Revelation Tidbits - David Weber
Recently I was directed to look back at the themes that were revelatory in my spiritual walk. These are themes the Lord brought to my remembrance. As we start out on our walk with the Lord we hear certain concepts and our understanding of them is limited. As we mature, we receive clarity and their deeper meaning begin to be revealed. Concepts like grace, faith, the Kingodm of God, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit are exceedingly deep, but the Lord is faithful to open our eyes and has helped me in my journey to uncover some of the deeper meanings that have brought greater intimacy with Him, as God’s loving heart and provision for us was revealed.
What is the Kingdom of Heaven - Kingdom of God as expressed in the Gospels particularly the Gospel of Mathew. We need a revelation of the supernatural power and authority of dwelling (living-operating) in the fullness of the Kingdom of God. Jesus spoke much about His kingdom and how we can apply it to our spiritual lives in this life.
There are two realms of authority on the earth. God’s Kingdom authority and Civil authority which are the governmental laws and cultural restraints of society.
Psalm 115:16 states: “The heavens are the heavens of the Lord. But the earth He has given to the sons of men.” God gave earthly authority to Adam, but Adam sold his authority by obeying Satan in the garden of Eden. Christ bought it back by His total obedience to His Father. He has granted that authority to us. It is our responsibility to actively through prayer, petition and declaration invoke God’s will and Kingdom expression to the earth in our personal realm of authority. Since God’s Kingdom supersedes earthly authority it is our privilege and responsibility to supplant what we know is counter to the purposes of God through prayer, petition and declaration. When we pray: “Thy will be done, Thy Kingdom come” it is a command and is a powerful declaration that we enact over circumstance! The authority of the Kingdom of our Lord supersedes that of the kingdoms of this earth.
The Baptism of the Holy Spirit: Jesus did not begin His earthly ministry until John the Baptist baptized Him and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him. The Lord told His disciples to wait to “be baptized in the Holy Spirit” and “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” Acts 5. The Baptism of the Holy Spirit is the activation of the Kingdom power through us! Without Him we operate in our intellect alone. It is available to every believer in Jesus, however many would seek it but often lack clarity on how to receive it. Jesus said in Matt:7:7-11 “Ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives…what man is there among you when his son will ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he shall ask for a fish he will not give him a snake will he? If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him.”
If you want God to baptize you in the Holy Spirit and you have asked for it, believe that you have already received it because God has given you what you asked for when you asked for it. You may have no cognitive indication, however it is an absolute truth that when you ask He will give it. The issue is what receiving looks like. Like the 120 in the upper room, you may have it manifest powerfully or so gently that you’d not realize it. The key is accepting on faith that God will do what He says He would do. You must initiate doing the speaking in faith that He will give you the language. When you open your mouth to ‘try’ to speak in tongues you are acting in faith. The sounds might feel foolish like baby talk but the articulation will eventually come. Who among us began speaking anything but baby talk as a child. Why would we expect it to be different learning a new language of the Spirit?
Tongues pray the will of God for our lives and secure the destiny that pleases His purposes for us. God Himself makes intercession for us through the Holy Spirit as we speak in tongues. This is our personal prayer language and rarely do we have any idea what we are praying. This is distinct from the “tongues and interpretation” that is part of a prophetic gift. Every believer can receive it. I recall Lance Walnau who found himself engaged in a political meeting asking the lord “What am I doing here in this political thing when I am a preacher not a politician” The Lord answered immediately “But this is what you’ve been asking for when you’re praying to me in tongues!”. God speaks His mysteries through us to get us to His assignment for us!
Righteousness and Grace: How would you define Righteousness? As a teen I thought that when you become a believer God helps you to become perfect. I tried to be righteous by being perfect. Didn’t Paul say “be perfect even as I am perfect.” Reading that I became very discouraged because I knew that I constantly failed in many ways. Being a perfect Christian was an impossibility for me I discovered. Paul I later learned was saying “perfect” but a more accurate translation would be “mature” which releases us from the impossibility of perfection. Our sanctification comes from our obedience to God and is a lifelong process. In my immaturity in trying and failing I became so discouraged that I left the faith believing it to be impossible to please God. So I went from the ditch of legalism to the other ditch of lawlessness. I spent the next decade living without the guilt of constant failure but without the God of grace.
At the end of that decade I, like the prodigal son came to the end of myself and my emptiness and cried out to return to the Father. In my repentance I discovered grace. What I discovered is that God’s grace is an ocean! It is an inexhaustible sea. It is cleansing and restoring making us new again. His invitation is for us to just dive in!
