Category: Words of Study & Instruction: Scribes & the Arts

Copyright 2013 Theresa Harvard Johnson

(This post is written specifically for seasoned leaders who have been seeking the Lord for strategies to keep order within the ministries entrusted to them. So as you read it, do so within the context of what has been entrusted to you personally, not from the perspective of the body as a whole — even though some elements relate to this. This series is intended to identify and expose a subtle attack that the enemy is using in this hour to bring division and distort authority in the midst of core leadership groups. At its conclusion, we will also look at how to guard what Father has entrusted to us. Christ maintained the proper relationship with his disciples – with each one of them, outside of the son of perdition, knowing their relational boundaries and navigating humbly within them. It is with this respect and honor that I share what the Lord has been teaching me personally in this area. I pray that it blesses your soul.)

The Foundation: Defining Respect

The atmosphere in which we practice our faith has been so watered down in these last days that very few people understand what it means to respect leadership, respect mantles or even to respect one another. We can see this clearly in homes where children tend to run the household; and parents break and bend at their child’s every beck and call. You can see the struggle in trying to figure out who is the parent and who is the child.

 

In the atmosphere of the congregation you can see it in fathering, mothering, shepherding and mentoring relationships. People come to be taught but are unwilling to bend into the mantle of a student.

 

Father has been ministering to me deeply about how the adversary is pouring the cup of division among the people of God. In this hour, there is an intrinsic, diabolical attack on Godly relationships – especially those centered around the “making disciples process” and the non-bondage centered mentoring, fathering and mothering relationships in the Spirit (Matthew 28:18-20; 1 Corinthians 4:15).

Copyright 2010 Theresa Harvard Johnson

1 Sa-mu-el 17:34-40

34 David answered Sha’ul (SAUL), “Your servant used to guard his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear would come and grab a lamb from the flock, 35 I would go after it, hit it, and snatch the lamb from its mouth; and if it turned on me, I would catch it by the jaw, smack it and kill it. 36 Your servant has defeated both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised P’lishti will be like one of them, because he has challenged the armies of the living God.”

In my walk with the Lord, I have sown a great deal of faithfulness in my service to His people. I boast in the Lord in this, not in myself. I’ve walked with some mighty and anointed vessels. Whomever I sat under as a student, I gave them the very best I had to give — and did so without reserve, and often to a fault… unquestioned loyalty. Father said to me a few years ago that “because you have sown this kind of faithfulness in the Kingdom, I will return faithfulness to you as you follow hard after me.” All I can think of as I share this is the passage of scripture that says, “A man reaps what He sows.”