Skeleton Sheep

When we are considering the widow in 2 Kings 4:1–7, we find a woman with a household of vessels. We know that she would have cleansed these vessels from any and all impurities prior to pouring in the oil that held great value.

Likewise, we today are finding that the Holy Spirit Himself is seeking clean vessels for His indwelling. Yet many of us resist the cleansing process. We have been chosen, brought into the house as a prized vessel. But when the oil is being poured, we accept the first few drops, then shut our lids to a complete infilling. We desire just enough of the anointing, just enough of the Spirit to be identified as a child of God. But a complete infilling, we should know, would be life-changing and transformative. This can be too much for some believers. Too scary. It's the unknown.

Why is it the unknown? Because our ministers have not taught what it means to be filled—how it can transform the normal into, sadly, what we would call unusual today. But without a clear message on what it means to welcome the Holy Spirit completely into our lives, we miss out on what should be the naturally supernatural Christian experience.

It would be the shepherds that command the attention of the sheep that are to blame for an incomplete vision for who we are and where we are to live. If the natural shepherds are to lead the sheep to pastures of green grass where they can feed and grow, then the spiritual shepherds of today are leading sheep into fields of lack where emaciated skeleton sheep are made to feel good just by coming together. The church blossoms as a social club and remains spiritually ineffective and irrelevant to the kingdom of darkness. This kingdom is just fine with the lazy shepherds and ill-informed sheep.

A jar with a few drips of oil is enough for the King to claim ownership but not enough to be a vessel of much purpose in this realm. Perhaps it’s the price that needs to be paid that keeps the depth of the dynamic out of our reach. Jesus fasted and prayed in the wilderness for forty days. Daniel fasted for answers. Biblical history is filled with those who paid the price for deeper answers to secrets held back from the flesh. Held back from carnal knowledge.

There are two kinds of knowledge: carnal or fleshly and revelation knowledge—that which is revealed to us through the Holy Spirit. The natural mind cannot comprehend the mysteries of the Spirit and is at war with the things God would speak into our hearts. The natural mind reasons the mysteries of God away, searching for scientific explanations or the metaphysical. It cannot go into the places reserved for the man or woman who is hungry for the deeper life.

Your spiritual journey begins and ends with the heart’s acknowledgment of the life and purpose of Christ to redeem you from destruction. This you accept like a life preserver tossed to a drowning man. You struggle to find purpose while you remain in the water, clinging to this life preserver. Oblivious to the greater role He has for your life. He does not wish for you to remain in the water, just hanging on. He desires to pull you out of the water, dry you off, change your clothing, and place you on the bridge of the ship to steer into waters where others are still treading.

This anaemic condition is why you seldom hear the purity of the Word preached anymore. The clock dictates our lives and services. The Holy Spirit may move—so long as it's after our five songs, announcements, and fifteen-minute, three-point sermon—and then we have lunch plans.

"Enter into the promises of God. It is your inheritance. You will do more in one year if you are really filled with the Holy Ghost than you could do in fifty years apart from Him." —Smith Wigglesworth

Hunger. Hunger is something we must deal with in the flesh, but we have not felt real spiritual hunger in our lifetimes. Paul taught that we are at war with the flesh and that the flesh does not seek the things of God. We live in the flesh and not in the Spirit because our shepherds, too, are flesh-driven. They seek more security in their pensions and buffets than what it would mean to press into their prayer closets for the Divine Presence.

So it falls to the sheep to feed themselves, to seek out knowledge and wisdom, and allow the Spirit of the Living God to permeate our very beings with so much of His Glory as to transform the everyday believer into a sold-out firebrand that is never satisfied with the normal Christian experience.

"A man without a manifested God is abnormal. The plan of God is to make normal man supernatural by the indwelling of His Spirit." —John G. Lake

The church's history is filled with the unqualified, passion-filled souls who, without credentials and solely with a heart burning for His continual indwelling, have wreaked havoc over the kingdom of darkness. And far too often, these are persecuted from within the very body of Christ that so desperately needs to be shaken into consciousness.

Remember the parable of the ten virgins—five wise and five foolish. The five wise believers brought extra oil in jars in case they needed reserves. Their lamps were filled. All of them in the beginning had full lamps. They received the Word with gladness, and it filled their hearts. Yet the cares of life and the weakness of the flesh crept in, and the five foolish lost their light. In darkness, they sought a source from the other believers around them—from their pastors or televangelists that they sent money to every month. But there was no source for them to be found in the hour that mattered the most.

We notice that all ten had fallen asleep. All of them slept. All had their lights go out in that last hour. The flesh was weak, and we recall the disciples who could not pray with our Saviour in His hour of need. So they all closed their eyes and were blind to the signs of His coming. In darkness, they dreamed. Despite all the warnings and all the parables and letters to the churches in Revelation, we do not watch—we sleep.

