Section 1 - Discovering The Apostolic Ministry

If you were to pick a whole lot of people at random and ask them what an apostle is and what he does, I'll guarantee you will get a whole lot of different opinions.

Why is this? Why does confusion seem to reign where the Apostolic Ministry is concerned? Because the Apostolic Ministry is still so new, and because there is so little clear, obvious teaching from the Scriptures in the New Testament.

Sharing My Experiences

I didn't say there is no teaching. I said there is no obvious, clear teaching. Also not many people have lived and been through what it takes to prepare somebody to be an apostle. So in this section, I am going to share with you some of my experiences.

I am not doing this to set myself up as a standard. However, many years ago when I taught on the call of the prophet, I found that my starting point was to share what I had experienced personally as God prepared me for the Prophetic Ministry.

I just put it out there, not knowing what people would think or how they would respond. I didn't know if anybody would even get anything from it. But the amazing thing was as soon as I shared it, people started to write back and say,

"Hey, you lived the same life story as me. You knew all about my life. What you described is exactly what has happened to me."

That surprised me, because I knew God had put me through some things. I didn't realize though that what He had put me through was actually a standard protocol for training somebody for the Prophetic Ministry.

So as I want to share on the Apostolic Ministry now, I am going to stick my neck out and try the same thing. I am going to share with you what God has taken me through.

I'm hoping that as you read my story, your head will start to nod and you will say, "Yes, I've been there, done that and am doing that. Now I can see what is coming next."

Perhaps you will also understand what is involved in rising up and fulfilling this call to the ministry of the apostle.

The Beginning

When God first called me to be an apostle, I think my experience was a bit like that of Abraham and what he felt like.

God had said to him, "I want you to leave everything that you are comfortable with and know. I'm going to send you out to a new country that I have chosen for you and that you know nothing about."

So when God first called me I went out, not knowing where I was going. I didn't know if I would recognize when I had arrived because I didn't know where I was going. I also didn't know what to expect.

All I knew is that God was saying, "I'm teaching you, raising you up and training you to be an apostle."

It took me many years before I even began to understand. Now I want you to just take note of this expression.

Before I began to understand

This is because the process is not finished yet. God is still teaching me things. Too often I thought I knew exactly where it was at, only to find out that there was more to learn.

I guess during this life and while I breathe, there will still always be something new to learn. So what I am going to share with you now is not the full answer.

Rather it is everything that I have learned so far, through my experiences in being trained and raised up for the Apostolic Ministry.

Getting a Full Picture

The learning process that God took me through was a bit different to what you would normally expect. This is because firstly you find very little about the Apostolic Ministry in the New Testament.

The New Testament is the first place where you ever read about the apostles, because that is where the term apostle was first mentioned. It was where Jesus raised up His [12] disciples and called them the apostles.

You would expect then to find everything you need to learn about the ministry of the apostle in the New Testament.

But apart from looking at some of the apostles and what they did, we don't really have a clear teaching on exactly what is involved in being an apostle.

Things are different today. Times have changed, we live in different circumstances, and what was good for Paul isn't necessarily good for us today.

So we need sound principles that will work through the generations for all times, and we can't find all of them in the New Testament.

Because of this, I started looking into the Old Testament. I realized that we need to sometimes use the Old Testament for what it was given; to be a pattern, a picture or a sign.

The only way you can get the truth out of that is to allegorize it. You need to take real events and convert them into spiritual ones. So I began to dig into the Old as well as the New Testament.

I started to get a picture, but it takes revelation from God to put the pieces together. Even as I read about the characters of the Old Testament and saw some of the symbols and things related to the apostles, I needed revelation from God.

So I had to study the Old and the New Testament, and I had to get direct revelation from God on how to put all of this together.

Even that wasn't enough though. I had to now live practically in my experience, what God had taught me in His Word as well as by revelation.

I had to make it work. I had to prove that it works in my experience and be my own guinea pig if you like, to actually learn what works and what doesn't work.

Goals for this Series

So in this new series on Apostolic Ministry Made Easy, this is what we are aiming for.

Firstly I want to light your fire. If you have a desire for the Apostolic Ministry, I want to make that desire burn in you.

I want to stoke that fire until it is a raging furnace; until you can't wait to get out there and fulfill the call that God has given you.

Next I want to show you what the journey looks like. You see I have been on this journey. It has been a long journey and has taken me many years. I am in fact still on the road. I haven't reached the destination yet, but I have come a ways.

