A strategy of self-preservation will result in a modified, powerless message that draws people to you instead of God.

If you are called as a prophet, you will feel moved to root out and to pull down, and to destroy and to throw down, and to build and to plant (see Jeremiah 1:10). Intense spiritual warfare will be a frequent reality in your life. You will have a sense – a “knowing” – that you are being called to walk a narrower path than some around you. You will feel a sense of duty to honor God's will and be crushed with godly sorrow when you misstep. ~Jennifer LeClaire

So many don’t have a clear ministry goal, so I thought I’d offer one here. This is the calling of the end-time messenger:

The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching. Mark 11:18

The call is to teach in such a way that people actually want to kill you! What a life mission that is!

Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets. Luke 6:26

While true prophets were hated, excluded, reviled, spurned, beaten, tortured, and killed (cf. Heb. 11:32-38), false prophets were well spoken of, for they prophesied what people wanted to hear. This is a warning against seeking the approval of the world rather than being faithful to God.
ESV Study Bible, The: English Standard Version.

There is a GREAT fallacy that has castrated the messages of the end-times: We have to appear to be humble, meek and loving.

I deal with this in detail in my article The Great Love Deception. The thought is that we must expend energy to convince people that we are humble, when that mandate is simply not found in Scripture. We are to BE humble, and that humility very often manifests as a fierce, fearless anger against the spirit of the age. The goal isn’t to affirm others when challenge and correction is necessary. We aren’t to put on a plastic smile with alligator tears pouring down to convince people we care.

Of course, we aren’t to be careless or unloving either. We just preach with a broken heart and the fear of the Lord. The messages in the Word are so often radically offensive that we just let the Holy Spirit do the work.

There are ignored, shunned messages that are coursing throughout the Bible that must be taught again—with such conviction that the religious, independent, self-serving resistors will want to eliminate us.

Thank God for those who have not shrunk back from preaching “negative” messages. People like Leonard Ravenhill, David Wilkerson and others have refused to shut up when the critics attack. We must boldly proclaim the Word of the Lord, no matter how bad of a light it shines on us or how open it leaves us to scrutiny.

Here’s one example of such a message:

SUBMISSION TO AUTHORITY

Submission to authority. GASP! Yes, I said it. Clearly, since I’ve been focusing on this topic in recent Facebook and Twitter posts, I must be reacting to some people who just won’t submit to my authority, right? I am overbearing, self-centered and insecure…motivated by my need for people to submit to me. Ha! Wrong. It has nothing whatsoever to do with me or my personal endeavors. (I actually just chuckled as I wrote this.)

On the contrary, this message is a core life message of our ministry that God has required me to communicate, and it’s not uncommon for me to spend a lot of time teaching on it. My book Covens in the Church addresses this issue in detail and I’ve been teaching on it in our school and at other venues for years. I spend time counseling people who are ready to leave their church due to wounding, controlling pastors and other very real issues. Simply, it’s a clear, scriptural and healthy message that most pastors avoid teaching due to their fear of accusation. However, pastors would do well to embrace it and teach it with boldness. The Absalom spirit would be diffused before he even began to operate.

But, unfortunately, the fear of accusation is too often too great.

Pastors don’t want people to presume they are being controlling, manipulative and self-serving by teaching on this particular topic, so they ignore it entirely—to the detriment of the church. Today people are scattered, disconnected and driven by a casual, independent spirit that has greatly compromised the mission of the church and has left them unhealed, bitter and defensive. This is a direct result of selling people a spiritual eat-what-you-want buffet instead of calling people as holy soldiers to sign up to die.

You see, I’m more concerned about the corporate mission of the church to set multiplied millions of people free than I am the reaction of the resistant religious (or true brothers and sisters in Christ who simply disagree) when teaching on submission to authority. Beyond that, I’m exhilarated by people who were once operating in a religious, independent spirit finding freedom through the message of healthy submission. It’s a win/win!

When people submit, the enemy tells them they are in bondage, but God reveals they are free!

From Covens in the Church:

The enemy has caused many to believe that we can’t experience freedom while being submitted. This is simply not true.

• Freedom from authority is rebellion.
• Freedom in the absence of authority is anarchy.
• Freedom under authority is liberty.

Why is it so critical that this sensitive issue be discussed?  I’m fully aware that many have been wounded by poor leaders in their lives.  While some difficult points will be discussed over the next several pages, it must be made clear now that while God desires leaders to serve with great love, humility, passion and care, there are some in the body who simply do not do so. While God will hold those leaders deeply accountable for their leadership, God will hold the rest of us accountable for how we respond to them.

The call is not to validate poor leadership. It’s to validate leaders who, in their weakness, were positioned by God.  It’s to ensure that we go through the proper processes in the face of disagreement so as to keep all of us as holy soldiers in position.  We simply must serve the greater mission in love and mature to the place where we can trust an infallible God, who is the one who actually appointed our leaders.  We are to allow God to work with and through those leaders, who are without question weak and fallible (as we all are).  If we don’t, the greater mission of the church is compromised. A failed mission at this stage of Church history is not an option, and we must weather some mighty storms if we are to succeed.

God needs these messages to be released! We can’t be afraid of teachings like this having the appearance of being self-serving. We can’t back down when the accusation flies. We must preach truth, take the hits, let our pride and ego die and trust that God’s wisdom in the Word will set the masses free.

Submission to authority is dealt with clearly in Scripture, and it’s critical for us to understand it, and communicate it without apology…because the church today has been compromised by a casual, self-interested people. We need to see a passionate army that’s locked in and unoffendable and ready to serve with precision at the sound of the alarm.

I continually run into people who are offended at pastors and other authorities in their lives, and they have absolutely no idea that they are largely disqualified from effective ministry until they rectify that. Why? Because nobody is teaching them about this critical reality.

