This is an important question for all disciples-in-training to consider. In other meditations, we contrasted ‘Headless’ humans (those who run their own lives) with disciples who have come under the absolute authority and provision of God’s Living Word (Yeshua) and are thus reconnected to their all-sufficient Head. (If this concept is new to you, please refer to additional Follow Me meditations throughout this website.)
The issue we will ponder here will reveal more of the enormous chasm that exists between those that are ‘Headless’ (living by their own devices in radical independence from God) and those that enjoy the unshakeable Blood Covenant-level assurance that comes from being connected to, and abiding in right relationship with, God’s Living Word. When He rules and presides over us, as our Head, we can share in all that He is and gives to His own. To better understand this, let’s consider the parable our Master gives in Matthew 25:
Matthew 25:1-13
“Then the Kingdom of Heaven will be comparable to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the Bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were prudent. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the prudent took oil in flasks along with their lamps.
“Now while the bridegroom was delaying, they all got drowsy and began to sleep. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the prudent, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the prudent answered, ‘No, there will not be enough for us and you too; go instead to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’
“And while they were going away to make the purchase, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast; and the door was shut. Later the other virgins also came, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open up for us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly I say to you, I do not KNOW you!’ Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hour.” (Emphasis added.)
Yeshua is God’s living Word made flesh! He was referring to Himself when He spoke of the ‘Bridegroom’. God’s living Word is our Source of life and everything else that is real, and therefore, acceptable to God. So notice what the Bridegroom says to those who are not ready to celebrate with Him in His eternal Triumph because they habitually have no oil for their lamps, the lamps that are to release the Light of His Truth and guide their steps as He leads His true disciples through the surrounding world-wide, demonic Darkness. The Holy Spirit is the ‘oil’ that enables His Light to fill their lives. So He says to those who are unwilling to abide with Him in His Light: “I do not know you! You did not accept and embrace or desire Me to pierce, penetrate and impregnate you with My Life…and so you do not bear My Fruit!”
The milieu into which our Master and His hearers were born, raised and lived in continually, was totally Hebrew and Scripture-based. In the Hebrew language and its Bible culture there are several words for ‘know.’ But the one the Holy Spirit chose to use consistently in this particular context is the Hebrew verb, yadá. The Holy Spirit used it in Genesis 4:1: “Now the man had relations (yadá) with his wife Eve and she conceived and gave birth to Cain…”
So ‘yadá’ in this bridal and marital sense, is the most intimate form of knowing that we humans know of. It is a knowing that is as close, intimate, personal and penetrating as an inter-personal union can be. Thus God’s living Word uses it to express the depth at which God wants His Word to be received. He is to be so welcomed, embraced and accepted by us that He can actually be free to pierce, penetrate and impregnate our spirit and soul so deeply that we will actually become one with Him! We, who are being known, and He, the Knower, transform into one composite unit! This is the sense in which He summons us to ‘follow’ Him. Spiritually speaking, that would be similar to tea and hot water being steeped together until they are inseparable, or like a once decapitated body being perfectly reunited with its head!
This intense close, personal union becomes unmistakably fruitful, leading to reproduction and new life. The Lord also spoke of that kind of abiding, interactive personal ‘knowledge’ in the parable of ‘The Vine and the branches’ in John 15. The resulting supernatural ‘Fruit’ enables us to love God and each other with the same pure, selfless, supernatural love with which God first loved us. And this supernatural Fruitful Love leads to the obedience of faith which glorifies our Father and gives proof to Heaven and Earth that we truly are human ‘branches’ that are one with God’s Vine’ …true disciples of Yeshua, that have transformed into His image and likeness. That is another way of saying that our ‘lamps’ are filled with the ‘oil’ of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is given to us to make God’s living Word this real and dynamically active and fruitful from within our innermost being. And this is is what will make us totally acceptable to, and beloved, in the sight of our Heavenly Father (John 15:1-11). God really loves and cherishes His own image and likness!
The verb ‘yadá’ in this penetrating, impregnating, fruit-producing sense, is the transmission of a deep, personal, intimate Life-giving love activity that passes from the living Word of God, to His beloved disciples. Yadá is also the word used in Jeremiah 31:34 when the New Covenant that God promised to make with Israel is described as being the fulfillment of what the previous Covenant that Israel had with God failed to achieve because over the centuries, Israel could not keep herself from violating and breaking it:
Jeremiah 31:34
“They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me (yadá), from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
Can you see how intimately personal and interactive and radically fulfilling this New Covenant relationship between God’s living Word and His people is to be? This is what was lost in the Garden of Eden when Sin murdered the human race! This is what God’s living Word has been trying to restore to the sons of Adam ever since we lost it! And in this New Covenant, the restoration and fulfillment isn’t intended for just a few special chosen ones. When the total Fulfillment comes, this is the way it will be between God’s Word and all New Covenant believers, Jew and Gentile alike! (See Gen. 12:1-3; Rom. 2 & Eph. 2) But God fills us with His Holy Spirit and requires His Son’s disciples to gear themselves to operate with Him at that level…now!
