Do Not Touch the Glory
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedIn 2007
our core group attended a meeting of leaders
in Cleveland, Ohio.
The speaker was Bob Jones,
an old gnarly prophet from North Carolina.
Before Belonging House, I worked for several of the people in the room.
We hosted region wide renewal conferences,
and I organized a lot of them.
Bob looked at that group of men
and he said,
“God had given you a word
that you would be the hosts of the great end-time revival.
He promised you that this region would be the centre of the
billion soul harvest.
I am here to tell you
that the Lord has moved on.
You touched the glory.”
Bob then went on to say that some would lose their buildings,
others would get sick,
and others would watch their marriages fall apart.
And all of this,
because they thought they could personally benefit
from what God had promised them.
And over time,
everything Bob Jones said happened.
When I began our series on spiritual warfare for artists,
I stated that everything we do in discipleship is spiritual war.
Your life of prayer,
your practice of listening to God,
your choice to do what God asks of you,
and your regular rhythm as an artist and creative person
is just like the daily physical training of a marine.
And just like a marine
your core mindset and belief structure
is just as important as knowing your enemy
and knowing your weapons
and how to use them.
And as a member of an army,
you have to understand the over all strategy and
tactics of your Commander,
otherwise
you will do things that help your enemy.
I see this all the time,
Christians who are not listening to God
make decisions based on what God did in the past
or based on what conventional wisdom tells them,
and not what God is saying or doing right now.
The greatest example of this in Scripture is Moses,
who in one situation
was instructed to strike the rock
and water would flow.
The next time Moses was instructed to speak to the rock.
And Moses,
in anger
struck the rock.
And he was never allowed into the Promised Land.
He never received the reward of his suffering.
Many people believe that the God of the Bible is the
greatest task master in the Universe.
And when you believe this,
you believe that your Christian life
is a series of accomplishments you need
to achieve in order to make God happy.
And you begin to believe that your accomplishments
add to the work of God.
And people who embrace this error
think that being busy is a spiritual strength.
Works righteousness is a subtle devil.
Paul,
in Galatians 3 makes this very clear,
if you believe
that you have to add human activity to the work of God,
then you are bewitched.
Again and again,
we have seen people who believe that God is task master
come into our community,
and because we believe that God is Relational
think we are not very effective
and they cause trouble.
This is spiritual war.
At the heart of this is
the belief that results are more important than fruit.
In other words,
people believe that if you look at measurable outcomes,
bank accounts,
buildings,
and bums on seats,
then you are a success.
The Kingdom says
you measure fruit,
long term
sustainable
change and transformation
in people and lives,
and
faithfulness to the call and direction of God.
God never called you to success,
he called you to faithfulness.
When you believe that God is task master,
you believe the ends justify the means.
And that means it is okay to not be truthful.
It is okay to be manipulative,
and play power games.
It is okay to not love people,
or even be kind to people.
This error leads to something very dangerous:
touching the glory.
The best example of this is described in 2 Samuel 6:
David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand. And David arose and went with all the people who were with him from Ba′ale-judah, to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts who sits enthroned on the cherubim. And they carried the ark of God upon a new cart, and brought it out of the house of Abin′adab which was on the hill; and Uzzah and Ahi′o, the sons of Abin′adab, were driving the new cart with the ark of God; and Ahi′o went before the ark. And David and all the house of Israel were making merry before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.
And when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there because he put forth his hand to the ark; and he died there beside the ark of God. And David was angry because the Lord had broken forth upon Uzzah; and that place is called Pe′rez-uz′zah, to this day. And David was afraid of the Lord that day; and he said, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?”
For a generation,
the Ark was in exile,
after the Sons of Eli
took it into battle.
During that time
it was in the house of Obed Edom
and Obed Edom’s family was blessed.
David was passionate for the Lord,
and he also wanted the Kingdom and his throne
to be blessed,
and so he decided to bring the Ark into the city of David.
And so,
he got a vision for the bringing the ark
to Jerusalem.
He hired the best worship teams to do non-stop
worship,
he hired the best craftsmen
to build a new cart for the ark
and he put the sons of the top general in charge of the cart.
The ark was going to be the glory of this parade
and everyone would be able to see the gold,
and the beauty,
and they would celebrate that the glory was finally back
in the midst of Israel
where it should be.
And in the midst of this holy convocation,
this prayer event,
this worship festival,
something terrible happens.
The new cart
hits a bump in the road.
And the ark starts to slip.
And Uzzah
grabs the ark to stop it from slipping
and he dies.
