Dear Ones,
As I finalized the July Family News I was again overwhelmed with gratitude to our amazing God for the way in which He has rolled out the red carpet for His disciples (us!) to not only know Him and His ways, but to get to know one another. The covenant level commitment shown among us when our brother had his accident is nothing less than miraculous. Do you see it too? We see His faithfulness over and over again, in us and among us, all of which brings Him the glory that’s due His matchless Name.
My July and August so far have been filled with busyness and raw material of various kinds. Lots of death, mourning, illness, heartaches within my ‘circle of influence’ in which Father has called His Son to shine through as Comforter, Encourager, Friend. Although I work in a large company, my department is fairly small – 50-60 or so. And in that small group alone, six people lost their mom or dad in just the last month. In addition, one of my son’s and daughter-in-law’s friends, a young wife and mom, lost her battle with brain cancer. At Adat, we have several members who can’t meet and worship with us regularly due to illnesses and the daily news in Omaha continues to be filled with shootings, murders, etc. And I’ve found myself on more than one occasion defending my God and my faith, even with other believers. We disciples truly march to the beat of a different drummer while others remain entangled in a pseudo faith that lacks the substance and Torah foundation that we have been called to embrace and live.
We are truly seeing the ‘Last Days’ unfold just as the Lord said it would. One of the things that remains constant in our FMM family is testimony after testimony of God’s faithfulness, which you’ll see again when the August Family News is published. Just this week, John had occasion to articulate once again what FMM is and is not. He was responding to an email inquiry at the time and while it met that need, I thought a greater need could be met as well. As you know, we are scattered all over the world, living in different countries, different continents even. And yet, we all have clearly heard His call to “Follow Me!” And we are doing that to the best of our understanding and ability, even while we try to deal with whatever we encounter in our personal ‘boot camp’ training.
You’ll recall a great deal of boot camp involves rewiring our brains with solid Biblical Truth in the midst of regular, everyday life. So I thought it would be a great reminder and encouragement to share with the family what John explained in his response to that inquiry. So the following is an adaptation of what John wrote in response to the email inquiry, edited to expand the individual references to address our larger family audience. My encouragement is that you give this much thought and meditation – add it to your understanding of our God and His Perfect Ways… then it will flow out through you to the dry and parched hearts Father brings into your paths.
Here is the adaptation of John’s email response…
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What FMM Is and Is Not – A Reminder of Who We Are as Disciples
What I believe I heard the Lord tell me to do, when He was planting Follow Me in my heart, was to continue …at a deeper level…what we started to do with The Christ-Life Solution material (now entitled: The Ultimate Journey). But although it is a continuation of what we began, in Follow Me, there is a big difference in approach and methodology.
Follow Me operates in a much narrower venue than many other ministries. We concentrate on serving the needs of those whom the Lord has called into His service as Last Days disciples. They will have to be able to operate and fulfill their calling under dreadfully chaotic, brutal, violent and unstable circumstances. So this is not a ‘relief-imparting,’ ‘feel good,’ type of ministry. It is a discipline-imparting, toughening, skill-developing ‘boot camp preparation for deadly spiritual combat’, type of ministry.
What I say as I try to explain the nature of Follow Me is not meant to demean any other endeavor. I merely intend to zero in on this ministry’s limited sphere of interest and activity, amid the vast panorama of available ministries. In no way should the following remarks be interpreted as personal criticism or disrespect of what other ministries are doing. The Body of our Lord is vast, diverse and rich. Each member has its essence, function and purpose for the common good. So God in His awesome Wisdom, has something for everyone and meets them right where they’re at. He covers all areas and all people types and every level of need. And Follow Me is one small part of all that God is making available for us.
Follow Me is not geared to help people who still identify with and focus upon interests and activities that are not directly connected to the Biblical disciple lifestyle. Discipleship is invasive, exclusive, full-time, difficult and demanding. There is no such thing as ‘part-time’ discipleship. Nor is there such a thing as an ‘easier’ or ‘less costly, or ‘more convenient’, non-Biblical way to ‘be the Lord’s disciple.’ Those that the Lord has called will not be allowed to remain introspective or self-absorbed, or independent and individualistic. Nor will they have the luxury of continuing to remain preoccupied with untended, unhealed wounds from the past. There will be little time to remain exceedingly needy and preoccupied with having all kinds of personal needs met. These disciples will have to be fit and ready for action. They will have to ‘die’ to whatever worldly, created things or ideas they identified with and to which they gave top priority before the Lord summoned them to follow Him. So, people that still struggle with personal issues and debilitating situations from their pasts need other types of ministry that are geared to meet such needs. Then, once they’ve been set free from the past…they’re free to follow their Master into their Kingdom of Heaven futures.
