Seven Steps To Building The New Church

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Step 1 – Discontentment

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Seven Steps – 01 – Discontentment

Seven steps to building the new church. Turn to Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 19. Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building fitly framed together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

In whom you also are built together for a habitation of God through the Spirit. And then 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 9. For we are laborers together with God. You are God’s farm. You are God’s building. According to the grace of God, which has been given to me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation.

And another is building on it. But let every man pay attention how he builds on it. Have you ever moved house? I have moved house more times than I have fingers and toes to count. More than I can possibly remember. As far back as I can remember we’ve been moving house. The days when you would sign a six month lease on a house, we’d stay for six months, and when the lease was up, then we’d move.

Sometimes the lease was a year, and then we’d stay a year before we moved, but it seemed like we were always moving house. The worst thing about moving house is having to pack. Oh, man, it’s just amazing how much junk you gather. How much you own that you didn’t know, until you’ve got to pack it up and you’ve got to move it.

And you’ve got to go and pull out all the things that you’ve dumped in the garage or other storage places in your basement. And you’ve got to get it all together and you’ve got to get it packed and you’ve got to get it put in boxes and you’ve got to get it loaded up. It’s not nice moving house. And then, the reason you’re moving house is probably because you don’t own the house.

You’re renting somebody else’s house. And the worst thing about renting somebody else’s house is when you get there, you can’t change it. You can’t make modifications to it. You can’t change the house to make it suit you. You’ve got to change your lifestyle to suit the house. You want to stay in a big room and the room is small, you’ve got to get used to living in close quarters.

You’ve got to change your life to suit the house. Oh, what’s the best solution? Oh, the best move of all is when you can move into a house that you have designed yourself. And the most wonderful thing about that is you’re moving into a place that is yours. You don’t need to move out there again after six months.

You don’t have a lease. This house belongs to you. You can stay there for the rest of your life if you want to. And the beauty of it is before you move in, you can decide for yourself. what kind of house you want to live in. You can decide what kind of rooms you want in the house. You can decide exactly what shape of house and the locality that you’re going to live in.

And you can lay out everything and make a house that’ll be the kind of house you want to live in for the rest of your life. I think if each one of us had the opportunity to choose our dream house. We’d all have different ideas of what we would like in our dream house. And I’m sure the guys will have their idea, and the women will have their idea of what they want in their dream house.

Do you know that God is very particular, also, about the kind of house that He wants to live in? Did you know that? Did you know that God is very fussy? And that God also has a dream house? Well, what is God’s house? Paul tells us about it here in Ephesians. He speaks about us being the household of God. And we’re built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone.

We’re built together to be a habitation of God through the Spirit. We are His house. Now God is very fussy and very particular, and God knows exactly what kind of house he wants to live in, and God has designed his dream house. Do you know that? And God is very fussy about how his house is built. He wants it to be made according to the pattern.

And when Moses came up to meet with God in the mountaintop, and God gave him the pattern for the very first structure in this earth that God was going to come and put his presence upon. God was very very fussy and he kept saying to Moses, now don’t forget, do it exactly according to the pattern. Moses you make it exactly correct and if God said that the room was gonna be five feet six inches, he didn’t mean well make it about five or six feet he meant five feet six inches exactly No builder constructs a house by saying, well, we’ll make it about five or six.

You don’t make a house with about. You make it exact. Because if you don’t do that, the walls aren’t going to reach and touch each other when you finish them. You’re not going to have a pattern. You’re not going to have a structure. Your walls won’t be closed. The roof won’t cover. It’s got to be made exact and it’s got to be made correct.

It’s got to be built on the correct foundation. God is fussy about his house, and his house is the church. The body of Christ that is on the earth today is the house of God. And we’ve got this idea that we’re just going to slap together a house and come and invite God to live in it. And we’re forcing God to be like everybody else and say, Well, I can’t afford to have my own house, so I’ll have to put up at somebody else’s house, and I’ll just have to accept the way that they made it, and I’ll have to adapt to it.

You know, the Lord is so wonderful, and so patient, and so loving, that He’s actually done that in time past. That He’s actually met us where we are, and He said, Okay, I’ll come and live in your house. But it’s not the kind of house that I want. But I won’t reject you. I’ll come and be with you. I’ll come and stay with you still.

But God is fussy about his house. And he wants his house to be made according to the correct pattern. And the correct pattern starts right from the bottom. From the foundation upwards. Because if the foundation of the house is wrong, the house is going to crumble and fall. We have some houses built right here on the beach down the road from us.

Well, shall I say we have what used to be houses, or what perhaps people thought were going to be houses. It was simply a matter of time before the elements began to show that that house was not built on a secure foundation. And we have houses that have fallen apart and are in pieces. And there’s bits of bricks and wall lying all over the beach, spread everywhere.

The house could not stand, it was not built correctly. The foundation is important. I do not, I want to speak about God’s house. And I want to speak about how God wants his house to be built. And I want to speak about how we As the apostles of God have been called by God to restore his house and to build his house, his end time house that he’s coming to dwell in and the bride that he’s coming to receive.

