Lisa Great

When I was growing up in the 70’s, every time we went to the doctor for a check up, they measured my height. Each year, they noted how much I had grown. It was a time of celebration, every time the practitioner would tell me, you grew three inches, you grew six inches.

Now in my 50’s I go to the doctor for an annual check up and they don’t measure my height, they measure my weight. Every year they are comparing my weight to the last year and it is either good news, I lost weight, or bad news I gained weight. I dread that doctor’s scale.

Same doctor, same yearly check up and yet two completely different reactions. But it is also measuring two different things. When I was growing they measured my height. Now that I am grown they measure my weight.

I believe this is what it is like in the spirit. As we are new Christians, new believers in Jesus Christ, people are measuring our growth. They celebrate our growth as each year we get taller and taller in the spirit. We gain confidence, we walk by faith, we speak life. Signs of growth.

But we also measure people’s weight in the spirit. The challenge with the church is the same with the doctor’s visit, the heavier you are the more they tell you to lose weight. Weighty people in the spirit do not know where they fit in a church that prefers to platform lightweights rather than heavyweights.

Matthew 23:23 says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.”

Paul was a heavyweight; Peter was a heavyweight; Esther was a heavyweight; Deborah was a heavyweight; both John’s were heavyweights; Phillip was a heavyweight. God release the heavyweights back into your church for we need weightier people in leadership roles, so we can have a stronger church on earth. Www.apostolicresourcecenter.org

The only childhood memories I have connected to correction came with punishment. If I was sassy, the punishment was a bar of soap in my mouth. When I was disobedient to some rule that was laid down, I was put over the knee and the wooden spoon was on my buttocks. If I lied or did some other activity that was unacceptable I was grounded for days.

Correction was tied to punishment for me as a child, but it did not stop in childhood. If I am honest, correction from people has more often than not, had a punishment tied to it. Whether the punishment fit the crime or not is a whole other story.

When correction is tied to punishment, we no longer want to be corrected for what we do wrong. We fear the punishment, that is why we get that knot in our stomach or put up those thick walls of self-protection. If we were honest, correction has been tied to punishment, so now conviction is not something we feel much anymore, for we don’t want to be punished, not by people but by God.

When was the last time you genuinely felt convicted for something you did, by God? When I first got saved, I was so sensitive to conviction, because I was being transformed. I remember altar calls in our church weekly, because people were being convicted by the Holy Spirit. People would run to the altar, kneel, lay face down under the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

Just this week, the Lord revealed to me, correction from people leads to punishment. If you are convicted of a crime there is a punishment for the crime. However, conviction by the Holy Spirit leads to liberation. I wonder if we are not free because we have stopped being sensitive to conviction by God?

John 16:8-11 says this of the Holy Spirit, “When He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.”

It is time for us to be convicted again, for the sake of liberation not punishment. Www.apostolicresourcecenter.org

I absolutely love the body of Christ, because we all carry something we each need. The challenge I see in the body of Christ is we think we have all we need so we walk in pride, rather than humility. Humility is the access key to increased capacity. When your humble you can learn from others and what God has taught them but has not taught you.

I was told my whole childhood I would never amount to anything. It translated to me, I was dumb. My grades did not reflect I was dumb, I was a B average student, until high school. In high school that narrative caught up with me and I dropped out of school in 10th grade. I ended up taking summer school a couple years in a row and even had to attend classes after graduation in order to receive my high school diploma.

I often wonder if that narrative, is what keeps me humble, hungry, teachable? At the training this past three days, one of my takeaways was the need to tell myself the truth about how I feel, think or believe, in order to ask the right question and obtain the right answer.

When we do not ask the right question, which is rooted in the truth about our beliefs, we will waste other people’s time and never hear what we really need to know. So, I practiced this today with the Lord.

I was discussing with the Lord this morning about His presence in His house and He said to me, “Do I need people to invite Me, for Me to show up?” I said, I have been taught, yes, but Your question is leading me to think the answer is no.

I continued with the Lord and said, I have been taught the Holy Spirit is a gentleman. Immediately, the Lord said, “You have been taught wrong. The Holy Spirit is a bulldog!” Bulldogs are tenacious, courageous, fiercely loyal, protective, strong, determined, devoted and have confidence.

I then realized, my thinking, people can resist the Holy Spirit so He doesn’t show up in His presence in places I wish He did is not true. The Holy Spirit is a bulldog and I sensed He is about to show up in ways and in places whether we invite Him or not. Nothing can stop the Holy Spirit and what He is doing on earth. Www.apostolicresourcecenter.org

Sitting for the past two days listening to a man who is carrying the ability to deconstruct and rebuild simultaneously has been both refreshing and rewarding. He is not selling a program; He is not taking an offering; He is not seeking a following; He is walking with Jesus and inviting us to walk with Him too.

This should not be foreign in a Christian nation, with churches on every corner, but it actually is. This is why it is so refreshing and rewarding at the same time. The fact that this is happening with entrepreneurs, during the work week with people who have come in from a variety of states around the country, just adds value to what is happening in the room.

