To try and grasp the significance of the kind of demand transition can have on a person just picture in your mind rowing down a river when suddenly you are faced with an approaching waterfall. Everything seems peaceful and serene until you hear the sound of water cascading down below.   As you become aware of the situation you are now in, your heart is compelled to take in the consequences of being pulled into an inescapable experience beyond your ability to alter its outcome. This is where the church is today. She is about to face the demand for transition that will usher in a shift so dynamic in its making that it will bring about change completely unmatched and unparalleled to any other time in her history.

How to Interpret the New Thing 

"Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth: shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."  - Isaiah 43:18-19

      Sometime around the beginning of 1998 I was preparing a message on "Walking in the Full Anointing." God had been speaking to me about some things concerning the anointing that I had never seen before. Right in the middle of my preparation the Holy Spirit said to me, "I am about to bring a divine shift to the church." In fact, he called it a "paradigm shift." What he began to explain to me was how he was about to bring a greater dimension to the ministry of the Holy Spirit; particularly, to those who were hunger for a move of God. In other words, change was coming and it would usher in a deeper, more intimate walk in our son-ship than we had ever known was possible, but it was going to require a life of preparation in order for us to be able to step up and launch out into it.

        Frankly, I don't think I was able at that time to fully grasp the import of what he was trying to prepare for me. But back in 2010 I became more awakened to the idea of this "divine shift coming" and since then it has pulled on me to make diligent search of it like never before.

        You know, sometimes I think we interpret what the Lord is trying to get over to us as if it is going to happen tomorrow, when in reality it can be much later coming than we realize. It has been nearly sixteen years from the first time I heard him speak to me about this "divine shift" and yet, here we are just now beginning to feel the demand for transition where everything is about to change.

        Make no mistake about it we have already entered into a season of unprecedented changes. These changes now require of us to become more deeply and intimately acquainted with the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Any time God begins to announce change is coming, we can rest assured it will always be assaulted with counterfeit revelation that the enemy will use to try to throw off what God is about to do. It is uncanny how the devil tries to steal away revelation by substituting brass for gold. I'm telling you the winds of doctrine are going to once again blow in on the church like it did during Paul and John's day, and we have to be able to discern what truth is from that which is error. That is why the "hyper-grace" teachings and the emergence of the "seeker-friendly" church format can appear so appealing to so many. It looks good. It sounds good, and it even feels good. But it will only increase the level of compromise and weaken the revelation of God. We have to allow the teacher on the inside to take his rightful place, if we want to see the greater dimension of the Holy Spirit work in our lives and not be limited to the possibilities that our son-ship holds.

Every teaching that comes along inspired by the Holy Spirit has one distinguishing characteristic: it is marked with the anointing and it aims to produce holy living.    

          God spoke to me one night during our Bible School class and said, "There is a liberty to move." Just as I began to write that thought down more began to rise up out of my spirit. The Lord went on to tell me: "There is so much the Holy Spirit wants to do...things he wants to impart and things he wants to see stirred up that has already been imparted, but things have been confined because of man's thinking. His mind has stood in the way of much of what the Holy Spirit wants to see done. But there is a liberty coming. It is all part of the shift!" There it was again, this word, shift! Then he said, "There is a new mind that will lift you out of the mind of man into the mind of the Spirit. When this is accomplished then a new liberty to move will come. Right now things are wanting because your mind is restricting the flow. It may not be a conscious thing but it is still restricting the flow." Here was the real clincher for me. He added, "You have to draw back from the natural tendency to think like a man and start thinking like a God-man, and then will come the liberty, and then will come the release of things that are wanting." What I took away from this word is simply us having "a new mind for the new man!"

          If there has ever been a time we learn how to think with the mind of Christ it is now! Listen very carefully. Here is my whole point: Christ, in the Greek, is the word CHRISTOS and it means "the anointed." To think with the mind of Christ is to think in line with the Anointed One, or Holy One.  Remember John said, "You have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things" (1 John 2:20). Later he added: "But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him" (1 John 2:27). Every teaching that comes along inspired by the Holy Spirit has one distinguishing characteristic: it is marked with the anointing and it aims to produce holy living.  If there is a revelation that comes along and does not produce righteousness and true holiness, watch out for it! It may create a shift and a change, but can it carry the demand of transition? In other words, can it carry the anointing and will it ultimately bring us into a greater dimension of the ministry of the Holy Spirit!

PRAYER

        Father, today I purpose in my heart that I will become more mindful of the anointing. I will observe whatever comes along that seems to be a new thing, and I will look to the anointing within to reveal what is real from what is counterfeit. Holy Spirit, guide to and teach me so that I only embrace what has your markings on it. Help me today to be more discerning, more conscious of where you want to lead me from where deception would try to take me. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.

CONFESSION

         I will not be deceived. I will not be lead astray. I will be most discerning to the flood of things trying to press their way into the church. I purpose in my heart that I will stick with the anointing. I will flow with only that which I know has the true characteristics of the life of God, and which draws me into righteousness and true holiness. I will answer to the demand of transition with a heart sold out to God, unwilling to compromise my faith and my commitment to Jesus Christ.

DEFINING MOMENTS...

         If you and I will learn to hold fast to the markings of God, then we will be able to handle the demand for transition and not be lead astray. There is something about the anointing that when it begins to flow you know you have entered into sacred territory. You know you are on holy ground and it is there where the life of God resides. There is no other place like it. It is a place where the greater dimension of the Spirit is revealed and where our son-ship can begin to rise to new levels apart from any compromise!

In His Grace,

Pastor David

Faith Harvest Church