Last week we studied how the mystery of God’s grace that was revealed through Christ was made plain through Paul’s ministry. The next verse, Ephesians 3:10, adds a significant and remarkable reason why this must be done:

We are studying the increasing need to know the Lord’s voice, and for authentic, trustworthy prophetic ministry in our times. This is reflected in
Acts 2:17-18, which is a quote from Joel 2:
 

A new breed of leadership will soon arise in the Body of Christ. The coming spiritual generation will not be content to wander in circles in the wilderness, and the coming leadership will be like Joshua and Caleb to lead them into the Promised Land.

As I have said before, an eagle needs both a right wing and a left wing to fly. I am personally a conservative, but I am just as concerned about right wing extremists as I am left wing extremists. Someone said in a recent summit of Christian leaders we hosted that as Christians our allegiance is not to the party of the donkey or the elephant, but to the Lamb. My first allegiance is to the holy nation, the kingdom of God, far more so than any other allegiance. However, I do have some allegiance to my country, the party I belong to, and other associations I have.

We can have the best army in the world, but it can still be defeated without good leadership. Likewise, even with competent leadership, it can still be defeated without a well-trained and disciplined army. We need both. However, we will first focus on the leadership because any great organization or force will only perform according to its potential if it is led well. This is why leadership should always be the highest priority when we begin an endeavor, and it was the highest priority with the Lord when He began to build His army on the earth, the church.

Two weeks ago we began discussing how the habitations of God in Scripture, the tabernacles and temples, were divided into three compartments, and how we had applied this to our Katrina relief efforts, breaking it down into three phases, which were:

Phase I: Rescue. The main goal in this phase is simply saving lives and getting people to safety.

As we continue this week with our brief study of the kingdom government of God, we will consider democracy's place in that government. Of course, many great teachers who have had a vision of the coming kingdom have stated that there will be no democracy in the kingdom because the people will not rule in it, the Lord will. This argument certainly has a lot of merit to it, but there are other factors that we need to consider.

In Matthew 12:28 Jesus said, “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”

          The New Year is always a time for hope, and hope is one of the most powerful forces. It is often a time when we resolve to fulfill certain vows like getting in shape, spending more time with family, or being faithful to certain spiritual disciplines like more prayer or Bible study. These often help people focus enough to actually accomplish them, certainly a good thing.

We are receiving many questions about the present outpouring of the Holy Spirit, so I will periodically take those that seem to be the most common or important and try to answer them. Please keep in mind that many of these questions are worthy of far more time and attention than I can give to them here; therefore, I can only address them briefly. Even so, there can be merit to just addressing important issues superficially as even some of the New Testament epistles do the same.