So because Follow Me creates more of a ‘boot camp’ preparing-for-combat atmosphere, it is not for those that still think in terms of ‘sort of fitting’ the Lord of Glory into some convenient nook or cranny of their lives, while they remain primarily worldly and torn between an array of competing priorities. The Lord will no doubt assign most of His disciples to ‘in the world’ venues. That is, many will probably still work in their professions or fields of expertise or jobs. But they will no longer identify with those things. Their identities from now on will be IN their Messiah, and will flow from their union with Him. So, no matter where they are, or what their assigned fields may be, their real full time work will be to be ‘God-Bringers’, they will be God’s ‘Royal Priesthood’ that brings ‘The Light of the World’ who indwells them, into their situations and circumstances and interactions so that He can dispel the Darkness that engulfs the world and destroy the works of the Serpent. Last Days disciples won’t be able to retain their previous identities; nor will they remain committed to and engrossed with wearing ‘many hats’. Everything they do will be an embodiment of their Master. So they can’t be committed to the mind-frazzling ‘multi-tasking’, part-worldly, part-spiritual types of lifestyles that entertain and try to juggle many competing preoccupations, although this is very common among many people of this day and age.
Disciples do not have the luxury of being allowed to refuse to change once the Lord has called them. His call will force them to forsake their ‘pre-call’ lives and gladly leave them behind. If they’re going to follow Him, everything about them is going to transform! So the Lord will not allow them to remain occupied and involved with temporary worldly identities, ties, commitments and pursuits. Nor will He allow them to settle for being ‘religious,’ in an attempt to ‘sprinkle’ a little ‘spirituality’ onto what, essentially, are worldly pursuits.
“Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The Wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
“Nicodemus said to Him, ‘How can these things be?” Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?“ (John 3:7-12)
The Gospel is not about a new and improved version of the ‘same old me’. It is about the death of all I used to be…and the total replacement of that with the Resurrection Life that only our Messiah can impart to us. And this is what He is here to do, through the Gift of the Holy Spirit. For that reason, Follow Me will focus on addressing the needs of those who hear and are ready to obey the Lord’s call to come out of whatever they were before, and leave it behind. We endeavor to offer such people Bible-based material to help them as they follow their Master into the Great Unknown of the Last Days, as the Book of Revelation briefly and generally depicts them.
I firmly believe that the Book of Revelation has, packed within it, the complete and perfect Fulfillment of what God began to reveal in the first five books of the Bible. I believe the books that follow the Torah explain and amplify and lead up to the Last Days fulfillment. At the end of this temporary earthly life, all that was originally packed into the indispensable Torah Foundation that God gave to the world, through Moses, will be totally fulfilled, just as God said it would be. So, Follow Me is here to serve people of all backgrounds, from all regions, who are ready to answer the Lord’s call to hear and obey His voice, and follow Him OUT of their former rigid ties to cultural and ecclesiastical traditions and worldly ethnic and family lifestyle patterns, priorities, mindsets and lifestyles they inherited that have nothing to do with the Biblical Culture God commands His chosen ones to embrace and share with the world. In other words, Follow Me is not about ‘asking the Lord to accommodate Himself to MY life’. Our Master won’t allow us to get away with trying to invite Him to fit Himself into MY life, at MY convenience. We must learn to forsake ‘my life’ so that we can truly be free to follow Him into HIS HEAVENLY ETERNAL LIFE!
I am well aware of the fact that there aren’t too many people who care enough to be that serious about living out all that is implied in the command, ‘Follow Me!’ But the ones that the Holy Spirit is truly causing to be that serious, are the ones this ministry is meant to serve. We believe that they, thanks to the awesome preparations the Holy Spirit is making in their hearts, will care enough to do whatever it takes to change…and will be willing to devote the time and energy required to ponder, seriously, what is provided for them on the Follow Me website.
