Author: 'face2face' - Gareth Duffty
Road signs ahead…
As you drive in the rural areas of UK the road signs are some times different to urban driving. You come across signs that tell you to pay attention of, “Beware of…”. Generally they are small signs, not mass-produced or government signs but little hand-made, painted on cardboard to wooden board and some times even marked stones.
Signs of “beware lambing season”, “beware heavy plant in road”, “beware ducks crossing”, they communicate one thing in all their ways BEWARE, pay attention, take a second look, make sure you’re paying attention, avoid an accident or an incident. All these tells us we don’t want you to harm yourself or any one else.
While recently writing blogs on the prophetic a few have come to mind, things written on hearts, hands, eyes, life really. I would like to knock a few hand-made posts in regarding the prophetic, to hold up some beware’s for us all. All prophetic ministry, using it in a broad sense if you prophecy or are in ministry call, even if you are an elder, pastor, vicar or teacher you should have a prophetic fervour in you.
All prophetic ministry should Beware of Weariness. When the scriptures says don’t 
grow weary, weariness. Think of the prophets that got tired. Elijah running from Jezebel, oh the grace of God that he didn’t just wake him up and give him a meal but sent him back to sleep. Let’s get rid of the weariness.
Beware of a weariness that is deeper than just physical. beware of the weariness that insidiously creeps into your soul, the tiredness of not wanting to get up and do it again. Or so much flack that you don’t want to get up and say it again. weariness. beware of that weariness.
When Jesus pressed himself on in the garden of Gethsemane and had come back and asked them to wait the hour and watch the hour in pray with him, he says “…can’t you even watch the one hour?” Their weariness. But he couldn’t afford to let that weariness press his soul. For if he had allowed that weariness to engulf he soul the cup would never had been drunk and you and I would not have been here.
Beware flattery. All the apt on the back to the prophet. Beware those who come flattering you on your delivery, your content. your powerful word and yet don’t change by it. Flattery comes from the heart that is committed to no change. It just wants you to feel good about accepting them in their unchanged state. Beware flattery.
Beware compromise that when you have the word of God, when you have the vision of God, then you don’t indulge in well may be, well perhaps you are right, maybe I will have to tone it down a wee bit and yes perhaps I am asking too much too soon, and by the time they will have finished helping you adjust your vision will be so small you will need a microscope to find it. Don’t compromise.
Beware of ridding your gift. Most prophets, not all but most, are articulate. But when in the unction of the Holy Spirit they bring the word of God it is powerful and articulate, even when they are preaching the prophetic word, it can be very easy to lose your dependence on God and ride your gift.
Beware hypocrisy. It’s interesting that Jesus didn’t shout out to the crowds there 
beware of hypocrisy, he accepted the fact that the Pharisees had hypocrisy, but he said to his own, beware of the leaven. Hypocrisy of demanding in your words what you are not willing to walk and are not walking in, of calling on people to walk by principles that your are not a model for living in.
I have found myself being in situations where people are generous they give, share of their life and give as well as tithe while some men and women live on this generosity yet did not personally tithe, the church required the people to be generous in this manner other wise it would not meet its responsibilities. I could not believe it, what right did they have to expect what they did not do. What right do we have to know the depth of their actions and not walk ourselves in it? Beware hypocrisy.
Beware the influence of wrong companions to you as God servant. Imagine how many people in the hour of crises or time to strain forward to stand for what is to come from God found themselves in companionship that keep undercutting, undermining, with nice words and suggestions.
Beware trying to prove your ministry. if you are a prophet you don’t need to prove your ministry. there is nothing for you to prove. Listen to what its says in 1 Samuel 3:19-20 ‘Samuel grew and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fail. And all Israel from Dan even to Beer-Sheba knew that Samuel was confirmed as a prophet. Who confined him? God, by not letting his words fail. By brining it about. You have nothing to prove. You are either bringing the word, if you are bridging the word, let God do the proving. It will happen. You don’t fight anything.
Just be who you are meant to be, enjoy the adventure as you expand and follow Godlikeness, as those who are part of a prophetic movement, a church called to be the voice of God, to enable, to inspire all to hear God, to enable people to hear the Father where ever they find themselves to be far from God or where God has made us near.
Chosen Ones – WOW!
Let us not doubt who we are, let us live in whose we are, let us see Gods view of us…
∑ Chosen us for Gods name (Acts 15:14)
∑ Chosen us for Gods own possession (1 Peter 2:9)
We are called ‘People of God’ (1 Peter 2:10).Distinct from world around us so we were called ‘People of the Way’ (Acts 9:2; 19:9; 23)
The early church ‘stood out’ in their
∑ Attitude; Behaviour; Talk; Family Values
∑ Work Ethic; Integrity; Civil obedience
∑ Covenant Relationships
Through becoming a ‘new creation’ 2 Cor. 5 (Regeneration) transferred from one kingdom to another. (Col 1:13) Our difference defined by our life in Christ’s Kingdom.