God wants it made according to the pattern. And the first part of the pattern is that it is to be built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. You say, but I don’t understand that, the Apostles and the Prophets were here already. When Jesus died and went up to heaven and poured down his spirit, and the church was born on the day of Pentecost, was God’s house not built?

Was the foundation not laid at that time by the prophets and the apostles? Were the walls not put up? Was the roof not there? Was there not a house that God dwelt in? Did not God come and dwell in mighty power in the midst of his people? Weren’t there signs and wonders taking place and miracles? Wouldn’t the church shake the world of their day?

Yes, they did.

But today we can see that God is doing something new. And over a period of time we saw that that church, that house of God, fell into ruin. Fell into ruin. Why? Something must have been wrong. Because the early church did not stand. They were mighty and filled with power, but they did not stand. They went into the dark ages, and they fell away, and they disappeared, and they got covered over and smothered by the world system.

And as we look at the body of Christ, the church today, we see a building. Yes, we see a building. We see a building that has a foundation. And it has walls. And it has a roof. It is functional. And God is living in that building. But it’s not his dream house. It’s not made according to the pattern that he designed.

So we see God has been restoring his church. He’s been restoring his church over the centuries, and over the last few decades God has gradually been bringing his church more and more, and we’ve heard people speaking about the renewal movements, and the revival movements, and the restoration movements, and the charismatic movement.

There have been so many movements in the last century alone. Where God has been restoring his church back, and now finally we see, in these end days in which we live, we see the restoration of the prophetic ministry coming back into focus. And now finally we stand on the brink of the manifestation and the revelation, and the restoration of the apostolic office.

Now hang on, something’s wrong here. If the Apostles and the Prophets are meant to be the foundation, then how come God’s restoring them last? One would think that if the Lord was going to get His house in order, He would have brought the Apostles and the Prophets first to lay the new foundation to get it in order.

Why has God left the Apostles and the Prophets for last? I’ll tell you why. Because the Lord has reached the point where He said, that’s it. I’m not living in this old house anymore. I want my dream house built, and I want it built correctly. And what he’s been doing over the last decades and centuries is he’s been showing us what he doesn’t want in his house.

But he’s been bringing restoration. Restoration. Restoration. And we’re taking this old house and we’re restoring it and we’re making it beautiful and we’re making it look closer and closer to what God desires. But I want to tell you it’s not his dream house because it wasn’t made according to the blueprint.

It wasn’t made according to the pattern. The foundation is wrong. And you cannot change a house after it’s built. You can knock down a few walls, you can add on some rooms, you can put on extensions, you can modify it, but you cannot change the original structure. You cannot take the foundation out and put a new one in.

You can’t pull the walls up and hold them suspended in mid air while you put in a new foundation. And then put the walls back again. It’s not gonna fit. It’s a different foundation. It looks different. The rooms are in different places. Everything’s completely different. It cannot be done. There’s got to be a new foundation laid.

And God has today, even in this new millennium that we stand facing now, He’s raising up His apostles to come and lay a new foundation. That’s just my introduction. Seven steps to building the new church. God is calling his apostles to build his new church. And to build it they are going to lay a new foundation.

They’re going to put up new walls. They’re going to put up new roof. They’re going to put in new everything. They’re going to make God’s house the way it was meant to be. And we’re going to leave that old dilapidated house to fall apart. And we’re going to demolish it and destroy it. Because the Lord doesn’t want to live there anymore.

He’s not satisfied to do it anymore. He wants a house that’s made according to his specifications and according to his pattern. It’s going to have to be built right. It’s going to have to be done right. Now how are we going to move from the old, from where things are at, into the new? I’d like to suggest seven stages.

Seven steps that you, as an apostle of God, are going to be required to take in order to bring the church, the body of Christ, out of where it is, into where God wants it to be. And until you’ve accomplished all of those seven steps, and done what God wants you to do, you have not fully accomplished the apostolic call that God has placed upon your life.

And if you are not prepared to follow through those steps, If you have no desire or inclination to follow through those steps, the chances are the Lord did not call you to the apostolic ministry, and you are taking this apostolic course in vain, because you have no intention at all of moving out of the old, and into the new.

And so you need to examine yourself right now, and you need to say, am I satisfied? with the situation that the church is in. Am I satisfied with the house that God is being forced to live in right now? And that’s the first step. That’s the first stage. And I’ve taken seven words that begin with D to describe the seven steps that need to be taken to building the new church.

And I’m going to start going through them tonight and I don’t know how far we’re going to get. But we’ll go as far as time permits, and then we’ll carry on next time. And until time permits, and we’ll carry on as many times as we need to, until we’ve covered every aspect of what God wants us to consider and to do, in order to restore His church to what it should be.

And so the first step that needs to be taken is the step of discontentment. The second is disassociation. The third is Determination. The fourth is Deliberation. The fifth is Displacement. The sixth is Development. And the seventh is Deployment. Nice lot of D’s. Good alliteration there. I love alliteration.

Let’s look at the first step tonight. The step of discontentment. And that means becoming dissatisfied with things the way they are. Becoming discontented.

