Apostolic Preparation And Training

January 19, 2019 by Apostle Les

Death, Change and Qualification

The Apostolic Preparation and Training

Chapter 01 – Death of a Vision

I shared my story elsewhere about some of the experiences that the Lord took me through. In the middle of that though there were some principles that the Lord applied in my training.

Although you may not follow the exact same order and have the exact same experiences, the principles that you are going to experience are going to be the same.

The Lord has given me three words to describe what you must go through along the route of being trained to be an apostle. Those words are death, change and qualification.

I’m just going to share very quickly on each of those and explain them to you. You need to understand them and prepare for them, because you will go through all three of those, before you come to the place where your training is complete.

Luke 14:27 says,

And whoever does not bear his cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.

It is not enough just to be called to the Apostolic Ministry. I see so many people out there calling themselves apostles, because someone confirmed that they were called. Maybe some prophet came and prophesied over them and said,

“Thus says the Lord, I have called you to be an apostle.”

They then assume that now that they are called, they can now take their stand and say,

“I’m called to be an apostle, therefore I am an apostle.”

After this they take the title of apostle. But you see there is always a period of preparation and training. David was anointed to be king while he was still a shepherd boy. He didn’t step into the throne the next day though.

Well was he called? Absolutely. Was he the king? Absolutely not!

In God’s eyes, yes he was a king. But in actual experience and qualification, no he was not yet ready to take his place on the throne. It took many years before he got there.

Three Processes

The apostle must go through a process before being ready to take his or her place in the Apostolic Office. There are in fact three processes that you must go through, before you can be considered an apostle.

Firstly you must go through the process of death, burial and resurrection. Secondly you must go through processes of change. And thirdly you must go through processes of qualification.

Even Jesus, who was the greatest apostle of all, had to go through a process before He was ready to fulfill His life work. Well He was born to be an apostle. The Father even spoke from heaven and said,

This is my son…

You couldn’t get a clearer confirmation of the call, but Hebrews 5:9 says,

And being brought to a place of being complete, he became the author of eternal salvation to all those that obey him.

Jesus learned through obedience and suffering. He was not ready to take His place from the moment of His call.

So do you think you are ready, when our Lord Himself had to go through a process? No, if you are not prepared to go through the processes, you are not going to eventually stand in that place.

I want to look at each of these three in a little bit more detail. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail because we don’t have time. We have done teaching on a lot of these things in other places though.

If you have been through some of our other trainings, particularly the training of the prophet, we have done a lot of teaching on some of these. But I want to try now and bring it together. I want to clarify it and to also remove some confusions that people have on these things.

Let’s look at birth, death and resurrection. Jesus said in John 12:24,

Most assuredly, I say to you, Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone: but if it dies, it produces much fruit.

Going Through Death

You have heard me speak about death. Some people cringe at the idea while others are gluttons for punishment. And some expressives thrive on a challenge and say,

“Give it to me!”

I made that mistake once. I said to the Lord,

“Lord, do to me whatever it takes.”

When He started to do it I wasn’t happy though. I complained and I didn’t like it.

Here now is one thing I want to get straight at the beginning. I want you to get it loud and clear, because there is so much confusion concerning the process of death.

The death process is not about overcoming sin. You might be confused now and say to me,

“But I thought I had to die to my sinful desires. I thought I had to die to my sinful bad habits.”

The flesh will be with you until the day you die. Sin will also be with you until the day you die, or if Jesus should come while you are still alive.

The flesh has to be put on the cross continually. While you put the flesh on the cross and you walk in the Spirit, you have the flesh in subjection. But the moment you walk out of the Spirit and back into the flesh, the flesh is manifest and sin will be manifest in your life.

The Holiness Movement

Don’t ever think you can come to a place of dying to sin. People out there called the Holiness Movement will try to teach you this. It started as far back as the early Methodist days with John Wesley and some of the preachers of that time.

It is a process called sanctification. There is a whole doctrine on it, and we will teach you about it later concerning what the Scripture really says about it.

