Leadership

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Imagine, being invited to take a trip on a private jet. A limousine arrives at your home to chauffer you to the airport. The driver loads your luggage in the trunk as you get into the plush taxi and ride to the airport in style. After the luxurious ride you enter a private terminal and are greeted by smiling, friendly flight attendants. The chauffeur transfers your luggage to some of the staff and the flight attendants invite you to follow them to the luxury aircraft waiting just for you. As you walk down the private corridor, one of the flight attendants pauses for a minute and directs your attention out through the glass hallway to this amazing private jet. It is sleek and sparkling in the sunlight. The attendant takes a minute and gives you a little information about the aircraft. It seats twelve, it can reach a flying altitude of forty-two thousand feet, this aircraft cruises at six hundred miles an hour and can fly five thousand miles before needing to land for fuel. Flight maintenance and all safety inspections have been completed with the required certifications issued.

After a brief pause, the attendant leads you to the cabin and invites you to sit wherever you like. You take a seat and feel the luxury of plush leather mold around your body as you sink into the soft chair. The aroma of leather fills your senses. You sit back, close your eyes, and experience a wave of relaxation wash over you. The attendant asks if you would like some refreshments, offering you a sort menu of sandwiches, hors d’oeuvres and drinks. You look over the elegant placard that lists the options. The attendant returns and you indicate your choices. They inform you that there are some magazines on the executive style desk along the bulkhead if you care to read them. They recite the titles but nothing interests you, however you decide to look through the small pile of the latest issues to see if anything grabs your attention.

The refreshments are served and the attendant offers to start a movie on the large screen. You put on the headphones and sit back in the luxury of your seat and begin to enjoy the delicious morsels the attendant has served. Upon completing the refreshments the attendant returns and takes up your empty plate and glass. As she picks up your service wear she asks if you’d like a cup of coffee or tea. Thinking it might enhance the relaxation you indicate your choice and settle back in to enjoy the movie. The attendant soon returns with your hot drink, and you indicate that you really would like a different choice of movie. The attendant shows you a hidden remote, and you begin sorting through the stations to see what is available. You find a program and settle back for a relaxing flight. A while later the attendant returns to collect your cup, at which time you ask them when the flight is going to take off. They smile reflecting a trace of embarrassment and say,”Oh! We have no fuel.” So, then you inquire as to how long it might take for them to fuel the plane. Their smile reflecting a great deal more embarrassment the hostess replies, “Well, sir, I am very sorry, but we have no resources with which to fuel the plane.”

One might find this story a bit odd. But it illustrates a relevant truth about our churches today. We have beautiful facilities, many filled to capacity. Many ministries have television programs and streaming video on the Internet reaching millions of people around the country. But little has been accomplished to impact our culture and social conscience. The church is like this amazing machine. It stands proud, looking beautiful and full of spiritual amenities but lacking the power to accomplish its basic function.

As we look around our nation today we find ever increasing social problems. Our leaders are confused about how to deal with the unlimited drug supply, the escalating economic crisis and the endless array of violence. Drugs are a social plight that runs rampant across the nation. Billions of dollars are spent trying to interdict them at the boarders and additional billions are spent trying to confiscate them as they are distributed on street corners across America. Law enforcement has indicated that a majority of crimes committed in our country are related directly to drugs. People are stealing and killing trying to gain control of drug distribution. Others steal and kill trying to get possession of drugs for personal consumption.

We can also look at Wall Street and see the devastation and economic disaster created by greed and a hunger for power. Corporate executives found that dishonesty could generate billions of dollars of profit and unimaginable personal wealth. So they traded their integrity for temporal wealth and fleeting prestige. Their greed has brought great financial instability and loss of jobs to the entire nation and uncertainty to the international finance community. This situation was only made worse by politicians who reward the self-indulgent businesses by compensating them for being greedy.

Another major social problem we see today is the increasing violence. The violence has become so pervasive that it has infiltrated our schools. Many schools have “school resource officers” on the premises. The school resource officer is not a parent or concerned citizen. It is a duly sworn, armed, officer of the law; on the premises during regular school hours to assist with threats and violence. Many schools do regular sweeps with drug canine to try and keep the drugs and illegal contraband out of the facilities. Some schools have metal detectors to filter out guns, knives and weapons. Some schools require armed law enforcement officers at sporting events to maintain order and keep the students from attacking each other at major athletic events.

It is hard to believe the number of shootings that have taken place in our schools over the past ten years. And to realize that a large number of students have been killed in our school facilities because a student or students went on a rampage, killing their friends and fellow students before killing themselves.

This federally controlled educational system has removed most acknowledgement of God from the classrooms and indoctrinated our children with the philosophy that there is no god. It has pumped an atheistic philosophy into the core of our culture and social fabric. In doing so the belief that we are our own god’s and we can do want ever we want to do has been skillfully woven into the social and moral essence of our once Christian nation. Now we live under the social philosophy of situational ethics determined by human reasoning.

There has been a long-standing premise that morals cannot be legislated. The truth is morals and righteousness cannot be legislated, but spiritual anointing and the power of God can change hearts and lives. When people’s hearts and lives are changed then Christian conduct will not have to be legislated. The only power that can bring righteousness back to a foundational position in the culture we live in today resides with the assembly of redeemed.