Most of us don’t like to rock the boat. We don’t like confrontation. So we tend to accept wrong just for peace sake. Just to let things go. You know, that means in society that business, businesses can get away with bad business practice. Because nobody says anything about it. Bad quality can be given out and nobody says anything about it.

And it goes from bad to worse. And I’m afraid that is what has happened to the body of Christ. For too long things have been wrong. But nobody has the courage to stand up and say, Hey, I don’t like the way things are. They’re wrong. I don’t believe this is the way God wants it to be. They don’t want to rock the boat.

And because they don’t want to rock the boat, things just carry on, and they carry on. And so, new people come into the church. Children are born and grow up. And they learn by example, that this is the way things that are done. And nobody’s complaining. My parents aren’t complaining. Society’s not complaining.

The church people are not complaining. This must be the correct way to do it. This must be the way God wants it done. Nobody’s going to rock the boat. And so we just continue. Trouble is, people have not become discontented enough. They complain, they come home, and they complain about meetings, they complain about the church, they complain about the world system that’s in the church, but nobody does anything about it.

They’re not discontented enough. You must come to a place where you reach a point that you’re not prepared to accept it anymore. You gotta come to a point of discontentment. And usually the only people who come to that place of discontentment are the people who have become victims of that system. Of people who become victims of the wrong that is in the body of Christ.

And eventually they come to the place where they say, I’ve had it up to you! I’ve had enough! I’m dissatisfied! I’m not prepared to accept this anymore! Discontentment must come about. If I go back to the very first time That God called me to the ministry, my very first experience. I want you to know I grew up in the church.

I was born into a Christian home. I have known the church system from as far back as I can remember. I grew up in church. I went to Sunday school in church. I went to youth meetings in church. I went to church system. I grew up in it. But when the time came that God put His Spirit upon me and His anointing upon me, and He called me to the ministry for the first time, around about the age of 20, something happened.

For the very first time, I came into confrontation with something that I did not expect. We went to a youth camp conference, a place where all the young people had gathered, and there were older people there too. Of course, the older people were the pastors. The young people weren’t the pastors. The young people were there to get ministered to.

The old folks, of course, were the preachers and the spiritual leaders. And they were going to minister to the young people. And God began to move in that camp. But He wasn’t moving in the meetings. God began to move outside of the meetings. He moved one night on two little girls, two little teenage girls who had a problem, and began to pray, and the Spirit of God came down on them.

And other teenage girls came to join them in this prayer, and God came down on them. And some guys started to come in, and God came down on them. And eventually there was a whole crowd of people in a small little room that could only hold about two or three. And there were about thirty people in the room.

And the Spirit of God came down and began to work. People got filled with the Spirit. And that, that night, for the first time, I got filled with the Spirit. Grown up in a Pentecostal church, being prayed for by pastor after pastor, by visiting preacher and visiting evangelist. They all prayed for me, and nothing happened.

But I walked into that room that night, and a little 10 year old girl laid her hands on me, and the Spirit of God zapped me. And I fell to my knees, weeping. And the anointing God came on me, and my life was changed and transformed. And the call of God came down on my life that night in that room. It was wonderful.

It was revival. It was an outpouring. And you know what happened? It was going wonderfully until one of the pastors found out about it. And he walked in there in anger and said, You young people, you’re out of order. You don’t know what you’re doing. Stop it at once. And tried to put an end to it.

Immediately tried to scatter it and to stop it because all these silly little kids were going and laying hands on one another. What did they know about how to use the power of God? What did they know about the Holy Spirit? They were not qualified. They were not pastors. How dare they try this? They were accomplishing what none of these pastors had managed to accomplish yet.

Except for one man of God, thank goodness. It was an adult and had some sense in his head, and had the anointing of God on him. And he intervened and said, hold it, hold it. And he called all the young people and he said, just keep in the spirit. Just keep in the spirit and follow me. And he led them into the meeting hall and he said, just keep it going.

Keep it going, just keep worshipping the Lord. And he brought it into the meeting. And he brought it into the meeting. And the anointing of God began to move in those meetings. I hadn’t moved up until then. The power of God came on that conference. And the young people began to experience God’s anointing.

And power. But I looked at this and I thought, Oh Lord. Oh Lord. You were moving so mightily. And help these people. One of them was my own pastor. Who was saying, These young children can’t control their emotions. Who do they think they are? Coming and trying to take over. And they squashed it, they crunched it, and stopped the move of God.

And I looked at this and my heart was pained and I was hurting inside. And I thought, Lord, how can it be? How can they do that? Couldn’t they see this was your spirit that was moving? But you see, that’s not the way it was meant to be. That was out of order. It was not church protocol. So we wouldn’t allow it.

These young people would get out of hand. Well, we got back to our normal church services and I was on fire for God. I stood up on a chair that very first prayer meeting after that and called the young people and I preached to them. Before that I was too scared to even open in prayer. The power of God came on me.

