An Excerpt from Danyele Bloom Holtner, Wanda Fost and Leslie Precht. Draw Near to Hear: Practical Wisdom for Hearing God Personally and Corporately (2021), pp. 20-27.
Aglow International is “a Kingdom movement…committed to seeing God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven” (aglow.org). A kingdom requires a king ruling over subjects who are obedient to the king’s rule in the land he owns. The Kingdom of God is a priority for Jesus. He began to preach the Kingdom at the very outset of His earthly ministry.
“…Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
(Mark 1:14-15)
He taught extensively about the Kingdom because it was misunderstood by His contemporaries. Jesus told His disciples that the secret of the Kingdom of God had been given to them, but to “those outside”, He spoke in parables “so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand” (Mark 4:11-12). Repeatedly, He introduced His teachings about the Kingdom by saying, “The Kingdom of God is like…” and comparing it to something familiar to His hearers; for example, a seed, yeast, treasure hidden in a field, a valuable pearl, a fishing net (Matthew 13:31, 33, 44, 45, 47).
The Kingdom continued to be prominent in John the Apostle’s account of his vision of the conclusion of this age. John declared that God has “made us to be a Kingdom” (Revelation 1:6) and described the scene in which the fullness of the Kingdom is announced:
“…the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever’.”
(Revelation 11:15)
As Jesus’ modern-day disciples, we must always be learning, searching the scriptures and inquiring of the Spirit to have the mind of Christ as He transitions us from what has been done into what is to be done next. Currently, God is resetting our understanding of His Kingdom because we also have misunderstood or been lacking in understanding. Resets are not merely correction or re-tuning; they go to the foundations, assigning everyone fresh orders and clarifying roles and functions. They create huge waves of reactions, initiating spiritual momentum not born of human initiative but at His intention. Resets are God’s delivery system to expand the vision for newly arising leaders and new assignments at the frontline of expansion. When we are being reset, whether it is major or minor, having new and fresh words to describe things that are a departure from the old way of doing things helps us change our mindsets as we transition into the new. When you hear a word or phrase you don’t understand, be sure to ask someone to explain it so that you can participate in the transformation.
Because God is a Father, the Kingdom over which God has exalted Jesus to the highest place is simultaneously the Family of God (also called the household of God, in Ephesians 2:19).
“Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
(Philippians 2:9-11)
The Father sent His Son to earth to redeem humanity so He could have a family from all nations, tongues and tribes. His covenant with Abraham was that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3 ESV). Every family on earth is named through the Father (Ephesians 3:14-15), and we become children of God and members of His global family (John 1:12-13, 1 John 3:1-2) through salvation secured for us by His Son.
Paul describes all those saved in Christ as the Body of Christ, which consists of many interdependent members with various gifts to perform every necessary function while caring for each other under the direction of Christ, who is the head (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). His description of how the Body grows and matures in love is reminiscent of the function of family.
“…we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
(Ephesians 4:15-16)
One of the functions of God’s family is to be a unified Army that makes war against dark spiritual powers that oppose God and His Kingdom. We are instructed to clothe ourselves in spiritual armor (Ephesians 6:11-17, Romans 13:12), fight in a disciplined manner (2 Timothy 2:4) and use spiritual weapons to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). Our objective is to extend His Kingdom among those not yet saved. Paul proclaims our battle to be the “good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12a, 2 Timothy 4:7).
All these terms—Kingdom, Family, Body, Army—are corporate expressions, that is, they apply to groups with a larger purpose than that of an individual. Without question, Jesus came to save, heal and deliver individuals; but His ultimate purpose is to win a bride “from every tribe and language and people and nation…to be a Kingdom and priests to serve our God and…reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:9-10). There is a sense in which the revelation being poured out now by the Spirit about the Kingdom of God is to help the Bride of Christ prepare for the wedding supper of the Lamb.
“Hallelujah!
For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad
and give Him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and His bride has made herself ready.”
