TOWARD AN EFFECTIVE MINISTRY

Chapter  8                      THE SPIRIT AND POWER OF ELIJAH

 Now while he was serving as priest before God when

 his division was on duty, according to the custom

 of the priesthood, it fell to him by lot to enter

 the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And the

 whole multitude of the people were praying outside

 at the hour of incense. And there appeared to him

 an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of

 the altar of incense. And Zechariah was troubled

 when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. But the

 angel said to him, "Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for

 your prayer is heard, and your wife Elizabeth will

 bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.

 And you will have joy and gladness, and many will

 rejoice at his birth; for he will be great before

 the Lord, and he shall drink no wine nor strong

 drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit,

 even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many

 of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God, and he

 will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah,

 to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,

 and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to

 make ready for the Lord a people prepared."

                                                Luke 1:8‑17

 The man was a Muslim and he came right to the point: "Was Jesus a  prophet?" I answered, "He was more than a prophet." And then he said,  "What we need right now is a prophet."

 It was a beautiful spring day and the city was teeming with people coming and going in all directions. When the Muslim said, "What we need right now is a prophet," he himself was being prophetic, because in fact, the world is about to receive a prophet whose name is Elijah.

There's so much religious talk ...spawning religious cults ...religious busybodies in every office and factory ...religious charlatans on radio and television. People are sick of empty promises and sensational religious exaggerations. When Elijah comes and speaks an authentic word from the living God everybody will know the difference. And even those who reject his message will know ...in their hearts ...that it came from God.

Now the difference between this Elijah who is to come soon, (in fact his foot is already in the door), and the Elijah of the past is this ...the Elijah of the past was one man standing up on Mt. Carmel, or one individual, John the Baptist out by the Jordan River. But this Elijah will be an army of men and women covering all the nations of earth. This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come.

Just as Elijah the prophet centuries and centuries ago appeared suddenly and shook the northern kingdom of Israel in the days of Ahab ...and just as John the Baptist suddenly appeared down by the Jordan River and again shook the nations hundreds of years later ...so now this last Elijah will suddenly appear in ten thousand places at once. Men and women will suddenly show up in every city, every valley, every hillside, every desert on earth, and they will shake the world for the last time. And these people will be raised up by God himself; some are alive on the earth right now. Suddenly they will be raised up to do this thing, moved by the Spirit of God. We are being called to be among the people who are to be the last Elijah.

He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah

to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the

disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready

for the Lord a people prepared.

...that's John the Baptist, and that's also us. There were three things that marked John the Baptist as totally different from all the religious teachers and preachers of the land at that hour ...marked him as the one who was indeed going before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah.

First, John the Baptist somehow made people conscious of God. The publicans and tax collectors for instance. Normally they weren't conscious of God ...the only thing they were conscious of was their money. But when they went out there with John the Baptist they forgot their money and the only thing they could think of was God. Many of the religious people of that day were very conscious of their religious ideas and their particular pet peeves, but not of God. When they began to hear John the Baptist they forgot all their ideas and they became aware of God. There were thousands of people who never got near the synagogue or the temple, but went out to John the Baptist and their hearts began to reach for God. And today, there are all kinds of people who are "doctrine conscious,"

"Do you believe in the doctrine of eternal security?"

"What's your doctrine of baptism?"

"What do you believe about the rapture?"

And there are all kinds of people who are "tongues conscious,"

"Did you get tongues yet?"

And there are those who are "experience conscious,"

"When he put out his hand I was slain in the spirit."

And there are those who are "church conscious."

"What church do you go to, Brother? Aw, that's the

 wrong church .... join my church."

And there are those who are "Christian personality conscious."

"Brother So‑and‑So is really heavy ...Sister So‑and‑

So, oh, I just can't stop listening to her words,

they're marvelous."

Then there are those who make you self‑conscious... before you know it you're taking your pulse every five minutes.

"0h, my spiritual blood pressure dropped five points

...I don't know what's going to become of me."