What is so different about this ministry is this: We ask you to assume responsibility for training yourself! How can you do that? You do it…by learning to be trained by our Lord and Master…in Person! No one can do what you must do to follow Him, for you. You must realize that your brain only listens to you! Once you’ve programmed it, it will automatically do what you say or imply now, and will continually do what you told it to do in the past…with awesome faithfulness and accurate precision…even if what you told it to do and believe was wrong or demonic! That’s why only you can do what it takes to change or reprogram it if what you told it in the past was wrong. This is at the heart of true repentance. Once you have put data into your ‘onboard computer’, only you can repent of it. Only you can change and replace it. Not even God will take away your free will! So YOU must choose deliberately, to set things right within the onboard computer that runs your life according to what you will be telling it to do from now on!
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.” (Romans 12:1-3)
To do that you must ‘garden’ your personal faith in our Master’s Resurrection Presence until it becomes so deep and strong that you will focus on and abide continually with Him, as your personal Commander in Chief. He must become so real and present to you that you will remain perpetually at His service and disposition! This is essential. We are called to become one with God’s living Word; and He only says and does what His Father is saying and doing! [See Isaiah 55:8-11 & John 5:19; 30]
This interactive union with our Master is the heart and soul of what we stand for and what we ourselves are striving to learn to do with Him in our own lives. As His image and likeness, we are to mirror and embody His obedience to the Father, by the way we obey Him, who is our Father’s living and written Word. No other activity can replace the actual personal abiding, interactive intimacy into which God’s living Word Himself has called you. Nor must you think of allowing other men or women to take His place in your life. There can be no substitute for you, interacting personally and directly with Him, the way a branch interacts with and depends upon its vine! Can you imagine the absurdity of sending branches to ‘Vine School’ so professors can give them lectures and assign books for them to read that talk about ‘Fruit-bearing’ and ‘Vine-Life’? Would any of that ever produce one real grape? No, of course not! Only union and interaction with the Vine itself would produce real results. Nothing can produce fruit for the Vine or like the Vine. Only the Vine can and must produce the fruit…from within the branches that are truly one with it! And this is what we are urging disciples to realize and admit. We must resign ourselves to the utter necessity of doing whatever it takes to be truly bonded and united to Him so that He can become our Life and we can bear the fruit that only He can produce.
So, with that in mind, ponder what is on our website…but do it always in the Lord’s Presence! Discuss with Him, everything you read. He is always with you…giving you every breath, heartbeat and brain wave. So let Him speak to your heart as you ponder the articles and Biblical meditations. This will take time; but since you’ve already been set aside for His full time service, the time this will require should not be a problem for you. All your time is His from now on anyway, isn’t it? So, use that time to allow your Master to teach, train, direct and correct you. There is no substitute for doing the reading and everything else, with Him. We’re learning to live in HIS PRESENCE at all times and to do everything with and from Him! So reading the material with Him is great practice for learning how to interact with Him at all times and be able to hear His voice, in the midst of every other activity you engage in throughout daily life.
Our Master must be able to teach and train you Himself…in Person…to show you what specific things His Father sent Him to do to you, in you, for you and through you! There is no substitute for this if you’re going to be His disciple…on HIS terms! No created ministry, church fellowship, synagogue, or ministerial organization can take His place. Nor can any human religious leader(s) teach you to be our Messiah’s disciple, in His place. Disciples are always under the direct command of their Master. He is the one they must always be following. And just as no other human can take His place in your life…you, as His disciple, must never assume that you can take His place in anyone else’s life! Others must learn to abide with Him from you…as they see you abiding in Him. The disciple message must be: “Watch me abide in Him…now you try abiding with Him the way you see me doing it…and keep trying…until you get it and can actually do it yourself.”
