There is a great awakening taking place now as God stirs hearts to return to the covenant of Jesus Christ. Perhaps God has been stirring your heart. Often, after saying yes to Jesus, believers express that there always seems to be some kind of obstacle to having the life of Christ formed within.

They are looking for a way back to the original gospel to start walking in the way God planned for us to know Him and for Him to know us.

Did you know: every question about your personal walk with God is a question about empowerment and obstacles to empowerment. The search for empowerment and the means to remove obstacles has dominated sermons and teaching in both the charismatic and denominational churches, but nothing has changed until now.

God has changed the message in this new apostolic season.

With so many failing to find lasting transformation, it is no wonder that God has called for a re-education through His real apostles about how He empowers our faith.

• What does empowerment look like through God’s eyes?
• What do obstacles look like through God’s eyes?

We will get into that study in Apostle Eric vonAnderseck’s new lesson series, “The Second 8th Week”, where a new kind of equipping is taking place as God turns the tables to change the dynamics and reverse the teaching that put the church on the wrong course.

In lesson 2, “The Making of an Apostle”, we get a new baptism of knowledge about how God views scripture differently than what has been taught in the fake church where believers have been taught to replace apostolic stewardship with the scriptures.

Ministers of the corrupt gospel are like cheerleaders on the ball field. They use the scriptures to cheer believers on with advice that sounds spiritual, but is empty of the knowledge God uses to direct our faith.

We don’t expect much from cheerleaders. They simply put the spectators in the right mood for the game to cheer their team on to victory on the field. They don’t actually take part in playing the game and neither do the spectators. Spiritually speaking, the same thing happens when you’re on the field of faith.

Satan has kept ministers ignorant of Jesus’ covenant and how God designed our contact and direct involvement with Him through Jesus’ spiritual tools. So, your faith is robbed of the very things that God uses to work in you. That’s an obstacle because you’re not taking an active part in your faith, you’re benched as a spectator, watching the game unfold.

That doesn’t mean that you’re not fired up about your faith and the chance for victory. Even when faced with repeated defeat, certain buzz words resonate with your current struggle that will get you motivated to cheer yourself on to victory in Christ.

Some of these buzzwords and phrases that cheer you on have to do with failed revivals. Believers feel let down after revival meetings and are forced to turn inward again to ask the same questions about obstacles to personal transformation and God’s power to transform.

When ministry leaders fail to lead you into Jesus’ covenant, they fail to direct your faith so you can be active with the spiritual things God has for you in Christ. Instead, we hear cheerleading slogans. For example, saying, “Many chase the fire of revival, but without a foundation of truth and holiness, it quickly fades.”

As God challenges ministry leaders on the grounds of the covenant of Jesus and the stewardship of the covenant, many simply use the challenge as a new cheerleading slogan as they glad-hand their audiences with promises while denying them the covenant of salvation. They are aware of the challenge, but turn it into a useless slogan because they have no intention of obeying God.

Let’s look at one more buzz phrase that is meant to cheer you on to victory in the face of defeat. This has to do with the moment of truth for each believer sitting in the pew, on the sidelines, trying to learn how faith in God is actually lived by the power of God.

The moment of truth for many is the day-to-day things that happen in life which has to do with trying to see the hand of God in everyday obstacles. And again, when ministry leaders fail to lead you into Jesus’ covenant, they prepare you for defeat. For example, saying, “When we fixate on our problems we exalt them about God’s sovereignty. But scripture calls us to set our minds on things above.”

But shelling out advice about not fixating on their problems is not the same as equipping the saints with the knowledge about the 5 features of the fleshly kingdom that is built into their nature and how God equipped us with new spiritual tools in Christ for us to engage our faith with Him in our priesthood for fruit bearing.

Ministers who were born out of the Jesus Movement were never discipled in Jesus’ covenant. They learned to give calls that resonate with common human struggles, but they cannot equip the saints with Jesus’ covenant knowledge and tools.

You will notice that a minister’s strategy is to replace God’s voice through stewardship with God’s call through scripture. Satan’s strategy with scripture is also seen in this substitute. Satan tried this switch on Jesus too. Satan tried to use scripture to leverage the will and purpose of God, but Jesus did not submit Himself to that.

It’s important to see how God has turned the tables and changed the dynamics to reverse this teaching that put the church on the wrong course with scripture. God brings this teaching out through the Prophet Isaiah.

Isaiah 28:13
But the word of the Lord was unto THEM precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.

I want to take a quote from lesson 2, “The Making of an Apostle”, where Apostle Eric gets deeper into this study. He brings out, “Remember that when ministers say that what they believe is in line with scripture, they are actually building through lines to your nature and that’s your line of sight. What is the benefit of breaking scripture from Jesus to align scripture to your nature?”

That’s an important point to take on as God reverses these teachings. Believers do not benefit from breaking scripture from Jesus to align it to their nature. The fleshly, man-made gospel is always looking inward in the search for obstacles to God’s power.

The neglect of Jesus’ covenant led to questions about transformation, like why am I failing to walk a transformed life, why does it seem like I come back to the same barriers over and over again? The usual obstacles that are discussed in sermons are pride, lust, an unforgiving heart, a heart that is not in the right place, deep seated temptations, so-called generational curses, etc.

