What Our Ministry Is: Other Titles, #2

By Theodore Andoseh

There are the general purposes of God and the distinct purposes of God that He entrusts to specific individuals, groups of individuals, communities, and even to a Spiritual Movement. Both kinds of callings are documented in the Scriptures and all serve the economy of God's purposes.

To Zach Fomum and those that God called along with him, a distinct economy of the Gospel was entrusted that translated into a clear goal. The pursuance of that goal through obedience to God's specific instructions has gradually clarified the will of God and the means of accomplishing His purposes. God's will, God's ways, our responsibility, who we must be, and what we must do to please God, and accomplish our goal, are presented here as constituting our ministry.

This is written for all who are part of our ministry, and for all who will be part of this ministry, so that we may serve in the same spirit for the same purpose and, by accomplishing the goal, bring glory to our Lord Jesus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books4revival
• Release date: Jun 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223384304

Theodore Andoseh

The current leader of Christian Missionary Fellowship Internation

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Let us fellowship around the word. Our sharing shall be based on an encounter between God and Abraham, redefining His purpose for Abraham and the conditions for executing that purpose. I will like us to share it so that later on we can pick out various aspects as they concern us. I hope this will situate us in the context so that we can better understand things that will be discussed not as isolated ideas.

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers. ​Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, ​As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. ​No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. ​I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. ​I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. ​The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God."

Then God said to Abraham, As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. ​This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. ​You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. ​For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner--those who are not your offspring. ​Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. ​Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.

God also said to Abraham, As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. ​I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.

Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety? ​And Abraham said to God, If only Ishmael might live under your blessing! ​Then God said, Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. ​And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. ​But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year. ​When he had finished speaking with Abraham, God went up from him (Genesis 17:1‒22).

I will like to consider four things in this passage:

God’s purpose.

The covenant.

The appointments.

The conditions.

PART ONE

1

THE ENCOUNTER AND THE ENCOUNTERS

THE BASIS FOR SPIRITUAL PROGRESS

When Abraham was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless (genesis 17:1).

I have also had to confront two things:

Spiritual progress and

Progress in God’s work; both are a function of fresh encounters with God. Every encounter with God is promotional. We move ahead spiritually by such encounters with God. In Abraham’s life you find it again in the following passages:

Genesis 15:1:

After this, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision: Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.

Genesis 18:1:

The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day.

Spiritual history is chronicled in encounters with God. When I meet God, there are:

transformations,

transactions,

transpositions, and

God moves me ahead.

I operate in that realm until I meet God again, and then I can move ahead. So if my only encounter with God was at my conversion, I may be a witness, but I may not make much progress. All spiritual progress is conditioned upon fresh encounters with God; at least this comes out in Abraham’s spiritual history.

THRESHOLD HOLINESS

The second thing to confront in that verse, I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless. If God will take me ahead, there must be a fresh encounter with the holiness of God. Deepened sanctification will take me ahead. Preceding all spiritual appointments in service, for most spiritual appointments in service as documented, there must be an encounter with the holiness of God and the God of all holiness. You find it in brother Zach’s The Way of Christian Service. I will continue in my present level of service as long as I continue in my present level of sanctification.

In John 15:1-2, the Lord says,

I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

So we have from fruit to more fruit through a pruning process. Pruning is cleansing or discipline, by some translations. So I move from fruit to more fruit, to more fruit, to more fruit by increasing pruning. Sanctification is God’s threshold condition for service. If I am anxious that my work, my ministry should grow beyond what it is, I can’t run away from confronting God’s holiness afresh in subjective terms, in deepening sanctification.

In the case of Abraham, the sanctification coincided with the encounter with God. The encounter with God produced a call to a deeper level of holiness. These are the conditions that God established for the confirmation of his covenants.

THE BASIS FOR INCREASE IN NUMBERS

There was a covenant to increase Abraham’s numbers. God appeared to Abraham and charged him to walk a blameless life, and on that condition, promised to expand the covenant. I have had to confront the fact that my work cannot grow outwardly, while my heart and my relationship with God does not grow inwardly. I must also confront the fact that I must enter into a deeper cleansing by God’s Spirit, as God’s normal way that precedes a new breakthrough.

Last night, we were laying hold on God, for a new impartation of God’s holiness to the saints. Growth in numbers is linked to man’s walk in blamelessness. It is not the devising of new methods, how to do things better. It is a new walk with God. That is what God based the increase in numbers on. Let us pray we would believe it, because I find that I have the tendency of planning for growth in my work only in terms of increased activity. God’s word condemns me. I have to confront the fact that growth in numbers will be linked to my own spiritual growth.

2

SOME APPLICATIONS

Let us take two applications of what we have just said.

OUR WORK IS SPIRITUAL

The first one is that our work is fundamentally spiritual. It is not the mastery of methods. Our work is spiritual and it is as we evolve spiritually that our work also evolves. So when I get into a nation or to a province, the state of the work there, at every given time, is a reflection of my walk with God. If I make more progress, the work will progress more. The state of your ministry is a reflection of your present walk with God. One can keep going further and further with God; further and further and further; from glory to glory to glory to glory; from increase to increase, to increase, as he keeps growing. So Paul says, Forgetting what lies behind, I push on to take hold of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. We forget what is behind and keep pressing on. So, to come to a plane of satisfaction, through the observation of some success is blindness.

To excuse myself that the condition of my work is tied to the fact that the people are difficult or other is not true. It is God who gives fruit; and He bases it on fulfilled conditions. These conditions are spiritual. In the business world, you can master certain success laws, but you cannot transpose them to the gospel enterprise. If you do, you will have a worldly work that looks big and successful. It doesn’t cost much for grass to grow. My work can be grass. But if you are going to cultivate corn, you will have to fulfil some conditions. You can’t cheat there. Your ministry can be grass, or it can be a farm of corn. But many of us may just be satisfied with the fact that there is at least something. Our work is spiritual, based on spiritual conditions fulfilled, counting alone on God’s intervention.

THE MAKING OF A LEADER: TIME AND SPIRITUAL TRANSACTIONS

The second application which I am going to come back to is that God begins to trust a man after a lot of spiritual history and dealings with the person. If God was to make each one of us a starting point, the work may never be done. It took him 25 years to prepare Abraham, with at least five failures:

The failure of famine when he went down to Egypt.

The failure of carrying Lot along.

The failure of that resulted when he went into Hagar who bore him Ishmael.

The failure by his lying in the land of the Philistines.

The near disaster of defiling the holy seed.

It took God long training and long discipline. It took God 80 years to