Recently I received an email from a sister. What she asked me to answer or to explain to her is quite important so I decided to publish it publicly. So many Christians out there struggle with the same type of thing:
Good morning,
My name is Sally. I have a question that I would like to ask you. I have watched your videos about you breaking free of religion and moving into full-on in Jesus. That being said brings me to what I am experiencing and wonder if you can help me understand it a bit more? About 3 and a half years ago I went to a conference to learn more about the prophetic and about hearing Father. I knew there was more than just “Sunday service” and honestly I was sick of church.
I wanted MORE. I began asking Papa to give me ears to hear, eyes to see and a heart to receive. Beyond that, I just would praise Him.
During that conference, many things began to happen. I would be walking across the conference room and it would literally feel like I was transported to the front of the room or to my seat in the middle of the room. I asked only a couple of people at the conference if they knew or experienced anything like that and they had not. I of course came home thinking I just imagined it all. However, this has happened too many times for me to think I just have an overworking imagination. Not only will I feel like I am transported, but I will also feel drunk in the Spirit. I feel as if I am floating or not really in the natural realm sometimes. Like I am just hovering above. The room will feel almost distorted but more like I am just seeing it for the first time in a way I never understood before.
Honestly, today I feel crazy drunk and have stumbled into a wall or two today. I am not afraid. Quite honestly I am at peace and hopeful and anticipating something fantastic and amazing around every corner and turn. Have you ever experienced anything like this? Do you know anyone that may have? Can you maybe help shed light on anything? Maybe even caution me if I need to look at something?
I just want Jesus. And if I am allowing something that shouldn’t be please be very blunt with me. I pray my writing to you is not bothersome or crazy. I somehow felt led to ask you.
Thank you for your time and your insight.
Blessings.
Your sister in Jesus
My reply:
Hi Sally,
To answer your question, I am going to explain to you what is going on in the church:
The reason why people struggle with this:
Pastors do not equip their church members for the work of the ministry. They also do not develop their faith and their love relationship with Christ (their ministry is not focused on Christ but on church methods and programs). When Christ is the focus, church members move closer to Christ and their relationship with him becomes deeper or more intimate.
Because of this, church members are very passive. They go to church every Sunday, they are spiritually entertained, and then they go home for 6 days, doing what they always do and that is doing life.
For most Christians, their ultimate religious experience or their Christian experience is that Sunday morning or Sunday evening service. The service is the center of their life and their faith.
In Biblical times, and in the life of many Christians (a small percentage though), this is not the case. These Christians are focused on the great commission as Christ instructed. They are out in the streets and market places, looking for broken and lost people. They clothe them and they give them food. They teach them about Christ and the gospel and they show them how they should live and how they should fulfill the great commission. These people experience a bit of hardship because to carry out the great commission takes hard work, planning, and commitment.
They are sometimes persecuted and ridiculed. Just look at the life of Paul in the Bible and understand that there are still people today who act and live as Paul did.
These people also have faith. They really trust God and they believe every word that came out of the mouth of God and they act on it. These are people who are doing the work of the ministry. People like this are focused on what matters and they just do not have the time to experience what you have described. I am referring to the incident that happened to you at the conference. Is any good coming from such experiences? Not really. Christians grow when they believe the word of God and when they act on the word of God.
In the church though, because church members have not been developed spiritually and because they just do not have the miracle-working faith that they are supposed to have, they struggle to cope with life. To deal with life successfully, people do need miracle-working faith. There are a lot of challenges in life that are just above our natural abilities. We do need faith. Faith is critical.
For such Christians, the best way to deal with the ups and downs of life is to seek emotional restoration experiences in the presence of God in a church service. They live for the services just so that they can have the “power” and the ability to cope with life. They crave all sorts of experiences with God and the Holy Spirit, and when they do have such an experience, they are on a high. When this happens, they are joyful and excited and that takes them halfway through the week. This is until they hit rock bottom again.
It is not supposed to be like this. Mature Christians who know and understand their position in Christ, do not experience the type of things that you mentioned. They do not need such experiences. They stand on the word of God and not on experiences. They have a strong foundation and therefore they can focus on the great commission and the work of the ministry.
Make no mistake, I believe in the things that you mentioned. I am all for the workings and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is wonderful, but, it should not be what we crave and seek and live for.
So my official reply is no, well-balanced Christians who are focused on the great commission and the work of the ministry, do not experience what you mentioned. In the lives of most Christians, these types of experiences are very rare. This does not mean that it never happens. It does happen but it happens for a reason. However, God is not in the business of entertaining Christians with all sorts of “wonderful” “anointed” “Holy Spirit” experiences. We live by faith and we stand on the word of God. We do not live on experiences. Christians who are seeking after “experiences” may open doors for the enemy. It can be dangerous.
Yes, a similar incident as the one that you mentioned happened in the Bible and it still happens today but it is rare and as I said, it is for a purpose. In the New Testament, one of the disciples was transported to another city where he had to preach the gospel of Christ to a man and he had to baptize this man in water. So there was purpose in this transportation. In your case, there was no purpose in it. You are not even sure if it really happened. This disciple knew what happened and he can tell you the results of this miracle. A man was saved and baptized.
