way you can listen to it while not being tethered to the computer, tablet, or your phone screen.
“Called” on MessengerX
John Cooper’s Website and Podcast