Yet there is one watching. Outside the building. Keeping an eye on the distant road, watching keenly. Oftentimes these watchers are outside the structure of our churches. On the fringes of our congregations. The loners. Isolated because they are a bit unusual. A bit different than all the rest of us. There is a fire and hunger in their eyes that is not quenched with the mediocre conversations in our church lobbies of the latest game or the newest gossip of sister so-and-so. They make us uncomfortable because we sense the Glory on them and know that nothing other than the Kingdom of God will sate the hunger in their souls.

We know the frustration they have over the mundane and spiritual famine that saturates our temples. It is these watchers who are awake while everyone slumbers during the critical hour. They burn with a brightness that does not require a lamp, for the fire of God burning in their hearts makes them a lamp unto the world. They glow. They shine with His presence, and they serve us, standing in the gap. Standing outside our temples of religious practice watching for the coming of the Master. They shout with excited conviction: "Awake! Awake!"

And yet we slumber. Our hearts recoil at the message of conviction. For waking comes at a cost. The lamps will need to be trimmed. The snuff ("snuff" is the term used for the piece of wick that is actually trimmed off) must be cut away. This is the painful process of cutting the sinful habits and lazy spirituality away from our lives so that the flame can burn clean and true.

Are we willing to awaken and cut away the snuff that so easily besets us? Jesus warns us that there would be a falling away in the last days. Parabolically speaking, half of those who had some oil—some of the knowledge of God—while half would not have enough to last the days of spiritual drought. When they go empty, they have lost connection with the source of the anointing. They seek it from man, from another. Hoping that the anointing from another could sustain them when the day comes. It will not. Each is responsible to keep their lamps lit. Some came equipped for the time of pressure. Some knew where they could get the reserves they needed. There was a supply.

I would dare say that within that room with the virgins, or within the structure of the institution is not where I want to be. There is a voice crying in the wilderness. Outside the establishment. Outside the rigours of religious activity that in itself is empty and lifeless.

John was outside the norms of what could have been his spiritual peers. His school was not at the feet of the Rabbi in his local village with the books of the Torah at his feet. No, his school was in the rivers and byways of the wilderness, hearing from the Voice of God. Drinking from the river of anointing and calling out to wake those sheep who were starving for a spiritual oasis. Something the rabbis could not and were not offering, because they were completely unaware that they were missing anything. They believed their lamps were filled with the knowledge of God, but it was with drippings of carnal knowledge. They knew the books and the verses, but it was only dead nouns and adjectives. Words without meaning. Clouds without rain.

The revelation of God was a mystery to them, for the Word had not moved the eighteen inches needed—from the head to the heart.

Jesus tells Simon, "Blessed are you, Simon, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father in heaven."

Fleshly wisdom did not comprehend who Jesus was, but by the Spirit of the Living God, a revelation is made to our hearts of the hidden things of the Spirit.

The watchers are hungry for this revelation knowledge and will burn away any and all dross to allow the purification of the vessels necessary for the anointing oil of the Spirit of God to penetrate the deepest parts of our hearts. Pride dies. Ego dies. Self is crucified, and the life of Jesus becomes magnified.

The religious mind recoils and makes excuses to avoid the growth and development needed. That old religious spirit speaks verbosely because of the love of hearing themselves echo the Word of God, yet the fruit of the deeper life is absent. A fig tree with no fruit. A finely wrapped Christmas gift—an empty box. Oh the disappointment.

The watchers have no interest in the formalities of conformity, the orderly religious customs that are void of transformational power. Because these religious customs exist to stroke the egos of those who seek leadership in the eyes of man. Rather, to be a servant of the Most High and diminish into a healing shadow to allow His purpose to be a living experience through the suit of our flesh. To be a vessel filled to overflowing with the abundance of the Spirit that is the only remedy to a dying world. To the hungry sheep that need meat on their dry bones.

Only His Word spoken into the spiritual realm over the lives of these, His little ones, can set them free. And this freedom is not something just bandied about like a buzzword for the age. It is the all-encompassing, revolutionary power of a Living Creator coming into contact with our bodies—a body that is yielded to Him entirely. A vessel that does not close the lid to the infilling but, with arms raised high in surrender, is desiring to die to self completely to allow Life to consume our dryness.

"The greatest human attainment in all the world is for a life to be so surrendered to Him that the name of God Almighty will be glorified through that life." —Kathryn Kuhlman

Those who choose this life are by nature tuned to His presence to sense His soon coming. With the knowledge of this impending arrival, how then ought we be speaking, thinking, teaching?

Awake! For the Bridegroom is coming!

So as the call goes out to awake, we teach sermons on the importance of tidiness or the qualities of proper penmanship. God forbid. We are not preparing the church—the virgins—for the encounter with the Bridegroom. There is no instruction on what a good wife should look like. There is no teaching of the coming duties, roles, or responsibilities.

We need to think like a wife, act like a wife, and engage in the reality that the Millennium is coming with Him. The church needs to be fed, equipped, and trained to be the dynamic government of which He will be the head.

Please readers, do not be satisfied with the drips of oil that constitute your salvation, but hunger for the filling of His Spirit that brings with it the answers to prayer and the power to live a life of the naturally supernatural.