Embracing Your Covenant
May 1, 2024
Governing from the Plateau
May 8, 2024
Dealing with Petitions on Appeal
(Continued from Part 1 and Part 2)
The Magistrate then turned to the back of the ledger, and we saw the word “appeal.”
He explained, “Some of these are on appeal.”
Stephanie asked, “What does that mean? How do you mean they are on appeal?”
He replied, “The enemy has appealed some of them.”
Stephanie could see that the appeal was based on what the accuser kept saying regarding “the truth of the matter.”
I remarked, “For instance—”
The Magistrate asked, “What is the substance of things hoped for?”
Stephanie replied, “Faith.”
The Magistrate explained, “There are some areas where the enemy knows that there's a lack of faith regarding certain matters which has caused an appeal.”
Stephanie asked, “Is there a specific example?
He asked if she believed she was healed.
She replied, “I have been fighting for that. Is that my lack of faith? Can you give me another example?”
He responded, “Agreements.”
Stephanie saw the difference between what one person thinks should happen and what others think should happen regarding how we do things.
Stephanie stated, “But Magistrate, we can't control what other people’s thoughts are.”
He replied, “No, but you can forgive.”
Stephanie responded, “Okay. We do forgive them for not fully agreeing with a matter.”
She continued, “It seems like it would be difficult to manage, especially as we grow regarding many people's thought processes about matters.”
The Magistrate replied, “It causes an appeal, nonetheless.”
The scripture just came up about how can any walk together unless they agree (Amos 3:3).
Stephanie asked, “When we meet with Gloria, we can just ask if there are any appeals against supplications?”
“Yes, you can,” he replied.
I remarked, “Okay. For those who do not agree, we do forgive, bless, and release them for operating contrary to how we operate and not agreeing with our standards.”
Stephanie asked, “May we request that this appeal be overturned by this court as supplication of unity with the scriptures that were spoken of before that were specifically about agreement?” Where two or more agree upon a thing… (Matthew 18:19). We wanted that scripture added to the supplication.
In response she saw the word appeal and he put a red X across it.
I asked, “At this point, does it go back to the regular listing on the ledger?”
The reply was, “Yes, it goes back over on the ledger side.”
Reasons for Appeals
What are some other reasons the enemy might use to appeal a supplication? You have created a petition, you have added appropriate scriptures to provide legal precedent, you are standing in faith for that need, yet it the supplication has been appealed.
The enemy can know or at least presume that he can disqualify a supplication for any number of reasons. Here are some of the ones we have uncovered at this point.
Lack of Agreement
One of those reasons is a lack of agreement when agreement is required for a particular supplication. We will discuss an example of that in a short while.
Paul wrote in Colossians 1:15-17:
15 He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
‘All things’ includes the provision for needs that you are not aware of the existence of that are waiting for this time to appear. You may have a need for a certain amount of financial provision. The Father already has the provision arranged. He spoke to someone to sow a seed into your life and that seed comes into your hand at just the right moment. Perhaps you suddenly had the opportunity to earn some extra cash and that is how He provided for you. Perhaps you suddenly got a rebate or refund unexpectedly that was the precise amount that you needed at that time. Or perhaps an inheritance was released to you that had been held up until that time. Is it possible if those funds had been released earlier, they would have been spent elsewhere and not where the Father had in mind? Heaven is not limited in how provision can manifest for you or in you.
Failure in the Tithe
When you receive your paycheck, the tithe is already assigned from those funds, additionally, offerings are assigned from those funds. Maybe part of the funds will help pay your mortgage, buy groceries, or make the car payment. Because it has an assignment, we need to make sure we co-labor with Heaven so that those funds go where they are intended by Heaven.
All money has an assignment.
When you make a purchase at a store, a portion of those funds are eventually intended to provide a paycheck to the workers in that store, which in turn provides tithe income, offerings, house payments, groceries, shoes, etc. Money has an assignment. Help it get distributed properly.
Your tithe is not to buy your children’s shoes. It is not to buy groceries. It may be in your bank account, yet it does not belong to you. You are stewarding it for the family. It is the property of the Father, placed in your hands to teach you lessons of trust, faith, stewardship, and obedience (among other things). If you are petitioning for finances but have not been obedient to return the tithe to the storehouse to which you are assigned, the enemy can appeal your petition on those grounds. It is difficult for a farmer to have a harvest on seed that is not yet sown. Have we (as Malachi 3 says), robbed God with the tithe and/or offering? If I were farmer and I had plowed a field, planted the seed, and then cultivated it, I should have a reasonable expectation of harvest. The degree of harvest depends upon the quality of the field the seed is planted in.