Some people are confusing their legal position in Christ with their experience. They are teaching that in this life we can overcome sin and be sinless.

There was only One who was ever sinless though. His name was Jesus. No person who ever followed Him, even the early apostles, could claim to be that. So don’t ever get this idea and say,

“I have to die to my anger. I have to die to this weakness and die to the sin in my life.”

The only way you will die to it is to really die. You don’t want to do that yet though, because you will not be much use to the Lord or to anybody.

Dealing With Habit Patterns

So what are we dying to? Well sin has formed habit patterns in our lives. Some of those habit patterns have developed through years, and eventually we become programmed to follow a habit pattern without thinking.

We can begin to work on some of these and we can begin to develop new habit patterns. The Scripture shows us a process of a putting off and a putting on; of changing and being renewed in our thinking, until these things begin to fall away.

You can have a degree of victory over the patterns that you have formed in your life. You can do this, but it is never a death. It is a process and it falls into the next one which is going to be change.

Death of a Vision

So what death are we talking about? What is it that we must die to?

Where ministry is concerned, when I speak about death, I am not speaking about dealing with sin. I am speaking about a process by which we become identified with Christ in His death, in His burial and in His resurrection.

It is called taking up your cross. And actually it is not about dealing with sin. It’s about dealing with self, and it has to do with the vision that God gives you. It has to do with the ministry only.

Starts With Something New

It is called death of a vision and it works like this. The Lord births in you a new vision, usually for ministry.

You might say, “Isn’t it exciting? Somebody prophesied over me and said that God has called me to the ministry. What an exciting goal and vision.

How am I going to fulfill this vision? Do I need to study? Do I need to pray more? What do I need to do?

I’m excited about this vision. I have a goal to aim for and I know that God has confirmed this. I know this isn’t my imagination. This is of God.

God has told me to go in this direction. The Lord told me to start something new and unique in a certain direction. Wow, how exciting! I’m consumed with passion about this new vision. It’s been born in me and it is alive and well.”

Who birthed the vision? God birthed it, because there is only one thing that you can actually birth and that is sin. So if something good was birthed in you that is for the glory of the Lord and for the extension of His Kingdom, sorry but you did not birth it. You might say to me,

“But it was my idea.”

No it wasn’t. You never even had that idea until God put it in your mind.

Too Much Your Own Vision

We kind of think that it is my idea and my vision. We kind of think that it’s my ministry, and it becomes ‘my’ everything.

You see that’s what has to die. The vision was of God, but it has become contaminated. And actually the moment you add your take on it, you immediately limit and restrict what God can do.

If God has told you to do something, you immediately start visualizing what you are capable of doing. But is that really what God called you to do?

When it becomes your vision, you build it up in your own mind, and you know that this is of God because He confirmed it. And so you feel that you must follow it through, but then suddenly you hit a wall.

You think, “That must be the devil that is stopping God’s vision, right? Everything is going wrong. People are against me. The bottom is dropping out of everything and the finances are dying.”

Everything goes wrong but this vision is of God.

My Experience of This

Many years ago the Lord told me to leave my job and the church and sit at home. Everyone thought I was mad or in deception, but I knew that God had told me that. It was when I waited on the Lord and He started to train me in the Spirit.

Then everything suddenly went from bad to worse. The logical thing for me to do would be to just go back and get a job again before my family starved to death. But God had given me a vision and I was going to fulfill that vision.

Well the Lord sent me someone whom I despised; someone who I didn’t like and who didn’t like me, to come and tell me I should go back to work. It was a death by someone sticking a sword into me.

Why did that happen? God had made it so clear that I was to pack up my job, leave the ministry and to start something new. I had all this time of waiting on the Lord and I was waiting for this thing to explode. But it didn’t happen. Instead it died.

You have been there. You have all these big visions of what you are going to do and it starts out great. It starts out wonderful.

All is going well and then Satan gets in. It has to be the devil, because I mean this is God’s vision and Satan is trying to stop me. You see that is the problem. He is not trying to stop your vision. He’s trying to stop you.