They are stunned when I start to unpack the issues and share about healthy submission to their previous leaders. They most always had no idea how they should have acted toward them. Some of them have lived in defeat for decades due to this issue! God wants them free! I am much more afraid of God than I am of man, so the accusations that will be hurled won’t hurt as much as if God was bringing judgment to me!

“You will lose your job, and then die.”

I was talking with a powerful, humble man of God in another nation recently. He shared a fearful story that highlights how serious God is about honoring and submitting to authority.

A lady was making inappropriate advances toward this pastor, and while initially subtle, she became more emboldened as time when on. She was initially counseled and ultimately removed from the church. She became deceptive and would attempt to make contact with him via a false name. Eventually, the pastor said, “If you don’t stop inappropriately touching the man of God, you will lose your job, and then, if you still don’t repent, you will die.”

Within weeks she lost her job. Then she died. The man of God conducted her funeral.

That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. 1 Corinthians 11:30-31

This is just one example of necessary, costly end-time messages. Will you preach the truth, or just the part that draws people to you?

EXPECT TROUBLE

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law– a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.' “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Matthew 10:34-39

The messages we carry should absolutely provoke people out of compromise, deception, apathy and slumber—and into challenging, costly, inconvenient and absolutely glorious truth.

Such messages might include calls to repentance and holiness, Hell and demons, unbiblical grace or unbiblical prosperity…and on and on.

Or, how about…Tithe. There I go again! If I talk about tithing, I clearly must want to use people and manipulate them so I can be more financially secure, right? Come on.

I’ve actually heard pastors say that they refuse to teach on financial giving because they want to gain people’s trust. I suppose their wisdom surpasses the wisdom of scripture?

Jesus talked about money more than any other topic other than the Kingdom of God. Maybe instead of avoiding the topic of tithing and giving so people will like us better, we should expose the demon named Mammon that is attached to so many of them today. Maybe instead of focusing on our own ministry and on self-preservation, we can actually preach the Word and set the captives free!

When you carry burning messages in your spirit, you have to know that the release of these messages will result in rejection, accusation and a fierce resistance by the religious spirits around us.

But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus. Matthew 12:14

 Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?” John 10:31-32

Even Jesus’ message was shut down by accusers and aggressors due to the trouble (salvation) he was bringing to the Earth:

After this, Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying away from Judea because the Jews there were waiting to take his life. John 7:1

So from that day on they plotted to take his life. Therefore Jesus no longer moved about publicly among the Jews. Instead he withdrew to a region near the desert, to a village called Ephraim, where he stayed with his disciples. John 11:53-54

THE SPIRITUAL AND RELIGIOUS

In ministry, we must understand that MOST of those we are preaching to will soundly reject our message and will attack with a vengeance—oh, and these people are the spiritual and religious among us.

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Matthew 16:21

Preaching of the Word, whether it’s from behind a pulpit or in sound bites on Facebook and Twitter will always divide. Always.

It will provoke, trouble, challenge and set a standard. The problems come when that standard is higher than the standards of the religious.

Take six months and talk about nothing but holiness, repentance and Hell. I dare you.

Your attacks won’t come from the lost. The lost is actually waiting for a church that will have the guts to stand with such conviction. The assaults will come from your friends and family.

Read this in full:

Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.” His brothers said to him, “Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said. Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind. Genesis 37:5-11

It seems every time I hear someone teach on this passage, they presume that Joseph was arrogant, that the problem was with Joseph for communicating what God had revealed to him!

We have become so resistant of bold, provoking, disturbing messages of God that we accuse the messenger of pride or arrogance when they simply reveal the truth! Has this fear stopped you? Repent. It didn’t stop Joseph.

It was actually every one of his brothers and his parents that wrestled with pride, not Joseph!

Notice how his father ultimately responded rightly in his heart by keeping the matter in mind.

However, we know the story—his family set out to destroy him…simply because of communicating a message from God!

“…So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan. But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. Genesis 37:17-18

Those close to you must be expected to react wrongly toward you! Don’t presume you are off track when the arrows start flying! Stay humble, stay teachable, but simply know that the more pure your truth, the more violent the attacks will be.

(By the way, those who read this and are rising up in indignation will still presume I’m affirming arrogance—even though I just wrote that we must stay humble and teachable. Read it again…I affirm humility and teachablity. OK?)

True humility results in true boldness that can look very much like aggression as the fear of man has disappeared. The fear of God takes over.

False humility results in false love that is focused on being affirmed instead of setting the captives free.

Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. Mark 6:3

Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” Mark 6:4

PRESSURE FROM THE CROWD

Get a backbone.

If you can’t stand for truth in the face of resistance, what good are you? What impact will you have?

At once the girl hurried in to the king with the request: “I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” The king was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her. So he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head. The man went, beheaded John in the prison, and brought back his head on a platter. He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother. Mark 6:25-28

When your family and friends and those you are trying to impress are in the picture, will you hold back or preach truth? Will you stay silent or sound an alarm?

Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified. Mark 15:15

A sign of a growing ministry just may be small numbers and a message that will be rejected by even the most devoted Christians you know. Will you be OK with that?

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. John 19:25-27

If you are unmoved, God will give you such perfect, pure and life-changing relationships with those who will die daily with you…who will not forsake you when you bring the offensive messages of the Word…and you will be marked as a true minister of the Most High God for all eternity.

When the crowds come, get ready to follow the fearless example of Peter in Acts 2:

“Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. Acts 2:22-23

Trust truth. Preach truth. Don’t temper it. Don’t hide from the offensive issues. Most will reject you. Some will hate you. A remnant will thank you. God will celebrate you for eternity.