So ponder what is on the website…always in His Presence! Discuss it with Him. Ask for His views. Ask Him to teach you Himself about what His written Word means and what He wants you to gain from the website and what He needs to emphasize with you. Do this on the website so that you can gradually start doing it all day, in the midst of anything else you encounter. Get used to doing everything with Him. Don’t rely on your own wits or any other created thing to speak for Him or take His place in guiding your steps. Take sufficient time and effort to get used to this kind of personal interaction with your Messiah. Then…you will find out for yourself what Follow Me is all about and how vastly different from everything else disciple life really is. In this context, let me point out some facts that pertain to what we’re doing:
1. The era and conditions during which I wrote the Christ-Life (Ultimate Journey) material, and the world situation in which I wrote it, no longer exist. Today’s world and times are vastly different. America and the other nations and their cultures and attitudes have changed drastically! And, I believe that because of the vast improvements in communication and the advances in technology, it won’t be long before we are all pulled into a world-wide, Last Days ‘Ultimate Confrontation’ between the Powers of Darkness and God’s living Word and His Heavenly Hosts. And that confrontation and the ultimate defeat and downfall of the powers of Darkness will be followed by God’s Ultimate Judgment in preparation for the way things will be for all of eternity.
In other words, I believe we’re running out of time. So every temporary thing or situation we got used to in the past, and may still be comfortable with in the present…is going to disintegrate and blow away in the foreseeable future (Hebrews 12:25-29). And our training must prepare us for that inevitability and also prepare us to effectively and successfully ‘weather the storms’ that are surely ahead of us.
2. If I’m right about this…then the training that Last Days disciples (like you) will need, must go much deeper than what previous generations knew or could have even imagined. Those who are properly trained to abide in and with Him will persevere to the end. But those who cannot abide with Him will be powerless to finish. They will cave in and fall apart under the intense spiritual combat and the physical chaos and pressures that will shake all of Creation during those dreadful, awesome, overwhelming days.
3. Even as recently as the 80’s, 90’s and the turn of this 21st. century, believers did not feel this Last Days urgency. But now, many can see the ‘handwriting on the wall’ and realize that the level of ‘Christendom’ we have all been showing to the world and were willing to ‘practice’ to this point…has to a large degree, fallen short of the mark. There’s hardly any difference between what we call ‘the world’ and what we call ‘the Church.’ Many have no spiritual authority because they seek comfort and status in the world, AND the blessings of God’s Kingdom, at the same time. But that bypasses the stringent crucified life and Spirit-led lifestyle responsibilities that connect disciples to the Kingdom of Heaven. We can’t have it both ways! Disciples must live the crucified life of their Master before they will be able to share in His Resurrection Glory.
“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on Earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our Life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in Glory!” (Colossians 3:1-4)
In this modern era, there is very little fear of our Almighty God. Most societies have little or no respect for the awesome Majesty of His Word. And it is hard to find the Power of the Holy Spirit freely able to work in many places around this world. Therefore, God’s Spirit is not validating and testifying in Power, to the way many of us are living (See 2 Timothy 3). I am speaking of Jewish people, Christian people, Muslim people and all others, without exception. And many of us who claim to be ‘believers in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’, are NOT prepared to give the supernatural level of testimony that God’s True Israel will be required to give when all hell breaks loose and all the chips are on the table. At that time, nothing phony and unreal will be allowed to survive. God’s Holy Spirit of Truth will burn away whatever is false. And, as the Lord has warned, there will be a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth by a lot of shocked, traumatized, very religious people, who, in their Biblical illiteracy and self-will, lived their lives under the false assumptions that they had ‘arrived’ and ‘knew all the answers’ . They further complacently assumed that they were representing God and were following His ways and that they were doing exactly as he wanted (See Matthew 5, 7 and 25 and Revelation 3:15-22).
4. In the days of the apostles, when the Lord’s Resurrection and Ascension were fresh in the minds of believers…and the living testimonies of the apostles who saw Him in His risen state still rang in their ears, it was easier to abide in Yeshua’s risen, Spirit-imparted Presence. During the first few years of that post-Resurrection experience, as recorded in the Book of Acts, all believers were either Messianic Jews, or Gentile proselytes to Judaism! And in the excitement and joy that came from knowing that their risen Messiah was right there with them, they would spontaneously gather in homes, or even in open spaces like Solomon’s Portico in the temple, to rejoice in Him and celebrate and demonstrate His living Presence in their midst. So their original Spirit-filled idea of ‘going to church’ was vastly different from the current commonly held idea that arose centuries after the apostles died and the influence of their Messianic, Remnant of Israel lifestyle, had faded. Those original gatherings were a natural outcropping of the vibrant, living, Tanach-fulfilling, New Covenant Messianic Family Life they all shared and enjoyed. These blessed New Covenant Israelites had the very one that Moses had written about… actually living within them! (See Deuteronomy 18:15-19; 30.) So they were always able to interact with their risen Lord individually and corporately. And naturally they would gather to celebrate and share their common Living Treasure as He circulated in their midst. The Word’s electrifying Presence was the unbreakable supernatural ‘Glue’ that bonded those Spirit-filled New Covenant Israelites together. And wonder of wonders! In every city, whether it was very large or not, there was only one Body, because only He was the Head of every believer! Imagine that! Regardless of how great their numbers became or how diverse their backgrounds and locations were…those Messianic Jews abided as one multi-membered organism…joyfully, lovingly…under the Authority and Headship of their risen and vibrantly present Messiah!
