Summary

Show Notes

• The problem of placing new believers into immediate church work.Many believers begin doing tasks before learning to walk with the Lord or being led by the Spirit.
• Learning to wait on the Lord.New believers must be trained in waiting on God, His Word, and His Spirit.
• The shift from individuality to oneness.God is moving His people from isolated spiritual lives into a connected Body where every joint supplies.
• Why small groups matter.Smaller gatherings foster relationship, impartation, safety, trust, and real spiritual growth.
• Impartation versus teaching.Growth happens through spiritual impartation, not just instruction.
• The supernatural nature of the Body.Structure alone won’t work—only the Holy Spirit brings unity and transformation.
• Being set into the Body by God.Believers are placed into spiritual family "as it pleases Him," not through personal choice or human organization.
• Challenges of relationships and spiritual dealings.God uses relationships, confrontation, and family dynamics to help believers grow.
• The importance of humility and openness.Believers must be willing to receive help, ask for help, and open their hearts to God and others.

Quotes

• "You can't be working for God—you need to work with God." — Ed
• "Impartation, not teaching, changes a believer's spiritual level." — Ron
• "God is drawing people into a oneness, not individual walks." — Ron
• "You’re set into the Body as it pleases Him—not as it pleases you." — Ken
• "Small groups create a safe place where relationships purify and grow." — Ron
• "If you're talked into a walk with God, someone can talk you right out of it." — Mike
• "It's all about your heart, not your nominal thinking." — Ken
• "If you lose the relationship with the Lord, you've lost it all." — Ron

Scriptural References

Takeaway

Ken: One of the biggest problems that we see in Christianity today is the fact that people find the Lord, they open their hearts and receive the Lord immediately. They come in and somebody wants to put them to work, and the problem with that is whether they're ready or not, they start doing the things that they're asked to do. There's a problem in that we need to have the Holy Spirit working in us and through us to do His will in the works. That's what we're to do. We need to be led by the Spirit.

Ron: Depending on how mature this believer is that comes into a church, the believer himself should be waiting on the Lord and praying and seeking the face of God earnestly to find out, Where do you want me? What do you want me to do, if anything? The Lord may just want him to, for a time, just be with Him. But you're right, if they just dive into whatever the pastor or people are asking him to do, probably not a great idea, right? At first anyway.

Ed: A new believer, they really don't know what waiting on the Lord is. They don't know what a lot of these things that they're supposed to be doing. When they had the New Testament church, a person would come in, they would just sit there and start talking about the Lord and what He's doing, not trying to get somebody to get out to start doing something. Now you need to find out. Now you need to get into the Word. Now you need to get into the functioning in the Spirit, and you don't get that by going there and doing something that the group wants you to do. You've got to be trained when you first start in the Lord—trained to wait on the Lord, trained to get into His Word. That's for even for most Christians, that's one of the hardest things for them to do.They can't do it. They just, for some reason, they can't get it going daily.

Ron: I think that what you're hitting on, Ed, is there's some important points in that. One is that as new believers come into a group, whether it's a church or a prayer group or whatever it is, I think it's important to realize that the old ways of individuality—where you come in, but now I'm gonna walk with the Lord as an individual—God's kinda doing away with that. He's really drawing people into a oneness and into a flow of the body ministry. I think that's really changing in the Spirit, whereas people will come in and they're drawn into the center of the camp by a—by the group, and the group begins to minister to them, begins to impart to them. It's not even so much teaching as it is an impartation. That impartation, their spiritual level begins to grow. And we've all seen this. We've seen people come in, they just hang out more than anything. They just hang out, they listen. You can see the way they're talking. Everything starts changing. You can feel the Spirit begin to move on their spirit.

I think the old ways where a Christian would come in and be accepted and go to work for Jesus—basically, if you really scrutinized his path, you'd see that he was still an individual, not really drawn in by the group, because there was really not a group. It's just a bunch of individuals trying to walk with God, and they come together maybe one time a week or twice, and they call themselves a church or a family or whatever they call themselves. But they really aren't, because God hasn't welded them into that oneness by the Holy Spirit. But that's what He's doing now.

Debbie: Yeah. See, that's a problem though, because a lot of churches, they don't know how to be one. They don't know how to minister as one. They try and they think they're doing it, but they have nothing of the Spirit behind it. Like you said, it has to be imparted. You have to impart it—oneness together.

Ken: I think you're hitting something, Debbie, that is really important, because if you come into a large church, or even a church over a hundred, you're one number in a hundred. I think it's important, if there is a large church, find a small group of people that are having home meetings. Get into a place where they're teaching the Bible, talking the Bible, praying together, for an impartation in that group. But it has to start somewhere, and I think a smaller group is a lot easier.