Jesus highlighted this before Pilate, John 18:33-37. My Kingdom not of this sphere; realm; world. It is not sourced in this time/space world. Pilate intrigued would like to have known more.
What kind of Kingdom is this?
∑ Invisible but Real: Psalm 103:19
∑ Operating to its own currency and ways, different to the created world: Psalm 115:3
∑ Eternal not just passing, it is established and will continue: Psalm 145:13
Here in submission to Christ as King discover starting point of Kingdom agenda in our lives. Christ’s silence before Pilate was not cowardice. Christ knew visible controlled by invisible. Christ knew the Divine Purpose was being outworked in this Cosmic moment. Silence therefore befitting what was happening. Although stakes high for mankind – Jesus had nothing to say to the world of men. He knew his stance was now in confrontation with Satan/demons. Pilate was the instrument of Father’s will, shocker Acts 3:16-21. After 4000 years – time arrived to crush serpents head. When he’d prayed ‘not my will …yours’ in Gethsemane and drunk the cup. The whole Redemption drama moved to higher plane. Jesus silent knowing God’s purpose must be viewed from Heaven’s perspective. Lose sight of invisible Kingdom end up pursuing the visible kingdom.
This is why Jesus said ‘Seek first the Kingdom’. (Matthew 6:33) This is the ultimate priority for Kingdom people. In accepting this we are saying we accept/submit to Christ’s Kingdom.
∑ Christ is over us as King
∑ We are his brothers and sisters, as Subjects yet joint heirs, as created yet brought to a place of co participant with God, brought into the relationship with God, now a shared life
∑ To live by Kingdom ways
∑ To fulfil Kingdom agenda in our world.
Ultimate accountability for the coming Kingdom motivates immediate responsibility. To cause us to live as Kingdom people God has given us discipleship structures to our lives
∑ Family; School; Community; Work place
∑ Church; Civil Government and often a
∑ Mentor: whose integrity, spirituality yet normality has earned our respect/trust.
To this extent your life lived by Kingdom pattern, ways. To this extent in life comes and holds together. Just as he does the universe. Col 1:15-17 (message)
The Kingdom life is internalised in our Humanity. Everything is touched by Cause/Effect. Before coming to Christ our effort to keep law external to ourselves was legalism. Now the law of Kingdom written in our hearts out minds. It is internalised in Kingdom. This means things start changing from within – This process – of Christlikeness, Kingdom alignment always means Kingdom adjustment. e.g. Isaiah 6:5 ‘Ruined’ – ‘Coming apart’. Coming apart before the throne, until grace cleansed, adjusted and brought him together again – Conformed to image of King.
Where shall we go to in our next blog?
On Our Door-step
There is a challenge on each of our door-step, to reach the world of our every day, not the religious world or some other sub culture but the world of the people of my street, the people in my education world, those who turn up at the office of factory every morning world.
To reach our world with the radical love of God, to adjust Peoples view of God so that they might find a life worth living. To open people up to a correct View of God. I am not sure if the following will be your world if you don’t reside in the UK, but it certainly the world as defined by the UK as a Village of 100. I will in another blog offer a World Village of 100.
If Britain were a village of 100 people…
17 of the 100 villagers would be under the age of 15, while another 16 would be 65 or over (three of them 80 or over).
There would be 80 adults (aged 16 or over), of whom 40 would be married and 11 would live alone.
There would be 42 households in the village, of which 13 would be home to just one person. (Six of these would belong to lone pensioners, of whom five would be female.
Of the 19 villagers aged between 20 and 34, four would live with their parents.
The village would welcome one new baby this year. The baby would expect to live for 76 years and six months (if it was a boy), or 81 years and seven months (if it was a girl)
One person would die this year.
Ninety-two of the villagers would be white. Two would be black, two Indian, one Pakistani, one of mixed race and two would be of other races.
Ten people would have been born outside the village, three of whom would live in London.
Six people would be gay or lesbian (probably).
84 of them would live in England, eight in Scotland, five in Wales and three in Northern Ireland
Eight people would live in Greater London (one of them in Croydon).
There would be 51 women and girls, and 49 men and boys.
If Britain were a village of 100 people, and its land mass were scaled down by the same proportion as its population, the village would cover an area the size of 99 football pitches.