Now when I am discouraged by failure I travel down to the sea in my mind and dive in. Christ has given us beach access! I discovered that only believing in the sacrifice of Christ was I righteous and it has been freeing because I am no longer condemned by my failings. I now define righteousness as simply being in right relationship with God which is by trusting in Christ alone.
I have found myself mistakenly thinking that greater significance is found in the Lord through ‘doing ministry’ which infers preaching or teaching or some other ‘pure’ spiritual calling. God has called us to our specific place and sees every destiny as significant if we are where He has set us. I am a farmer and have learned that the place that He has set me and blessed me is where I belong. Whatever we do, doing it unto Him is what pleases Him. God’s first and foremost command is to love the Lord with all of your heart mind and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself. Out of that love and obedience to what He reveals to you will come the true fruit in your life whatever your vocation. Then He will say “Well done good and faithful servant. Enter into your rest”.
Covenant: How understanding covenant changed my relationship with God. (He loves me unconditionally even when I don’t love myself) The covenant is between the Father and Jesus the Son – All of my striving to “to be a better Christian” can never earn my entrance. It is freely given. It is the Kingdom of God enacted!
For much of my teen years I was uncertain of my salvation because I never had that “felt experience”. It felt that salvation was something that you could lose if you weren’t diligent always and I didn’t feel very diligent nor very secure in my salvation. If I had only known about covenant! The Father and His Son entered into covenant for us through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. We did nothing and can do nothing to earn it. I didn’t realize that. I thought salvation was conditional on our behavior. Many sadly believe that but it isn’t true.
When you ask Jesus to be Lord of your life you are entering the Father’s covenant with His Son. You are born again of the Spirit or made alive to God spiritually, born into the Kingdom of God. When we are born again we have birthright citizenship to the new covenant. As birthright citizens we are beneficiaries of all of the rights and privileges of citizenship though we did nothing to earn them. Just as breaking civil law has consequences, our sin can have consequences but does not revoke our spiritual citizenship. Thankfully we have an advocate in Jesus Christ who “makes intercession for us”. Our sin is covered if we are repentant. It cannot cancel our covenant with Christ.
Faith: If you ask how to define faith you will get a lot of different answers. What is ‘enough’ faith? I always wondered about Abraham's faith mentioned in Hebrews until I realized that at 100 years old he had to put his faith in action for Issac to be conceived. It was not an immaculate conception if you get what I am saying. He had to be intimate with his 90 year old wife so they both had to both believe and act. Abram’s belief in God’s promise was ‘reckoned” to him as righteousness! Faith needs to be acted upon. Believing is a choice after all isn’t it? Choosing is an act of our will. Yes there is a gift of faith but oftentimes faith is referred to as some nebulous thing in the ether that perhaps we can somehow get a hold of, but how? Certainly knowing the truths of the word of God help our faith. His word holds His promises. We can determine to choose to believe trusting that it is in the hands of our loving Father. Our trust in His love is what He desires. The outcome is in His hands if we trust Him. The outcome may not be what we had hoped for, however we should consider Job 13:15 after all he endured (from Satan’s hand with God’s permission) Job declared, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him; I will surely defend my ways to His face.” This speaks of intimate trust and intimate relationship that he could contend with God to argue his case.
Where do we dwell (mentally)? We live where ever our thought life is attending. It is our dwelling place. If you think about it your mind is your dwelling place, your inner reality. Isaiah 26:3 “He will keep him in perfect peace all those who trust in him, whose thoughts turn often to the Lord.” TLB. In today’s world everything is after our attention.
Compare our daily social environment to that of 100 years ago and the difference is astonishing. We are bombarded with information all day in one form or another. Emails, solicitations, bill boards, TV ads, not to mention our texts, news outlets , social media, etc. It is an avalanche of distraction all of it designed to lure your attention towards some idea or product.
Our attention is where we dwell. God wants our attention because our attention focused on Him produces true life. We live our lives – our realities in our thought life. What we dwell on influences everything that we feel and do. But do we have to agree with our thoughts? Philippians 4:8 states: “ Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, Whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there’s any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things...and the peace of God shall be with you.”
In the verses above Paul declares that “by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” God wants our attention. Satan wants to distract us from our reality, our dwelling in God.
