Prayer For Apostolic Grace

Lord thank you that you are awakening an apostolic grace in the church transforming us more into an apostolic community. 

Eph 1:17-18 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people. NIV

In the search for simplicity to be able to explain what we are sensing I’m discovering that this revelation is so costly that simplicity doesn’t characterize its reality. Part of the price is the process and easy explanations can give a false sense of comprehension and lessen the process of pursuing the deeper revelation. Patience in prayer has a great work in unseen places taking us from clever to power releasing deep wells in the place of shallow streams. 

1 Cor 2:3-5 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. NIV

In 2019 you spoke just before Covid, “You’ve gone as far as you can go in the form in which you’re in” introducing us to your plan to take us from a confidence in our own human abilities to a reliance upon his grace. Lord, take away our ability to function outside of your presence so we will constantly look to you. Human ingenuity can develop systems and procedures that produce mechanisms of discipleship lacking power and fortitude. Using our own human ingenuity, we can achieve goals providing a false sense of accomplishment without fulfilling the true mission of Christ. 

Lessen our reactions and deepen our response that we may learn to only do what we see the Father doing. May we die to ourselves so we are not easily drawn out into a place of reaction rather than response as we fix our eyes on you. The less conscious we are of God’s presence the more we feel the need to prove ourselves. If we allow ourselves to be energized by man’s praise, we lose our discernment. Jesus said, “I do not receive honor from men” (John 5:41). We must not chase attention when we are called to have authority.

Deeper revelation will come from learning to exchange self-serving pursuits for grace and authority from God. When we succeed, we can learn to do so without embracing a self-serving appetite for worldly attention. Lord, help us humble ourselves well in success but also in suffering. In humility we quietly suffer various kinds of injustice, inconvenience and difficulty without making it known. When we succeed and suffer well, we identify more intimately with the sacrificial nature of Christ. Deeper humility releases greater authority as God gives grace to the humble (James 4:6, 1 Pet 5:5).

We cry out, “Lord, send Your power!” God longs to answer but great power requires safe conduits or destruction will result. God will not pour out his Spirit in great power until the church is mature enough to handle the intoxicating allure of all the recognition that comes with a supernatural outpouring. 

Teach us discernment above decision making where we learn to lead by listening. God is delivering us from the unsanctioned and unrestrained use of leadership gifts which involves commanding and demanding results that may have nothing to do with the desires of God. Tremendous power and authority will come with apostolic grace on those who can be trusted with the transforming influence of our King. Jesus demonstrated restrained abilities rooted in humility.

Matt 26:53-54 Are you not aware that I can call on My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels? 54 But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen this way?” NIV

Jesus was given as the Chief Cornerstone Apostle demonstrating the foundational character we are to pursue. Phil 2:6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. NIV Jesus never used his authority for self-promoting interests but rather to sacrificially serve and to expand God’s Kingdom in the lives of others. Love, unity and maturity are awakened by the apostolic grace releasing God’s Kingdom in the earth.

The early church walked in incredible Supernatural power turning their world upside down. This all transitioned when the early church lost the office of apostles. The restoration of this apostolic grace will activate the church to function in a greater grace and authority. A primary role of the office of the apostle is to awaken the authority of God in God’s family.

This Kingdom has a Father and we are God’s family. The church has been fascinated by leaders but God is raising up fathers and mothers in their place. These fathers and mothers will bring the DNA of God’s Kingdom into the lives of those around them as they carry a living message with the living DNA of the King awakening God’s Kingdom in the earth. This Kingdom family community validates each other as we all share “in part” what each of us carries. Humility postures us in an eager position of listening to God and learning from each other. 

The Bible does not describe the second coming of Christ as a coming of the Messiah to rescue a weak church that has grown soft or surface. Jesus will not return until the church has been established in great power and supernatural authority. There has been hyper focus on Jesus coming back to rescue us and not enough focus on “God‘s Kingdom come God‘s will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. This comes through his surrendered, available and empowered church “rooted and established in love” ”having power together” being “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Eph 3:16-21 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. NIV

Eph 4:11-13 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. NIV

Col 3:14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. NIV

Lord, awaken within us the deeper pursuit of love, unity and the knowledge of the Son of God that we might attain the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

 

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