Actually he has grounds to stop you, because you gave him license. It became your own selfish vision and God says,

“Kill it.”

“But Lord you gave me journals. You gave me Scriptures, prophet words, dreams and visions.”

“Kill it.”

Identifying With Jesus

It’s called death of a vision. When your vision dies you become identified with Jesus.

Jesus was born with a vision. He was going to call God’s people the Jews back to God. He was going to come and present Himself to them as their Messiah. He gave it His best shot as only Jesus could. He was the best of the best, but He failed.

Jesus had a bit more sense though. He knew what the Father wanted and it was time to step back. He said,

“I gave you guys a chance. Now it’s over.”

Even Jesus went through a death of a vision before He died on the cross of Calvary. He was buried and then it was all over. The disciples got together, commiserated and said,

“All these years we spent with Him are all gone. He’s dead and in the grave. It’s all over.”

Peter said, “I might as well go back to fishing again.”

Burying the Vision

Jesus stayed in the grave for three days and three nights. There will be a second phase known as the burial of your vision. In other words, it is dead.

If you have ever had someone close to you die, you have probably gone through stages of grief where at first it seems hard to receive or believe. You start to think,

“Did it really happen? Was it all a big dream?”

But you know when they are buried they are in the ground. It’s over and there is no ways they are coming back to life. They are dead and gone, and sometimes it takes you a while to just get it and let it go.

You have had all sorts of visions and dreams that include that person in your future life. They have been snatched from it now and your whole future is shattered. You think to yourself,

“What do I do now? Where do I go from here? My whole future life with my goals and plans had that person in them.”

We now pull them out of the picture and all the pieces fall on the ground like rubble. That is what it feels like when you go through death of a vision.

It’s like losing a loved one and it is the exact same process, because that vision became your little baby. If you have ever lost a baby, there is nothing more traumatic. All the hope is gone.

You must let it die and finally come to the place where you say,

“It is over. We can’t go back there again.”

“If I could just restart the vision again.”

“No you can’t, it’s over!”

“Lord, can’t you just let me go back?”

“No.”

Chapter 02 – Letting Go and Resurrecting

The third phase is resurrection, and resurrection is not restoration. So what is it that God has called on you to die to?

Abraham’s Experience

Abraham dreamed of being a father of many nations, through his own son and from his own wife. He made a lot of mistakes along the way and tried to make it happen, until eventually God gave him the promise and Isaac was born.

Now here he was an old man. Isaac was probably about 15 years old, rising up into his own, and as Abraham looked at him he knew,

“This is my son who is going to carry on the generations and the promises of God.”

The vision was born and was alive and well. Then one day God said to Abraham,

“I want you to take your only son Isaac. He is your vision, your dream and your hope for the future, but I want you to go and sacrifice him to me.”

That is called death of a vision. What is your Isaac? Abraham could have said,

“Isaac is 15 years old already. You know God it took me years to fulfill those promises.”

Here he was, but now God said to Abraham, “Kill him.” It doesn’t make sense does it?

Well Abraham didn’t argue with the Lord. He said,

“Okay, Father I don’t know what you are trying to do, but I know that if I kill him you are able to raise him up again. Whatever you want to do, here I am.”

Then they took a knife and wood and went up the mountain.

Giving Up Your Isaac

What is your Isaac? One of the first Isaacs that I had to give up was my wife whom I dearly loved. That was a price to pay for the call of God. There have been many more since then.

When God says to you, “Kill your Isaac,” are you going to argue with him? Because let me tell you, if Abraham had not sacrificed his only son Isaac, God could not have sacrificed His only son Jesus Christ for us.

Abraham’s obedience affected all of us. That’s why he became the father of a new generation and our spiritual father. You don’t know the implications of what is going to come as a result of that death, so don’t argue with the Lord.

Death of a Ministry Vision

There are so many times in the past where we have had a vision from the Lord to build a ministry or to do something.