If we were to be honest about the situation we would have to admit that the church has lost its power. The church is no longer a place where the unredeemed are confronted with the truth about their eternal condition. Preaching that brings conviction and leads to repentance has been replaced with intellectual edification and religious lectures that are designed to make people feel good. The contemporary church is dispensing spiritual morphine trying to comfort the unregenerate as they slip one by one into an everlasting abyss.

The Samson Principle:
Samson found himself living in a time of oppression. The nation of Israel had reached the promise land. Ease and blessing had caused them to turn their backs on God. The motto of the day was “every man did that which was right in their own eyes.” So, God allowed the unrighteous Philistines to take them captive and bring hardships on them, so they would turn back to Him. During this period of captivity and hardship God raised up Samson to lead His people out of their captivity and back into a position of blessing and fellowship with Him.

When we study the life of Samson we find an interesting sequence. His mother, because of her burden to bear a child, sought the face of God. Her prayers were heard, and she found God’s blessing. God gave her a son but only after she had consecrate herself to God. Her obedience and devotion to God brought about Samson’s anointing.

Samson birth and anointing was for a specific purpose. He was not just a phenomenon of nature, a once in eternity birth, appearing merely because of the number of people born. Samson was anointed in his mother’s womb to serve God. He was to deliver his people from the oppression of unrighteousness. Scripture clearly states that Samson’s victories were because of the Spirit of the Lord coming upon him. In Judges 13:25; 14:6 and 14:19 it records, “The Spirit of the Lord came upon him.” When he broke the various devices the Philistines used to try and bind him, and he escaped their plots to take him captive, we see clear evidence of The Spirit of the Lord moving in him.

But Samson was controlled by the mindset of his day. Samson’s own desires and plan preoccupied him. He was motivated by the pride of life, and the lust of the eye. He used his spiritual gift and anointing for his own edification and promotion instead of accomplishing God’s purpose.

During this period of time we see God being patient and long suffering. He worked through Sampson even though Samson disregards every commandment God had given and every vow he had taken. God was willing to allow Samson a chance to acknowledge Him, and turn to Him, and be the spiritual leader God intended for him to be. But the heart of Samson was set on his own desires. God’s great mercy eventually ran its course and the Day of Judgment came. The Spirit of God departed. Samson’s power to over come the enemy was gone. He had disregarded the source of his blessing. He no longer had the anointing power of God to deliver him.

Samson illustrates a key spiritual principle relevant to our modern age. As he started his ministry with a divine anointing and great potential, so the United States started with a great anointing and promising future. Believers from England migrated to Europe hoping to find liberty to worship God according to the convictions God had embedded in their hearts. Finding no relief from religious persecution there, they sought passage to the new world. In America they established colonies that were grounded completely upon their faith. This faith was the center of their homes, their work, and everything they did. The Bible was their textbook for school. It was their law book for judicial affairs. The scriptures directed their business transactions and their social activities. There was a profound spiritual core to the foundation of the country in which we now live.

When our nation’s culture began to change with immigration and a swelling population God sent great revivals. Whitfield was raised up by God, and helped bring about the great awakening. Charles Finney established Oberlin College, on what was at the time the most western front of the established European civilization; to train preachers to take the message of God’s redemptive plan to the ever-expanding western frontier.

D. L. Moody was anointed to turn his generation from self-indulgence to a realization that God was still, “the way, the truth, and the life.” God’s power and His anointing upon chosen servants transformed a once fledgling group of explorers, entrepreneurs, and religious patriots into the greatest nation the world has ever known. There was a divine anointing upon this great country, an anointing that allowed it to prosper in spite of the great internal struggles that tore at the central fibers of its being.

In more recent generations God has raised up anointed pastors to built strong churches that reached the nation with the message of salvation. Evangelists have been raised up to proclaim the truth of God and His eternal plan. God’s anointing has been poured out upon devout men and women to propagate the eternal truth of God’s righteousness and holiness, of His omnipotence and mercy. But like Samson the modern generation has taken God’s anointing and the blessings of His anointing power for granted. God’s anointing power has departed and the church stands blind, weak and powerless to impact this modern age in which we live.

The church is like a powerful jet that has the ability to overcome the forces of gravity and fly great distances in relatively short periods of time, but without the proper fuel to start the engines it is unable to achieve its real potential. The church sits on prominent street corners with beautiful exteriors, plush interiors, heated in the winter, air conditioned in the summer, carpeted, Sunday school class rooms that have everything a teacher could want. The church today has every advantage and opportunity one could ever hope for, and yet we are impotent. The modern church has accomplished far less in its day than those who had nothing but two feet, and a boat or camel to carry them to the unconverted.

Is there a need today for the anointing power of God to be poured out on this country, which is blind and lost in an environment of humanism and atheism? I believe the honest person would have to admit that we need a new out pouring of God’s Spirit upon the believer and our churches today.

So, what is Spiritual Anointing? In the next chapter we will look at the basic elements of Spiritual Anointing. Before you begin to read the next chapter, take a few minutes and pray, asking God to open your heart and mind so you will be receptive to God’s Spirit as He speaks to you, so that He can lead you to understand the principles of being anointed by The Spirit of God. It would also be beneficial if you would take a few minutes and read Exodus 30:25-30, Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:5-8.

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