Although a believer can recite in troublesome times that Jesus is their rock, God wants to take their understanding past reciting empty affirmations to the full application of that reality.

God is challenging the shifting sands of man’s teachings that have influenced generations. Believing they are standing on God’s word, standing in God’s favor, standing on the moral high ground and speaking for God in troublous times, ministers recite empty affirmations, while neglecting to teach the reality of Jesus’ covenant.

Let’s look at three examples of shifting sand teaching.

1. It has been taught that Spirit-led living is knowing who you are in Christ and having the confidence that the Holy Spirit in you is greater than any trouble you face in the world.

When a minister says that you can know who you are in Christ, but does not follow through by teaching the essential elements of the gospel, he’s reciting empty affirmations. He’s not preaching the reality of Christ, he’s storytelling.

God brings this to light in the IDCCST® Handbook (p. 272. Week 7 The Record of Your New Birth).

We can observe God’s Intelligent Design for Christ-Centered Spiritual Transformation in these elements [the 12 elements of the gospel]. These foundational elements are the brick and mortar of our faith that tell us who Jesus is, and thereby reveal who you are in him. They are God’s blueprint for faith to reflect Jesus, and therefore, they are God’s blueprint for your faith to be completed in him.

The name of Jesus is in us by Spirit and truth. Truth means knowledge. With this knowledge, Jesus engraves himself in us to shape our thinking of him so that we can carry his perspective with us throughout the day. Each element bears a unique signature imprint in our soul that acts as a proof of possession, stating that we belong to God. We are born of him, born of the Spirit, and carry Jesus’ DNA as proof of life – in Spirit and in truth.

2. It has been taught that the first step to living the abundant, supernatural life God desires for you is to learn to hear God’s voice.

When a minister says that hearing God’s voice is key to living an abundant life that is full of God’s supernatural gifts, he often tunes you in to the inner, intuitive voice of your own nature. He’s reciting empty affirmations. He’s not preaching the reality of Christ, he’s storytelling.

Another helpful note taken from the IDCCST® Handbook (p. 283. Week 1 Gods Focus on Grace).

…books about how to hear the voice of God were not written from a covenant perspective and focused on learning how to train our natural senses to “sense” God’s “leading” and “guiding”, and “gentle nudging”.

These poorly designed instructions played a significant role in developing your gut instincts and hunches as God’s voice which, of course, leads a person to struggle with himself rather than build with God. In Chapter Four of the Handbook, you will have the opportunity to discern the voice of intuition that complements our signature and to practice the steps involved to separate your faith from the fleshly kingdom. As you learn your true spiritual identity, the mask comes off; you see that your gut is tied to the 5 features of your flesh and you are presented with many reasons for not trusting your gut as God’s voice.

Trusting your gut as God’s voice was a setback. To have a personal relationship with Jesus meant to have God speak to us about everything that is happening in our lives and in the world in which we live. That’s our backyard. God’s backyard is his covenant kingdom and he’s calling you there to communicate (grace) with you about your new life in Christ and his plan to transform you, to heal your soul and form Christ in you. In God’s kingdom the elements of the gospel have a considerable presence as we draw upon them to know him.

3. It has been taught that as a believer, you can recognize God’s mind to unite the church around the essentials and that will allow you to agree to disagree about everything else.

When a minister says that unity is in the essentials of Christ’s gospel, yet he isn’t talking about the foundation of truth, but rather substituting his own moral code, he is helping the church to remain in its current state of chaos. He’s reciting empty affirmations. He’s not preaching the reality of Christ, he’s storytelling.

A third quote taken from the IDCCST® Handbook (p. 84-85. Week 4 The Flesh You Were Born Into), brings much needed clarity.

The moral code is the place from which introspection gives birth to resolutions for change: I resolve to go out of my way, above and beyond, to show kindness to friends, family, and strangers. I resolve to enjoy my own life without comparing myself to others. I resolve to make a difference. I resolve to stop competing with others. I am my own person. Following the moral code, you’re simply competing against yourself…

God needs to explain to us why the interlocking mechanisms found in the nature of man feels right, but is not righteousness. It feels good to the natural man to use the moral code. He sees a reflection of his own nature (moral code) in acts of random kindness and equates that to pleasing God.

To loosen Satan’s storytelling grip on the church, God re-introduced the apostle’s calling. The foundation of truth is now again available and the deeply-rooted storytelling practice can be discerned.

There are many ways of storytelling – the art of movie-making is probably the most prominent avenue of storytelling today. As people drink in what is portrayed by the actors and all the elements of the film, they feel a connectedness to the story by associating their experience (or imagined experience) with what the people in the movie are going through. The same connectedness can be felt when listening to the moving lyrics of a song. This connectedness takes place when you can place yourself in those same shoes.

This worldly practice of storytelling has made its way into the Christian faith where it is believed that the Bible is God’s storytelling that is meant to move us with hope and peace and ground our fears. Some don’t see the danger in this as it brings the things of God down to the level of the flesh. They’ve accepted and settled for a faith that is about trying to get out of the situation they are in rather than bearing fruit for God’s kingdom by obedience to His covenant commandments and allowing His peace to rule the heart.