I was pondering the questions people have been asking at this event. The main theme of the questions is, why did the deliverance program not work for me? Why did the sowing seed program not work for me? Why do I feel like a failure all the time? Why do the programs not help me?

The Holy Spirit dropped a thought in my spirit. The church has made programs the pillars of the church and now those programs have become idols. When programs replace the person of Jesus Christ we operate under the Law of Moses rather than walk with person of Jesus Christ who is grace and truth.

John 1:17 says, “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

People are crying out, not for a program, but for the person of Jesus the Christ. They have tried the programs and it is not helping them. They want a person, they want to know: how do I walk with an invisible God? How do I hear the voice of God? Discipleship is walking with Jesus together. Our call is to disciple nations, to walk with people. Www.apostolicresourcecenter.org

The Lord spoke to me earlier this year and said, “The next move of God is going to be EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, EVERYDAY!” I have been saying this over and over again. It is not going to be a platform move of God; it is not going to be a church move of God; it is not going to be solo ministry or person move of God where you have to travel or move to be apart of it. It is going to be EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, EVERYDAY.

I was listening to Charlie Shamp this morning and he said, “The next move of God will be God moving through His people.” I smiled for this is what God told me. Why is it important to listen for the echo to what you believe you heard God say? Because the echo establishes the voice you heard and reveals the mind of Christ is saying one thing not many about what He is doing in the earth.

Once a prophetic word is confirmed, we activate it by first believing it and then making preparations for it. If it is true, the next move of God is going to need me, going to need you, what are we doing to prepare ourselves?

Matthew 9:35-38 says, “Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”

Laborers are people who know how to work a harvest. If God is saying His next move is EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, EVERYDAY, we need to be prepared to harvest what is white and ready. This is why we are doing a training event at Forge called The Making of a Minister (Harvester). This training is to prepare you to do the work of the ministry. It is free financially but will cost you 4 hours of time.

We must be prepared for the next move of God needs us, the everyday people, who work jobs, who raise kids, who watch grandchildren. We are the laborers who are going to be ministering when this move of God begins. So join us on zoom or come in person to FORGE, The Making of a Minister. Www.apostolicresourcecenter.org

Do you know who you are?
Do you realize the Spirit of God lives in you?
This is not theory, this is reality.
The attack of the enemy is on the reality of who you carry.
2 Corinthians 4 says, we have this treasure in earthen vessels.
Don’t focus on the vessel so much that you miss the treasure you carry.

I received a phone call early this morning from a friend who led me to read 1 Samuel 4-7 about the ark of the covenant. The Lord said, “The presence of God is in the people of God and that puts panic in the enemies of God.”

I had to think about this over and over again, for I do not see or hear many people of God who realize the presence of God in them is putting fear in the enemies of God. What I see, what I hear is the people of God afraid of the enemies of God as though we have no God.

Friends, listen to 1 Samuel 4:6-8 “When the ark of the covenant of the LORD came into the camp, all Israel shouted so loudly that the earth shook. Now when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, “What does the sound of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews mean?” Then they understood that the ark of the LORD had come into the camp. So the Philistines were afraid, for they said, “God has come into the camp!” And they said, “Woe to us! For such a thing has never happened before. Woe to us! Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness.”

Do you hear what I hear? You are the carrier of the ark of God inside of you. Everywhere you go, the ark shows up and the enemy panics, that is why the enemy fights you so hard. He is afraid of Christ in you. Let me say it one more time. THE PRESENCE OF GOD IS IN THE PEOPLE OF GOD AND THAT PUTS PANIC IN THE ENEMIES OF GOD.

The enemy is afraid of who you carry! You are the clay jar, but the treasure in you is causing the enemy to flee seven ways. Forward march friends. If God is for us, who can be against us. Www.apostolicresourcecenter.org

We as people reveal who we are by things we do. We know children are known by their actions, as Solomon tells us this in Proverbs 20:11. People are know by their actions as well, even if those people are adults and no longer children. When we see someone’s actions it is telling us something about them, if we can hear what they are saying.

If we take time to listen to people’s actions it will reveal to us what is going on inside of them and then we can ask the Lord what He wants us to say, what He wants us to pray. Actions are not to cause us to judge them, but rather to recognize them. Let me give you an example.

This month of October reveals who people are in ways they may not even realize they are revealing themselves. To some it is just a cultural month in which we celebrated a holiday, but one cursory walk through your neighborhood and if you listen you can hear what is happening in families in your area.

The most obvious one we see if skeletons. Skeletons are speaking that home has dry bones living in it. How do we know, listen to Ezekiel 37 “God’s Spirit took me and set me down in the middle of an open field strewn with bones. There were bones all over the plain – dry bones, bleached by the sun.” Skeletons is what Ezekiel was shown.

