A minister recently introduced a challenge to the church, saying, “If you had to choose between God’s presence and His blessing, choose His presence.” Silly, isn’t it? Yes, it is, but don’t let this challenge bewilder you. What’s happening here is that ministers are trying to backtrack and fix some major mistakes they’ve made in the past >>> directing faith towards obtaining material blessings from God.

Thankfully, we don’t have to choose between God’s blessings and His presence because they are one and the same. The grace of God is His blessing and His presence. The peace of God is His blessing and His presence. The stewardship and priesthood are God’s blessing and His presence. All these things are in Jesus and He is God’s blessing and presence.

When we talk about God’s presence we are talking about the power of God that is present in Jesus’ knowledge and His tools to transform the soul into the likeness of Christ – which is God’s blessing.

When a minister chooses not to transition into God’s new apostolic season he continues to define grace and peace and the divine transformation in the same way as he did in the past, and fails to make the connection between God’s blessing and His presence, and continues to separate them, and passes on that paradox to you.

When grace is defined by God and connected to the new covenant tools and priesthood of each believer then grace is the common experience of all believers. It is the constant thread that binds us together and tethers us to God.

If you want to talk about how to increase personally in your relationship with God, you can’t help but talk about one or all nine of the operations of God in grace that you experience throughout the day as you use the tools of Christ to serve God and know God. That IS God’s blessing to you and through you to others in the Body of Christ.

But if you neglected to transition into the new apostolic era, then you don’t know that the nine tools of Jesus’ new covenant are your access to God’s grace. You want God’s grace, but don’t know how to access it. That’s the problem in a nut shell.

The grace of God is there for every believer, but ministers bared the door by denying Jesus’ tools, thus cutting off your access to God’s grace, and then throwing the responsibility back onto you, asking you to choose between God’s blessing and God’s presence.

Jesus addressed the same problem when correcting the religious leaders of His time, saying, “Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.” (Luke 11:52)

If you want to talk about how to overcome yourself, the world, and the devil to gain the victory over sin, you can’t help but talk about your experience with the nine operations of God in grace as He manifests Christ to you. You CANNOT walk with God apart from this spiritual blessing, which is His presence (power to give substance to hope).

If you want to talk about how to be used of God to voice His will in prophecy to the Body of Christ, you cannot help but talk about the nine distinct and tangible operations of God upon your soul that He deliberately placed into His grace. You stop focusing on trying to prophesy events. You stop trying to figure out when and where prophecy can be discerned as true or false, or which prophet deserves to be stoned. All of this striving for equity is done in the house of Baal, not in the house of Jesus Christ.

When God restored apostolic stewardship He also restored the royal priesthood of the believer. These two blessings are designed by God to manifest His presence for the purpose of regeneration –the divine nature formed in you as God heals your soul.

When that does not happen you’ll notice that ministers get bogged down in another paradox, asking, “Is it God’s will to heal everyone?” They are not talking about the healing of the soul (God’s blessing to you and the purpose of your redemption). They are talking about the healing of the body. The two are not the same.

The grace and truth of God directs you into priesthood prophecy, which spiritual sacrifices we offer at that altar of Christ. This is where we partake of Him. He is the blessing and presence of God (power, substance, virtue) that is reserved for you to experience daily – to heal your soul AND to create the likeness of Christ within you.

The choice of faith is not between God’s blessing and His presence, it is between the kingdom of the flesh and the kingdom of God – the priesthood of the flesh or the priesthood of Jesus Christ – the record of man or the record of Jesus Christ. These kingdoms are not the same.

True apostolic leadership equips you to make these choices by equipping you with the restored foundation of truth, the restored altar of Christ, the restored priesthood, the restored new covenant tools.

God responds to the challenges raised by ministers by challenging them: “Why do you walk in my courts as my elect, yet profane my name by teaching strange doctrine to cast off my care? In place of my grace you have sown lasciviousness to teach each man to live according to the light of his aspiration; in the place of my peace you have sown the equity of the flesh, which kingdom is tethered to Satan, and his promises bar the door to my bosom. Why are you slow to repent and put aside the knowledge that I have given as a seed that you might return to me in the fullness of my blessing? What are these words of murmuring that I hear? Is my knowledge too hard for you, that you strain at it? Yet you take to yourselves vain and empty vessels in whom is no grace and pour out for yourselves vanity and vexation of spirit.”

Real faith is with cognition, whereas our faith pleases God because we know how to select the things of Jesus to reflect Him and express Him. You will be amazed at all the chains of bondage God will break for you and all the ways in which He will increase your soul with His powers. God has prepared you for this transition. All you need to do is be obedient.