The Lord took us to Mexico and we thought we were going to build a ministry training center right there. We even saw the piece of ground we wanted to buy. It took years of building up that vision and suddenly the Lord said,

“Give it up.”

“But Lord you brought us out here miraculously. You have developed it and you have shown us. Now what do I do?”

The Lord said, “Go back.” “Where?”
“Where you came from.”

“South Africa? Come on Lord, you delivered me from that. You told me you were drowning the Egyptians in the sea and I will never have to go back there again.”

Well the same thing happened to Moses didn’t it? After he had left and fled from Pharaoh, he was sitting nice and comfortable in the land of Midian in the backside of the desert. But God said,

“I am calling you to go back.”

That was a death of a vision let me tell you. Well Moses already had his death of a vision, because he thought he was going to be their deliverer.

When he tried to do it he had to run for his life though. That was death of a vision. His backside of the desert was his time of burial when God said,

Something Bigger and Different

You see there is a difference when God resurrects the vision. He doesn’t restore the vision. He makes it bigger, better and different.

So if you have been through a death of a vision, God will never ever take you back to that same vision again. The Scripture shows us that when Jesus was born, He was born in a manger.

He was born as the servant and He took upon Himself the form of a servant. But when He was resurrected, He was raised up and given the name that is above every other name. And as the Scripture says,

At the name of Jesus every knee will bow; of things in heaven, things on the earth and things under the earth.

The resurrection is always far greater than the birth. So perhaps you are complaining and saying,

“Lord, why are you killing my vision?”
But the Lord is saying,
“I have something better and greater for you.”

When I was first called to the ministry I could see me becoming a pastor. Imagine if the Lord had left me there? You wouldn’t even know I existed, and I would not have reached the nations.

God had to take me through all of these things, so that He could lift me up and so that I could reach so much more.

Giving Up My Isaac

So if you have great desires to be used by the Lord, firstly be ready to let go of your vision.

You might say, “I am pretty comfortable here. I have been in this church for a long time. They kind of recognize me here, and maybe one of these days they will ordain me to the ministry.”

I sat like that for years until the Lord just killed it dead and I had to leave. When I finally left Zimbabwe, which was where I had been ordained and place in the ministry, I came down to South Africa.

When I arrived here, I kind of hoped that the group down here would still put me back into the ministry. I hung onto that vision until the day God said to me,

“Leave them. You are finished with them. You are over and will never go into ministry with them. You must separate yourself from them and get out on your own.”

That was a death for me. It sounded exciting but it was terrifying. It was a death and I threw away all my future hope that I had been counting on.

So you see I have lived this one. Everything I have preached is something I have lived.

What is God calling you to die to and to give up? Your marriage, relationships, health or wealth? What is your Isaac? Is it your ministry? Maybe God wants you to sacrifice that too. I’m not saying this is the case. You must ask Him. For me He said,

“Let it go.”

So I took my ministry that I had spent years building, with all my materials that I had taken years to develop, and I handed it over to my daughter and son-in-law. Then I stepped away and said,

“I’m not Apostle Les anymore. I’m Bill Yinaire.” “Bill Yinaire?”

“Yes, because I’m going into business now, and Bill Yinaire is a pretty good name.”

Everyone said, “You heretic! You just want to make money. You’ve lost your mind and you’ve lost your call. You’ve turned from God.”

I walked away from it and lost all the income that was coming from it. It was a very big price to pay. However, if I hadn’t taken that move, I would not be teaching on the business calling as I am now. I had to live it.

Do you know how many years it took me to get there though? I was in my fifties at that stage and had finally established a ministry that was training the Fivefold Ministry in the nations. I had set up ministry schools online and produced my book, but I handed it all over and walked away from it.

That was my Isaac back then. But now the Lord has not only given me Isaac back, but He has given me so much more.

There will be a resurrection, and when the resurrection comes it will be far greater than the original vision. You don’t know what He is going to resurrect though. All you know is that it is dead, buried and gone. You must wait until He says,

“Now this is the new vision. This is the resurrection. It’s going to be different. It’s going to be greater and more magnificent.”