For believers you want your seed planted:
Where you are assigned. You do not go shopping at one store and pay for the items at another store. If you are being fed from one location, but pay for it at another location, they have a word for that—stealing. If I went to a department store and picked up items, but did not pay for them at that store; rather, I took the items with me and paid the store down the street, they would consider that shoplifting. A lot of believers are shoplifters in that respect.
The promise of God in the tithe is that the devourer will be rebuked for your sake. If your seed is being devoured, it may well be that the devourer has a legal license to rob and steal from you. Malachi 3 makes it plain.
Some will argue that all your money belongs to the Lord and that the tithe is not a New Testament concept. They would be right on both parts. All your money belongs to the Lord, not just the tenth which is the tithe. The Father is only asking for a tenth, not the whole amount, so what is the problem? Also, it is not a New Testament concept. It even pre-dated the Old Covenant described in the some of the Old Testament. It is first shown with Abel’s tithe to the Lord in Genesis. Abraham tithed to Melchizedek. It is spoken of in Hebrews. It is not an Old Covenant concept nor is it a New Covenant concept. It predates the Old Covenant and supercedes the New Covenant.
Heaven does not consider the tithe as done away with by the cross. It is Heaven’s means of supporting the work and workers of the Kingdom so their focus can be on the reception and release of revelation to grow the sons. The sons of God should be the most generous people on the planet. Like the early church recorded in Acts, their generosity should impact and change the culture in which we live.
The reasons Mormons are able to accomplish so much and advertise so much is that approximately 80% of Mormons consistently tithe. The principles work whether you have everything altogether or not.
As a ministry, we have assignments and projects that we are to develop, fund, and grow. The funding for that is designed primarily to come through the faithful support of those the Father has assigned to join with us in our assignment. When the Father leads you or instructs you to join hands with a particular ministry, he does not assign your money to some other ministry that you may have formerly belonged to, or your favorite TV preacher. The tithe belongs in the storehouse. A storehouse is a repository for food. Are you being fed by a particular ministry? Then prove it by your faithfulness to support it with your tithe.
On another note, if you are assigned to a particular ministry and for some reason you decide to separate yourself from that ministry, the tithe that would go to support that ministry is still assigned to where you are assigned, not necessarily where you attend. Until you are released from the ministry to which you are assigned, the tithe still belongs with that ministry and the leader of that ministry is not obligated to release you from the obligation.
Malachi 3:10 instructs us to bring ALL the tithe into the storehouse. We do not have any scriptural precedent for splitting the tithe between several different ministries.
In that passage, the Lord has promised to open the windows of Heaven (release revelation in abundance). According to Malachi 3:9, the whole nation is affected by the disobedience of one or a few. Certainly not the entire nation was refusing to tithe, but because many were refusing to tithe, it impacted the entire nation. Verse 9 says,
You are cursed with a curse for you have robbed me—the whole nation. When you refuse to tithe you are not merely robbing God, you are also robbing from your fellow sons. All are affected by obedience, and all are affected by disobedience.
Many times, we face financial shortfalls because we have not been responsible stewards. The Father has a remedy for that, but it requires our obedience at the most basic of levels.
Lack of Faith
Earlier in this chapter we discussed one reason for appealing a petition, which was a lack of faith. As we grow in sonship, more and more of the religious mindsets that many of us still carry will be shed from us. The late apostle, Lester Sumrall, once defined faith as simply knowing God.
Numbers 23:19 tells us:
19 God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
20 Behold, I have received a command to bless; He has blessed, and I cannot reverse it.
Isaiah 55:9-11:
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. 10 For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11 so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
We need to develop an unshakeable faith and confidence like Solomon who had seen the promise of God fulfilled in the children of Israel and recorded in 1 Kings 8:56:
Blessed be the LORD, who has given rest to His people Israel, according to all that He promised. There has not failed one word of all His good promise, which He promised through His servant Moses.
Paul had an unshakeable faith as did Abraham and the others listed in Hebrews 11. May we, like Lester Sumrall, know God—He is not a man that He should lie.
