A WORD FROM THE LORD FOR CHURCH LEADERS AS OVERSEERS OF THE FLOCK

​Friday, January 3rd
Elaine Dexter, Derby England
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The Lord gave me a vision for church leaders. In the vision, I saw a stage. In the middle of the stage was a fridge full of food. Standing in front of the fridge stood two church leaders. They were dressed in dinner suits. The male leader was wearing a white shirt, black jacket and a bow tie while the female leader was wearing a long black dress with a mandarin collar. The collar was shiny with diamonds all over it. They both looked very grand, much like entertainers or celebrities.

The leaders were juggling the apples with each other. They were juggling extremely fast and it was exciting to watch. At first they were throwing the apples to each other in a straight line then they suddenly started to throw the apples at the audience. I asked the Lord what this vision meant. The Lord then showed me a mechanical torchlight, one of those that don’t require batteries. The torch was lighted up with electricity generated by hand motion. The faster the hand motion, the more power it produced to charge up the torchlight.

The Lord showed me that instead of using God’s power, the church leaders were manually being charged up and feeding the audience in their own strength. The audience were in the dark and it was a matter of a hit or miss as to whether they received an apple that was being thrown at them.

The Lord is saying that church leaders are putting on the best show in town whilst their congregation is not being fed. The real food is in the fridge, kept in the cold. Today's congregation is being entertained and the leaders are getting burnt out. The Lord is saying that many church leaders are running on their own strength instead of relying on His strength and are not feeding their flock.

In the model of the first church, the twelve disciples saw that they needed to give themselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word (Acts 6:4), just as Jesus did. Because a disciple is not above his teacher and everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher, church leaders need to be more like Jesus otherwise they will be like the blind leading the blind and both will fall into the ditch. (Luke 6:39-40)

Church leaders need to give priority to prayer with God, to hear Him and to give less priority to programmes and meetings and works that are in their own strengths. We are urged to ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Jesus prayed at his baptism (Luke 3:21). He prayed after healing people (Luke 5:16) and he prayed all night before choosing his disciples (Luke 6:12). He prayed before he walked on water (Matthew 14:23) and he prayed before he raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11:41). Jesus was constantly in prayer with God. Prayer must be a priority in the lives of church leaders.

Much of Jesus’ ministry was teaching the word of God. Before Jesus left, he affirmed to Peter three times that if Peter did love him, he was to feed His sheep (John 21:16-17). If church leaders today love Jesus, they must also focus on feeding their flock the true word of God. The focus should not be on how many people are being bought into the church or how to keep the flock entertained but should be about feeding the ones that are there real food.

I leave you with a final word; that church leaders are overseers and will be held to greater accountability because Jesus paid a tremendous price for all of us.

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Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. Acts 20:28

My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment. James 3:1