You might say to me now,

“Once I have been through that it is okay, right? Then I can be an apostle?”

Well I am still going through deaths, burials and resurrections of a vision. I will end on that later and clarify it, but I didn’t say it is a process. I said there are processes of death, burial and resurrection that you will go through.

Don’t get hung up on the sin aspect. Yes God is dealing with sin in your life, but you must know you don’t qualify for leadership by becoming sinless.

That is a process we all go through. It is the sanctifying process. Yes there must be a degree of righteousness in your life, certainly if you are going to be a model to others.

You certainly need to have overcome sinful habit patterns in your life and you should know how to deal with your sin. That is another story though. The death of a vision is about your vision.

Chapter 03 – Change and Qualification

You Need to Change

Romans 12:1 and 2 says,

I urge you brothers, because of the compassions of God, to offer your bodies specifically as a living sacrifice, dedicated completely, pleasing to God, which is the logical thing for you to do.
And stop following the pattern of this world: but be changed by a total renovation of your mind, that you may recognize what the good, pleasant and complete will of God is.

The Lord demands that you change. You might say to me,

“Well I would like to move from being an ordinary believer to being a minister.”

Or, “I would like to move from being an ordinary minister to being an apostle.”

You know most of the time we desire change. We see our circumstances changing, but we see the same person.

I see me and I am a little nobody; an ordinary little preacher. Now I become a prophet and now I’m an apostle who is known, but it is still just me.

Change from Within

Here is a simple little saying that I heard from a self-help teacher. He said this.

For things to change, you must change.

If you don’t do this things are not going to change. You must change. You must become an apostle long before you are called an apostle. You must become a millionaire long before you get the millions.

There must be a change that takes place within and that is the process of training. God is not making you an apostle because you have created a big megachurch. You might then say,

“Because I have created this huge megachurch, therefore I have the right to call myself an apostle. Can’t you see what I did?”

It’s who you are that matters, not what you did. What you did will be a natural result of who you are. Change must take place within.

The Process of Change

So how does change take place? It starts with a decision as the Scripture says,

Take up your cross and follow me.

That affects both your body and your soul. Your spirit is regenerated. It is born again and is where Jesus lives. It’s where the Holy Spirit lives.

However it is our bodies that must change. That’s why Paul says you must yield it to be a living sacrifice to Him.

Your soul must change, which means there is going to have to be a change in your mind. There must be a change in your attitude and in your viewpoint.

There must be a change in your understanding. You might say to me,

“Well I will just read a few books and it will happen.”

I’m afraid not. It is going to take a bit more than that. It’s going to take experiences with God in the Spirit and in the Word; in this world and in life. It is a process.

So standing where you are now, look back five or 10 years. Are you the same kind of person now that you were back there?

You people who have been with us since we started this training school, are you the same person now that you were when you first started this course? No you are not because change has come.

More Change Coming

The bad news or the good news, whichever you prefer, is that there is plenty more to come. If you make it through this three year training, you will not be the same person you are right now.

If you make it through or not depends on whether you are prepared to change your attitude, change your viewpoint and change your methodology. Whatever happens, change is essential.

It is not just a matter of gaining the knowledge. The renewing of your mind is not studying. So if you just came here to study and know a bit more, it is not enough.

Also if your thinking doesn’t change by the time I’m finished with you, I have failed. Because you see my job is to bring change by renewing your thinking; for you to see things in a different way. You need to start seeing it from God’s viewpoint.

Qualification

The third requirement is qualification. Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:12,

And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who empowered me, that he considered me worthy of trust, appointing me to ministry office for himself.

We know what qualification is in the world. We know that if you are to be promoted in anything, you need to be trained and you need to qualify.

Well how do you qualify – by the knowledge you gain? So you went to university and you studied a lot of stuff. At the end of that time they said,

“Well you guys have been very good. You’ve been coming to the lessons, and so we are going to give you a degree.”