Something began to happen. Oh, it was exciting. The young people were excited. They just got back from camp and they just, they were drawn to my leadership. I’d never been a leader in my life. I’d been a wimp. Suddenly I was taking leadership. And the pastor was looking at me skew. I could see it. He wasn’t happy about it.

And so, I, I tried to fit into the system. And so we would pray before the meetings on a Sunday night and, and God would move mightily in the meeting. And then it was over and everybody had to go home and I thought, I want some more of this. I don’t want it to end. Everybody had gone home. So I got a couple of young people together and said, hey, why don’t we go over to your home tonight and have a prayer meeting.

So we went off to the meeting and went to have a prayer meeting. Oh, it was exciting. I said, we gotta have another one of these before the next meeting. Let’s get together on Tuesday night. Who’s got a home that we can go to? And we met in somebody’s home and we got together. Bunch of young people began to pray.

Began to wait on God. Spirit of God began to move. Gifts of the Spirit began to be manifested. God began to speak in prophetic words through us. God began to tell us to go out and witness to the lost. God began to stir us up. There was revival in that church. Oh, we wanted to do things for the Lord. Friday night youth meeting, we wanted the Spirit of God to be there.

We wanted people to be touched. Some of the leaders in the church preferred to go out and have a social event for the youth meeting. They wanted to go out ice skating on Friday night. So we let them go out ice skating, and the few of us that were zealous for the Lord, we went and had a prayer meeting instead.

And waited on the Lord, and moved in His anointing and in His Spirit, and got into His Word. And all the trouble began. All the trouble began. Who did we think we were? Especially since most of the pastor’s kids were the ones who wanted to go skating. Who did we think we were? Mr. Super Spiritual, who do you think you are to come and preach at us?

Don’t you know I’m the pastor? Don’t you know I’m the pastor’s son? How dare you look down on me like that? How dare you put me down? There’s nothing wrong with us going ice skating, what’s wrong? I didn’t say there was anything wrong, I just didn’t want to do it. I wanted to pray! But no, that was wrong. I began to buck the system.

You buck the system, it’s not so good. People don’t like you. They’re unhappy with you. But oh, I tried to toe the line. I tried to tow the line and fit in there, and the call of God began to rise up within me and I thought, I gotta go to Bible school. The Lord’s coming next year, maybe tomorrow. I gotta go to Bible school.

I gotta get dressed. I gotta go into ministry. I can’t waste any more time. If you let me get out of here, Lord, I just gotta go. Gotta go study. Gotta go prepare. Oh Lord, I gotta do it tomorrow. Well, who do you approach? Obviously, you go and see your pastor. He’s the one who’s been in ministry. He’s the one who’s got the call of God and has been to Bible college and is qualified and been ordained to the ministry.

And if you’re going to go into ministry with your denomination, then he’s the guy to go and see. Oh, I was so excited. I couldn’t wait. Just imagine spending the whole day in the Word of the Lord. Imagine spending all day in the college, just learning about the Lord and being in His presence, and devoting your life completely, just to spreading the Word and to ministering to people’s needs.

Oh, I was so excited about it. I went to go see him and I said, Pastor, how do I go about the Lord’s called me. I want to go into ministry. Tell me how do I go into ministry with denomination? And I expected him to get excited and say, Oh, that’s wonderful. Let me just share with you the burden that’s in my heart.

Let me just share with you how God can use you in ministry. And he sat down and he smiled and he said, that’s wonderful. And he pulled out a bunch of papers and he said, Okay, these are the applications you’ve got to fill in. He said, We have a wonderful denomination here. He said, You will receive a very good salary as a minister.

We have excellent medical aid benefits and our pension scheme is one of the best. And I looked at him and I couldn’t believe What I was hearing. I didn’t want a job. I didn’t want a career. I didn’t want to go into the ministry as another professional career. I wanted to work for God. I wanted to minister to the body of Christ.

And he was telling me all the benefits I’m going to have in this job of the ministry. Oh, I looked at him with disgust. But I had no choice, this was my way of doing it. And so I filled in the forms, after forms, after forms. And I looked at the subjects that we’d be studying, and top of the list was church government.

And the constitution of the denomination that you’re with. And you’ve got to learn all about the ins and outs of this particular denomination. And what makes them so important. And so that somewhere at the bottom there was a bit of Bible stuff. Oh, I looked at this and I thought, man, man, I can’t believe this, I don’t know.

I don’t understand it, but that’s the way you go into ministry. I gotta start somewhere. I put in my application and send it off and waited. As I filled that application in, I looked at what they wanted, what kind of qualifications did they want, what kind of ministry gifts did they want to see in you?

Well, the first thing they wanted to know was your standard of education. That was top of the list. Because if you didn’t attain a certain standard of education, you were not qualified to be an ordained minister. After all, a minister has to be somebody of repute in society, and therefore he must be a well educated man.

He must be able to stand tall, and be able to address people of repute, like doctors and lawyers and people like that. We can’t have any old idiot going into the ministry. We can’t ordain somebody who doesn’t have any good education. Oh, no, sir. Well, thank the Lord I had the education. I had tons of education, not that it did me any good.