According to Mark 11:22, it is not even our faith that we must have. We already possess faith originating from the Father. Do you suppose He has any trouble believing for anything? He and Jesus are not sitting in Heaven looking down at you and your situation and saying, “Oh my, we didn’t see that coming! What are we going to do?”
No! Before there was ever a need for a need, the provision was already set aside and earmarked for you in Heaven. The supplication is part of the requisition process to get the resources of the Kingdom into your hand. You want to go from merely supplication to the acquisition of the thing you need.
False Narratives
If we are under the impression that we can enter this court without being honest and truthful, and without presenting a true narrative, then we are grossly mistaken. There can be no falsehood here. A supplication can be appealed because you are presenting false evidence. You must remember to mind your mouth. You cannot come into this court in intimacy and lie. You cannot present anything false in this court because of intimacy. There will be those that will try to enter this court one way and they will leave another. It is one thing to know that you are a son, but it is another thing to be arrogant about it.
For example, as we make a petition and we are only telling the favorable part of the story to the Court and not admitting our failures and repenting of them to the Court, we can expect an appeal by the enemy on our supplication. Presenting a false narrative is typically based on pride and not wanting to be seen as “less than” in other’s eyes, but we must be transparent, telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (which is the oath one typically takes in the courts of law in the United States of America). One of the ten commandments is to not bear false witness (Exodus 20:16) and we would do well to remember that.
Hidden Motives
Heaven knows our motivations for doing what we do.
No secrets exist in Heaven.
For instance, there have been cases when someone would pray for a divorce between a married couple. However, the hidden motive was this: the one doing the praying was “in love” with one of the partners and wanted any opposition moved out of the way. You do not want that prayer to be answered because it is simply wrong on several accounts.
Asking Malcolm what some other hidden motives are, he gave me a scenario of the people in Heaven, who, without judging us, simply know everyone’s motives in Heaven. If we could only realize that Heaven (and hell) know our motives. We cannot bring hidden motive into this court. We cannot operate with hidden motives. Heaven and hell know our motives.
Pride
We have already mentioned a bit about pride, but we must look at it from some other angles. Do we want to maintain our status or stature in front of others and do we want prayers answered that would reinforce that motivation? James 4:3 tells us that we may be asking and not receiving because we are asking for the wrong reason—we have the wrong motivation behind what we are doing.
If we want to keep up appearances of some sort, that is a demonstration of pride being involved. We do not want to be found wrong about a matter and so we operate in pride and will not allow the higher road of humility to be the one we travel. Instead, we travel the lower road of pride.
Proverbs 16:18-19:
18 Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
19 Better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.
Humility must always be a part of our lives. As sons, we must understand that sonship is a privilege, and we cannot be arrogant about it. We have been graced by our heavenly Father to be called and adopted as sons. Let us not forget how that came about.
Frustration
When we present a petition in frustration, we can often be doing so out of a motivation to make things better for ourselves and not to benefit the other party.
When frustration is in operation, often love is not.
The word frustrate means to set aside, to cast off, or to disesteem. When we operate in frustration, we are not esteeming the other party. I have been guilty of this. I do not want it to be a regular practice, but it has happened. We may have a situation within the ministry where someone’s actions are extremely frustrating, but when I realize that if I am reacting to frustration, I am disesteeming the other party, I am setting aside the other party or not hearing the real reason for their behavior. It takes grace to esteem them properly. Paul instructs us in Philippians 2:3:
Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. (Emphasis added)
Let us be aware of the pit that frustration digs for all the parties involved and not let it be a part of our motivations in our petitions before the Lord.
Be assured that in this court, if you come in one way, you WILL leave another. We always want to be pliable before the Lord and subject to his instructions, not arrogant, not prideful, not a “know it all.” A know it all really does not know as much as they like to think. Let us always rely on the one who knows all and sees all.
We have the promise of Mark 4:22:
For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light. (Emphasis added)
The same principle is found in Matthew 10:26, Luke 8:17, and Luke 12:2. We need not think our stuff can stay hidden.
We also have the promise of Psalm 9:8:
You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your countenance.
Let us own up to our junk and come before the courts with pure hearts borne of intimacy with the Father. It is all an outgrowth of intimacy.
Love is the motivator.
The enemy knows, and believe me—he will try to inflict such various challenges upon the sons to keep them from entering this place because he is not welcome.
