27 February 2024 Disrupt: Presence over Preaching
God is raising up a generation of evangelists who will preach – not through word but through deed. A generation that will demonstrate the power of God, as in the book of Acts. Demonstration, not focused on signs and wonders, but through an authentic life – a renewed mind is consistent. The change is undeniable. Demonstration through acts of service, kindness and love. Demonstration through giving, sharing and living like Jesus lived.
There will be signs and wonders. There will be healing and deliverance – but there will also be a very real move of God in the hearts of believers. No more ‘Sunday Lip Service’ Christianity – but real, authentic rivers that run deep and transform communities.
God is going to strip many titles of their power in this season. Many thrones and strongholds are going to be pulled down. Many fig trees will wither for they have carried the fruit of bitterness and ego.
Those who remain standing will be those who know how to bow. Those who know how to sway and move with the winds of God.
God is calling fishermen to come and build His Kingdom. The hierarchies have failed in a lot of ways – the systems man have put in place. The world mocks the church and laughs in derision because the church has become like the world.
It is time for authentic Christianity. It is time for the church to become the Church again – the Ecclesia – the household of the Lord.
The world needs our presence – not our preaching.
Repent of your ego. Repent of your small ambitions.
It is time we get our hands dirty – it is time we do the hard work of the Gospel again. Uncompromised lives sold out to the Truth. Hands and feet willing to walk on water and sit with sinners. It is time for us to crucify the church. It is time for us to strip ourselves of ourselves so that Christ can shine clearly in and through our lives. No more compromise. No more double standards. No more hypocrisy. No more ‘multiple personality disorder’.
Compassion rather than compensation. Empathy rather than esteem.
Presence over preaching.
Your preaching means nothing if people cannot see Jesus in you.
Your title means even less.
The only title that matters is servant.
1 Corinthians 4:20: 20 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.
James 1:21-25: Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
Matthew 7:21-27: “Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?” And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. “But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”
When the apostles, prophets, pastors – those with titles and esteem – stop declaring the uncompromised, true and faithful Word of God, the stones will cry out. God is raising up fishermen once again. Men who do not need to talk – but show the power of God.