All that education didn’t teach me how to serve the Lord and do his work. Oh, I looked at this and I thought, well, this is where it’s at. This is what I grew up in. This is the church. I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to follow it through. And so I submitted myself to that and I began to wait while they went through all the red tape and all the paperwork and assessed my application to see whether I qualified and put it before the board to see whether I was good enough.

Whether they were going to accept me to their Bible college. And while all that was happening, my younger brother met a girl. Oh girls, women have this power. He met a girl in another church. Met her at some mixed youth meeting somewhere, and he fell in love with her, and naturally he went to go and visit her church.

And he came back telling me about this church she’d been in, oh, where the Spirit of God was moving, where God moved in every Sunday night service, where miracles were taking place, where the gospel was preached with power and authority. I had to go with, go and visit too. And find out if what he’s saying was true.

And when I got there, oh it was true. It wasn’t like our church at all, which was dead. There was life there, there was power there. The people had liberty there. I could see that the man of God, when he preached from the pulpit, was preaching under the unction and anointing of the Spirit of God. Oh, my heart burned and yearned to be in a church like that.

And in the process of time, with me being involved in the youth fellowship of our church, I managed to arrange a joint youth meeting with the youth of that church. And we got together and we got to meet their young people and they were on fire for God. Oh, what a meeting we had! It was wonderful! First time I ever stood up and preached publicly from the pulpit.

It was wonderful. The anointing of God was there. And my own pastor called me aside afterwards, and he said, Les, I envy what God’s given you. He said, I envy the way you deliver the word. He said, I wish I could preach like that. Well, I didn’t become big headed about it. I knew this was something God had given me.

Because I’d never been able to do anything like that before. I was, I was an insecure little wimp. I couldn’t do that until the power of God came on me. But oh, I was drawn to this other church. I was drawn to this other church, and it seemed that the more I tried to serve God where I was, the more I got squashed, and hampered, and criticized, and put down.

And as I began to visit this other church, I just felt the power of God and the anointing of God. Oh, I was in a difficult situation. What do I do? What do I do? The Spirit of God began to move on me, and I began to feel a very, very strong urging in me that I should move to the other church. That I should leave this church that I’ve grown up in, that I knew so well, that still had not accepted me to the Bible school incidentally.

And to go to this other church. And I knew that if I went, I’m going as a nobody. They don’t know me. They know nothing about me. They’re not going to accept me and ordain me to the ministry. My only chance of going to the ministry being left behind. I’m going to have to give it up. I made my choice. I decided that that’s what I was going to do.

So I went to see my pastor. Tried to explain it to him. Tried to say, brother. I’ve been faithful here. I’ve done my best, but God’s placed a calling on me. And, and I feel that God is leading me to go to that church because I believe God is going to give me a greater opportunity for ministry there. Well, one would think he would have prayed about it and been delighted and said, Well, if God is leading you, brother, I can see that you’re moving in the spirit.

And we send you forth with the blessing of the Lord. And we pray that God will bless you and use you in that new church. No, ho, ho, ho. No, that’s not what he did. He looked at me and he said, I should never have allowed that joint youth service. He said, Pastor, so and so is a sheep stealer. He’s known as a sheep stealer in town.

You’re not the first one. that’s wanted to leave their church to go and join his church. He said, just go and look at his church, and you’ll see all the people that he has in his congregation used to belong to other people’s churches. He’s a sheep stealer. He’s a sheep in, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And he’s drawing people away from other churches.

And he began to downmouth and put down that man of God that I knew, that I could see, was filled with the anointing of the Spirit of God. Well, that made it easier for me. That made it easier, then I really wanted to go, but, uh, before I did, I went to go and see the other pastor. He didn’t even know of my intentions yet.

But I went to go and see him, made an appointment, and I said, brother, I’ve visited your church a few times. I told him my background, where I’d come from, etc, and I said, we really feel that God is leading us to come and join this church. And he looked at me, and he smiled, and he said, brother, I don’t want you to come and join this church.

Well, that kind of deflated me. I thought you were going to welcome me with open arms. I mean, this was the sheep stealer who was trying to grab everybody else’s members. He said, I don’t want to be accused of being a sheep stealer. He said, I don’t want to steal somebody else’s sheep. He said, I don’t want, he said, if you, if it’s possible at all that you can stay in that church and be happy, please stay.

Well then I really wanted to come. And then he smiled and he said, But brother, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not telling you you are not welcome. He said, And if God is telling you to come here, He said, Who am I to argue with the Lord? He said, But I don’t want you to think that I have tried to draw you away from the other church and to bring you into this congregation.

But if you decide to make that decision, he said, I’ll back you and you’ll be supported and you’ll be welcomed with open arms. Well, it didn’t take me long. So I went back to my other pastor and told him of my decision, and the first thing he said to me, he thought I was someone else, he hadn’t told me before, and he said, by the way, I just want to warn you, this man has an error in his doctrine.

He is a heretic. He believes in such and such a heretical doctrine. And he teaches this kind of thing. Well, I’d never heard him preach it in the time I was there. He said he believes in this particular doctrine, which is heresy. And if you go and join that church, you are going to be cut off from all the other churches of God.

