PILGRIM, PIONEER, BUILDER

A teaching by Trevor Baker (based on a message given on Dec 28,2008).

Recently, God has been repeatedly speaking to me two words - “incredible journey.” In the past 12 months, we here at Revival Fires have come into more unprecedented blessing that we could have ever imagined.

In a book entitled When Heroes Rise Again, the author makes the point that as Christians, we should be “making ourselves better known to God.” That’s the journey we’re on. We can talk about being elected and chosen by God (and that’s what I taught on last time), but, we need to make ourselves better known to God.

We also need to look at how Jesus made Himself known to His Father because we’re to walk in the same footsteps as Jesus. He went on an incredible journey and had to give up so much before He actually received His full inheritance [Heb12:2]. It wasn’t until He came to the cross, that He could receive the glory and that He could look upon the travail of His soul.

From the same book I found this life transforming quote: “We can sculpt whatever world we choose to make within the parameters of our minds, but our hearts will always be capable of telling us where the real one is, the real world is.” God didn’t say “My son, give me your mind.” He said “My son, give me your heart.” That’s because out of our hearts flow a well spring of life [Prov4:23].

ENVISIONING REALITY WITH THE CLARITY OF THE CREATOR

As I pondered this quote: “Revelation is based on our capacity to envision reality with the clarity of the Creator,” I asked God a question. “What is the journey that You’ve been taking us on?” And He told me: “I want you to make yourself better known to Me. I want you to come into a place where it’s not just the thoughts you have, but that you allow your heart to take you to the reality.” And as we go on another “incredible journey” with God this year, I think there are three things we need to become - a pilgrim, a pioneer and a builder.

PILGRIM

We don’t use the term pilgrim or “making pilgrimage” very much anymore. But what we do say in Christian circles is “we’re going to a conference” - a place where we go because the presence of God is there. In the words of our forefathers, they “make a pilgrimage.”

The important thing about pilgrimage is that it’s about somebody wanting to express passion. You see, Abraham was on a journey and the Bible talks about him being a pilgrim. He looked for a city whose Builder and Architect was God [Heb11:10]. He wasn’t looking in the natural, he was looking for something far greater and that future reality had so taken hold of him that he was expressing passion! And, this passion came from a conviction of what God was going to do in and through his life. This year become a pilgrm, set yourself on a journey and while on this adventure express the passion that is in your hearts to know more of the presence of God.

When the Pilgrim Fathers left this country, it was because they had a conviction that there could be a people who came under the authority of God. They were being persecuted for what they believed, the convictions that they carried. So they left to find a place where they could begin to live out that which they wanted to express in terms of their passion for the presence of God without restriction of governments, or being oppressed. That’s how the United States came into being.

I believe God still looks for people like that. He still wants to say to a people, “I want you to leave something so that you can take hold of something.” In Gen12, God called Abraham to leave the land where he was at and make a journey. Over this year, there are things you may need to leave behind, such as sicknesses, poverty and wrong mindsets. I believe this could be a year where you begin to fully make yourself known to God.. And when you do, He then releases all that He has to meet every need that you have in your life! [Phil4:19] Wouldn’t that be awesome? That would be a wonderful journey for you to be on and then you would be able to bless other people’s lives out of the overflow of God’s provision!

PIONEER

We also need to be pioneers, or forerunners – people who extend boundaries. Are you in a place, like Abraham, where you need to extend boundaries? Your boundary lines have fallen to you in pleasant places [Ps16:5-6]. But maybe you’ve stepped over the boundary lines and you’ve left your clothing on the barbed wire! You need to go back and get the clothing.

Do you remember as a child, you’d be out running in somebody else’s field? I can remember as a child being in a rifle range. There’s was a man there called Captain Webb, and everybody thought that he “killed little children” if you went on his land. But you know, the best or the rarest of eggs were there. And as I was bird or egg hunting, I’d have to go over into his land in order to get it. But there was barbed wire fences all the way round it, and sometimes you’d hear the gun go off and that really did make you think that he was going to “kill” you if he saw you. I never actually knew of anybody who had died, but we just lived by it. And so we’d hear the gun go off and we would run like whippets and jump over the fence. Often times we’d catch our trousers on the fence and leave a hole in our trousers and a piece of cloth on the barbed wire.

There are some people who need to go pick the cloth up off the barbed wire because you extended the boundaries that God hadn’t made for you. You need to pray something like: “God, I want to come back to a new place with You, I want to know the boundary lines You have placed in my life, I want You to know, from my heart today, that these boundary lines have fallen to me in pleasant places because I want to one day be able to extend my boundaries - but they are only extended as You extend them.”

CONVICTION AND COMMITMENT

As you extend your boundaries, the new boundaries come because you have made a commitment to move on. You see, we can have lots of convictions but never have the commitment to carry them out.

You know this is great credit to Nola, one of the leaders at Revival Fires, what she’s done [going through a healing process with God and seeing blood sugar levels returning to normal and weight loss]. Now, a 39 stone guy can have a conviction and even a passion that he’s going to crawl through a chair, but it’s not until he makes a commitment that he’s going to shed weight that he will get through it.

Again, you can have all the convictions you like, but unless it’s connected to a commitment, to live it out day by day, week by week, month by month – you will never extend boundaries. How many of us have had convictions and yet we’ve lacked the commitment to go and do it? How many of you have started your Bible reading plans but by February, they’re already two weeks behind? How many of you have said “God, this is going to be a year where I get out of poverty.” Yet, you still keep loading yourself up with debt because you don’t have the conviction and the commitment to begin to scale down the way you live your life. We need conviction and commitment!

