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According to a recent survey that I read, 50 percent of all ministers do not feel they have the skills necessary to meet the needs of those they minister to!

I want to offer you some practical advice while offering clear direction on a particular issue that can help you meet the needs of those you minister to.

A few weeks ago while I was ministering in our Sunday morning service, I began to say some things out of my spirit that was revelation to my ears. The more I dwelt on this subject, the more I began to understand some things about the Spirit and how to be successful in the plans of God.

During that service, I made this statement; "Our prayers are typically focused on bail-out while God is focused on divine purpose."

We see a glimpse of this in the Scripture found in Jeremiah 29;11 which states,
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, said the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
God has an expected end for you and I guarantee that it is exceeding abundantly above all that you have asked or even thought about!

What Is That Expected End?
It is the divine purpose according to the Word of God for you. For example, it is obvious from the Scriptures that God's perfect plan for His people is divine health. When God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt, the Word states that there was not a feeble one among them. God does not want His people feeble and sick!

But let's look at our prayer for a moment. If we experience a health issue that is affecting our kidneys, we will come to church, call on those we have confidence in and ask them to pray that our kidneys will be healed. This makes perfect sense because our kidney is the place that we are having problems.

However, God's focus is not our kidney, but divine health that will include our kidneys. What typically happens when a situation like this occurs is that we will get real focused in our prayers. We will seek God for healing, calling on the Name of Jesus and proclaim His promises that by His stripes we have been healed.

When that touch from the Master's hand comes and our kidney is restored, we thank the Lord, give a testimony and go about our business. The focus of our prayer was bailout! "Lord I have this problem, heal me." But we could just as easily have said, "Bail me out of this problem."

Let me tell you a true story to illustrate my point of what the Lord showed me during that Sunday morning service. I experienced a powerful financial miracle back in 1995. It was so powerful that I have used it to illustrate many different points in numerous sermons I have preached.

It was May 1995. I was still in my secular job and I managed an office in the lending field. I was about to take a transfer, and there were three potential branches that would possibly be opened to me. I will call these branches one, two and three.

I was praying for branch one as it seemed to have the best future, location and opportunity associated with it. However, as I prayed the Lord kept impressing me with branch two. I really didn't want branch two, so I ignored the promptings of the Spirit and continued to pray that branch one would be made available.

During that time of prayer, the Lord, on several occasions, prompted me in my spirit that it was branch two that He was preparing. I finally yielded to these promptings and shortly thereafter, I was called and offered branch two.

Free Will
I accepted the new position and started making plans for the transfer. About a week went by and my new supervisor called me and asked if I would take branch three instead. Without consideration of the way the Lord had led, I agreed and took a branch other than the one the Lord had prompted me to and prepared for me.

On the very first day in my new assignment, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I had never felt so much opposition before in my life, and I immediately knew my error. This started what would be the longest six months of my life. After about three weeks of tremendous pressure and opposition, I realized that something was going to have to change.

I had moved to take this position, and I had to sign a contract that I would not leave the company for a minimum of twelve months. If I left, I would have to pay back the bonus and moving expense I had received, which equated to over $7,000.

I started seeking the Lord for deliverance in my situation. Everyday as I drove to work and home, I had tapes of someone ministering on faith in order to stir myself up.

When I go home, I would take Scriptures that I had isolated and go on a walk by myself praying and reminding the Lord of His promises of deliverance. After my family went to bed, I would go in on the living room floor in prayer for the Lord to intervene in my situation.

This went on for several months while the pressure continued to grow and life continued to become more unpleasant. Then within a few days of each other, I received a couple of calls from other companies who were interested in hiring me.

I immediately turned them down; as I was determined in my prayer that God would turn my situation around. Besides, I had a good job and had been with the same company for ten years, it didn't make sense to start over again.

Trying To Be Led
One day while driving home, the Lord made it very clear to me that I was praying for deliverance and that opportunities had come without my even looking into them. I immediately repented and told the Lord that I would call the companies back. I arranged for two different interviews. One went well, but did not feel right in my spirit. I had a peace about the other and continued the interview process.

By now it was nearing the end of October. I was still under contract until the next May, but I also had to be employed at my current position on December 31 in order to receive my annual bonus, which was going to be around $12,000.

I continued with the interview process and around the second week of November, I was offered a job with a pay raise of $4,000 per year on my base salary and a much better bonus program. However, I had two problems. I had a $7,000 + debt I would owe on the contract I signed if I left before May 1996 and I would be walking away from a $12,000 bonus that was already earned.

I told my potential new employer about the contract and after some phone calls, they agreed to pay the contract off for me. I agreed to take the job with a start date of January 2, 1996. The branch they were hiring me for had not had a manager for several months and was doing very poorly.

They wanted me to start immediately! I explained to them my situation with my bonus and how I could not leave before the end of the year. They had me bring in paperwork to verify that I really was going to get this bonus.

What A Deliverance!
When they received the paperwork, they agreed to pay me the bonus to have me start immediately! I received my bonus check a couple of weeks after I started and to my surprise the new company had also paid the income taxes for me! They had written the gross check for a little over $20,000.00! What a deliverance the Lord had worked out!

God had worked out something that in the natural could have never happened. But was this God's ultimate plan? Was this the expected end that He talked about?

In Psalm 35:27 we read, "...let the Lord be magnified, which hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant." Prosperity is a continuing event. It is not a one-time windfall. When I walked in the front door of that new job, I basically told the Lord, "I can take it from here!" Why? Because my prayer was focused on bailout while God was focused on divine purpose. I didn't tell the Lord I would take it from here, but we all know that actions speak louder than words.

I no longer took those walks where I was reminding the Lord of His promises. I was no longer on my living room floor after everyone else was asleep petitioning the Word of the Lord. I no longer did these things because the "pressure" was off.

I continued at this job with moderate success until the Lord started leading me in a direction that resulted in my being in fulltime ministry. What the Lord revealed to me that Sunday morning is that He had much more for me, but I was unwilling to continue pressing in.

What a shock!

Don't Stop Doing What You Did
The story I had told so many times as the biggest miracle in my life could have been even bigger if I would have kept doing what I was doing when the Lord delivered it into my hands.

I've told you all of this to make one very important point. When you break through in your circumstance, don't stop doing what you did to get the breakthrough. That breakthrough is just the tip of what God wants to do for you. He has a bigger plan and that is the plan He is working on.

Remember, He has an expected end for you and He is trying to get you there. Keep pressing in - your victory is coming! But more importantly, the fulfilling of the divine plan is being worked out!

Copyright © Fellowship of Hope
All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Author Biography

David Shipman
Web site: Covenant of Peace International
 
Pastor David Shipman is one of the founding pastors of Fellowship of Hope and presently serves as the Senior Pastor. He employs a very aggressive and responsive attitude toward the Word of God. Believing whole heartedly Jesus’ Words found in Mark 9:23, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.”
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