This subtle mixing of the fleshly kingdom into faith is why believers struggle to live a life separate from the flesh. God regifts the church with the apostolical character to return the church to the foundation of truth that He placed in Jesus. Building from one foundation untangles the mind from the fleshly kingdom and restores the unity of the faith.

The Pharisees and the Sadducees thought they were kingdom giants and they got into heavy debates about demons, angels, and life after death. When Jesus was in their midst teaching the true kingdom of God, they debated with Him their position and when Jesus left to preach in the next town, they debated among themselves what Jesus’ words meant to them (Matthew. 16:1-6).

Jesus was and is the kingdom of God, so the debates that took place between the Pharisees and Sadducees were between themselves and had no bearing on God’s plan. By their divisiveness against Jesus, they placed themselves outside the boundaries of God’s work and produced a mountain of justifications for their confidence in doing so.

In Zechariah 4:7, God speaks about those who got it into their head that they were kingdom giants. God shouts to the mountain of aspiration He is addressing. 

Zechariah 4:7
Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.

The mountain of religious aspiration is brought low to humble such ministers to God’s grace. The knowledge of God that came through the lips of Jesus brought low the high looks of the Pharisees and the Sadducees who were the theological giants barring the entrance to God’s kingdom.

Luke 3:5
Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth;

John the Baptist saw the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to his baptism to debate his claims to be the voice of one crying in the wilderness. He said he was God’s voice, but they didn’t like that because they considered themselves the giants of the time and voice of God to the people. 

The Prophet John was established by God as the eyes of stewardship to the people and for the people; and when he said, “Behold the Lamb of God” that was proof that he was the steward. (John. 1:29)

The Pharisees and the Sadducees were angry because they felt that they were being replaced. God selected the Prophet John outside of their system and they didn’t like that. John correctly called them vipers (vultures). They were only there to take the meat off the bones, and that’s what Ezekiel saw. True stewardship puts meat on the bones as to give life, but false stewardship takes the meat off the bones as to deny life and plunder. (Ezekiel. 37:1-10)

What happened to the people who took hope in Jesus’ teaching, but then got lost in the debates between the Pharisees and Sadducees? They lost sight of God and their hope dried up. You too, can lose sight of God if you get caught in the crossfire between ministers who debate their positions and belief systems.

Jesus, listening to the debates among the theological dry bones equated their posturing with children’s play.

Luke 7:32
They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.

The theological dry bones of our time are also children in their thinking. All they’re doing is trading ideas as children trade marbles and thereby humbling themselves before each other, but not before God. Feigned unity possesses no wisdom for the church.

Ministers claim that debating creates virtue, but Apostle Peter joined virtue to the Godhead. If the knowledge you’re arguing is broken from the covenant, then it’s absent the virtue (power for fruit bearing; 2 Peter. 1:3). Jesus said that the scriptures cannot be broken from the stewardship (John. 10:35). 

Did you know: the debate about deliverance ministry takes place outside the boundaries of Jesus’ covenant and although ministers can agree to disagree, they have not come into agreement with God’s covenant terms. So, this feigned unity is destructive and not the mind of God.

Ministers use manifestations such as feigned unity to shield themselves as they try to create fruit by a manifestation instead of submitting to grace. A manifestation can trick the eye, but the knowledge can’t fool the circumcised ear.

So, ministers continue to ask, how can we know the truth, who should we believe? It always comes down to the true stewardship to whom God has given the key of knowledge to open the door to His kingdom.

Ministers today, like the religious leaders of Jesus’ time want to be the voice of God, but all they’re doing is hashing out scriptures. They don’t understand the scale God is using and that’s why they are confused about what to believe and how to interpret scripture. They break the scripture open in the context of the aspiration, which is error. Scripture, when it is tethered to the Godhead, the context is Jesus’ covenant, which is truth.

Each minister claims to be a learned man and quotes from the Bible, but the Bible is not God’s scale; the anointing in the apostolic calling is God’s scale and key. The one who holds the key is the steward that God selected.

To expound on this point a little more I’d like to quote from the EVA Terms Glossary where Apostle Eric vonAnderseck differentiates the Bible:

Believers often say that Jesus is the foundation and cornerstone of their faith, but are they talking about the Bible or the person? To be clear about what we are talking about when we say that Jesus is the foundation of our faith, we need to explain why the Bible and the person each takes a different path, and why each path offers different results.

It’s not that the Bible takes a different path than Jesus, but rather that the habit of the flesh is to redirect scripture away from Jesus to substitute our needs in place of his covenant – and that’s not a good thing. A person selects a scripture to represent his desire instead of selecting Jesus as the record of his faith.

From this, we further learn that it is not that Bible reading is problematic but rather what people do with scripture that needs to change. The habit of man to take from Christ to add to self or to take from self to add to Christ can only change once the apostolical stewardship is accepted and the foundation building starts anew.