But suppose you suddenly find yourself among people who leave your heart with one impression ....God: You don't remember what they look like, you can't quite put together what they said, you don't know what they did, but somehow since these people came along God drew near to you. You wake up in the morning thinking about God, go to bed at night thinking about God, all through the day ...it's almost as if God is haunting you. The one mark...the first mark of that which is done in the spirit and power of Elijah …is that people become not conscious of you but of God. Not even that "you're a man of God,"...they don't even care what you are .... just God!

Notice how Elijah begins his ministry by coming forth and saying,

"As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand...."

The only thing that mattered to Elijah was God. Or those two olive trees standing before God ...or the two candlesticks that stand before God. People who are truly ministering in the spirit and power of Elijah, every­where they go, God is. When they speak you don't hear them ...you hear God. And you look at them and your eyes go right through them to God.

The second thing about John the Baptist is that he called for and got repentance. People broke ...they turned ...they forsook their old ways ...they went down into the waters of baptism. Religious teachers in Israel then were a dime a dozen. They had all kinds of wonderful information. They could fill your head with all the hair‑splitting facts you needed to know ...but you never changed. They were dry as dust. But when people got near John the Baptist they either ran away from him or they repented. And this will today be the effect of the Elijah ministry that goes across the earth. People are going to repent. All kinds of people over the years get up and holler, "Repent, repent." Then they turn down the lights and put on the spooky music and they end up with a few jangled nerves. People who are unstable get a little bit more unstable ...but no repentance.

But when these servants of God begin to minister ...repentance. Everywhere they go, for reasons that only God knows, people start to weep. They wake up in the middle of the night and get things right. And those who are unstable find their stability in repenting, turning, making that root change in their lives that needs to be made. And when we're around such people we begin to admit to our own hearts how much of our faith has been superficial and shallow ...how we have really in our inmost thought done very little changing. We're still what we always were and we begin to realize as we're around these people that our attitudes, those secret, bitter, cynical and critical attitudes, are still there and we haven't made any changes in the critical areas of life ...in the area of the relationship between man and woman, the way we handle our money, the way we spend our time, the way we forgive or refuse to forgive, the way we hold grudges. All these things have remained unchanged. But now, in the presence of these Elijah people, repentance begins to spring up like a river in the desert and instead of running around trying to pull the speck out of everybody else's eye, we all start to concentrate on the log in our own eye.

The third and final mark of John the Baptist which set him apart from all the rest was that he made a people ready and prepared for the Messiah. When John the Baptist said,

"Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,"

half of his own disciples left him and went to Jesus ...and John rejoiced. Fantastic! It's quite possible that every one of Jesus' twelve disciples had been prepared for him by John. We know for sure that Peter, James, Andrew, John and Philip were indeed disciples of John before they ever met Jesus.

In those days there were all kinds of religious teachers and preachers who were attaching people to themselves and hanging on to their disciples. John the Baptist, on the other hand, was preparing these people to follow the Lamb. And when the Lamb came on the scene he gladly let go of them and off they went with Jesus.

And they came to John the Baptist and said to him, "Rabbi,

he who was with you beyond the Jordan to whom you bore

witness here he is baptizing and all are going to him." And

John answered, "No one can receive anything except what

is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness

that I said I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.

He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the

bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the

bridegroom's voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full ...He

must increase, but I must decrease."

We have now arrived at the day when the spirit of Elijah is going to sweep through town like the Pied Piper. People are going to have to make up their minds whether they're going to drop their little religious prejudices and their favorite doctrines and their Bible prophecy hobbies and their churchianity and the "gifts" as something separate from Jesus. Now the spirit of Elijah says, "Come," and you have to let go of all that and be willing to just hang on to Jesus and let go of the rest.

The true test of any ministry at this hour is: Does it attach people to itself?...fill its own kingdom? Or, does it truly prepare men and women to follow Jesus wherever he leads?