So when God uses this Hebrew verb in relation to the way God expects us to receive and interact with His living Word and Holy Spirit, we should all pay very close attention to what habitually goes on in our hearts in relation to God’s living and written Word. What are our habitual attitudes and response patterns in relation to His absolute Preeminence and Authority over us? We must examine that, and wherever necessary, cleanse, correct and purify our attitudes and knee-jerk responses to our Lord and His ‘Headship’ over us. It’s not about acquiring lots of head knowledge or merely ‘going to church’ and engaging in endless religious rituals or studying books and courses that are somehow ‘about’ Him. It’s about the ‘electricity’ that is generated when we personally interact with Him in the midst of our daily situations. It’s about loving and responding to Him so much that we think, act, react and interact as one with Him! That is how God expects us to live out and express our heartfelt obedience of faith to His living Word, His beloved Son (See Rom. 1:5; 16:26).
Jn. 5:39-40
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have Life!” Emphasis added.)
In the text above, Yeshua was speaking to people that were Bible experts and as religious as the day is long! They had tons of head knowledge, but their lamps had no oil! This is the context in which the Bridegroom in the parable says, ‘I do not know you’, and when God’s living Word, Yeshua, says in Matthew 7:23, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness,’ it is as if God’s living Word is saying to these very religious, theologically correct and knowledgeable people:
‘Who are you? I don’t know you! You are a stranger to Me. You did not receive Me with open arms, the way an enamored bride receives her beloved Husband. You did not open your heart and soul wide so that I could come in and fulfill My desire to have you all to Myself and share with you what was in My heart so that I could fulfill the plans My Father had for the two of us. You never allowed Me to get close enough to pierce, penetrate and impregnate you with My Life. You were never eager and hungry for Me, and ready to receive what I promised to give you. You never wanted to bear the Fruit of My Life in you. You were always too busy and preoccupied, going out and looking everywhere else but to Me, to have your needs met. You insisted on remaining distant, a stranger, living a preoccupied life, always apart from Me. Your other alien loves (false gods) consumed all your time and attention. You bore their fruit, but you never bore Mine! So who are you anyway? I don’t know you!’
The “Yadá” Level of KNOWING Our Lord Is the Goal of Our Follow Me Ministry
When the Lord first included me in this form of disciple training ministry, He made it clear that He wants to demonstrate and reproduce this level of supernatural, Fruit-producing, Life-giving interactive lifestyle with each of His disciples. This is what our ‘Marching Orders’ (which I will list later) try to articulate. But to be able to carry out those orders and live in true Kingdom of Heaven Wisdom, we must become men and women of faith, obedience and ongoing, never-ending, trusting, interactive – PRAYER!
There’s a huge difference between mouthing a lot of formalized prayers and, actually abiding with and waiting upon Him in your private ‘prayer closet’. THAT is ‘praying’! And we must learn that vitally important difference in order to be disciples that are worthy of that title. God wants us to abide at all times with His beloved Son (His Word) personally and intimately…ON HIS TERMS. He wants us to always be attuned and receptive to – His Presence and dynamic life-changing Activity. We must follow and obey Him and never get ahead of Him or go off on our own. We are to be one in spirit, mind and purpose with Him, always looking to Him to receive His orders and directions and waiting for Him to supply everything needed for us to carry out His orders. We will have no other god, no other created substitute sources, beside Him. We will eliminate disruptive, competitive distractions that draw our hearts and focus away from Him. He is our only God…the one and only all-pervading Love of our heart, the only motivating force of our lives and the only Source of our well being, provision and protection. That is the relationship between Master and disciple that God is talking about.
Obstacles to Truly Knowing Him
Many so-called ‘believers’ in technological, humanistic societies are accurately described by the Lord in the rebuke He gave to the congregation of Laodicea, in chapter 3 of the book of Revelation. They remained distant from Him, smug and self-satisfied…thinking they had ‘arrived’ and knew all the answers. So they felt no real need of Him. And so God’s living Word responded with these words:
Revelation 3:14-22
“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: “The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this: ‘I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.
“Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline (See Heb. 12); therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. He, who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’” (Emphasis added.)
