HEART OF THE FATHER and PROPHETIC WARNINGS by R. Loren Sandford

The Father’s heart:
I have not been alone in hearing from God and issuing a prophetic word that God is moving his people from the age of salvation to the age of the kingdom of God, from focus on self, personal healing and individual blessing into a focus on demonstrating the power of the kingdom of God beyond the walls of the church for the sake of all those Jesus came to save. But He has also been calling us deeper into His heart – a message often lost. Sooner or later, power exercised without the loving heart of the Father results in foolishness and abuse, even when it’s heaven’s power. The kingdom of God operates on the law of God and the order of God. He is, after all, a King. His law and His order are the expression of His own nature and character. In the days to come the apostle John’s affirmation that “God is love” (I John 4:8) must become incarnate in our lives and ministries at a deeper level than ever before lest the power of the kingdom of God now being poured out become a temporary manifestation mishandled and misapplied by those who don’t understand its implications. Pastors and leaders (whether women or men) must minister the Father’s heart. Prophets must become shepherds in the Father’s heart. Churches must be infused with the heart of the Father for the healing of lives.

Prophetic warnings for the days to come:
1) Beware the growth of strange theologies and subtle twistings of the Scriptures as teachers seek to impress the body of Christ with “new” revelation and as believers hunger for the power they lost when they surrendered the simplicity of merely being sons and daughters. Have you ever noticed how we moved easily and simply in signs and wonders in the beginning of renewal and revival, but now feel we must go to conferences and schools to learn to do them? Thinking to become mature, we surrender the humble simplicity of childlikeness which is a prerequisite for true heavenly power. Unless we become as children, we cannot inherit the kingdom of God (Matthew 18:2-3, Mark 10:15 and Luke 18:17). At heart this means that only in the simple innocence of being children, sons and daughters, can we truly walk in the power of the kingdom that has come to earth in Jesus. After a lifetime of moving in renewal and revival circles, I no longer aspire to be a miracle worker. I only want to be a son in the confidence that as a son I’ll be a miracle worker. Jesus healed people not because He knew HOW to heal. He healed because He was and is the Son of God who knew His Father and moved in oneness with Him. Ultimately we who have been adopted as sons and daughters through Jesus will not do miracles because we’ve learned how to do them, no matter what we might think. We will only continue to minister the power of the kingdom if we’ve been rooted in the Father’s love and have become one with Him as sons and daughters.

To sum it up, in days to come we must be certain to hunger after the right things for the right reasons. As a son of my Father, I hunger to grow up to be like Him. This begins and ends with a transformation of heart that enables us to walk in the height, depth and breadth of His love that passes understanding. This is our family heritage and inheritance. This is the source of our power and authority.

2) Beware those who teach the impartation and exercise of kingdom power without the necessity of walking in the character of the Father and the Son. This leads to abuse, foolish actions, bad prophecies and inflated egos. When power and glory rest upon a foundation built of insecurities, fleshly ambitions, bitterness and judgments, destruction results. Witness the tragedy of King Saul whose broken foundation resulted first in disobedience, then in jealousy of David and finally in the loss of his sanity when the weight of destiny came to rest upon him. In recent years we have seen a long list of national and international Christian leaders fall to immorality and other failures for the same reasons that took Saul down. This must stop. Let this be a season of the broken spirit and the broken and contrite heart that God accepts as true sacrifice (Psalm 51:17). Too many godly approaches to inner transformation in the Father’s love have been sown into the body of Christ for us not to use them.

3) Beware the adoption of absolute statements put forth by those who teach the transfer of the power and sovereignty of God to human hands as if these were under our control to wield at will. Not even Jesus wielded power by His own volition, but said instead, "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works” (John 14:10). The use of the present tense in the Greek word “does” indicates ongoing action in the present. As the Father moves, Jesus moves. Heaven’s power does not flow at our beck and call. The Holy Spirit does not obey us. We must rather obey Him. We must move as He moves when He is moving.

4) Beware ever more popular teachings that in any way deny the sovereignty and foreknowledge of God and place the future in the hands of human beings. This may flatter our egos and fill us with a sense of power but it reduces God to a being as bound by time as we are. Time is a created thing. God is not. He knows the end from the beginning because He spoke time into existence. As the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, all of time is contained within Him while He can be contained by nothing. In this we can rest while continuing to take responsibility for our own decisions. We can believe in the sovereignty and foreknowledge of God while holding to the freedom of man to choose. We will never understand it, but God can never be limited to our finite human understanding.

I see danger of shipwreck for the renewal movement in all these things. Let us hold the course of humility and truth and seek the depths of the Father’s heart.

(Prophetic Moments is an occasional bulletin produced by Pastor R. Loren Sandford, New Song Fellowship, Denver, Colorado.)