ANOINTED TO BE A KING

ANOINTED TO BE A KING



                The older I get them more I understand my complete and total need of the Holy Spirit. In our youth we keep thinking that we can do something, even though Jesus says that we can do nothing. John 15:5



                David was anointed to be king in his youth and yet he had many things to go through before he actually reached the palace. We must realize that it was most likely the things that he went through that made Him a good king and it is also likely that it was his trials that caused him to maintain his dependence upon God.



                Saul was anointed as king as well and yet he fell from his anointing and began to live by the flesh rather than by the Spirit. The result was that an evil spirit from the Lord came over him and he needed David to tame his ravaged mind.



                Paul tells us that everything that happened to Israel was written down for our admonition upon which the ends of the age have come. So we can see that David and Saul represent two kinds of churches operating in the last days. There is the anointed church that operates in the anointing and there is the church that was once anointed but now operates in the flesh. One is represented by Philadelphia and it is said to have the key of David, while the other is Laodicea which is said to have become lukewarm and miserable and poor and blind and naked, as was Saul.



                The Philadelphia church today is not represented by a denominational name… rather it is made up of those who are learning to live by the anointing rather than by the flesh. We have been anointed to be kings, sure enough, but it doesn’t always look like it since we are often hiding in caves and prayer closets and learning by trial and error how to live by the Spirit rather than by the flesh. And isn’t it interesting to note, that the Philadelphia Church was said to have the key of David. I believe that the key of David is the anointing, for it is the anointing that breaks the yoke and it is the anointing that kills the Goliaths in our lives.



                The outside world knows nothing of the battle that we are engaged in. They don’t even know there is a war… even though they are cowering behind enemy lines having been pinned down by Goliath. Rather they have built campfires to warm their hands and they have accepted that this is just the way life is. They are wearing Saul’s armor instead of the full armor of God which David was wearing.



                On our way to becoming kings and priests we too have many things to learn. Sometimes we chafe at the trials we must go through and it doesn’t help that the subject of faith has often become distorted in recent decades. More often than not we try to use faith to get what we want rather than to get what God wants. And when we don’t get what we want then we feel like our faith is being tested, or we begin to doubt altogether.



                We talk about taking authority over situations in the name of Jesus and there is an element of that in the Bible. “Ask and you shall receive… knock and the door shall be opened… seek and you shall find. But none of these seem to tell us that we can impose our will upon God. Oh He may give us what we want. Israel wanted a king like the other nations had and so God gave them Saul. He looked good in the eyes of men, but he wasn’t a Goliath killer. He was religion without the power. He was conventional thinking. He operated in the flesh and so they were limited to what flesh can do.



                So when David came along living each day by the anointing that had been placed upon him, he had a host of enemies to overcome on his way to the throne. The world hates the anointing because Satan hates the anointing, for the anointing carries with it a silent power and authority that does not operate in the same way that power and authority operate in the fleshly realm.



                Oswald Chambers once said this: “If our Lord insisted on our obedience, He would simply become a taskmaster and cease to have any real authority. He never insists on obedience, but when we truly see Him we will instantly obey Him. Then He is easily Lord of our life and we live in adoration of Him from morning till night.  The level of my growth in grace is revealed by the way I look at obedience.”

                From his book: My Utmost For His Highest



                A legalist is one who is constantly struggling to obey a demanding God.  Full compliance is always just out of reach and so he must live in constant guilt and fear. He may claim to love God for that too is required of him… but he can never seem to enter into the rest that Jesus promises. He is trying to get there by the works of the Law and the struggles of the flesh.



                Religion spends much time polishing Saul’s armor rather than learning to live by the anointing as David did. We hide behind the structure of the church rather than venturing out to the front lines where the real battle is raging. We too are terrified of Goliath and the sinfulness of the Philistines and so we hide away from the frontlines and we practice our faith safely in the presence only of those who agree with us.



                Don’t get me wrong… the church is a battlefield and a mission field as well and yet we often keep to ourselves and live for ourselves even in church. We blindly walk by dozens of opportunities to help, encourage and bless others. We are weighed down with the heavy armor of religion rather than the light and agile armor of the anointing.



                When we really come to know God then we will cease to live as His slaves and we will begin to live as His sons and daughters. We will share with our Father in the family business, no longer as an outsider, but as an heir.



                Jesus came to introduce God as our Father and this was something that people under law could not comprehend.



John said it in John 5:18: “For this cause therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.”



                They could not grasp the concept of sonship because under law you are a servant of God. But the New covenant came to adopt us as sons and daughters of God in which we obey our Father as sons and not as slaves.



                The New Covenant is based upon love and a Law that is fulfilled by that love, because in truth, obedience can only be fully realized between equals. We obey as sons, not as slaves and that makes all the difference in the world. We have a stake in the family business, whereas a slave must obey simply because he is a slave. He doesn’t share in the family councils and he doesn’t share in the family inheritance. He obeys simply because he has ended up in the unhappy lot of a slave instead of a son.



                Paul explains this in Galatians 4:22-26: “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a bondwoman and one by the free woman. But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh and the son by the free woman through the promise. This contains an allegory for these women are two covenants one proceeding from Mt. Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves, she is Hagar. Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, she is our mother. “



                It is time for us to learn to live as sons and daughters rather than slaves, for it is God’s purpose to bring us into maturity as sons. “For whom He foreknew He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son that He might be the first-born of many brethren.”



                Do we really comprehend what is being said here? Jesus is the first-born among many. We are His brothers and sisters, not His slaves, and we are destined to become joint heirs with Him. And not only that but all of creation is waiting with anxious longing for the revealing of the sons of God. It is we who can move on to become sons that will become the first fruits of a much greater harvest to come.



                Remember if you will that before anyone could eat the harvest of barley, the priest must wave it before the Lord as first fruit of the harvest and once the wave sheaf was declared holy then the whole field was holy.



                Do you think that this has no meaning in our day? It absolutely does, for we are now called to become sons and daughters of God and in these final days God is forming a remnant of her seed that keep the commandments and bear the testimony of Jesus. But remember this: We don’t keep the commandments as slaves, but as sons. We walk in the anointing and we love the Father and so the Commandments are fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.



                Hebrews 12 also reassures us that we have not come to Mount Sinai again, but to the living God and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect and to Jesus, the Mediator of a New Covenant and to the sprinkled blood which speaks better than the blood of Abel.



                These themes run through the entirety of Scripture and we need to study them with the idea of learning how to walk in this world as sons and daughters of God. He is looking for far more than the obedience of slaves. He is looking for the obedience of sons who will reign with Him for eternity.



                Pray this with me today: Father, I thank you that you have adopted me as a son (daughter) that You have shared your DNA with me, which is the anointing of Your Holy Spirit so that I can be formed into the image of your firstborn Son Jesus Christ… to reign with Him on the throne of the universe for- ever. Amen