You are experiencing what many Christians do every day in different forms and shapes all over the world. This trend was unintentionally caused by pastors and church leaders. They did not do their jobs by teaching and equipping Christians to do the work of the ministry and by showing them how to carry out the great commission. Instead, they focused all their attention on “anointed” “blessed” Holy Spirit-filled miraculous services, and now many Christians are craving for things that they should not crave. As a result, many churchgoers became completely passive and they are all just trying to cope with life. Most of them are not steadfast in their faith and in their position in Christ, and they are insecure and struggling.
Many people may think that what I am describing here is not the norm but they are wrong. It is the norm and the situation is as bad as I described it. The church is in trouble, Christians cannot cope with life, they are not actively busy with the work of the ministry, mainly because the pastors and church leaders did not equip them to do the work of the ministry:
Ephesians 4:11-12 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.
I hope that this answers your questions. Start pursuing what you are supposed to. Do the things that matter. Try to find a congregation where the focus is on the great commission. Try to find a church where church members are practically developed, taken out in teams into the streets and the market places, and taught, practically, how to fulfill the great commission.
As this image suggests, we need to cultivate a new culture in our local congregations, where the focus is the great commission and the work of the ministry.
More about the conference and why we struggle to hear the Holy Spirit:
Before church leaders hold conferences like the one you attended, they should first get the basics right. Just maybe, when the basics are in place, a conference like that might be completely unnecessary.
What Christians don’t know is that God communicates with us when certain conditions are in place. He communicates with us when we act a certain way. We do not have to beg him to do that. Another important fact is that God does not speak that often. He only speaks when it is necessary.
The reason for the latter is because God already told every one of us what to do. We are all supposed to do the same thing. It is when we go out and do that thing, that God suddenly starts to communicate with us. Why, because now it becomes necessary for him to speak because if He doesn’t, we will fail if He does not help us. When we are passive, there is no need for him to speak to us.
A friend of mine once told me that he plans to fast and pray because he wants to know what God planned for his life. He wants to hear from God. I told him that he is going to waste his time. “God already told you“, I said. He already told all of us what to do. We should all go out and fulfill the great commission and carry out the work of the ministry.
When we do, when we are active and focused on the great commission and the work of the ministry, then God gets involved because of the situations that we get involved in. We step out in faith, we get involved in the lives of people, we set people free or we attempt to set people free, we advise and teach people, we stumble upon seriously complexed situations in the lives of people, we open a can of worms in the life of a specific person, and to deal with all this, we need wisdom and we need God to help and guide us. This is why God starts to speak to us and to guide us.
When we are obedient, we are no longer passive. To be active, we need to leave the building. When we do, we meet strangers in the streets. We get involved in their personal circumstances. We start to help them and we start to support them. We talk to them, we teach them, we exhort them and we pray with them and for them. This is when God reveals things about those people to us. This is when the revelatory gifts of the Holy Spirit start to manifest. This is when miracles start to happen.
This is when we are no longer focused on or craving wonderful experiences with God. Divine experiences will start to happen automatically and sometimes we are so focused on the work of the ministry, that we barely notice these experiences. After all, mature Christians do not need these experiences. Yes, mature Christians also enjoy these experiences but they are not dependant on them and they do not seek or crave them and they do not need them. They cope completely well with life and their ministries without such experiences.
We do not really need to hear from God. Whatever He wanted us to hear, is in the Bible. Whatever He wanted us to do, is in the Bible. We do not need the mysterious “all-important” leading of the Holy Spirit in the way that the church advocated for so long. No, we need to be obedient to the word of God and we need to start doing what the word of God says. We need to do what Jesus instructed us to do in the Bible, and then, when we are obedient and when we comply with God’s instructions, then God will start talking and we will hear his voice. Then He will start leading us. Before we are obedient, God has nothing to tell us. To many people, this may sound wrong, but it is in fact the truth.
This brings me back to the experience that you had during the conference. The reality is that it is not important. It was probably just a feeling or it was a move of the Spirit of God, or it could have been an experience that the enemy orchestrated, but, it is over and it was probably not that important because it did not result in anything worthwhile. Forget about it. To God, obedience is more important than experiences.
Go out and fulfill the great commission. Go out and change people’s lives. It may not be a wonderful experience. In fact, you may not even like it, but, it will make your Heavenly Father smile and if you keep up with it, He will lead you and you will hear his voice very clearly. Why? Because you are obedient. Because the people that you minister onto depends on you ministering correctly. They depend on you saying and doing exactly the right thing that will set them free and change their lives (the work of the ministry), and this is why God gets involved. This is why He starts speaking. God does not want his ministers to fail, for their sake and for the sake of the people that depend on them.
This is the basics. This is the basic gospel of Jesus Christ and this is what sets God and the Holy Spirit in motion. Before you do this you will not really hear anything from God. Before you do this, you will just be another Christian that lives from service to service or conference to conference and nothing ever changes.
I hope that this answered your questions.
Blessings in Christ
Basie Martins