You are probably starting out right near the beginning of the journey. You are way back on the first road that I walked many years ago, so I can help you along the way. I can warn you where the pitfalls are and about where the obstacles will be in the way.

I can warn you about the traps. And I can help you very quickly to go through this journey, and quickly come to the place that God has brought me now because of the experiences that I have had.

I want to start by just giving you a quick rundown of my journey, right from the first road that I started on and how I have come so far.

Then when you get to walk this journey later on you will say, "Oh yes, I remember he said something about that. Now I understand what it is that I am going through."

So if you will bear with me, I have told my story many times in different places, but this story is going to be a little different.

I am going to cover some of the same ground and add some new stuff. Then we are going to try and bring the bigger picture together.

Fantasy of Ministry

My call started out with fantasy. Isn't fantasy lovely? I grew up in prophetic training for many years, and prophets live in a fantasy world.

I lived in a fantasy world even as a child, and as a teenager I always seemed to be in this fantasy world. I lived in a reality that didn't exist, because real life was so tough.

My fantasy with ministry started out with the idea of being the great big preacher. The only pictures I had were of the big evangelists who stood before the crowds, moved in signs and wonders and did wonderful things.

So I had this fantasy about what it was going to be like to go into ministry. God had called me and I was going to rise up and be a big preacher.

However it didn't take long for me to realize that this fantasy could not be fulfilled. I just had to come down to reality, and I realized that there was really only one possibility that existed for me to go into ministry. It was to become a pastor.

Becoming a pastor of a church was what going into the ministry was, wasn't it? I thought, "Let's get going and become a pastor of a church."

I began to make all the plans and enquiries about going into the ministry and becoming a pastor. I found though that there were tons of rules and regulations and red tape of procedures that I needed to go through.

There were also qualifications that I needed to get, in order to get involved and go into ministry with the church that I was in.

Well I was impatient. I was young and full of fire and there was still a bit of fantasy there. There was still strong emotion and I wanted to go out and conquer the world. I wanted to do the ministry; to get it all done quickly before Jesus comes.

I couldn't even wait for the church I was in, and before I knew it I had moved to another church, hoping that I would get the opportunity there.

The Lord tricked me then, because when I got to that church they offered me even less opportunity to go into the ministry.

I tried one thing after another, and it took me eight years before finally God said, "Okay, you are ready now to go into the ministry."

I thought, "That's wonderful, now I'm ready to go after eight years."

It was eight years before they finally ordained me and put me into the ministry and I thought, "This is it; I've finally arrived at the place where I can fulfill my call."

Not Satisfied

It didn't take me long to find out that being a pastor just didn't hack it with me though. It was boring. Maybe I was too expressive, I don't know.

Being a pastor just didn't satisfy. In fact my Teaching Ministry began to flourish so much that eventually I thought, "You know what? I wish I could be a full-time teacher. Maybe I should become a lecturer in a Bible School."

I just couldn't be satisfied with the limitations of the ministry. I wanted to change everything.

I didn't like the way they ran the church. I didn't like the rules and regulations of my denomination. I didn't like the structure, and I didn't believe that that was God's order or His pattern.

Well I soon discovered that they did not want me to change it. They liked it that way and I couldn't change them.

So there was only one conclusion that I could come to about how I could do this. I thought, "I must start my own denomination. Then I can rise up and I can make it on the right pattern."

I was so full of fire and zeal. I had it all laid out about exactly how I was going to do it, and I knew how it should be done.

Sharing My Zeal

Then I got my chance to share this publicly - at least that is what I thought. I figured, "Now is my opportunity."

I was invited to be one of the main speakers at a conference where all the ministers of the denomination met together. Wasn't that awesome?

It was just me and another guy who were the chief speakers. I had risen up and proved my Teaching Ministry, and they gave me a chance to be the first main speaker.

What an opportunity that was! Here I could stand up and preach the truth the way God had shown me from the Word. I could show them how it should be done and how wrong they were doing it.

I just knew it was going to excite them. They were going to be stirred and realize that they needed to change. Not!

The other guy stood up and preached on shepherding. The Shepherding Movement was a big thing at that time. It was total heresy and they loved it. They laughed at his jokes and thought he was wonderful, but they avoided me like the plague.

Afterwards when we got together for lunch, nobody even wanted to talk to me. Have you ever felt like crawling into a hole and dying? Have you ever felt like you have made such a mess; that you are such a failure in life?

I reached a point where I thought this was all a big delusion. It was all wrong and I had messed it up so badly. In fact it was the beginning of the end. I never really did succeed and rise up in that denomination again after that.

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