Beloved, I have a great, outrageous hope that because of the response of those called to be Follow Me level disciples in this generation, the spiritual climate of the Body of our Lord is going to begin to change dramatically. It is my hope that the believers associated with Follow Me Ministries will – regardless of where they live – respond to the Lord in a way that is radically different from the ‘Headless’ worldly attitudes shown by so many in our contemporary societies. I pray that we will all soon develop a true, deep yearning in our hearts to know the Lord and to be known by Him more than we desire anything else on Earth. I pray all believers will become more open, hungry, eager and receptive to our Master than we ever imagined possible in former years. I yearn for the day when He will no longer be rejected and ignored by multitudes of cold, distant self-satisfied independent people.
Isaiah 9:6-8
“For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.” (Emphasis added.)
Some Key Differences
We know from Scripture that all of us that inhabit this fallen, broken world, just and unjust alike, experience trials, pains and troubles. We also know that He sustains and provides for the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45). So, Headless humans and reconnected disciples all go through similar experiences and are all loved by God without discrimination or favoritism. But there are enormous differences in the results that each group achieves as they experience life on this earth. And the results depend on whether or not they know the proper way of responding to all the things that happen on this Sin-corrupted, fallen, broken planet.
Psalm 91:14-16
“Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him securely on high, because he has known My name. He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. With a long (eternal) life I will satisfy him and let him see (personally experience) My Salvation (Yeshua).” (Amplification added.)
Upon what is your heart habitually fixed and grounded? To what do you turn and depend upon during your easy, pleasant, ‘fun’ times? What occupies the workings of your innermost being when you do not feel dread, anxiety or desperation? Are you grounded on Him during those times? Or do you forget and ignore Him most of the time? And then, when something unexpected, something horrible and shocking and overwhelming hits you…do you then begin to think of Him?
At such times, many frenziedly begin to call out and look for Him because the other gods they usually cavort with are nowhere to be found and are letting them down. So now, they go to ‘Plan B’. They begin to try to locate this ‘Stranger’, to see what they can get out of Him. They heard or read about Him in the Bible, or heard people talking about Him. But to them, He has remained a Stranger…until now:
“Lord, where are You? Why are you letting this happen to me? Why are you absent and not answering my prayers and meeting my needs?’ I go to church and say the prayers and give money and do what the authorities say. What more do you want? Why aren’t you paying me back? Why are you not here to give me what I want?”
Beloved, if you do not know Him in the easy times…how will you ever be able to suddenly get close to…or even be able to recognize and hear His voice when ‘all Hell is breaking loose’? Are you one of the billions that only think of Him when you’re utterly desperate and have already exhausted every other possibility, but now don’t know which way to turn? Do you only think of Him after all of your other false gods and empty sources of provision have betrayed you? James warns us:
James 4:2b-11
“You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: ‘He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us’?
“But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, ‘God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.” (Emphasis added.)
We do not have because we do not ask. We do not ask because we do not believe enough to abide with Him in such close, Covenant-level (marital-like) union. (See Mt 7:7-8) Our daily preoccupations and activities prove that we do not believe that He is our only Source, our only God. Thus we are always too busy for Him; too busy being so involved with and distracted by so many other created things that we never have time to get around to being alone with Him! We have him listed as No. 27 on our priority list, but we never seem to be able to get past numbers 1 to 10 from day to day. We still do not grasp the reality that the created things we chase after and put our faith in are just as empty and needy and bankrupt, as we are! So let’s look at some examples from actual email correspondence I’ve received:
‘I can’t pay my bills please help!’ … I must repair my house, my car, my church building’…’There is no food’… I can’t pay the doctor/ hospital bills…’
You get the picture – these dear people are filled with a fear-filled obsession over negative circumstances. They never write about their lives with the Living Lord of Glory who promises to meet every need of those who love and obey Him. They obsess over problems…repeatedly.
Many of them have a gross misunderstanding, not only about who God is, but also about the makeup of this ministry. Apparently they must assume that Follow Me is a large organization with a big staff, lots of buildings and equipment and a vast treasury of resources. But of course that is as false as an impression can be! At present, Follow Me is just me…an old man in Omaha…who also struggles to meet unforeseen expenses and pay the bills from week to week and month to month. It is a struggle because I receive no salary.
So when I receive these pleas for money, I wonder why people would think I can be their ‘money dispensing machine’ or bank that can keep giving free money whenever someone asks for it? How can someone they have never even seen, who lives on another continent, assume responsibility for meeting obligations they took upon themselves? And even if I could send money whenever they asked for it, the more important consideration is: Is this what God desires? Is this how He wants His Kingdom on Earth to be run and operated? I don’t think so.