5. But after a few centuries, the original glow of His living Presence had dimmed and faded. By then, other people groups had taken authority over God’s ‘Family.’ Their alien non-Biblical views and agendas caused the Family to drift far away from the revelations and commandments of God’s Word as He had first entrusted them to Israel. Man’s word usurped the preeminence of God’s written Word and the Biblically illiterate peoples lost the Reality and electrical glow of the Lord’s Resurrection Presence and the Messianic Family life that naturally developed around Him in the early days when all the believers were Spirit-filled, Bible-fulfilling Israelites. When the believers were severed from their Biblical Israelite roots, a genetic defect appeared in the ‘Church’s’ DNA. It manifests itself as a demonic drive, a lust for radical independence and individualistic autonomy that causes believers to continually fragment, divide and separate from each other. Today, I hear estimates that say we have in excess of 38,000 different ‘Christian’ denominations, groups, sects and cults that claim to be Spirit-led and Bible-based. Yet they have virtually nothing to do with each other! This abomination will continue, as long as the so-called believers settle for separation from their True common Head, the risen indwelling Lord. If it’s okay for them to remain separated from Him, they will surely remain separated from His other members.
So to try to fill the vacuum left by our Messiah’s living Presence, the common practice today is for religious leaders to continue to devise a variety of created religious things and ‘events’ to try to fill that horrible ‘Messiah Yeshua Vacuum’. ‘Christians’ no longer look seriously to the risen Messiah Himself, to serve as their ‘Head’ and Source of Life. They looked to ‘church buildings’ and ‘Movements’ and, self-appointed leaders’ and highly-gifted, charismatic personalities and soulish man-made religious organizations, objects, icons and rituals to take His place. That has been so common, that it has become NORMAL!
So, naturally, now that it’s normal for us to lack the utterly essential union with the indwelling Life of our common Head, the precious Body of our Messiah remains horribly fragmented and mutilated and disfigured. The inherited ‘genetic defect’ that came when the human race was decapitated with its Head, the living Word of God, continues to cause so-called ‘believers’ to disintegrate and crumble into thousands of conflicting, mutually-negating, divisive sects and groups! And throughout the post-Resurrection New Covenant post-apostolic era, that atmosphere and division continue to this day!
And out of that confusing jumble, there has emerged the modern, very common, ‘go to church’ or, ‘go to synagogue’, set of attitudes, and worldly religious practices and individualistic, self-adoring lifestyles with which we’ve become so familiar.
6. Over the centuries, believers were led to believe and assume that “We’re just fine the way we are…as long as we embrace ‘the right denominational theology’ and attend the ‘right’ church’ (out of tens of thousands of possibilities). So, people focus on getting sinners to say a ‘sinners prayer’ and be baptized, and start ‘going to their kind of church.’ But that pattern tends to ignore and omit what the Lord actually told His disciples to be and to do in the Scriptures. Yeshua wasn’t telling them to go out and make ‘more Jewish converts’ or to establish ‘churches’ or try to recruit and develop more ‘church-goers’ or ‘Christians’ or ‘Catholics’ or ‘Protestants’ or ‘Messianics’ by which to swell their memberships.
He told His Jewish apostles to show the whole gentile world how to abide with Him…as His disciples! He told them to show the whole world how to be and do with Israel’s Messiah, what Israel’s Messiah had taught them to be and do with Him after He called them and they began to follow and live with Him day and night. He commanded them to pass on to the whole world, the New Covenant, post-Ascension, supernatural Spirit-empowered, living Temple lifestyle and abilities that His abiding indwelling Presence would make possible for them…so that the rest of the world could be grafted into Israel’s Salvation Root, and all men could interact with Him, the way He had taught His Jewish apostles to interact with Him!