God kills him.
Boom.
And David was angry at God.
When you get caught up in doing tasks for Jesus
you can easily get swept away in your own momentum
and think that your vision and your activity
is God’s vision.
It is nothing more than excitement and adrenaline.
Nothing is more deceitful than the excitement
of a big crowd of people.
David
got lost in his vision
and thought his ways were God’s ways
and that God would bless his plan.
Exodus and Leviticus
tell us
that the glory of God rested on the ark.
It was holy.
It was so holy,
that 0nly the high priest could approach it
once a year
with special garments.
His garments had little bells on them
so people outside the holy of holies
knew he was still alive
when he was in the presence of the Ark.
And a rope was tied to his leg
in case the glory killed him
so that they could drag out the body.
YHWH is Holy.
You have to fear the Lord.
Many Christians have no fear of the Lord,
and they think they can touch the glory.
The Torah is very clear about how the ark should be moved.
The ark
was to be borne by priests
who carried it on poles before the people.
This movement
enacted the scene in heaven around the throne,
stopping and crying “holy, holy, holy.”
David put the ark on a cart
and had it pulled by beasts of burden.
When we touch the glory,
the work of the kingdom becomes work.
The Kingdom is not a burden.
We are a people of rest.
If you have ever followed a wagon
pulled by horses
you know that they leave blessings behind.
The ark was being pulled over ox dung
and being moved around like funiture.
This is not holy.
The Torah instructs us that if the ark had to leave the Tabernacle,
it must be shrouded in a special woven blue cloth
so that no one could look upon it.
It was not to be in out in the open.
No one can look on the glory.
And more than anything else,
no one could touch the ark.
David
thought that if he
successfully accomplished his vision,
by moving the ark
in a big worship event
that God would have to bless him.
He was trying to manipulate God.
This is witchcraft.
Your vision,
carried out in human strength,
no matter how spiritual it seems,
will lead to death.
You cannot touch the glory.
God is not looking success,
he is looking for sons and daughters.
Listening to God
and doing what he tells you is the model.
I have said this before,
the how and the why
of what you do
is much more important than “what” you do.
God didn’t tell Abraham where to go.
He said “go to the place I will show you.”
The Kingdom is always about
learning eternal dependance upon the Father.
The God of the Bible gives us impossible jobs
so that we will be dependent on him.
This is discipleship.
Discipleship is not learning a lot of hard stuff
and becoming an expert.
Discipleship is walking in rest and wholeness
and becoming transformed into the image of Jesus.
It is a daily walking with Jesus
knowing his voice and his ways.
It is not about
accomplishments or success.
When you get fixated on success
or ministry
you begin to lose the fear of God
and you begin to believe that God will be happy
because you did something for him.
Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7,
put it this way:
“Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.’
When you do stuff without the Lord’s guidance
you become evil.
Evil twists you,
because you are not getting your identity
from the voice of the Father
but from the things you do.
Every so often
someone comes into our house
and thinks
because I am not leading Belonging House
the standard evangelical way,
I must not be very smart
or I am deeply wounded,
and I am not a team player.
Honestly,
I have to battle with Christians all the time
to protect the culture and values we have created.
The level of continuous disrespect and trouble
I get about living by faith and really listening to God
would shock most of you.
Funny thing about some Christians,
they always begin with the belief that they are right
and everyone else needs fixing.
Ignorance and arrogance are a deadly combination.
I worked for the evangelical ministry machine
for twenty years
and God told me to leave it all
and to stop doing it that way.
No networking,
no fundraising,
no manipulation,
and no big events.
It was really hard.
In almost forty years of ministry
I have seen a lot of stuff behind the scenes.
That’s why I have been intentional about
creating a community of honesty,
where I am vulnerable,
and where we go slow and low.
When you go low
and you listen to God
and you do not run ahead
the enemy has nothing in you.
We have had twenty years of extremely slow
tectonic plate movement growth.
Conventional ministries have three years of fast growth,
three years of maintenance,
and three years of decline,
and then it’s over.
We are being called into Babylon,
and it is clear
we are going to be facing big battles.
You cannot come up with a vision
and try to do it your way when you are
face to face with people deluded by Marxism,
and committed to jihad.
You cannot put the glory on a cart
and haul it around.
You have to walk softly
and understand that the calling
is holy.
You cannot touch the glory.
This is the heart of spiritual warfare.
What we are doing is not a game,
it is serious.
Listen to the Lord and do what he tells you.
Do not run ahead,
and do not touch the glory.
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