I don’t know of any university that does that except us. No, you are going to have to pass the exams. There are going to be tests to see whether you got it; to see whether you understood it.

Then you go to a job with your little piece of paper and they are going to want a bit more from you. They want to know whether you can do the job or not. This means you are going to go through some more tests. You see qualification only comes through passing tests.

Phases of Preparation and Training

There is going to be a period of preparation to make you ready. There is also going to be an actual period of training. All of the Fivefold Ministry, especially the offices of the teacher, the prophet and the apostle, require those two phases.

They require a time of preparation where God is preparing you for this call. And then they require a release into official training, during which time you will go through a process which we hope will lead to qualification.

Not everyone passes the tests though and not everyone qualifies. Although they have been through the lessons, not everybody qualifies.

During your period of learning, there are going to be times of death as well as phases of change. That is your learning period and it is where you are right now.

Then there are going to be times of testing. When it comes to the spiritual side, I’m sorry but the rules are a little bit different to the secular world.

Testing Times

You see when you study out there, you go through the materials and you learn them very hard. They give you examinations and you write the exams. Your examination paper is then marked, and if you got enough stuff right, you may get a pass mark.

However the Lord has kind of messed things up for us when it comes to ministry, because there will still be a time of learning and a time of testing.

But here is what happens with your tests. Some of them have to be passed, but some of them you have to fail. So you might say to me,

“How do I know when I am supposed to pass?”

You see it is built into our nature to pass isn’t it? It is in my nature to do my best, in order to qualify and to get it ‘just right’.

Then when I have given my best shot, I unleash it all. You see I am standing before the examiner and saying,

“Here it is. This is what I learned. This is what I can do and this is what I do well.”

You think, “Let me give it to him.”

Then you say, “Here is my best!”

However he says to you,

“That was terrible! What do you think you are doing? What exactly were you trying to prove?”

It’s like the guy who stood up to preach. He spouted all of his stuff and fell on his face. Afterwards he wanted to crawl out under the door because he came up bold and confident.

Then the old experienced preacher said to him,

“If you came up the way you went out, you would have gone out the way you came in.”

Only the Invigilator

You see it is going to be a test, and sometimes you have to fail that test. But sometimes you have to pass it.

Well who sets the tests? The Lord does that. He’s the one who writes the papers, but He has someone who is going to give the paper to you and mark it for you. That is the person God has put to train you, and he or she is going to give you the test.

As the examiner or invigilator I have done this over and over again and I have a bit of experience of this. I want to tell you that when you are tested, I don’t write your tests. I don’t lie awake thinking,

“You know I need to test that person in this way. The next time we get together I am going to say this to her. I’m going to do this, I’m going to ask her to do something, and I’m going to test her.”

It has never happened to me yet. In fact, a lot of the time when I am giving a test, I think I’m just there to motivate and encourage the person. I think to myself,

“You know she’s doing so well. I really want to encourage her today. I want to tell her I’m so impressed with the way she is going and tell her that she is doing so awesome.”

That is what is in my mind and that is what I am trying to do when I speak to her. But whatever I say to her with pure motive hits her in a place I did not expect. She then reacts in a way I did not expect.

She might break down in tears and start to cry. I say to her,

“What happened? I was trying to be nice and was trying to lift you up.”

Somewhere along the line, something that I said hit the diamond in its flaw. After it is over I say,

“Lord, what happened there?”

It was a test, and very often the next part is that you failed it gloriously. I have a song that is written like that which I will share sometime.

Unexpected Tests

The tests will come when you least expect them. They usually come when I least expect them. Sometimes I hate to give the tests. And even worse, I hate to watch you fail and say,

“Okay, let me tell you what happened there. You just failed the test.”

I want to tell you though, without the tests there will be no qualification. So you may think of continuing the rest of this course, gaining a lot of knowledge and finally getting all the pieces together. Then you can say,

“Oh, now I know how to do that.”

There will come a time of testing though. And as I have said to you before, most people hate me at least once before it’s over, but I’m trying to be a nice guy sometimes.

