We really do want you to engage with the ministry through the website (www.hofmi.net), because it’s a way of us communicating with you – any place, anywhere, anytime. We believe in relationships and we will continue to develop our ministry based on relationships, not on programmes and not just on things that people can get access to.
Relationship is what is really meaningful and powerful. A real challenge about having a relationship is becoming vulnerable so that you can have the full benefit of the relationship. As long as you are defensive and not open and vulnerable, that’s the limitation of your relationship. Primarily our defense mechanism is to protect ourselves from ourselves, it’s not to protect ourselves from God. We put up barriers to kind of resist having this intimacy with God, because we’re going to let ourselves down in that intimacy. We then become defensive about all matters concerning God, because we turn and point fingers to ourselves.
Every relationship must have this kind of structure to it. First you touch each other – to engage is the foundation of any relationship. Then you begin to integrate ways – you start to learn something about each other, how to interface to both party’s benefit. The next level is strategic intentions – a level where you can cooperate in life together that add a lot of value and can create and develop things. After that you get divine productivity, then covenant. It is extremely damaging when people go from touch to the highest level of intimacy in a very short space of time.
The definition of intimacy – you’re into-me-you-see. People really want you to be interested in them (who they are, what they’re becoming and to help them become what they want to become). When people date, they are really interested in each other, because they want to get to know each other. When they get married, they shift from being into you, to being responsible and they stop becoming intimate (not just physical intimacy but being interested in emotions, thoughts, your day) and conversations then becomes more about managing responsibility. The same thing happens with Jesus when it shifts from being who you are in Jesus (relationship), to all about church life (responsibility). If we can’t have a meaningful relationship with Jesus, then we ought not to have church. He’s not looking for sacrifice, He’s looking for obedience. Obedience is about relationship, it’s about intimacy, it’s about hearing His voice and it’s about working with Him in life, being productive in Him. It’s not about what you do organizationally that makes the difference. Working in the church is not as important as what you are becoming in Christ.
The Word of the Lord to us for next year is that the Lord is going to open a new door and that we are going to experience supernatural increase.
1 Corinthians 16:8 (MSG); 2 Corinthians 2:12 (MSG)
Paul perceived that God had opened this opportunity for him (to go and minister at the right place, the right time, the right moment – that he must speak). Almost always if you are going to enter into a new door, where there are opportunities that are going to open, you are going to have to begin to speak and you are going to have to speak what God wants you to speak as you are transitioning from one space to the next space. In 2020 there is a portal that’s being opened and we are going to have to move from one space into another space. It means that we’re going to leave an environment that we are used to behind and we’re going to go into a new space. That doesn’t mean to say we leave the old environment alone and behind completely forever, it just means for a while we’ve got to move into a new space to explore what’s in there, because whatever is in that space is going to impact what we do with the old space.
We’ve got to get into an attitude and a frame of mind that says that there are doors, portals beginning to get opened in the spirit realm for us and that we’ve got to have this attitude that it is an opportunity. It’s not something to be afraid of, it’s not something where there are hidden traps, it’s an opportunity.
Paul said that there was mushrooming opposition. New opportunities, bring new things to be managed. It’s a matter of overcoming the challenges that present themselves in learning a new thing. Part of that barrier is your own internal feelings of, “I wonder if I’m going to mess it up?” There are going to be challenges, but they’re not challenges that you need to fear, they’re not challenges that you can’t overcome, you just have to be determined enough to go through the things that you’ll face in the new time, in the new things. When you go into new things, it creates new opportunities for you, that are to your advantage, it creates increase for you.
Colossians 4:2-5 (MSG)
Even though you may feel like your life is constrained right now (prisons of finances, lack of education, relationships), if you have a vision to be able to see, you can have opportunities, new doors that can open for you that you will see in the Spirit and then you will be able to take those opportunities regardless of your current condition.
I want to encourage you to begin to speak, what God’s Word says about your future. One of the greatest prisons that people are putting themselves in today is created by a cultural language that talks about many things in a very negative, very hopeless scenario. These words are actually locking opportunities out. He who controls the language controls the culture. If the enemy of God can control your language, he can control your future.
Let’s believe God for 20/20 vision for whatever we need to see as we look for the open door. Let your language begin to speak, “Thank You, Lord that I see the open new door. I pray that when the new door presents itself, I will not hold back, I will be bold, strong and very courageous and not afraid to go after what You’ve got in store for me in a new space, in a new place. I will have Your wisdom, guidance and ability to manage new things. I’ll have Your supernatural intelligence to know what to do, when to do it, how to do it, so that I can maximize my opportunity that You’re opening for me in the new space that is available to me. I have the ability, I have the resources, I have the relationships, I see them, I receive them, I work with them, they’re all coming to me and I’m able to see them when they come to me, when it’s available to me. I’m walking with marvels and wonders, extraordinary manifestation of the greatness of God into the new door. I have a vision, I see the new door, I see it. I’m ready to walk through it. God has opened the door and so now it’s time to recognize it and walk through it. I am a son of God and I have everything that a son has. I leave all my past behind, and I walk into a new future. Nothing from my past can stop me from having in my future, in Jesus Name. Whatever happened yesterday, it doesn’t matter today. Today is a new day, I dance in the Lord today – I have happy feet”.
© 2023 – Heritage of Faith Ministries International
TOUCH | TEACH | TRAIN | TRANSFER
