Are You Longing to be Led by the Spirit?

Are you longing to be led by the Holy Spirit at this time? God is the One who has made you uncomfortable with your present ability to hear His Voice. You join a great company of people who are pressing toward the mark of their corporate high calling in Christ Jesus. You have left the Laodicean lukewarm existence.

Perhaps you may have wondered how we can discern God's Voice and recognize it amid the internal and external cacophonous din? If God is leading and the human mind is deceitful and desperately wicked, how can we trust the human mind to know the difference between the leading of God and being influenced by the fallen human mind (or worse). That, of course, is a loaded question. It contains a hidden presupposition, the presupposition that we trust the human mind. We cannot trust the human mind. It cannot be trusted. Instead, we trust the Holy Spirit to continue a step-wise process out of the sinful nature and into a new nature. We sing a song: "To be like Jesus, all I ask to be like Him." Only the Holy Spirit can perform this transformation in us. We have to trust that He will show us the way step by step. It continues to be a series of small, seemingly insignificant, steps. Despise not the day of small beginnings. It is the little foxes that spoil the vine. Those little foxes are overcome by acknowledging God and denying self. But build the foundation first. There is a foundation. If the foundations are destroyed, what will the righteous do.

Our present vision is not clear. We cannot afford to put our own make-believe faith in our own Christian worldview. God is speaking to us through Scripture and saying, "And if anyone thinks that they know anything, they know nothing yet as they ought to know." (1 Corinthians 8:2) The word, anything, applies to everything that we think that we know. We know some things, but the Holy Spirit still needs to correct us. We need to have a mind that is open to that correction. Right now, we may think that we know some things, but our knowledge is flawed and incomplete. Humility is in order.

We are learning to hear God's Voice. There is no quick way. Each time we hear His Voice and acknowledge Him in deep respect, faith comes. (Romans 10:17) The fear (deep respect and holy awe) of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. (Proverbs 9:10) God reveals, through Scripture and experience, that faith gives us access to grace. (Romans 5:2) And it is grace, not us, Who does the works through us. (1 Corinthians 15:10) Works may consist of believing, thinking right thoughts, speaking by the Holy Spirit, or doing the works of God. "When we yield our beings to the Holy Spirit in this way, we are transfigured slightly, mostly on the level of mind. Be ye not conformed to this world, but be transformed (metamorpoo, transfigured) by the renewing of your mind." (Romans 12:2) We all wish this could be complete, instant, and without pain, but God is doing a work that requires that we each take up our individual crosses and follow Him. A cross is not an instrument of pleasure and ease. The fleshly nature is being crucified and will complain--and the death of the cross is a slow, miserable death. If we are willing to die to self in this way, He will give us a crown of life.

When God speaks to us and we ignore His Voice, or try to carry out His leading in our own strength, or add to His Words, or take from His Words, the opposite is accomplished. We become more fleshly. We can be very religious and very fleshly. God even speaks to us, through Scripture, of some who prophesied without being sent.

However, God has built the Church in a way that gives a covering of safety. Most of the structure of God's original design was lost within a few hundred years of Christ's ascension. It was necessary that a falling away should come. Yet, God has been restoring His order, gifts, ministries, and offices line on line and precept on precept. This restoration has been going on for hundreds of years now. God is patient. And the restoration continues to unfold before us. One of the steps in the restoration had to be the foundation of the apostles and the prophets who are built on the foundation of Christ, the chief corner stone. God began restoring this office in 1948. There cannot be a chief apostle, a pope. Each apostle is under the government of all the other apostles. No one can call himself to this office. God must call and set, and that calling and setting must be recognized by those apostles who were set previously. The apostles are not perfect, but those who are called to this office are being corrected constantly by the Holy Spirit. They are under the authority of all the other apostles who do have authority to command and to discipline. There are no maverick apostles. It is not an office of independence. God won't honor self-declared authority or man-declared authority, though He blesses us even when there is disorder. There is much more to the Scriptural order of apostles that has been revealed since 1948. And more is being revealed. The apostles are set by God to receive the doctrine, and that is safe. No apostle is qualified to determine doctrine on his own. Unless the Holy Spirit reveals the same thing to all the apostles, it is not apostle's doctrine. The apostles (traveling elders and deacons) teach the doctrine to faithful men (local elders and deacons) who are to teach no other doctrine. If this Scriptural order is followed, it preserves unity and prevents false doctrine.

Of course, as soon as the office of apostle was restored to the Church, many people decided to appoint themselves to be apostles. Some used the word, apostle, naming themselves as being among the apostles. Some formed organizations of "apostles." Others are now on mass media declaring themselves, by innuendo, to be the authority (the pope) on interpreting the meaning of Scripture. They don't use the word, apostle, but they certainly usurp the authority. Some of these will tell us that God doesn't speak to us any more, yet they make this baseless claim contrary to the plain revelation that God is speaking to us through Scripture. In making the claim they are claiming to speak for God in a way that supersedes the Scripture. They claim to have the same authority that they are denying. People try to set up their own little kingdoms. Souls are being lost because people don't know who to believe.

It is likely that you will come against the question of how you can tell the real apostles from false. God will guide you if you yield to Him and look to Him for guidance. If you seek Him, you will begin to discern the order as it is laid out in Scripture.