He's not interested in keeping our particular congregation in tact forevermore. It's possible that within two years every one of us will be scattered to the four winds and ministering where God puts us. The important thing is that we allow him to make us a people prepared and to use us to prepare others for the Messiah. We need to understand clearly in our hearts that this is the ministry to which every one of us has been called. To minister in such a way that people become God‑conscious ...that they repent, truly repent.  And that they are made ready to meet the Messiah, and that they are brought into a living relationship with the Spirit of Jesus now. And if there are those who say, "Wait a minute, that's too much to expect ...it's impossible for me to minister like that," the answer is that you will indeed minister in this way with power and with fruit beyond anything that you would dare to imagine, if you are willing to practice what you preach ...if all of us are willing to practice what we preach in these three areas ....

First of all, if we're going to minister in the spirit and power of Elijah so that people become God‑conscious, the first thing that happens is that we have to live God‑conscious lives ourselves by the power of the Holy Spirit.

How are we going to make anybody else conscious of God if we're not living in his presence all the time? The basic ingredient of our own ministries is that we allow the Spirit who reveals the lord, who cries, "Abba, Father," in our hearts in prayer to make us conscious of the Father all the time ...all the time we're thinking God.  We wake up in the morning with God and we go to bed at night with God. We thank him, we praise him, we worship him, we listen to him, we glorify him, we serve him constantly.

We know not how to pray as we ought but the Spirit

himself intercedes for us with groanings which cannot

be uttered.

And if there are those among us who say, "That will make me a fanatic," no it won't. This is the only thing that will bring you into sanity ...the only thing.

The Spirit of God has been poured out and is now being poured out on us so that we might live God‑conscious lives where we are at this moment ...that's what we're here for ...so that just the way Elijah stood before the Lord we stand before the Lord. And just as those two olive trees and those two lamp stands stand before the Lord we do the same. We live to God ...only to him. None of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself.

If we live, we live to the Lord and if we die, we die to

the Lord, so that whether we live or whether  we die we

are the Lord's.

...and only if we are living in the consciousness of the Lord are we able to make anybody else conscious of God.

Secondly, we will ourselves minister in the spirit and power of Elijah now, by bringing people to true repentance if we live in a state of continuous repentance ourselves.

John the Baptist walked around wearing camel's hair. The two witnesses in Revelation walked around for three‑and‑a-half years clothed in sackcloth. For what reason? ....to repent. They were all the time repenting themselves ...that's why they could bring about repentance. Now you and I are to take the camel's hair and the sackcloth and put it over our hearts. You say, "What do I have to repent of?" There isn't a minute of the day we don't have to repent of self ...self. The minute we begin to fly off on a tangent of self, out of God's merciful and wonderful will, the Spirit nudges us and if we'll listen we'll repent joyfully.

"Thank you God for saving me from wasted days and wasted hours. Thank you for bringing me back around again."

That's what we're called to be ...this isn't something morbid. We become more and more tender toward God ...more and more receptive of his influences ...more and more trusting of his goodness. What does it mean to deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Jesus, but to repent of self, every day, all the time. To repent of self. God help us to let that become our supreme joy, the doorway to liberty ...for only as we live that way will anybody ever repent as a result of our ministry.

And finally, we will minister in the spirit and power of Elijah by making people ready for the Messiah if we live in a relationship with the Messiah now, in spirit and in truth.

When the spirit of truth is come, he will guide

you into all truth.

 How? ..."He will take what is mine and show it to you." It's possible now, by the power of the Holy Spirit to see Jesus, to know Jesus, to love Jesus, to walk with Jesus, to be aware of him all the time ...if we will ...that's why he's given. We're not just sitting around waiting for the Messiah to come back. We are living in him, conscious of him, walking with him, talking with him .... 

"Lo, I am with you all the day ...I will not leave

you desolate." I will come to you …"

Don't settle for anything less than a conscious, burning, every day living relationship with Jesus. And if you haven't got it today, reach out for it ...call on God for it ...don't move out there in the world until the fountain of the Spirit begins to flow in your heart and you know Jesus' presence again. We will never make anybody else be conscious of the Messiah unless we're living in spirit and truth in union with him right now. 

He will go before him in the spirit and power of  Elijah

to turn the hearts of the fathers to the  children and the

disobedient to the wisdom of the  just, to make ready

for the Lord a people prepared.

The same God who raised up such a man is now raising up such a people ...may we be found among those people today.