by Pastor Donald Lamb, guest writer

It Is Unavoidable That Our Primary Gift Will Shape The Way We View What Is Going On In The World.  That Is Why We Need Each Other

“For Dietrich Bonhoeffer it was not enough to follow Christ by preaching, teaching, and writing.  No, he was in deadly earnest when he called for Christian action and self-sacrifice. This explains why Bonhoeffer always acted spontaneously. Why he considered self-righteousness and complacency great sins against the Holy Spirit, and regarded laziness as the starting line on the road to hell.”  G. Leibholz

One major stream of gifting in the Body of Christ (the prophetic/intercessors) sees the absolute chaos of our nation as a result of what God is doing in this hour: disciplining the Church for her prayerlessness, compromise, and disengagement from the world and culture in the guise of keeping to the exclusiveness of preaching the Gospel.

The other major stream of gifting (the pastoral/teaching) sees the passion in Christians to engage the culture through being salt and light in the political and governmental gates of influence as Christian nationalism and political idolatry. How do we reconcile this?

It seems possible that the prophetic may be better equipped to see providentially what God is doing in the messiness – God allowed the craziness of the political nightmare in America and especially the election of 2016 to show us how far gone our nation was. Following on we lived four years of non-stop railing, judgment, and accusation against President Donald Trump who was viewed as a providential firewall against globalism and the accelerated destruction of America – but many evangelicals did not see it that way because the majority of its pastoral leaders do not embrace the prophetic.

The pastoral/teaching leaders seem better equipped to discern the real dangers of overly relying on government and the institutions of Babylon to save our country without using the saving influence of the Gospel. Unfortunately, they also lend themselves to disengagement. Yes, they can warn about political idolatry and help reinforce the centrality of the Gospel as the ultimate hope for our nation but their practical silence on major social issues are unhelpful and only repeat the previous mistakes of disengagement from the gates of influence. They inadvertently promote a spiritualized apathy toward influencing the political process while focusing on preaching the Gospel.

Harmony between the Pastoral and Prophetic callings

Most bizarre is that the body of Christ can see the exact same moment in history so completely differently. And, as a result, we kind of all end up with our differences because of the gift that God has given us. And that’s why we need the harmony between the prophetic and pastoral gifts more than ever. The truly integrated ministry is able to champion all the gifts; validate all the gifts and cause people to walk together in a cohesive vision. Without an integrated five-fold ministry we all become an echo-chamber within our particular gifting. The prophetic leadership becomes very bold the pastoral mercy leadership becomes very concerned about the arm of the flesh and tends to silo themselves into a compartmentalized vision of the Church. It seems unavoidable that these responses take place because we’re all looking at the same thing through our own lens.

It’s like the three blind guys who run into the elephant in the middle of the jungle and they all grab the part of the elephant they can touch and describe it. Consequently, they believe they’ve run into a tree, or they’ve run into a small rope, or into a large hose.

Essentially, this is what has happened in the last eight years. If a person is not prophetic and they don’t see the providence of God in everything that is happening they believe that this is all hysteria created by Christian nationalists who want to save their country through a political messiah. On the other hand, when you realize what is happening prophetically (through the lens of God’s shaking and providence) we understand that God took the most basic responsibility of Christians which is engaging our country and culture and showed us that we had walked away from it in the guise of spirituality. This happened because we were primarily led by pastors who were solely focused on the Gospel and promoted the idea that this would take care of everything else. (A misapplication of “seek first the Kingdom of God and all these others things will be added.”) What we didn’t realize was that by not getting messy and participating at the political gates of influence we lost most of our nation to wokeness and all the craziness because we left our country to be guarded by godless leaders.

Not relying on the arm of the flesh

Now I acknowledge that if the Christian patriots who love their nation are not guided with the help of an integrated ministry that they can become dependent on the “arm of the flesh” and they might try to save America through carnal means alone. Furthermore, they can be tempted to raise or lower their faith level, or emotional level, or spiritual expectation based upon who’s in the White House. Clearly, that is unbiblical and unhealthy but that doesn’t mean we walk away from that gate of influence because it’s not the ultimate answer to America.

Yes, the most strategic strategy to save America is receiving the ascendancy of the kingdom of God through radical intercession that ushers in real revival and also through an awakened Church that is consecrated and boldly shares the Gospel while standing at the gates of influence. In contrast, reformation for a dying nation will definitely not come about from staying away from the messiness and not engaging the world where God has called forth the different Kingdom anointings.

Obviously, without the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit any of us could become obsessed with trying to fix all the problems politically and not receiving the power of the eternal Kingdom to transform people. It’s very interesting that we can validate each other’s gifts and yet our own gifting puts a lens on our spiritual understanding of the times and hinders us from seeing the whole picture.

Finally, we’re not going to roll over and pretend that we are not in a battle. But what is really crazy to me is this – I don’t know anyone seriously, and in a godly way, engaging the political mountain that doesn’t have to fight a fight daily – almost holding their nose to endure the stench of that broken system as they stand for truth. And for sure they need to be so prayed up and backed up by intercessors to keep a right heart about it all. How in the world can you call that political idolatry?

Photo Credit Karsten Madsen