An old proverb says: “If you give a man a fish you give him a meal. But if you teach him how to catch his own fish, you give him a new life!”
I can only give what the Lord supplies to me. If He does not give it, I have nothing to share. Obviously, I am not here to teach people how to catch literal fish. But I am here to encourage and urge them to go to the one and only God, the one true and only Source for all good things. I can draw their attention to Him and help them learn how to abide in Him, and look only to Him, and obey Him, so that He can reveal Himself to them and prove to them that the living Word of God is present with them…to back up everything He claims and promises in His written Word…and prove that His claims are absolutely true! I can also encourage them to learn what I have learned…that if they develop strong, faithful, loving, giving relationships in their lives, with people to whom God connects them, family-level relationships inevitably develop. Then a mutually-supportive base develops by which the people involved can begin to help, support and care for each other where they live, without having to depend on strangers that live at great distances. There can be no substitute for members of our Lord’s Body that He has personally connected to you locally. And that personal, intimate, love and fruit-bearing service and interaction is what is chronically missing from the personal lives of believers that agree with God’s Word intellectually…but do not take Him seriously enough to actually allow Him into their innermost being so that He can take them over completely.
This is a very different view of and approach to discipleship training. It is vastly different than approaches that are offered in other venues. But I believe this is solidly embedded within God’s written Word. And it contains the clear mandate Yeshua had in mind when He says to every prospective disciple, “FOLLOW ME!”
A Brief History of Follow Me Ministries
Here are the ‘Marching Orders’ I mentioned earlier. They express what I believe the Lord told me to do in the very beginning of this disciple-training adventure into which He called me, approximately a quarter century ago:
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 understanding of 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!
Notice that in Marching Order 5 He is showing how and why He intends to meet all the needs of those we are to teach. If they concern themselves with what He wants from them, and do what He says…THEN…He will do His part and supply all that they need! Is that not exactly the same promise He made to Israel in Deuteronomy 28, and in a myriad of other places throughout Scripture?
The Gospel that leads to obedient close, interactive cooperation with the Lord Himself is vastly different from what most of us are used to. When most people get ‘saved’…they begin to follow some kind of man-made religious system. They’re not told about the Lord’s requirement for them to begin immediately as His personal, day and night disciples-in-training. They see themselves as having chosen to ‘convert’ from one kind of lifestyle to a more virtuous kind of lifestyle. But still, basically, everything remains under their own personal control. In that case, they’ve embarked on another self-improvement program and the ‘gospel’ they proclaim is a religion or set of static doctrines and a kind of ‘study’ to which they have given mere intellectual assent. That leads to a more or less ‘arm’s length’ association with a church or ministry group. But there’s no ‘to the death’ commitment made to the Lord Himself for life or for death.
This is why the Follow Me Ministry approach is so different. We will continue to focus on and expand and amplify the unchangeable principles that the Lord originally gave me in 1988. The Follow Me Family and anyone to whom the Lord will join us in the future will continue to explore, unpack and personally experience together, what those marching orders actually mean and what they really lead to.
Becoming One New Man through ‘On the Job’ Disciple Training
It is the responsibility of Follow Me ministry leaders to seek God’s will and receive clear direction and teaching from Him…at all times! We must receive His wisdom so that we can pass it along and share it with the rest of the Family. If we do that, and the Family learns from what God has given us, we will eventually begin to operate in synchronization and harmony…as one New Man, under the Headship of our Messiah, no matter how large or culturally diverse the Family becomes. This oneness in purpose, focus and activity becomes especially important now that people from different continents, nations, cultures and vastly differing backgrounds have joined our Family. When that happens…confusion is sure to increase and present a potential danger. Clashes of cultural expression, viewpoints, priorities and agendas naturally take place. And more complexity and multi-layered realities and questions, problems and situations will arise. So we must learn to convert any possible problem into an advantage and asset! We can learn to see and use such things as part of our ‘Boot Camp’ training that is preparing us to successfully face and engage the enemy in deadly spiritual combat.