I was sitting in church on a Sunday morning a while back and the Lord gave me a daydream. You could call it a vision if you like. I was under water looking about and I saw hundreds of fish lures of every kind each one designed to be attractive to a specific individual being dragged along in different directions. As I came to the surface I saw multiple boats each with a fisherman tending to his line. I knew immediately what the Lord was telling me. Our world is teeming with things competing for our attention. Every one will ‘hook’ the one who takes the bait into believing whatever the fisherman is selling, be it a product, an idea, a conspiracy or false belief.
Each lure is specifically designed to attract a specific individual and tether them and take away their spiritual freedom through distraction. I see many in the body of Christ as victims of this. We want to believe something is true because we are following something that looks good to us but it wants to hook us – to distract us from our true calling. We need discernment and to be vigilant.
If an idea can get your emotions involved in any way in agreeing about anything, once your emotions are involved, it is very difficult for the average person to change their mind even when confronted with facts to the contrary. It is a common attribute to all humans. We are all susceptible to this but knowing this fact should help us be more aware when someone is trying to persuade us by using emotionally charged language such as outrage, sympathy, even excitement or any other emotion in order to provoke our emotions in sympathy. The red flags should come out! Let’s not be distracted from determining to root out what is truth and be willing to consider an opposite opinion. Sometimes skepticism in this world is really wisdom. Christians can be so gullible and end up being taken or sidelined from their true calling by things that sound good but are distractions or worse.
MEA: To help me be more honest and disciplined in my thinking, where I had been ‘dwelling’ in my thought life, the Lord brought me to a revelation in how to evaluate my thoughts by examining my Motives, Expectations and Attitudes. Sometimes I have to give myself an exam and a grade.
The process has helped me be more honest with myself and with God in my requests. He said that if I examine my thinking in relation to these three things that I would have a more correct perception of how I was relating to Him and what I was asking for and why. This is in effect a reality check. God knows our hearts however sometimes we don’t know them and how they affect how we relate to Him. Often I believe that He can’t answer our prayers because of our hidden motives. He sees them but we are often blind to them.
I have found that thankfulness refocuses my attitude. An attitude of thankfulness doesn’t change God but it changes us. Thankfulness is the gateway to God’s presence and in God’s presence is fullness of joy!
Here are a few of my experiences with the Lord:
In 2001 I took a sabbatical and spent two years at Morningstar because I was hungry and curious to see and experience the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Early on I was tasked to speak at a Friday night SOS meeting as a 10 minute speaker. I was going to speak on faith. I was nervous. I sat at the leaders table with Robin McMillan and suddenly I had the sensation of having a very full bladder. Not so good if your about to speak! I had been taught that the Holy Spirit would often give a sensation or pain in an area of your body that someone there needs to receive healing and the Lord wants to heal them. So I mentioned to Robin what I was experiencing and he gave permission to move on it. Very awkwardly I got up before a full house. Leonard Jones was behind me working on some equipment. I started by saying “I believe that the Lord is speaking to me that someone is having issues with their bladder. If you will stand up I believe that the Lord will heal you.” No one stood up. Leonard wisely piped up “ Say urinary problems and I wouldn’t embarrass anyone by making them stand up” Thank you Leonard!
So I had every one stand and prayed and then gave my message feeling quite embarrassed over the whole thing. After the meeting the guest speaker came to me and told me that he was having urinary problems but didn’t wish to harm his message by responding. He asked me to pray for him so I did. I never heard the outcome of that.
However months later, I was head usher to a large Morningstar conference at the Adam’s Mark Hotel in Charlotte and I was standing in the center isle when a woman rushed up to me grabbing my jacket and saying “I am so sorry please forgive me.” I had to ask what she was apologizing for. She said “Remember when you were the SOS speaker a few months ago and you asked if anyone had UTI issues, I have had urinary issues for years and have been prayed for over and over with no results so when you asked I said to myself I am not going to respond! But the next day when I woke up it was completely gone and has been ever since.” I believe that the Lord delayed the news for my sake but still wanted me to eventually know that to encourage me.
At another time our class was asked to get a prophetic word for a unidentified group. As I waited on the Lord I saw in my mind’s eye a huge ball point pen suspended before me. I described what I saw but had no interpretation. Turns out that it was for a writer’s/publishers conference. Just an encouragement from the Lord to me that I hear Him.