Fifty-three of these football pitches would be English, 32 Scottish, nine Welsh and five Northern Irish.
Agricultural land would occupy 20 football pitches, on which 54 sheep, 17 cows, eight pigs and 273 chickens would roam. There would be one farmer.
London would cover just over half a football pitch.
All built-up areas and gardens would occupy the equivalent of six football pitches
Seventy-two people would identify themselves as Christian (although only 10 people in the village would go to church regularly). Fifteen people would say that they were not religious, while there would be two Muslims, one Hindu and 10 people who practised other religions.
Each person would generate 495kg of waste every year. The village as a whole would generate 163kg of waste every day, of which just 47kg would be put out for recycling
If Britain were a village of 100 people, 17 of the villagers would smoke, of whom 11 would like to give up.
Nineteen adults and three children would be classified as obese (that is they would have a Body Mass Index of 30 or greater).
Sixteen men and eight women would usually exceed the Government’s daily sensible drinking benchmark (3-4 units per day for men; 2-3 units a day for women).
Eight men and four women would have taken an illicit drug in the past year
Eight people would have asthma.
Eight adults would be suffering from depression today (but as many as 20 would suffer from depression at some point in their lifetime).
One person would have dementia.
The villagers would have 118 mobile phones between them (66 of which would be pay-as-you-go). There would be 55 telephone landlines.
There would be 90 televisions (an average of more than two per household).
Twenty-one villagers would have watched Andy Murray beat Stanislas Wawrinka under floodlights at Wimbledon this year; 32 people would have watched Susan Boyle lose ‘Britain’s Got Talent’.
Of the 42 households in the village, 32 would have satellite, digital or cable television
Twenty-seven households would have access to the internet (24 of those would have a broadband connection).
Thirty people would have a Facebook account.
Sixteen of the villagers would be at school – of whom one would be in private education.
One of the 16 pupils would leave school this year. Twelve of them would, when the time comes, go into higher education. Nine of them would achieve five or more GCSE or equivalent passes at grades A*-C.
One person in the village would be illiterate.
There would be one teacher.
Seven people would be in further education. (In 1990, there were only four.)
Of the 62 villagers of working age, 45 would have jobs; nine of them would be in the public sector.
They would earn an average of £388 a week (including part-time workers).
Of the 13 villagers of working age who weren’t working, four would be unemployed; three would be looking after family and/or home; three would be excluded from the workforce by sickness; two would be students; and one would have taken early retirement.
The 80 adults in the village would share a personal debt of £2.4m (£30,480 each, on average).
Six would be claiming housing benefit; five would own their homes but have negative equity.
The richest 10 people in the village would receive 30 per cent of the total income. Between them, they would earn more than the poorest 50 combined.
The poorest 10 people in the village would receive 2 per cent of total income.
Two adults would not have access to a bank account.
Fifty-six of the 100 villagers would claim to have given to charity within the past four weeks. Overall, the village would donate £17,393 to charity this year.
Twenty people would claim the state pension; 12 would be women.
Five villagers would be employed in the food industry.
Five men and four women would have had multiple sex partners in the previous year.
If Britain were a village of 100 people, there would be 74 voters.
Only 26 of those voters would have gone to the polls at this year’s European elections.
Of the 42 households in the village, 18 would have at least one pet. Between them, those households would have 38 pets (not including fish), including 13 dogs (comprising 10 pedigrees, one cross and two mongrels) and 13 cats (12 of which would be moggies, or non-pedigrees).
Three of the villagers would be vegetarians and a further five would be partly vegetarian.
Between them, the villagers would spend £2,955 a week on food and non-alcoholic drinks. They would spend £1,154 a week on food eaten outside the home, of which £355 would go towards alcohol.
Seventy-eight of the villagers would have a passport.
Fifty-five would have a driving licence.
There would be 56 motor vehicles in the village, including 44 cars and two motorbikes.
Of the 42 households in the village, 18 would have one car, 13 would have two or more cars and 10 would not have a car at all.
In the past year, the people of the village would have made 107 trips abroad, spending £60,055 between them.
Let’s transform our UK village world in order that Christ might be seen. Let us bring the order of the Kingdom of God to our village!
Lord appear again!
appearəˈpɪə/
verb.
Come into sight; become visible or noticeable, especially without apparent cause.
-
“smoke appeared on the horizon”
synonyms: become visible, come into view, come into sight, materialize, take shape;
“The Lord appeared again” (1 Samuel 3:21), never try to live your life on a once given word, and then try to establish your life, once given vision. If what you see has been birthed in the courtrooms of heaven and has been spoken forth by the voice of God you will find God affirming it, and surely adding more detail to it, God will reveal his word from different angles and speak to you about it again and again. You are to be sustained by fresh encounters, fresh revelation, affirming, affirming, affirming whenever it is needed. Consider how many times God came face-to-face with Abraham’s life to talk to him about his seed and the promise. Clearly this man of faith needed an encouragement of affirmation, affirmation, affirmation of what he has heard and seen.