The Lord is never overcome by evil. He always overcomes evil with His eternal, infinite Good! And as we learn to become His image and likeness, we too will begin to use everything that happens in our daily lives as a tool by which the Holy Spirit can continue to train and prepare us to deal with anything we encounter in our ongoing war with the powers of Darkness. We will learn to release the abiding Presence of God’s living Word into whatever we encounter, so that, through the Holy Spirit, He can transmit from Eternity, into our time and space situations, what God, in His infinite Wisdom, has already provided for us and awaits us in the Treasury of His Perfect Finished Work of Creation! (See Gen. 2:1-3)
It is my responsibility to continually hear from the Lord so that He can guide my steps and the steps of those He has assembled around me. Together we will stay on course and make sure the original disciple training purpose God gave us can be protected and maintained with authentic integrity. As long as the Lord remains the sole Head of this ministry, we who are His members will operate in Spirit-managed union with Him and with one another. We’ll be equipped to avoid all destructive, divisive and distracting traps the enemy may set before us. If we remain focused on our Master we will not become distracted or fragment and scatter like a wild mob in which each one indulges alien ‘Head-less’ viewpoints and radically independent thinking and acting. We must avoid living as the fallen broken world does and not duplicate this sad conclusion to the Book of Judges:
Judges 21:25
“In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
The Lord will not teach His Last Day disciples the way the fallen world teaches its citizens to strive and compete against each other. Nor will He rely primarily on sermons, lectures, books, religious services or theoretical group discussions to train us. Radically independent worldly people indulge in such things. But in our midst, the Lord Himself will be The Lesson and The Teacher. He will teach us Himself…His Spirit-led ways…by personal example and interaction… in a close, intimate Master-disciple relationship. No one and no thing can be allowed to take His place in our lives. There can be no substitute for His Presence. He must always be the one that leads and teaches and trains each one of His own hand-picked disciples. He must always be the one that demonstrates and explains His Father’s Kingdom ways and its strategies and timing and counsel to those that follow Him. And that’s why we must become people that ‘pray always’.
Our Master will share His heart and mind and eternal Life with us, amid every situation we encounter here on Earth. Whatever happens in our daily lives…we will use it as ‘Boot Camp’ training raw material. And He will be with each of us…to teach, drill, train, correct, keep us in step with each other, and keep us properly aligned and in proper formation for the spiritual combat that lies ahead. He will show us how He thinks, acts, reacts and interacts with other people in every situation. He must be with each of us at all times. He must be so close to us that He will actually be what He is and do what He does…to us…in us…and through us.
And so we, His disciples, must be with Him, abiding with Him always, looking to Him…drawing from Him, so that His Life can be our Life and so we can actually feel what is in His heart and hear His voice and observe Him as He works through us and around us. How else will we be able to learn His ways and walk in them blamelessly? (See Gen. 17:1-3)
Revisiting the Parable of the Ten Virgins
Let’s take another look at the parable of the ten virgins. The Lord recently brought this parable to my attention as I was waiting on Him for guidance on how to respond to troubled Follow Me family members from distant places that keep asking for money. This is what I believe He showed me:
‘The problem is that the lamps of most of My people are habitually without ‘oil.’ They have no oil because they have not allowed Me to live in them. If I live in them I will develop the friendships, gratitude and trust from the people around them that will gain local support for them as I have done for you. The support you receive does not come from many anonymous wealthy donors that give money to charity to reduce their taxes. It comes from Me as I live in you and also in those with whom you have developed these deep personal friendships. Those other disciples are now your close allies because I drew them to you and blessed them by things I gave you to write or the personal guidance I gave them through you in years past. So because I connected them to you and you to them, I can give to all of you, mutual gratitude, loyal friendship and trust for each other. I minister to them through you, and to you, through them. My Love prompts all of you to want to help one another as My Love is able to reach out to all of you, through all of you. Now the others are helping you to reach still more people because they were helped first. Now they involve themselves because of how much they themselves were helped. That is the source from which the support I supply for you, originates. I supply you from the abundant harvest that grew out of the relationship seeds that you and I have been planting since 1984!’ And that is what I want all of you to learn.”
We must all begin to receive the seeds from Him that He wants to sow in others, through us. In time the seeds we sow into other people will transform into a glorious back and forth harvest that will cause us all to sing for joy. Just as farmers must first invest heavily in their barren, uncultivated land…we too must first begin by allowing the Lord in us, to love and serve and give whatever He wants to give to others, through us. We must do this with Him continuously. If we are willing, the Lord will work in and through us. And He will knit us together and gradually develop deep personal friendships and bonds between and among all of His disciples. He will form us all into His Body on Earth through the service He is able to give to others through us, and through them, back to us!
From such loving service – gratitude, love, trust and enthusiasm will spontaneously follow. People will become excited when their lives transform and wounds heal and paradigms shift dramatically. They will come to know God’s Reality as never before and that will cause them to be excited and happy to join in and help the ministry that helped and blessed them so deeply. Their enthusiasm and willingness to help will naturally arise from what we allowed God to invest into their lives through our efforts.
This is what the Lord is here to do through all of us, for all of us. He is here to love and bless…our spouses, children, friends, neighbors and whoever else the Lord brings across our path, through us…so that He can then begin to bless us, through them! He wants to include all of us in this for our common good.