Cheerleading the problem while distilling advice through scriptures that are broken from Jesus to align them with your nature intoxicates believers with the earthly wisdom that Satan spearheads.

You’ll notice that the questions you have about obstacles fall in line with something that has happened or something that was said, or something that’s in front of you. Something has made you feel a certain kind of way and now you feel like you want to search the scriptures to find out what God says about it so you can adjust your behavior.

In the false gospel, the flesh competes with the anointing as scripture is used to bat the ball of conviction back and forth over the same net. This is a sign that you have not yet stepped into the covenant that God sanctified with Jesus’ blood.

In Jesus’ new covenant, we no longer weigh our obedience to God on the scale of scripture, as we try to get the defiled conscience to line up with what the Bible says. Instead, God weighs our behavior on a different scale to work in us in a different way.

Jesus’ covenant is our new scale. God equips us with the knowledge and tools of Christ to complete our faith in Him. Our conscience is pure and the fruit of His work in us agrees.

People think that they know God by the scriptures and at first, they don’t mind batting the ball of conviction back and forth, until they discover they are weary and that they are not living the transformed life. They only know the defiled conscience. They don’t know God.

In truth, God knows us by the purged conscience. He writes His commandments in our hearts so that we can know Him and He creates His fruit in us so that He can know us.

God’s plan is for us to confirm the things of Jesus’ covenant, but Satan’s plan is to have people confirm the struggles of their conscience, and Satan built this concept of batting the ball of conviction back and forth.

Christians feel trapped in this dead faith. They are faced every day with the same dilemma, “I feel this kind of way – but what does the Bible say about that.”

There are two judgments that manifest in this struggle of the defiled conscience:

1. I feel this kind of way. We’ll call that the “NAY” judgment.
2. What does the Bible say about that? We’ll call this the “YAH” judgment.

God built these two judgments into the Urim and the Thummim which were both hidden in the garments of the priesthood under Moses to teach the children of Israel that the barriers and restrictions present in the law would be removed in Christ.

Exodus 28:30
And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron’s heart, when he goeth in before the Lord: and Aaron shall bear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before the Lord continually.

The judgment of the Urim (yes) and the Thummim (no) is active in the law of Moses to point out the struggle of the defiled conscience. Christians today who are not brought into Jesus’ covenant find themselves in the same unending inner battle as they war with themselves (yes versus no and no versus yes) trying to find God’s way to victory and peace.

True apostolic stewardship is God’s Urim. Meaning that in Jesus is yes and amen to bring us into agreement with God in a new and living way, and this is why Jesus called Apostle Eric His Urim. God is establishing the stewardship that confirms His covenant that allows Him to complete His work in you. In Jesus there is only Yea and Amen.

In 2 Corinthians chapter 1, Apostle Paul brings this same contrast out, saying that in Jesus only we are brought into agreement with God because all the things of Christ bind us to Him. We no longer try to achieve victory by aligning our nature to scripture. God is not using the kingdom of the flesh to challenge us to righteousness.

2 Corinthians 1:17-19
¹⁷ When I therefore was thus minded, did I use lightness? or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be yea yea, and nay nay?

¹⁸ But as God is true, our word toward you was NOT yea and nay.

¹⁹ For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was NOT yea and nay, but in HIM was yea.

So, Apostle Paul is saying that the apostles did not teach according to the yearning of the flesh for completion. That’s the batting of the ball of conviction back and forth over the net of faith.

We can see why God has infused the church again with the calling of the apostle. God never intended for the gospel to be “according to the flesh”, but according to Jesus Christ.

The Yea and Nay gospel ruled the church during the 6th Week of darkness. Ministers preached to the conflict of the defiled conscience instead of the gospel of Jesus’ covenant. The fleshly gospel was about helping you identify personal obstacles.

Did you know that each time an obstacle is confirmed, that the flesh is ALSO being confirmed and this is what stagnates your faith?

When believers hear God’s call to join themselves to His plan to renew their faith, false ministry leaders step in to lead them down the old tired path of the Yah and Nah gospel. Resolving struggles, doubling down on the obstacles, going to the scriptures to bat the ball of their convictions.

But because the path they were pointed down did not lead to Jesus’ covenant, they were never equipped with Jesus’ new spiritual tools. Their faith stagnated instead of being empowered for fruit bearing.

Each time you are encouraged to get rid of pride or look for unconfessed sin in your life, or recommit by being baptized by water again, you are offered options and promises that seem like the next step to living Jesus’ promises of gaining His fruit. But None of these steps fit within Jesus’ new covenant so God is not empowering those things to overcome the flesh and bear His fruit.

Each step holds a promise: this time it will be enough, or this time I’ll truly find myself in Jesus, only to find yourself stagnant at the next obstacle down the track. This is because as every obstacle was confirmed, so also was the weakness of the flesh confirmed, thus halting your faith.

God’s turning point is seen as His apostolic stewardship equips your faith to walk in Jesus’ WAY, where true transformation is placed within that singular, ongoing, daily miracle that is experienced by all His saints who are in covenant with Him.