The word that came to Abraham was that the seed of Abraham would be a blessing to all the families of the Earth, through his seed the earth would be blessed. Why again, the Father had told him once. God knows that in the advance, the progress, the process of living, this adventure of life with God will have seasons of pressure that require the ‘ again I say to you’. Abraham had to see that God was as much involved in Sarah’s inability to conceive, through their long years as well as when the cry of the 1st child happened. What Abraham had heard needed to be stated again and again. You do not need a new vision, but we certainly need to a word again frequently. I need a burning fire on the inside. If I who have been commissioned, entrusted with or been given a direction, a word to carry I do need the Lord to appear again. This is how the prophets of old in the face of a declining moral condition kept the flame of their prophetic conviction alive, by the continuous revelation of the Father.
Lord help us to receive your ministries and enable their hearing, if the word of God had not some to prophets such as Samuel personally Samuel would not of have had a word for Israel. Far too frequently we are trying to sustain people by preaching, don’t get me wrong preaching to inspire and impart is part of life for us. Like it or not there is a difference between a prophet prophesying Gods word into a situation and a person preaching the word to a congregation, these are two very different things.
Let me give you a picture, have you ever driven down a clear road and coming to overtake a car, you put your foot on the pedal but there is nothing there, no power, nor force that pushes you back on the seat. It is so different overtaking when there is great power in the pedal, as you press down you are surged for the kick down and away you go. Every revelation from God does that to you, you have been challenged, you felt held back and then you see it, you hear it again and…… you’re away one of God’s surges.
When the prophetic word comes it gives you what you need, both power and wisdom to continue.
The prophetic is about securing and advancing God’s purpose in creation, it establishes the house, abode, the dwelling place of God this is the prophetic heart. God will always establish a word, a goal then press on to add to what has been gained. Prophets are so convinced of the word they carry, the efficacy of the word, the creativity of the word, the power of the breath of God in the word, the circumstances around them are not their lead, they often prophesy in contradiction to what is seen around.
We are living in an incredible moment with the Gospel progressing in the realms of the spirit at every hand, with demonstration and manifestation, you could say the wave of experiential Christianity has come alongside revealing truth, we have revivals reported from all around the world, great gatherings of people groups in China, South America, Africa, India its exciting.
Here is our challenge, with all that God is doing we can get so quickly frustrated and disappointed, I am quite challenged and often unimpressed with the caliber of Christianity inside our very communities inside the very communities that are experiencing this blessing. We could say that the disappointment is that with such a blowing of the wind of God, with the Spirit moving so strongly yet this has not been met with the corresponding depth of response from us. The longing is that with hearts being changed we all become ready kindling for the fire of the Word.
Will we discover that our cooperation with the Spirit is of the depth of the same givenness God is to us, our experience of the power of God is balanced by our perception, our knowledge of the Will of God, that we who are to disciple the nations, we preach, teach, pray and are faithful to this end
“eyes of the peoples’ understanding the open that they may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance of God in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power to us all believe”.Ephesians 1:18.
Paul said my work is that he would “…proclaim him, admonishing everyman, teaching everyman, with oral wisdom, that we may present everyman complete in Christ…” Colossians 1:28. Catch the passionate heart of this apostle offloading his prophetic mantle “…for this purpose I also Labour, striving according to his power that mightily works within me, for I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf, but their hearts maybe encouraged having been knit together in love and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is Christ himself…” Colossians 2:2.
Here is the goal for every teacher or budding preacher, not to have the most creative and colourful delivery, but all that we do, is to result “in actual knowledge of God’s mystery, that is Christ”.
If we do not sustain a prophetic passion we will end up with the Gospel of trivia, Christianity that splashes around in the trivial. Little and troubled leaders occupied with the busyness of barrenness, we will become occupied with peripheral activities, becoming students and ultimately controlled by statistics, bottoms on seats and budget lines rather a people with the knowledge of God mystery.
I have a passion, I have a cry to see an effective dynamic testimony of the life of Christ in every major city, town and Street and house-to-house, then let our cry be to see apostles and prophets with passion would only build to Gods purpose. Become those who are sons of the prophets, of the covenant and be aflame!
“…Lord appear again…” refresh your word, your will and purpose to the nations.
Face2Face - Gareth Duffty Blog 