The Lord showed me that these types of strong local networks and personal interconnections are often missing from the lives of potential disciples. As long as they do not habitually abide with Him, as He lives within them, they will not really get to know Him. And as long as they do not habitually abide with Him, as He lives within their fellow disciples, they will never truly develop the Blood Covenant mentality, lifestyle and interconnected network necessary for true ‘Body of Messiah life’. They will remain isolated and self-centered and He will not be free to build local friendships and connections through them that will be deep and loving and numerous enough to produce a local harvest of provision and abundance for them and for the people in their lives.
He isn’t able to work through us as long as we fail to understand this Kingdom of Heaven principle: You cannot give what you do not first receive from Him. But if He supplies you, and you allow Him to give to enough other people through you…you in turn will receive everything you need…because of the love, gratitude, excitement and good will He generates among us all. The Holy Spirit expressed this same principle in other ways:
Luke 6:38
“Give and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.”
Galatians 6:7-8
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”
God wants to do this for all of us, through each of us. We are not to try to do these things FOR God, or LIKE God. We must learn to allow Him to do it from within us, and among us. In other words, we must all learn to do all things…FROM God! He must be the Source of it all. And that is why we must learn to abide in His Presence and receive from Him and release what comes to us from Him. He is like oxygen to us all; He is our one and only Life!
I discovered this from hard, bitter experience. I too tried to look to other people and various created sources for what I should have been receiving from God’s Word and Holy Spirit…I too ended up like the foolish virgins with their empty lamps. Then I realized that I can’t ever afford to operate at a distance from my Master. I must abide with Him and look only to Him so that He can always be filling my lamp with His Holy Spirit. If I do not have Him, He cannot share His Spirit with me. And I will not share in His supernatural anointing or be equipped to fulfill the responsibilities God has entrusted to me for the benefit of others that He wants to bless through what I yield to Him.
And if I allow others to look to me (or any other created thing) to meet their needs, they will never begin to look to the Lord and draw from Him what I myself must continue to draw from Him. If I encourage people to need and depend on me or any other created source to meet their needs, I will betray them, as well as my Master.
The Follow Me family must learn to receive whatever we need from the One that continually supplies all needs. I dare not fail you in this. I dare not fail to demonstrate and teach what I hope and pray you will learn and be able to demonstrate and teach to many others. If Follow Me leaders do not effectively teach the newer members of the Family to abide with Him…the Light that the Lord has equipped us to share, will grow dimmer and dimmer. So we must not fail to understand these things. If we don’t obey the Lord in this, He will have to find other people to take our place.
But if we continue to abide with Him and depend on Him…and teach others how to do the same thing we’re learning to do…He will continually fill all of our lamps. He is more than enough for all of us. God never runs out of ‘oil.’ He is The Oil! But He does run out of people that tremble at His Word and are willing to do what He teaches and commands.
The Watch Me…Now You, Pattern
This, dear ones, is the Follow Me Ministry lifestyle that must be passed from one to another by that ‘Watch me interact with our Master…now you try interacting with our Master’ pattern. This pattern produces fruit that is truly God-given and authentic. My job is to let others watch me depend on Yeshua. I have to depend on Him just like a newborn infant depends on its mother or father. Watch me do it…again and again…and then…you do it. And then…when He is my Head and your Head, and we are both His living members…we can do it together and He will be able to bless us all, as we bless one another. That is how this New Covenant Spirit-filled, one New Man in Messiah lifestyle is to be passed on from generation to generation.
Isaiah 44:8
“Do not tremble and do not be afraid; have I not long since announced it to you and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me, or is there any other Rock? I know of none.”
Isaiah 49:14-16
“But Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me. ‘Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, butI will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me!“ (Emphasis added.)
If you watch well trained disciples abide and interact with and look to our Master with never-ending needy dependence, you will also see how wonderfully and supernaturally He responds to them. When you see that, you will immediately see what you are missing, and what much of today’s ‘Christendom’ is missing. But if you are blessed to know true disciples that are worthy of that title, you’ll soon see the difference between them and you. And you will see your neediness and will begin to depend on Him the way you see those veteran disciples do it. True disciples always lead you to Him…and then they get out of your way so that the Lord Himself can take over with you. And after you learn to depend on Him the way the veterans do…you too can lead many others to Him…and then you must get out of their way. It is not at all about us. It is all about HIM! He must become the one and only Source of us all! Then, when we’re all depending and feeding upon Him, He can feed us all, as He comes through all of us.