7. Many, in this modern, post-apostolic era, have never been challenged or stimulated to wrestle with the puzzle and mystery involved in actually being grafted into God’s True Israel so that we could abide and interact with our risen Master as His Father chose to reveal Him. He has called us to abide with Him, by faith in the credibility of His Biblical promises and familiarity with His Biblical lifestyle and His Spirit-imparted Presence within us. But instead of wrestling with the challenge of being ‘grafted into Israel’s Root,’ and abiding in His Resurrection Presence, we’ve busied ourselves with a variety of other vapid, mindlessly inane things. And meanwhile, our Yeshua-less mindsets and habitual self-centered routines keep us as worldly, self-centered and fragmented and separated from each other as ever. And that does not allow God to build a true, Spirit-empowered, unified Body for His Son!
8. Today, it is common and ‘normal’ for believers, even within the same congregations, to remain distant strangers to each other. The Blood Covenant depth of mutual love, care and concern that the Family of God enjoyed in apostolic times is a treasure that has been lost for centuries. Instead, people remain selfish, individualistic and sectarian. We remain lost in large crowds and never come to intimately know and follow our risen, ever-present Lord, as His Family! But true disciples must undergo the unique discipline of living day and night with our Master…BY FAITH! He wants us to believe His revelations and promises, and to obey His commands and to trust Him so much, that we actually become part of His personal Household and Family. He wants us to know and love and put up with each other precisely because we are all interacting with Him, as He lives and operates in and through each one of us! He is our Head and Life Source…and we are His individual members, sharing His Eternal Life, and called to live and operate as His one unified Body! He is the reason why we are to stick together, to the death, as Blood Covenant brothers. That is why disciples of that caliber naturally want to be together. We are all called to be and do the same thing…to embody Him, and to care for His members for His sake! Disciples learn how to do everything with Him and from Him…24/7! This is the only way we can get to know Him and His ways with authentic precision and to help and encourage each other as we all learn to abide with Him, as His Body! He is here to be present to and live through, His own…to teach, correct, discipline and show each generation of this fallen world all that He is, and what He does, and how He does it…through His disciples!
But without Him serving as our true Head, we all remain decapitated, divided and scattered. No substitute for Him can make us supernaturally fruitful, or give us Divine Authority to speak and act in His Name. Only Yeshua Himself has the Authority to make us one so that He can live and operate in us and through us. And that is why we focus on Him exclusively.
9. There’s no substitute for abiding with our Master Yeshua, in person. Disciples can’t be formed and trained just by having them listen to other people talk about Him. It’s not enough to read the Bible or consume an endless series of ‘spiritual books’ or courses or classes ABOUT Him. That will never substitute for the Lord Himself…and for living and abiding in His Presence and interacting with Him personally and intimately! We must have direct personal knowledge of, and access to, His electrifying living, indwelling Presence.
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” (2 Corinthians 4:7-11)
10. Once we come to believe that He is really here with us all the time…then we will have a Master to follow. And then we have a chance to learn to be His disciples. According to Scripture (Hebrews 12:26-28), everything temporary, that is, worldly and man-made, is going to lose its grip and prominence and will disappear from the scene entirely, in the near future. So if we’re relying on those things, what will we do when they’re gone? And what will we do if the Lord says to us…‘Depart from Me workers of Lawlessness; I never knew you!’
No…we MUST have HIM! Nothing short of Him will do. The world doesn’t need any more of us. It needs Him…ALONE! And it is our job to learn how to abide with Him and carry about and embody His actual, Torah-fulfilling and validating Presence, as He lives in us and reveals Himself through our yielded flesh. We must be able to dance with Him in the Arena of Testimony…and let the rest of the world watch us actually doing it!