In Haiti one time we were traveling to Cap Haitian in the north through the mountains on these horrible roads. I was driving a little diesel pickup loaded to the gills with equipment. But before we even got to the foothills of the journey I felt the truck start to wobble on the road. We stopped and discovered that one of the Haitians had failed to tighten the lug nuts and the wheel was about to come off. Only two lugs were still good and the others were broken off. We tightened what we could and continued but just as we came down the last mountain at the edge of town many miles later the tire blew. I pulled over and saw that there was only one good lug left but the other was loose (the weld holding it internally was broken and so stripped that we couldn’t get the tire off. My friend Jay the missionary immediately prayed for the Lord’s help. Just a moment later a Haitian man jumped onto the road with a hammer and chisel and knocked off the nut so we could change the tire. I think he was an angel masquerading as a Haitian!
We were in class another time and Matt Peterson said that that day we were going to ask the Lord for a directive word for our neighbor. We paired up and I was paired with a 17 year old named Chase. We were to think of a specific thing that we needed direction for but to not relate it to our partner. This was at the end of our second year and I was planning to return to Florida determined that I should expand my farm and look for about 100 acres to develop. While I’m thinking that, Chase turns to me and asks “Is the number 100 significant to you?” When I returned to Florida my somewhat crotchety neighbor stopped by to inform me that there was a 100 acre parcel nearby and I should buy it because if I didn’t buy it then he would. I paid less than $200,000 for 100 acres because it had been sold to a realtor for unpaid taxes. That parcel is where my current farm resides and has been a great blessing to many. It is all God’s incredible grace!
In my second year at Morningstar Johnny Enlow and his co-pastors planned a trip to the Dominican Republic. They invited students from Morningstar to come along and help with prophetic ministry so I signed up. His co-pastor Dave’s wife whose name escapes me had been a missionary there for years and was fluent in Spanish. We held nightly meetings in Santiago where several large churches participated. During the day we spent the day giving prophetic ministry to the congregation. On the last night after the conference was over she called her husband and I over to where she was ministering to a woman and her teenage daughter. She explained that the mother was a pastor whose husband had abandoned her, the daughter had gone astray and she wanted us to give a prophetic word to the woman’s daughter. Dave says, “Oh come on we’re all tired after all this” but she persisted, “Oh please just one more time. This girl really needs a word”. “OK!” Dave pauses a moment and says, “I see you in a beautiful wedding gown” His wife interprets then looks to me. I recall feeling somewhat anxious but a thought came to me that this girls father didn’t know the Lord and that was the reason they wanted a word. The phrase “He will come in” came to my mind and I am thinking that means that the father will come into the kingdom that he’ll get saved. I got nothing more except that. I only heard that phrase so I told them “I just keep hearing the Lord say ‘he will come in, he will come in’, over and over.” Once I said that I saw in my mind’s eye the girl sitting at a vanity staring at a beautiful ornate jewelry box. She was just staring at it. I said, “ I see you sitting staring at a beautiful ornate jewelry box that is filled with beautiful things that the Lord wants to give you. He wants you to open the box so that He can adorn you with what is inside.
At that point I walked away as she interpreted. Later as we gathered on the bus Dave’s wife came to me gushing about how the girl was delivered from demons and gave her heart to the Lord. She said the girl had just told her before we were asked to give her a word that she could never believe that if she asked Christ to come into her life that he would come in. She kept on saying that He would not come in. The Lord wanted to emphatically tell her that He would come in by having me repeat the phrase over and over. Of course the Lord had put in my mind an entirely different scenario to get me to say those words. It goes to show you that we see in part but the the Lord will get the job done if we just follow through in faith even when we are clueless as to the meaning of what we’re saying. If I had tried to interpret that I would have messed it up. Sometimes you should give what you got and nothing more. Don’t try to expand or interpret. Let the hearer do that. They will usually have a different context than you.
Hearing God is not for a special few. Every believer has a direct line of communication with our Loving Father in heaven if they chose to believe it. He acts and speaks to us in many ways if we are alert to hear Him and be obedient to what He says.
David
David Weber - is a mainstay in the Central Florida blueberry industry, with a Bachelor’s degree in botany from Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in Boca Raton and his Master’s from the University of Florida in Nematology. He worked exclusively in the Ag industry –managing the UF Extension Nematology Lab and later with Ciba Geigy Ag Chemicals– before starting his own company, The Doc Applications, Inc., in the 1980s. The acre he planted in the late ‘80s has grown to 31 acres, and he’s continued to strive for innovation. David is a long term member of Morningstar KBA - Kingdom Business Association. He believes strongly in Marketplace Ministry and is a two year participant of Morningstar’s prophetic ministry. He is an ordained minister with The Covenant Center.
Contact: info@thecovenantcenter.com
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