Our corporate task is to lead all newcomers to HIM. And that in turn will be what they will do for others. We must all become veteran disciples of the same Master…and teach what we have learned from Him and pass on what we are always receiving from Him. He will be the Source of everything, for every one of us. This is the legacy and awesome Gift revealed to us through the lives of our spiritual forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses. We must share this Treasure with every new recruit that God will bring and entrust to our care…no matter how many or how few they may be, or where they may happen to live. Regardless of what is happening in the world around us…God is here to abide and rule the universe…through our crucified flesh!
If we do our job of leading everyone to HIM, God’s living Word will be THE HEAD of us all. And each one of us will be a living member of His precious Body on Earth. And the Holy Spirit will be with us to reveal HIM and make HIM real and alive TO us…and IN us…and finally…THROUGH us. But at all times, throughout every stage of the process, everything must be focused on HIM…and everything we receive, use and share must first come to us FROM HIM! He, the one and only living God and Source and Creator, will supply all of our needs. If He has to work spectacular miracles to do it, He will! Nothing will stop Him from fulfilling His promises to us except our own cold, distant unbelief that will lead us into the trap of fatal disobedience. And disobedience is what creates distance and breaks the connection between us and causes us to ‘lose power’ and languish in the demonic Darkness.
The first generation leaders in every location where Follow Me ‘seeds’ are to be planted, must learn the disciple lifestyle from the Lord Himself. Then He will gradually bring other new disciple recruits into the Family. As that happens, the first generation will become the ‘veterans’ around whom the new recruits instinctively cluster. The Lord will teach them all, veterans and newcomers alike, in their varying stages of development. Naturally the recruits will not know how to live with their invisible Master by faith. So they will watch and listen to the veterans as they continue to live and interact with the Lord. So by watching the veterans live with and depend upon the Lord at all times, the new ones will gradually become aware of Him and learn to do the same thing they see their elders doing with Him. In time, they too will be veterans, and their teachers will get out of their way and leave them in the Lord’s care…and so will it continue from generation to generation.
Veterans always listen to the voice of their Master and always bring everything before Him and talk everything over with Him. Then they will pass along and teach and do whatever He gives them to do and to give. But they do not act until they hear from Him and receive His orders and instructions. After He speaks, they do what He says. And they always receive what they need from Him and look to no other source, but Him.
Teaching this is the task of the Follow Me Ministry. Even though we are separated by great distances, we must nevertheless do our best to learn, practice and exemplify what the Follow Me Ministry lifestyle is about. The job of every one of us is to live this out and do the best we can to explain and describe it to the others.
An Example From my Follow Me Journey
I can only give what the Lord supplies to me. If He does not give it, I have nothing to share. But when He supplies funds, I must do what He wants me to do with them and not what other people may want me to do with them. Naturally I feel the collective pain and anxiety as people pass their problems along to me. But I do not have the money with which to give them the relief they crave. And that creates an emotional burden and distraction for me. My heart aches for them. But it is not my God-given assignment to ‘bail them out’ of their woes. Yes, there are a few people that donate regularly to me personally and to the Follow Me Ministry. These precious donors are by no means wealthy. They are moved by God and by friendship He created between us, to give what they can. But they are few in number. So when they give, I am obligated to use the funds to accomplish the purposes for which they were given. They gave it to help me buy equipment and meet ministry expenses according to how Holy Spirit chooses to develop and spread this ministry’s sphere of influence.
All of the original Follow Me donors knew me personally. They trusted and believed in what I believe Father told me to do. So I am responsible to God, and to them, to make the wisest use possible of the money they give. The Lord included me in what He wanted to do for these friends in the past. So the support that is coming in now is a present harvest of the seeds that the Lord and I planted long ago. So thanks to the lasting friendships and mutual love that arose between us, God is providing me with ‘oil for my lamp’ according to the ways of His Kingdom.
Concluding Thoughts
I know the Lord wants Follow Me to highlight this disciple lifestyle. So that is what I will keep offering to the Follow Me Family members…and I will strive to set a personal example by practicing what I preach. All Follow Me leaders must teach this to those the Lord entrusts to their care, so that in due time, we can all develop into leaders and teachers that are always ‘pregnant’ with God’s live-giving grace and are always bearing the Lord’s Life-giving, Supernatural Fruit. They will be the people that survive and overcome the tsunami of coming tribulations God describes in Psalm 91 and Revelation 3:15-22. Father is looking for such disciples. It’s as if He is saying to us:
‘Will you allow My living Word to pierce, penetrate and impregnate you…with Himself…with the Seed of His own Life…His Life that will work in you and produce the supernatural Heavenly Fruit that only He can produce in your life? Will you receive and abide with My beloved Son to that degree of interaction and intimacy?’