What do skeletons in people’s front yards reveal? Something was once living but is now dead. So when we see dry bones, what is our response? We prophesy, we speak, we declare as Ezekiel did, “God says, I am bringing breath of life to you, and you will come to life.” This is what we say when we see a skeleton in someone’s front yard. Command that family to come alive. Whatever has died in their lives, command it to live again.

Skeletons, ghosts, grave markers, witches, and demonic plastic beings, all displayed in yards around your neighborhood. What is is saying, the wages os sin is still death (Romans 6:23), so what do we say to those families, “But the gift of God is eternal life!” Speak to your neighbors as you walk by, “Hear the word of the Lord…You shall live and not die and see the glory of God in the land of the living.” Www.apostolicresourcecenter.org

One of our calls as people of God who hear the voice of God is to speak what God is speaking; to decree what God is decreeing; to do what God is doing. It is really easy to follow God if you are willing to do what He does, say what He says. The challenge comes, the stress ensues, when you have to make something up to say or do because you can’t see or hear what God is saying or doing.

The Bible says, “The blessing of the Lord makes one rich and adds no sorrow to it” (Proverbs 10:22). This means God blesses us with His voice, so we can hear what He wants us to do. When we do it, we are blessed not burdened by what He has asked us to do. We walk the pace of grace, we are not running the rat race of culture trying to “keep up with the Jones’” or are needing to put out a prophetic word daily so we stay “relevant”.

The body of Christ is changing in ways many cannot see. God Himself is doing a work on His church that no man or woman will be able to take credit for. God Himself, as the head of the church (Ephesians 5) has made some decisions and did not ask our permission or opinion about. But are going to be blessed because of it.

Ezekiel 36:24-29 says, Here’s what I AM going to do, says the Lord:

1. I AM going to gather the scattered.
2. I AM going to pour water on you and scrub you clean.
3. I AM going to give you a new heart and new spirit.
4. I AM going to put my Spirit in you, so you do what I tell you and live by My commands.
5. You will be My people! I’ll be your God!
6. I AM going to give you bumper crops.
7. I AM going to make sure your fruit trees and field crops flourish.

This is what God says, He is doing for us, with us and to us. He is I AM and He can do whatever He pleases. So, we just say what He is saying. We say, Yes to you, Oh God. Yes!!!! Www.apostolicresourcecenter.org

I had a dream this week in which I was on a piece of land with a large group of people and their was a wood frame of a building on the land. The atmosphere was electric with excitement and joy. Everyone was shouting, singing, dancing and saying, “God is building something! God is building something!”

A couple of days later, I had a sense in the spirit all night long, celebration and joy in the atmosphere. The sense of joy was palpable. I woke up twice this week with an atmospheric sense of great things happening in the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. There is great celebration in the spirit over what God is building in us His people on earth.

Some people cannot celebrate until they see what is worth celebrating. Others celebrate prematurely and then hope deferred makes the heart sick. So, when I share I sense celebration in the atmosphere, I am not predicting when it will manifest, so some will not celebrate. I am also not saying what God is building, for I was not given that information in details.

I can only share what I hear and see in the spirit. Nothing more, nothing less. But this I know with certainty, it was not a personal dream just for me, it was a dream of celebration for nations.

We have gone through some very challenging years lately with C-19; twisted narratives; and political unrest in many nations. But this stubborn spirit that has sought to control us is giving way to celebration that is liberating us.

Psalm 135:5-6 says, “I give witness to the greatness of God, our Lord, high above all other gods. Yahweh, does just as He pleases – however, wherever, whenever!” The psalmist goes on to say in verses 15-16, “God, your name is eternal, God, you’ll never be out of date. God stands up for His people, God holds the hands of His people.”

If He is for us, who can be against us? Celebrate! Is the call of the atmosphere from heaven to earth. Www.apostolicresourcecenter.org

Living in a family yields understanding of things spiritually that working in a company or even going to church does not yield. For example, in a family mom and dad set the rules, make clear the expectations and we as the kids are expected to do what we are told.

A mark of maturity is the willingness to do what we are told, not when we feel like it, but when the request is made. A mark of immaturity is thinking we get to decide what to do and when we want to do it.

In a family when you have older siblings, they carry the words of the parents and instruct, encourage, enforce what the parents have said, for the older, mature children in the family carry the same heart as the parents and want the family to function by design. The older children then exhort the younger ones to not only listen to what their parents said, but to actually do it.

God is highlighting and doing an alignment on us as the body of Christ so we can function by design in this next move of God. Ezekiel 33:32-33 and James 1:22-25 both speak of the call to be doers not just hearers of the word.

We have heard a lot and do very little, so it is time we examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith, for James says if we hear and don’t do we deceive ourselves.

Friends as an older sister, who carries the heart of our Father, I want to exhort you to not just listen to the word of God coming from other people’s podcasts, books, videos, blogs, conferences, or prophetic promises, but hear the voice of God in the word of God for yourself. But don’t just hear it, do it, for we are being invited to grow up, for new members are being added to the family. Www.apostolicresourcecenter.org