Because nobody will want to have anything to do with you. I had my first experience with the church system, with the status quo system, with the house of God that had been so corrupted and so changed from what God intended originally. That is not the kind of house the Lord wants to live in. A disjointed broken house with its bitterness and strife and anger and backbiting amongst God’s people.

Not just amongst God’s people, but against the leaders of the flock. I was devastated. I didn’t, I didn’t understand. I’d never thought of ministry before. I’d never seen myself in ministry before. But I began to see a side of ministers, pastors, that I’d never seen before. I began to see something behind these so called men of God that began to disgust me.

And it hurt deep and I thought, Lord, how can you tolerate this in your body? Oh, we’ve got to become discontented. We’ve got to become dissatisfied with the situation that you’re in. You’ve got to become dissatisfied with the condition of the body of Christ before you’re able to be used of God to do anything about it.

The other thing that stops us From taking that step, is we’ve gotten into a rut. It’s too much effort to change. Well, a rut is so nice, you know. You know, it’s difficult to get out of a rut. You’ve got to kind of go uphill a little bit. A rut is so easy. You just give it a push and off it goes. Whee! No problem.

Easy to follow the right. Well, I grew up in the right. And even in the church that I was in, which seemed so much better than the church that I’d come from, it didn’t take long for me to find out. That church was church was church. That the system was the system was the system. And there were elements that were the same in all of the church systems.

And so, as I became involved in the church I became a deacon. Oh, yes, a deacon is a high position in the church. You’ve been appointed to be a leader in the body of Christ. And you get together to have the board meeting to decide what is going to happen to the church. And I look forward to getting together with the other deacons and the pastor to discuss the future of our church.

At last I had an opportunity to decide how the church should be run. Oh man, was I disillusioned. Deacons are not there to run the church. Deacons are there to make money for the church, and to do the dirty work that nobody else wants. Deacons are there to say, Yes, Pastor. No, Pastor. Three bags full, Pastor.

How high would you like me to jump, Pastor? And as long as you’re doing that, Deacon, you’ve got a good position. Yes, you’ll be given opportunities and involvements and you’ll be given recognition in the church. But don’t you dare, don’t you dare, when the pastor makes a suggestion, say, I disagree with that.

Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare try and change the rite, because this church is not planning to get out of their rite. And I remember sitting in deacons meetings, Sitting with the deacons while we’re waiting for the pastor to arrive. And discussing with the deacons their opinion about certain aspects of the church.

And the way things are done in the church. And you know what? They all agreed with me. About the things that were wrong. They all agreed with me about what needed to be changed. Man, we were in total unity. Total harmony. We were as one. We agreed solidly. Yes! And then the pastor walked in. And suddenly, suddenly, Les Cross spoke up, after all I had all the deacons behind me.

They’d agreed with me before the meeting that this was wrong. Pastor, I’ve got a motion to give. I would like to suggest we change this, or we do this, or we don’t do that. And suddenly the room would grow silent. And everybody would be staring at me to see where did you come from. How dare you stand up to a pastor like that?

Have you got no respect for the man of God? And I stood all along. Well, I had one other person to back me, it was my dad. My dad and I, well, we were there, we were the thorns in the side of the pastor. Oh, we weren’t very popular, let me tell you. Down Rock the Bout, I began to realize That I cannot fit into this system.

But what do you do? Where do you go? I wasn’t discontented enough yet. I just let it ride. Let it ride. Let them ride me. And I became youth leader in the church, and oh, now was my chance. Now was my chance in the church. I was the youth leader. I was in charge. The pastor never even attended the youth meeting.

He didn’t have time to be bothering the stupid young people. I was the youth leader. I was in charge. I had this whole bunch of young people under me. And I appointed a youth council. Hey, and I was the pastor to them now, and I cooled the shop. Hey, that was pretty good. And I began to formulate amongst my youth group a way to make the church the way I knew God had showed me, even back there already, the way the church should be.

And so I began to structure. I began to put people together in groups. And I began to say, you brother, I can see you’ve got a real desire for intercessory prayer. I want you to take charge of a group, which we’re going to call the prayer group. And I want you to gather together all those who have a real burden for prayer.

And your job in this youth fellowship is to intercede and to pray and to back the word of God. And to pray for our youth, to pray that God will bring new people in. Well, I knew there were some, they wanted fun and games. Uh, they were into the fun thing, and yeah, it’s good to have fun. There’s nothing wrong with having fun in the presence of the Lord.

So I said, brother so and so, I can see you, you got a good sense of humor. You love having fun. I tell you what, we’re going to put you in charge of an entertainment group. And you’re going to, you’re going to develop new ideas. For games, and for fun, and for things that the young people can do that are more of a social kind of event.

And I’m putting you in charge of that, and I want you to gather together those who want to help you. And you get together and have your own little meetings. And you come to decisions, and then you just come and let me know what you’ve decided. And we’ll implement it in the youth, and we’ll get things going.