Mike: You're not bucking against the system. Babloyn has a system and it prevents people from coming into oneness. It's because the system is geared for division literally just by the way it functions. It's only by the fact that, like you said, Ken, when you get into the smaller groups and you're out from underneath that system, then you can begin to see how the Lord moves, where every joint supplies, everybody's contributing, and you start to get a sense of maturing and oneness coming into play. Where you don't get that feeling in the big churches, you're lost, like you say, in a numbers game. The bigger it is, the more lost you are, and you don't really feel one with this big group.

Ken: So you want to get into a smaller group. One reason would be that you need to interact in that group with the Word, and the longer you're there, the more you're going to be hearing what God's speaking to your heart as an individual. But then you come to a place where it's no longer about the individual, but about the whole of the group ministering to one another in the Spirit of love. When you have a smaller group, you tend to build bridges to each one of them, and there is something that you're attached to in your own heart for each one of those people. And you begin to pray for them, believe for them, and allow something to happen. You begin to minister to one another. And that's a key fact. As a body of Christ, we're ministering to one another, but it has to start on a small level.

Ed: You can't be working for God, but what you need to do is you need to work with God, and that brings that Spirit of oneness together. When you are working with God, you don't have as much yourself in it, because you come into the group and you're ministering to one another. That's what the early church did—ministered to one another. It wasn't the thing where they were trying to build a church or something like that. No. They were ministering to one another. And as they ministered to one another, the Spirit of the Lord came upon them and the Spirit of the Lord led them.

Ron: Yeah. We have to remember that this is a supernatural work, no matter how you structure it. If the Holy Spirit is not in the center of it, it doesn't work. It's not mechanics. And we can describe mechanics from a point of having it, seeing it working because Holy Spirit's in the midst of us. But you could take the same mechanics without the Holy Spirit and it doesn't work.

Ken: We're not building individual ministries for ourselves. We're building up the body of Christ, and that's the whole objective in being a part of what God is doing in the earth, because He's looking for His family to function, to build each other up, to create a love-flow in that relationship where you can come in and just feel like you've come into a safe place. You feel at home.

Ron: And the small groups lends itself to such an intimacy in relationship, to be honest. You begin to develop relationships with each one in a very intimate word level, spirit level, and God begins to purify those relationships. And then they can be a unit in themselves to begin to impart to other people, other groups.

Mike: The other thing is, you don't know how many people have come into, quote, a walk with God by being talked into it. If you're talked into it, somebody can come along and talk you right out of it. There has to be a revelation in there somewhere of the Lord Himself and of His Word, and they're both the same. That's another revelation in itself. When you realize that, then things take on a different light.

Ken: I think we have to go back and understand that God through Christ is going to set you—whoever you are—into the body as it pleases Him. If you're set into the body, you're one of the group, you're one of the body, you're one of the little fellowship, and that's where the Lord can minister to your heart.

Ron: And see, that goes back to square one. You don't join a church. You can, if that's your thinking. But honestly, what the Word says is, like you said, Ken, you are set in the body as it pleases Him, not pleases you. And if you really get a revelation of that—that God actually led you to that place—even though you may have thought that you’ve church-shopped or whatever you thought you were doing, but God had His hand on you to lead you and put you into the family or to the body as it pleased Him. If you have a revelation of that, then when God starts turning up the heat and starts working with your spirit and working in relationships, you don't run away.

God leads somebody somewhere, and you know they have a honeymoon time where it's just wonderful, and everybody—they love everybody. Everybody loves them. There's a great flow and it's great. And then God starts putting the dealings on them because He wants to grow them up. And all of a sudden you're going, “Whoa, this pastor did this,” and whatever. And you start going, you start backing off or putting walls up, and pretty soon you're gone.

Ken: Right there is why you need the family.

Mike: Yeah.

Ken: There's going to be people that say and do things that are going to be confronting to you as a new person. You don't know how to deal with it, what to think about it. But when you have that small group that you trust—where it's a safe place and you can open your heart—then with an open heart you can receive the answers and be assured that you're not alone. This is a process. This is something God has done and will continue to do in every new believer.

Debbie: And if you want a relationship with others, you've got to open up your heart to the Lord first and let the Lord lead you. Ask the Lord to give you someone to talk to that can help you. Remember what Philip did for the Ethiopian eunuch. The guy was reading the Scriptures and didn't understand it, so Philip helped him to understand. God provided Philip. You have to be able to say, I need help.

Ron: Most Christians don't realize how much our relationship with the Lord is number one, and number two, and number three, and number four, and everything actually is to come out of that relationship with the Lord. I think it's a process because none of us start with a deep relationship with the Lord. We go through a process of purifying. God works with us. We come in and we're excited. We've had a touch from the Lord. We're excited. If you lose the principal focus and relationship with the Lord, you've lost it all.

Ken: It's important that you initiate this by getting into the Word, hungering and thirsting after righteousness—whatever that means to you—until the Lord reveals to you what He's trying to get through to your heart. It's all about your heart. It's not about your mind. It's not about your nominal thinking. This is about your heart, the Spirit of God coming into you and making Himself real to you.