The directives listed below are what I believe the Lord pointed out to me, indicating that He wanted Me to cooperate with the Holy Spirit who is here to teach and train us to follow them. That happened in 1988, when I first began, with great trepidation and prayer, to try to structure and write my original Christ-Life Ministry material. After I became aware of these directives, my intent was to follow them in everything I did with the Christ-Life and Ultimate Journey Ministry that developed over the years. They were the target at which everything was aimed because it is my firm belief that our indwelling Lord intends to train His disciples to wholeheartedly believe that He is present with them… so that they will be able to abide and interact with Him… continuously!
It is also my intent to continue to depend on the Holy Spirit to equip and empower as many of us as possible to follow those orders through this more recent Follow Me Ministry that came into being in 2011. I view these directives as our abiding, unchanging target. So we will strive to help readers understand more fully how we can apply ourselves to the fulfillment of these orders in everything we think, say and do. The carrying out of our Master’s marching orders will underlie everything this new Follow Me Ministry will do in the future.
Here are the ‘Marching Orders’:
1. Take My people further in their understanding of what it is to be a temple of My Presence.
2. Teach them to think along with Me, in all things.
3. Teach them to listen to Me at all times, even as they are thinking!
4. Develop a great tenderness and sensitivity for My Presence within them. Teach them to worship Me in the depths of their spirits and innermost minds, in all things.
5. Teach them to understand clearly and thoroughly, what it means to be faithful to seek, in all things, My viewpoint and the purpose of My Kingdom, Kingship and Righteousness. If they do that, I, for My part, will add all other things for them.
6. Take them further in their ability to understand the depths of the New Covenant relationship they have with Me. Teach them what their part is to be.
7. Teach them how to respond to Me in even the tiniest matters.
8. I AM WITH THEM IN ALL THINGS AND IN ALL WAYS… I want them to be with Me in the same manner!
The spirit and attitude required to follow the above orders is beautifully expressed by God’s written Word in Deuteronomy. This is the interaction we will strive to develop with our indwelling Lord and Master:
“Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul and with ALL your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deut. 6:4-9 Emphasis added.)
This text can be regarded as the ‘job description’ of the true, New Covenant disciples of God’s resurrected living Word. And our ‘Marching Orders’ paraphrase what is in the text above. But please understand this:
Since the day I first heard them, I have never assumed that these orders were being given to me directly, or any one else among us. It continues to be my understanding that I was being allowed to ‘overhear’ Father…giving these orders to His Holy Spirit. He is the one that has the Power and the commission to fulfill them from within us…according to God’s New Covenant promises:
“Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and CAUSE you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.“ (Ezekiel 36:25-26 Emphasis added.)
So these directives are telling us what God intends to do to us, in us and through us. It is our task to learn to allow the Holy Spirit to apply to us, the wonders contained in Almighty God’s Perfect, Finished Work. That is the awesome Inheritance that God has waiting for us in His eternal Heavenly Kingdom! Everything is finished, complete and completely paid for in full! And these marching orders articulate the means by which we can access the Fullness that our Master intends to impart and teach to us, and develop to abundant fruitfulness from within us. And this is what underlies these marching orders that require us to learn to align our minds and hearts and wills accordingly. As we obey them, the orders will enable us to interact with our risen Master, as He abides and works from within us. And thus He will fulfill all that is revealed of Him in the written Word. All of this will be done by the power of God’s Holy Spirit… through our yielded, crucified flesh.
This is why New Covenant disciples are no longer to allow themselves to ignore or forget about our risen Lord for long periods of time. He is our very Life and our Source for everything that is real, true and good. He IS… our Daily Bread! And this is why we must view Him accordingly, and depend on and interact with Him…continuously…receiving everything that will be necessary to be His disciples, from His indwelling Holy Spirit, moment by moment. The Holy Spirit’s task is to make Yeshua, God’s living Word, real, and alive and fruitfully active within us, even while we still abide in this fallen world! God’s living Word can become flesh once again, in us, and through us, even now! That’s because God’s living Word, is to our spirits what oxygen is to our lungs…and much, much more!
So we must never allow anyone or anything that is created by God’s Word, to get between us and our Lord and Master, the Word of God Himself!