And I looked at so and so. Oh, sister, I can see you’ve got such a burning desire in your heart to reach the lost. Oh, you’ll be out, she’ll be out on the street every Saturday, handing out tracts to people and telling them about the Lord. It burned in her! I said, man, go and do it! Go and do it with our full backing.

Gather together those amongst the youth that have got the same zeal. Get them together. Grab yourself a bunch of tracts. Get together. Get into the Word. Prepare and go out. And go and reach the lost. And our pray group will be back in you. They’ll be praying for you while you’re out there. And covering you in prayer.

And then I knew there were those that were into the word. And I said, you’re going to be in charge of our spiritual life group. I want you guys to get together, and I want you to put together some Bible studies, and some teachings, and some good ideas, and things that can help the other young people. I want you guys to get together in the word, and share together in the word, and come up with some good stuff.

And we’re going to put this together as a body. And each one of you are going to function the way the body should function. And we’re going to pool our resources. Each person doing what they’re good at. Each person doing what God’s called them to do. We’re going to come together as one body. Oh man, this was powerful stuff!

This was the body the way I knew it should be. I was so excited about it, I took it to my pastor. Oh dear. I gave it to, I had it all laid out on paper. All systematically and analytically. Point by sub point by sub sub sub point. That was beautiful. It was a perfect plan. I wasn’t insubmissive. I wasn’t in rebellion.

I just wanted to do amongst the young people what burned in me. And I went to him and I said, brother, this is my plan for the youth. I want you to look at it and tell me what you think about it. Oh, he said, great, I’ll have a look at it and I’ll get back to you. I heard from him shortly afterwards and he called me in to speak to me.

And he looked at me and he said, Lez, this is a great plan for the whole church, but you’re just the youth leader. He said, you’re planning to take over the whole church? You’re planning to change the whole church and restructure it the way you’ve done the youth? He said, I can’t give you the liberty to do this.

In effect, what he was saying is, if you make this work, you’re going to make me look like an idiot. That’s really what he was saying. And he just frowned on it and he said this is too big a plan. He said there’s no way you can make this work. He said you cannot make this work without the church being part of the same thing.

You cannot make the youth people do this and it not be an integral part of the main church. He said and that’s my domain, not yours. And I’m in control and I have a plan of how I want this church to be run. And I’ve taken my plans and crunched them up and thrown them in the waste paper baskets. He didn’t want them.

They made him look bad. It was gone. Well, I let that one go. My teaching ministry was beginning to show so greatly that they appointed me to be the teacher at the adult Bibles class on a Sunday morning. Well, the kids had their Sunday school, there were parents and adults there, and they would gather together in the foyer of the church, and we would have a normal adult’s Bible study.

Well, the pastor didn’t have time to get involved in the Sunday school, so they had to find somebody to take the adult’s Bible class, and somebody recognized my teaching ability, and I began to take the Bible class. Oh, some of those adults would come there and be blessed! Are we talking about a young guy in his early 20s year?

That’s how old I was at the time. A young person, teaching all these old mature people in their 40s and 50s. Teaching them the Word, and they ate the Word. Oh, and they received it, and they were thrilled with it. And oh, I had wonderful times just pouring out all the truths that God had given me. It was so wonderful.

People were talking about the kind of Bible studies that I was given. It was wonderful. My ministry was flourishing. At last, I found a place in the church where I could do what God had called me to do, what I seemed to be good at, and which people were responding to. It was wonderful. And then this new pastor decided that one day he would sit in on the adults Bible study.

See, the previous pastor hadn’t done much, but this new guy came in. Suddenly, suddenly it wasn’t good enough for him. And so he sat in on one of the Bible studies the one day, and I felt a bit threatened, but he sat there quite calm, and he wasn’t going to take over from me. By any means, he let me go ahead and teach.

And I began to teach and I got into certain subjects. One of the subjects that I still hate to this day and I kind of wonder if it doesn’t date back to there. And it had to do with the second coming and eschatology and all that area. I don’t even remember what I was teaching. But I was teaching something and right in the middle of my teaching he stopped me and said, I’ve got a question to ask you.

And he asked me an extremely difficult question. Which I. Had to think about in order to answer and in the context of what I was teaching and what God had showed me I gave him my answer to that question, and he said I disagree with you And there was a deathly hush Now everybody’s sitting there. They’re members of his congregation.

He is the pastor I’ve been teaching them the pastor is now questioning my teaching in front of them Who are they going to side with? Yes, Pastor. No, Pastor. Anything you say, Pastor. Hmm. Again, my ministry was hindered, because the man of God that was there, and was in charge, was hampering my ministry.

Becomes a point. Well, you’ve had enough. I remember listening once to a, a series on success principles. And one of the lectures in that had a wonderful title that I’d never forget. It was entitled, The Day That Turns Your Life Around. And in it, the man was explaining how you reach a point in life where you’re sick of being poor, where you’re sick of being downtrodden, where you’re sick of being a nobody.