Death is a Part of it

Don’t think you are above this. None of us are above it, not even me. There is going to be a death process involved in all of these, to bring about death and change and to qualify you.

Sometimes your legs will have to be broken on the cross. And someone has to knock in the nails because nobody can crucify themselves. So perhaps you have begun to experience some of these things yourself.

A couple of my pastoral students in our first live pastoral class discovered that there was an unexpected death in store for them. I wasn’t planning it. I was hoping I could be nice to everybody, but I had to be honest and some of it brought about a death process.

If it happens to you welcome it. Embrace it because it is the key to your next level of qualification. And if you failed it, the first question you must ask is,

“Where do I go from here Lord? What do I do?” Get back to the drawing board. Let Him show you.

The Qualification Process

Once you have finally qualified and you have passed the final test, how will you know when that has happened? You will know when God says so.

We do not place anybody in any ministry office when they finish our course. I will not say to you,

“You have done so well. You have been through the course, now come forward. I am going to lay hands on you and we are going to place you in office.”

It is not going to happen that way. It never has and never will. For a start it is very unlikely to happen publicly. God doesn’t give you the privilege of standing in front of everyone and being honored. Sometimes He does; other times He doesn’t.

Most of the time when I place people in an office, it has been alone with one or two witnesses at the most. Very often at the most unexpected time and when you think that you have failed so miserably you don’t even want this anymore, God will say,

“Okay, you just qualified.”

“Who me?”

“Yes you.”

You see that is when you want to weep, fall on your face and say,

“But I am not worthy.”

I am not going to bring you to that place. God is going to bring you to that place, and when you reach that place God will show me. He will say,

“There it is. Call him forward and place him in office right now.”

Usually it won’t be in a meeting. It will be alone and God will tell me to call you aside. Then I will say,

“My brother, I feel that the Lord says you are qualified. Let everyone else go home and we are just going to pray with you quickly.”

That is how it happens. If you have been placed in office you will know what I am talking about. Sometimes it may happen in a meeting, but most of the time it doesn’t. However every time it comes unexpectedly.

A Continual Process

Once you qualify and you have been placed, you may think you have arrived and that it is over. You might think,

“There are no more tests, changes or qualification.”

I’m afraid not. The death process continues with each new level. Change continues as you continue in ministry, and each new promotion requires a further qualification.

In the apostolic call there are many levels as I have been teaching you. The only question now is how far do you want to go? How far as you prepared to go?

If you are happy to stay where you are right now feel free. But if you want more; if you want to go higher and further, there will always be a death of a vision and there will always be a demand for change. There will always be tests to qualify you.

Wrapping it Up

Where do you stand right now in your apostolic calling, and what are you prepared to do to follow through?

For me, I am about to turn 67. I am an old man and I should be retiring, but you know what? I haven’t arrived yet. I’m still growing. I’m still progressing and learning new things.

I don’t go through deaths as often as I used to, but I am still not immune. I’m still changing because I haven’t arrived yet. There are still things I need to qualify in before I can take the fullness of the authority that the Lord has for me.

The same applies to you, but nobody is forcing you. It is your choice to say,

“I want to go further. I want more and I want to go higher.”

If that is your passion, as it has always been mine for years, the Lord will not let you down. He will call you to death. He will not let you down. He will force you to change. And the Lord will not let you down. He will give you tests.

Every time those things happen, know that you have stepped up another notch higher. You have gone a step closer to the desire that you have.

My Prayer

“Father I thank you for your Word. I thank you for the principles you have given. Thank you for each one that reads this lesson. You have a track for each one to run on and you have a specific call for each one.

Each one of them has been given a vision that needs to die, to be buried and to be resurrected. Each one needs to change in a different way. And each one needs to face tests and qualify for what you have called them to.

It is in your hands Lord. We make ourselves available to you now as your instruments of blessing. In time you will raise each one of us up, to continue this process of training and teaching others, and helping them to rise up into all that you have called them to.

Thank you for this in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

[whohit]Apostolic Preparation[/whohit]