These awesome results can only come about as a result of habitual abiding prayer. We must soak and marinate ourselves in our Master’s Presence continually…not just when we are in some kind of dire emergency and desperate need. Didn’t our Master promise to give us every blessing imaginable as soon as we begin to obey Him? (See Deuteronomy 28 once more.) Does not living with our Master day and night and interacting with Him in all things and at all times prove that we love Him with ALL our heart, soul and strength?
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
“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 (personally demonstrate) 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.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The more dangerous and unstable and confusing conditions in our poor suffering world become, the more will we need to be in continuous interactive contact with our Master. Only He will be able to guide us safely through the demonic ‘mine fields’ that the enemy keeps laying before us.
Matthew 6:6-13a
“ …but you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you…when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your Kingdom come. Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil…” (Emphasis added.)
If you do not yet have a private ‘prayer place’ where you can abide and interact with your Master, GET ONE today! When your children and personal spiritual ‘trainees’ can see you engage often with our Lord in private prayer, in the place you have reserved for spending time with Him…that will be living proof that you really are His disciple…a disciple really follows Him and lives with Him day and night and can truly live, speak and reach out to others in His Name!
Matthew 11:27-29
“All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me.”
So, if you are being called by the Lord and instructed to come alongside of us and become part of the Follow Me disciple Family, it will be your primary task to learn to abide and interact with Him regularly, continually. As I do my best to teach this to you from a distance, realize that this is what I to must do myself…continually. I can only teach what I know and what I do. But when you see what Scripture requires, you will see that every disciple must learn to do the same thing in the same way. I am trying to learn, and to teach…how we can all learn to ‘dance with our Master’ in the Arena of Testimony! If we abide with Him, He will teach us the ‘dance steps’ He plans to perform with us when ‘show time’ finally arrives. And when the time comes, we will perform beautifully, because we took the time and effort needed to practice and practice until we reached the point where we can even do the steps with Him in our sleep!
After we get past the clumsy, stiff, beginning stages of learning to follow the disciple pattern, we will gradually transform from beginners…to veterans. And we will know instinctively and automatically how to dance with our Lord, even under intense fire. The dance will become smoother, more graceful and increasingly more beautiful and synchronized and supernatural…as time goes by.
I’ve tried to describe a major facet of the mission of the Follow Me Ministry. Abiding prayer is ‘oxygen’ and ‘food’, ‘drink’ and life to disciples. Follow Me leaders must learn to demonstrate and teach this…even if at first, they are the only ones doing it. In due time, others will see it how the Lord responds and interacts with us…and then they too will want to have what they see us have and want to know what we know…as soon as they see the fruit that comes to those and from those that are doing it.
My dream is to see ‘The Light of the Word’ pierce, penetrate and impregnate every disciple’s heart…as they abide with the Lord in their private ‘tent of meeting’. If that happens, then, when they emerge to resume facing their daily duties and responsibilities, His Light will continually radiate from them and illuminate the Darkness around them. It will shine forth from that very place of intimacy in their hearts…where He always abides. That is how His Light can be given to the rest of the world!
It is so characteristic of God to do this with and through the weakest, neediest, least likely people…people that never stand on podiums or receive medals of worldly achievement and ‘Perfect 10’ accolades. God uses poor, needy, humble, nondescript people for His purposes. He is able to work with and through them precisely because they know they are so perpetually needy. They are so needy that they can’t survive for a minute unless they continually abide with God’s living Word and receive everything from Him. So He continually fills and supplies those that are bankrupt in themselves, with the riches that only He can give. He fills the lamps of these helpless little ones. And then He shines forth through them and dispels the Darkness of this world in such supernatural ways, that the arrogant and the wise and strong and elite superstars of this fallen decapitated world are utterly confounded. Darkness can never dispel Darkness. Only the Light of the World Himself, shining through His ever-abiding disciples can do that.
I urge you all to join me in this. Go into your own ‘tent of meeting’. Abide there with the Lord yourself. Place every care, concern and need before Him, just as I have to do. Soak yourself in His Perfect Presence. Abide with Him under the folds of His ‘Tallit’ (Prayer Shawl)…And wait upon His good pleasure so that He can pierce, penetrate and impregnate you with His Life…and sow His amazing, Life-giving Seed into you and show to many others…through you…how He intends to run HIS Follow Me Ministry and teach and train HIS personal disciples.
If we all learn to do this with Him, then together as a team, we will be able to teach many other disciples…and all of our lamps will be filled with the Holy Spirit…to overflowing!
I send my love and affection…and In Yeshua’s Name…I ask Father to transmit His awesome Shalom into each one of you!
Your brother disciple,
John