Where eventually you reach that point where you say, That’s it! I’ve had it! Enough! And he said that day, when you finally reach the end of your tether, is the day that’s going to turn your life around. He said because from that day, you’re going to stand up and start doing something about it. Apostle of God, before you can even begin to move into the call that God’s given you, you’re going to have to go through a time of discontentment with the church system the way it is right now.

With the state and condition of the body of Christ that it is right now. And you’re going to have to come to the point where that discontentment is enough to spur you on to action. You’re going to have to come to the day that turns your life around. Well, I came to that point. Oh, I wasn’t through with all this yet.

I was still trying. I went and packed up my job and went full time to the Bible college that was being run by this church in the hope that if I qualified in their Bible school and obtained their qualifications, that they would finally recognize my ministry and put me into the work. Oh, I knew more than the lecturers.

Now, I don’t say that to boast, but I’d been studying. I’d really been studying. Most of the lecturers were just ordinary pastors. They weren’t even teachers. Some of them were evangelists. I think there was one man amongst the whole lot who was a true teacher. And he was the only one that really taught me anything.

And I would share and we’d be on the same level and he’d know, yeah, I know what he’s talking about. The rest of the students would be arguing with him and I’d be arguing for him. Because I knew what he was talking about. But oh It was a difficult situation But I rose up and I pushed through in this Bible school Hoping that as I qualify They would put me into ministry Somebody joined the Bible school a year after that I did This man at the time I had first felt the call of God several years earlier Had been unsaved and lost in sin, in fact he was deep into drugs at the time.

And God had miraculously saved him, which was wonderful. He’d been saved a few years now, had come into the church, started to get involved and showed some promise, and came and joined the Bible school a year after me. And oh, he had what they wanted. He had the personality. He had the right ability to please the leaders by saying the right things at the right time and by being the kind of person they wanted him to be.

Oh, he became the blue eyed boy, still immature, still a novice, but the blue eyed boy. And you know, before long it came time for our pastor to go on furlough. Oh, and there was nobody to take his place. So who do we appoint? Who do we appoint? We’ve got to take one of the Bible students! Who do we appoint?

Well, who else but this man. Who was appointed and he became my pastor. He became over me. I’d served the Lord all my life. I’d had the call of God in my life for several years. Probably about as long as he’d been saved. But he became my pastor. And now I had to submit to this new pastor. Well, I did it grudgingly.

But I submitted. I disagreed with his doctrine. It was false. It was legalistic. It was full of error. He’d been minted by somebody who was into some weird doctrine that was somewhat off. But he was accepted and he was put as my pastor. And the one day somebody who was fairly close to him, who in turn was one of those that was headed for big things, because He knew exactly the right things to say to make the pastor happy.

He began to question me and ask me what I thought of the pastor, what I thought of his doctrine, what I thought of certain things. And I spoke the truth and said what I really thought. Oh, big mistake. Big mistake. He went running straight back to his pastor to make sure that I would never be a threat to him ever again.

And he began to tell the story. Well, I got to visit the one night. From the pastor, and this man, and one of the elders. You know, the elder that was always ready to say, How high do I jump here, pastor? I’m happy to do whatever you want, pastor. They came to visit me to discipline me, and to tell me that I was out of order.

That I’d said things that were out of order. I hadn’t said things that were out of order. I said them to him, to his face! And he sat down there and he opened his Bible to try and rebuke me and to bring me to order. And he quoted a scripture at me and I opened my Bible and I quoted five back at him. And he opened his Bible and quoted another scripture at me and I opened my Bible and I quoted another five back at him.

And he sat there dumbfounded and he closed his Bible and he said, Well, it’s pointless us looking into the word. He didn’t know the way, that was his problem. And he wanted to be the leader, to tell me, who’d grown up in the church, who’d grown up in the presence of the Lord, how the church should be run.

That was the day, that turned my life around. That’s when I reached the point where I said, Lord, that’s it. Enough! Lord, I don’t care about ministry. I don’t care that if leaving this church cuts off any chance I have of going to ministry. They haven’t put me in any way. They put this guy in my place.

They’re not going to accept me. They’re not going to recognize me. Lord, I’ve had it! I’m out of here. Well, where do you go? Where do you go? You go to another church and tell them, I left such and such a church because they disciplined me. And the pastor’s going to get hold of the other pastor and say, why did you leave?

Well, we kicked him out. ’cause he was out of order. Insubordinate. I had to make a choice. I had to make a choice, and it cost me that choice because I walked out of that church never to return. Never to return. I walked out on every chance that I had of being a part of the church system in that particular church organization Parcel.

You’re going to have to come to the place where you are discontent. Are you unhappy enough yet? Are you discontented enough? Are you dissatisfied enough? Are you plain mad enough at the disorder that’s in the body of Christ to do something about it? Or you’re still too spineless to stand up and say, That is wrong, that is contrary to the word, that is not God’s order, and I’m not gonna stand for it, and I’m not gonna sit around here and take it.

I’m going to rise up, and I’m gonna do something about it. If you haven’t come to that point yet, then still awaiting you sometime in the near future is the day that turns your life around. When that day arrives for you, then you’ll be ready to move on to step two of building the new church of God. Amen.