11. If we don’t learn to abide with Him…IN PERSON…at all times and in all things…we will be as dead, empty and powerless as the world around us is. And we will not be ready to face the onslaughts of the powers of Darkness when they pull out all the stops at the end and use everything they’ve got to try to derail us and shoot holes in our testimonies. Only the Lord has defeated Satan and his demonic forces. HE’S the only Human in whom the Father is well pleased! He’s the only Human…to this point…in whom the Eternal Resurrection Life abides. Only In Him and From Him does that Life originate. Only HE has all Authority in Heaven and on Earth. Only HE knows the mind of Father. Only HE can impart the Spirit of God to His own. And only HE is able to lead us through the demonic minefields that the Serpent has laid all across this world to destroy us. So we must learn to abide with HIM, and cling to Him – exclusively. He is our one and only Source for whatever is real, true and good! He is our one and only Hope for persevering and surviving and overcoming in the days that lie ahead of us all.
12. So Follow Me focuses exclusively on trying to help people connect with the Lord Himself, so that He can be their indwelling Life. If we succeed in that, it will be more than enough. the Lord Himself will take over from there. So we must realize that the Last Days chaos and terror that Scripture warns us about will undoubtedly strip away and destroy our comfort zones and all current religious man-made empires. And then, we will see whether or not we are truly still naked and Sin-corrupted and alone, or whether we’re securely covered and enfolded within the Presence, Righteousness, Authority and Well Being of the risen Lord of lords and King of kings, as God promises to do, in Psalm 91, for those that truly believe.
This is why we follow such a different course heading. We aren’t trying to get people to supply us with paychecks and a nice headquarters…and lots of equipment. We are not a fancy business-like enterprise. We have no books, CD’s or ‘courses’ for sale. We do not sponsor expensive conferences, classes or meetings. All of those things can be helpful to some degree…but we don’t want anything to get between people and the Presence of the Lord. We don’t want to create distractions that will monopolize their time, focus and energy and draw any of their attention away from Him.
The only thing I believe the Lord told us to do in the Follow Me Ministry is to learn to continually minister to Him…while He lives in us and through us. That enables Him to minister to the world around us through our living faith in His Resurrection Presence. We draw everyone’s attention to God’s living and written Word…to the fact that He contains within Himself, the Fullness of Almighty God…to the fact that He became one of us and that He is Real and Risen from the Dead, and All-Sufficient…and always here with us, as our Messiah-King and High Priest, at all times…ready to be and do the things that only God Almighty Himself could do…to us…in us…and through us!
It’s quite likely that there will never be a Follow Me center or school or meeting place. The Last Days will probably force disciples to be a mobile army without walls…and guerilla-like tactics and lifestyles may become the order of that era. Therefore, we will not insert ourselves between our Master and His people. We can’t make disciples FOR Him. Only He can make disciples for Himself. And so we’re trying to give the Reality of His Resurrection Presence the ‘Last Days’ attention, respect and trust that our resurrected Master and the urgency of the Last Days truly deserve.
On our website, you will see a section entitled ‘The Original ‘Marching Orders.’ Read what they say…ponder them…absorb them…and above all, do them! For God’s living Word to truly take us over, we must die to everything else, and live only to Him. He must become our one and only Life. He is worthy of our full attention. As I’ve said, we’re not a world religion with a dead founder! God has eternally anointed His own Son, His living uncreated Word made flesh, who has Supreme Authority over all of Creation, to be here with us, to be everything for us and to to apply to us all of the benefits of His awesome Finished Work of Creation and Redemption. It is Finished, Perfect, Consummated and All Sufficient, and He is here to be all of that to us and for us! So the time has come for His disciples to learn to avail themselves of this awesome Treasure and to demonstrate to the rest of the world, how real and awesome His living All-Sufficient Presence in our midst really is!
God is waiting for His people to believe what He said about wanting to send His Word to reveal and command and impart His grace into our innermost being. He has been yearning to impart all this ‘daily bread’ to us since the moment Eve and Adam fell into the Sin of rejecting and bypassing His living Word. So it’s time for us to close the distance that separates us from our Master, until instead of distance, there remains only…oneness.
That’s all there is to Follow Me. It’s all about Him…in all of His Eternal Perfection and Glory…being and doing what He was sent to do…to us, in us and through us…to our Father’s Eternal Glory!
I hope that helps you get a better understanding of what this ministry is all about…
John
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May we all continue to learn and grow together as we follow our beloved Lord and Master wherever He leads and do whatever He requires. He is indeed worthy of that kind of testimony!
In His matchless Name,
Your sister, Nancy