(Revelation 19:6b-7)
The promise of the Kingdom requires a mechanism for realizing it, just like the Promised Land required an organized, disciplined nation of Israelites to cross over into the land, conquer it, work it and abide in the commandments of the Lord in order to reap the blessings of His Presence. The corresponding mechanism in our time is the ekklesia. Ekklesia is the Greek word used in the New Testament to represent Jesus’ declaration to His disciples that He would build His “ekklesia, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew16:18). When we think of “church” (the word commonly used in English Bibles to translate ekklesia), we tend to picture a building. However, what Jesus meant was not a building but a ruling body, a legislative assembly,
“called out to impact the earth from its position seated “in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6) and authorized to be a redemptive agent in society to transform culture. The ekklesia is the visible expression of the Body of Christ. “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10) is its mandate and rallying cry.”
(Remi Ogunrinde, personal communication, March 2021)
The ekklesia is characterized by oneness with each other and the Godhead. More than unity, oneness describes the nature of the relationship among Father, Son and Holy Spirit and is what Jesus prayed on the night before His crucifixion for all who would believe in Him (including us):
“…that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. The glory that You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me.”
(John 17:21-23)
To be effective as a ruling body, the ekklesia does not require the agreement of every believer, because God can accomplish His will through a remnant, a smaller group whom He chooses and sets apart from a larger group for His holy purposes. He determines the size of the group required (the critical mass). The first of many biblical examples which illustrate this principle is when Joseph, second in command to Pharaoh in Egypt, told his eleven brothers, the sons of Jacob (that is, Israel), “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors” (Genesis 45:7). Paul wrote about the Jews who followed Jesus as Messiah, “so too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace” (Romans 11:5). So too in our time, God has His remnant.
The ekklesia is the big picture of how Jesus authorizes His followers to carry out His will on earth as in heaven. In Aglow Canada, we are calling the smaller units Kingdom communities. They might be local groups of believers of the same Spirit seeking God, or they might be widely scattered across a region, nation or even the globe and connecting via messaging groups and Internet meeting platforms. Kingdom communities display God’s intent for the way Christians should live in relationship to Him and to one another, celebrating individual diversity and corporate oneness simultaneously. They experience His manifest Presence and move in His wisdom and power to become more like Him in word and in life by caring for one another and serving on mission together in whatever way the Spirit of God leads them. Kingdom communities are made up of individuals, each of whom is an imager of God with unique God-given personality, gifts, abilities and callings meant to be used to glorify Him. The community helps each one discover his/her identity in Christ according to who God created them to be and encourages and holds them accountable to being who He says they are. Each individual, community, people group and nation has a redemptive destiny, that is, a purpose which is always aligned with God’s overall redemptive plan and achievable not by might or power but by His Spirit (Zechariah 4:6).
Aglow International began over fifty years ago as an army of prayer warriors, but God has now shifted its role to that of “apostolic-prophetic watchmen on the walls of the nations…[who] stand in agreement with God for what He purposes to do in the earth…taking that position of authority to call Heaven down and to obliterate on earth the things that war against His Spirit, His intention, His purpose, and His calling in the earth” (Jane Hansen Hoyt, aglow.org). What are apostolic-prophetic watchmen? Apostles and prophets are mentioned together eight times in the Bible. Paul says they are the foundation on which God’s household is built.
“Now, therefore, you are…members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”
(Ephesians 2:19-22)
God appoints and anoints some believers to be apostles, leaders in the ekklesia (Ephesians 4:11); but all believers are called to carry an apostolic anointing with full authority from the One who sent them to represent Him. Likewise, He appoints some believers to exercise leadership as prophets; but every believer can operate in the prophetic anointing, the essence of which is to know the voice of the Lord. These two anointings are meant to work together. The prophetic is a journey, an ongoing pilgrimage of discovering and gathering information through inspiration from God by spiritual means such as visions, dreams, impressions, visitations and so on. Aglow Canada’s prophetic pilgrimage, described in the previous section, illustrates how our understanding of God’s purpose grew over time through prophetic words and visions. The prophetic anointing causes innovation to come on people’s lives to pioneer and trailblaze at the cutting edge of what has never been seen before. Those operating from an apostolic anointing and perspective strategize, using prophetic intelligence, to extend the borders of the Kingdom. The aim of being apostolic is to advance Kingdom activity wherever the adversary is operating to steal, kill and destroy, and take back the territory for God, who came to give life abundantly (John 10:10). The apostolic anointing reforms the culture of this world into the culture of heaven. The apostolic-prophetic anointing empowers ordinary believers with the momentum, authority and spiritual force of God’s revealed intention that cancels the opposition of all other powers in the earth.
“Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken…”
(Hebrews 12:28a)