BREAKING INTO NEW PLACES

I believe God wants you to break through into a new place. God has said that He has put your feet in a large place [Ps 18:19,118:5], but unless you step into them, it will be as large for anybody else but it won’t be large for you. We need to come into those places.

I know for my Christian journey of about 35 years, God has always been extending my boundaries. I’ve learned that I had to put my feet in the spacious place that God had said He’d put them into. What I mean is that I had to engage with God. You see it’s one thing to have a word that says “You have put my feet in a large place and my ankles didn’t slip over,” You know, from Psalm 18 (v.19). “And by My God do I run through a troop, And by My God I have scaled a wall. [Ps18:29]”. But it’s not until you put your steps into those places that God has already cut out for you that you then begin to realize that God will take you over the walls that have kept you out from that place, that He will cause you to run through troops that are all against you. The enemy will try to stop you coming into the freedom and liberty that God has for you. So we need that pioneering spirit to step into the new places God has for us.

THE WORLD NEEDS “HEROES”

We need, as William Ruth has said, “heroes to rise again.” I’m not talking about how the world sees heroes, (you know as some great macho person going on a mission like James Bond), but people who begin to take hold of God and walk with Him, expressing the life of Jesus in and through their lives.

What pioneers do more than anything else is that they begin to explore new dimensions and new possibilities. How many of you are prepared to explore something new this year? You see, I don’t want to stay in the old! In Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 18 it says “he is no fool, who takes hold of the old and the new and doesn’t let go of either because a man who knows how to do that, will be a man who is not given to extremes [paraphrased].” There is a part where we do say “forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward to those things which are ahead” [Phil3:13] and where we also hear God saying, “behold, I will do a new thing” [Isa43:19]. But you see, “a good wise steward takes out of his house things both old and new”[Mt13:52 paraphrased] – so there are things we don’t throw away - even when we do pioneer into new things. Let me tell you, there are things you’ve overcome in your past that God wants you to use in order to break into new things.

We need to explore new possibilities, new realms with God. For Revival Fires as a church, we need to explore the possibility that there would not be anyone amongst us in need. That’s what happened in the book of Acts. It says that everyone that had things sold possessions and brought it to the apostles’ feet, so that there was not one person amongst them that had need. [Acts4:34-35]

Now, I’m not talking about us just bailing everybody out. I’m talking about people who live out of a place of wisdom, not making foolish decisions. If you are in that place of having made foolish financial decisions, let me tell you that you can have that wiped clean. I’m not talking about the consequence(s), but the guilt of it can be removed from your life (by the blood of Jesus) so that you can begin to make right choices again. You see, that’s pioneering into a new place - out of a place of debt and on to prosperity! Others of you need to pioneer out of a place of sickness and explore the realm of divine health.

We need to pioneer new things, like building a community of people who are not in debt, who walk in divine health and have good jobs. We need to have a pioneering spirit so that we can see the unfulfilled dreams and aspirations that God has placed in us become reality. We give thanks for all that God has done in the past - but we want to pioneer into new places with God.

BUILDER

The third thing we need to be is builders - people who construct a new future, motivated by the desire to establish a community.

You’ve heard the slogan “we don’t build houses, we build homes for people to live in.” We have a Master Builder - A Builder and an Architect who is God [Heb11:10]. We also have a Pioneer, looking unto Jesus, the Pioneer and Completer of our faith. So we let go of every weight that would hinder us and we press on to take hold of Him afresh [Heb12:1-2].

Like our Heavenly Father, we also want to build. We want to construct at Revival Fires a community of people that the world would look upon and see how we love and take care of each other and the world. I believe that this church can come into that new place.

I was just listening to the news recently. There was this story about where the bishops in Britain had stolen the moral ground from the Conservative Party. Now, I feel that this is a tremendous picture for the world. You see, the different parties were playing off against another, and five bishops got together and released a statement, part of which said that this government had become morally corrupt. And they cannot put on to a previous governing party, because they have been in power for long enough now to have actually corrected what they said was wrong with the other party.

This isn’t about politicizing, but it is to say this – I do believe that this nation is morally bankrupt. And it’s morally bankrupt because we have a nation that now lives in total brokenness. I’m not talking about people losing all their homes and jobs - but a nation that has a broken spirit. Proverbs 18:14 says “And a broken spirit, who can endure it?” You see there’s only one who can bind up broken hearts and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.

We need again to be those who construct a community of people who bring healing to the broken hearted. God says He sets the lonely, the isolated into families [Ps68:6] - that has always been the truth that God wants to become reality. He wants families of people living together, knowing what it is to express the Father heart of God - a loving Heavenly Father who is able to meet every need that mankind would ever face.

I believe that this is an opportunity, where the national political leaders are still going to have to address the statements that the church is making (despite the church’s own faults and failings). I also believe that we can make a statement, not just from the words that we speak, but by being a community of people who know what it is to care of one another, our town and our region. Then, we do become, a picture of what the church should be in a broken society - bringing the love of Jesus that heals people’s broken lives. I believe that the world is looking for a people (a church) like that.

So this year, I want us to be pilgrims, pioneers and builders. I want us to express our convictions and make our commitments. I also want us to build something, where people can come into contact with His manifest presence and glory and be totally changed. I want them to come into a presence that they’ve never known.

Trevor Baker carries a Spirit of Revival. Through his preaching and prophetic gifting he equips men and women to fulfill their destiny and calling in God, so that through signs and wonders we may gather in the harvest from the nations of the world.

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