LESSON
33
“Instead of the Anointing”
We have tried to reach
this generation with many different programs and methods. We have learned how to get the youth to come
to a church building. But we have done
an absolutely horrible job in keeping them.
Research done by Josh
Mc. Dowell's Ministry, states that 95% of the young people that attend church
(Christian churches in
We have done pretty good
getting the youth to participate in some form of Christian activity, but we
have failed them miserably by not giving them the equipment they need to stand
against the onslaught of the world.
When the teen pregnancy
and drug rates of those that are in the church is nearly the same, or sometimes
more than those who are outside the church, something is wrong. When families that served God generation
after generation, can't hold onto their children anymore, something is
wrong.
Something is about to
happen. God hasn't given up on this
generation.
The devil thought he had
this generation, but God is raising up an army of young people who will serve
Him.
The world is looking at
this generation. They have tried their
“Just say no!” campaigns without lasting success. They pour millions of dollars into their
programs, meaning well, but they are not working.
There has got to come
something into this nation, that will invade this generation and bring out a revival of
biblical proportions, that will turn the hearts of young people back to God.
There is going to be a
distinctness of the holiness of God, righteousness of God, character of God,
and anointing of God, that everyone may know that something has happened to
them.
There is no problem with
creativity in the presentation of the gospel, but when we take on the image of
the world so much that you cannot tell the difference, something is wrong. When we have Christian rock bands dressed
like gangsters and expecting us to understand the difference, there is
something wrong. There's a
distinctiveness when we stop identifying with the extremes of society.
In Los Angeles today,
there are more young people shot, wounded and beat up that are not in gangs and
falsely mistaken for being in gangs than those who actually are in gangs. It is
called sporting. They take on the
colors, symbols and attributes of a gang, although they do not belong to that
gang. They want to be identified with a
gang, but they do not have the protection of it.
Why, in our efforts to
reach young people, have we resorted to identifying with that which is illegal,
immoral or contrary to God?
Luke 4:18-19 The
Spirit of the Lord [is] upon me, because he hath anointed me to
preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the
brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight
to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
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The anointing is the
divine enablement of God to fulfill a specific task or purpose. This is the key to penetrating this generation.
John
The Father sent Jesus to
preach the gospel. Jesus sends us to
preach the gospel. The Father sent Jesus
to heal the brokenhearted and restore sight to the blind. Jesus is sending us to heal the brokenhearted
and restore sight to the blind. As the
Father sent Jesus, so also Jesus is sending us.
We are losing 95% of the
young people we get in the church.
Although we learned how to entice them to come in, we have failed to get
them to a place where they are so free in Christ that they won’t go back out.
In youth ministry today,
we have left our dependence on the anointing.
We have been frustrated because we did not know how to appeal to this
generation. Our rituals and church
formulas don't seem to do it. Instead of
going to the Word to see what Christ did to draw a crowd, we have looked to the
world and tried to come up with methods and formulas.
John 6:2 And a great multitude followed him,
because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased.
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Jesus never had a
problem getting a crowd. Some may say
that we must relate with this generation.
When did the anointing stop relating?
Mark
God did not confirm His
Word with rock concerts, ice cream socials and pizza parties. He confirmed His Word with signs and wonders
(the supernatural manifestation of the power of God). God shows who He claims to be by showing
Himself in the supernatural.
The problem is that we
have found ourselves without the miracles and anointing (the power to deliver)
that Christ sent us with.
There's no problem with
creative forms of preaching the gospel, as long as they’re God ideas. Instead of having the anointing to manifest
the supernatural to get the crowds, we created another anointing (something
instead of Gods anointing).
If we had the miracles
that Jesus had, we would not need all our special programs.
Are we doing these things
because it is what God has told us to do, or is it because we don't
have the anointing?
If you want to get a
crowd, have a fire. Everyone will come
to watch the fire burn.
Lev. 10:1-2 And
Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put
fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before
the Lord, which He commanded them not..
And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them,
and they died before the Lord.
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In this context, fire
speaks of God's power, the anointing, the Holy Spirit or the presence of
God.
The problem is that the
sons of Aaron offered fire created by man and not the fire rained down on the
temple by God. They offered up strange
fire.
Ex. 13:21-22 And
the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way;
and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by
day and night: He took not away the
pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night,
[from] before the people.
Acts 2:3-4 And
there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it
sat upon each of them. And they were all
filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the
Spirit gave them utterance.
God said within His
house will burn fire, but it will be the fire of His unction and not the fire
of man's own creation. There comes a
point when God says, "That's enough, I will not put up with strange fire
in My church any longer."
Whenever you try to add
to what God did, you always mess it up.
There's a spirit loose
in the church today of the continual introduction of strange fire. We are introducing things in the church that
are not the anointing. The bigger
problem is that most of the church does not even know the difference.
1 John
The endtimes are near
and the spirit of the Antichrist is already loosed today.
‘Antichrist’ means
instead of the anointing. The Antichrist
is loosed today. It is another gospel, a
strange fire.
1 John 2:15-18 Love
not the world, neither the things [that are] in the world. If any man love the
world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that [is] in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the
lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the
world. And the world passeth
away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for
ever. Little children, it is the last
time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many
antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
How you identify an
Antichrist is that they will introduce the world instead of the anointing. They will depend and rely on the things of
the world instead of the anointing. They
will do it in the disguise of Christianity.
1 John 2:19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us,
they would [no doubt] have continued with us: but [they went out], that they
might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
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The Antichrist came from
the church. There is an introduction of
the ‘instead of’ anointing. It's the
love of the world or rather, fashioning yourself after the patterns of the
world, (the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of
life). It will be introduced from within
the church.
We
don't see the anointing, so we create another.
You can take a strange
fire and put it in the temple, but that doesn't make it holy. It doesn't make it acceptable, even though it
burns like the real thing. It looks like
the real thing, but it isn't the real thing.
So much of what we have
given the youth is instead of the anointing, and leads to destruction. Youth in the church have similar percentages
of drug use, teenage pregnancy, and
suicide as youth in the world.
Jesus said that the
anointing He sent with us will release the oppressed, heal the broken hearted,
set at liberty those who are captive...
It
will change them! It will set them free!
1 John 2:20-22 But ye have an unction from the Holy
One, and ye know all things. I
have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know
it, and that no lie is of the truth. Who
is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that
denieth the Father and the Son.
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The word ‘deny’ here
doesn't mean not to renounce, as much as it means to contradict. The man that contradicts the manner or
pattern of the anointed one is the Antichrist.
In Review:
1. What
is the percentage of youth who leave church after graduating from high
school? ______________
2. What is the percentage of those who
return? ________________
3. Is
there anything wrong with creativity in reaching this generation? ________________
When does it become wrong?
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4. Check
your methods of reaching others. Can
others tell a significant difference between you and the world? ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
5. What
is the anointing?
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6. How
did Jesus get a crowd?
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7. Why
has the church resorted to rock concerts, ice cream socials and pizza parties
to reach the youth?
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8. How do
you identify the spirit of the Antichrist?
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