In May 2011, Martin Scott was the speaker at the YWAM France School of Intercession at the "Gault-la-Forêt" base in the Champagne region of France. The topic centered around the concept of Spiritual Mapping, but the amount of time given to Martin allowed him to synthesize into that topic many of the different themes that he regularly deals with in his prophetic ministry. This is really a fabulous opportunity to gain a holistic understanding of the dynamics of the Body of Christ actually bringing transformation to a city or region. Another way of looking at that is the intersection of The Body of Christ with a location and what that is supposed to mean for the manifestation of the Kingdom of God in that place and why it sometimes doesn’t work out as it should.
The teaching is given in English and translated into French. This is also a good opportunity to brush up on your French if you’re so inclined! The recording was done with a hand-held digital recorder so the quality is not the best. I’ve post-processed it some to try and clean it up…listener beware.
I’ve been tracking off and on with Martin Scott since around 2002-ish and find him inspiringly provocative! Those provocations have been one of several key ingredients to my personal growth and the growth of my theology. As a prophet, Martin frequently has had specific perspective about the times in which we live and often for each new year. I don’t think he’s posted a specific word about 2011, but in mid-January he and Gayle, his wife, were at Family church near Sacramento where two messages were recorded that I think create a provocative (there’s that word again) context for how to journey with God in His destiny for us and the world during these really extraordinary days in which we find ourselves.
Certainly personally, and I think as an American, destination has been more my focus than journey. I struggle to appreciate most journeys and usually have my telescope out to scan the horizon for the destination. Martin is one who repeatedly brings me back to the profound truth of journey in our lives and in the tapestry of redemptive history. How to move forward with purpose and a deep-seated hope and joy when you’re filled with genuine questions without easy answers is often difficult (at least for me) and yet I am convinced that it is our calling in this season of world history and in being the Church sown into the World. I think Martin makes a great hands-on tour guide!
Be provoked and enjoy the ride (If you’re like me, you may have to get back on and enjoy the ride a few times!)
I’ve been wanting to express my frustration and excitement for some time now with respect to some of the revelation distributed to different places in the Body of Christ:
Excitement – fabulous revelation that will change how we think and usher us into new realms in God and new dimensions of the manifestation of His Kingdom concretely here on earth if we will just get this stuff into us at a heart level.
Frustration – people whom I respect, either personally or from afar based on their body of teaching and ministry, who contradict each other in aspects of their teaching. Contradiction is not necessarily a bad thing and is certainly not to be unexpected when groping to discover the Infinite God with finite minds and weak hearts. Where it becomes frustrating for me is the passion with which those “on one side” of a perspective categorize and label others.
Of course we all do it! 🙁 I was just in a church meeting Sunday afternoon where the diversity of perspectives, personalities and communication styles was exhilarating…which at first blush means: “Dang I wish they’d just shut-up!” I was seriously exhilarated and pleased by the diversity, but I was also seriously annoyed as a first reaction! 😉 As another example, just yesterday I was in the parking lot of a local supermarket waiting on Angela and Olivia who were inside shopping. While waiting I observed the stream of people arriving and leaving. One car caught my attention as it maneuvered slowly, directly in front of me, into it’s parking spot with its three occupants. You could see the visible signs of brokenness on what I supposed was a family. You could see where they needed a radical change of perspective and the gracious healing that only Jesus could bring. Unfortunately all of this “hindsight description” that sounds so spiritual manifests itself in my heart initially simply as “Ewww! What a depressing sight!” So, I admit, I put labels on people and I don’t do it with amazingly objective compassion and love.
That being said, when it comes to how we perceive God and His Kingdom I really think it’s important to realize that at the same time that we are being stunned by the depth and breadth of some revelation, our perception, our perspective, is really amazingly limited and small. I’ve attempted to represent it with an image in this mashup of clipart (ugly but I think it gets the idea across):
God and His Kingdom are so vast and multi-faceted that eternity will not be long enough for us to understand and experience everything. What I see/hear when I listen to/read about various revelations of who God is, how He acts, what His Kingdom is all about, etc. is more like this following image:
In this image, there is the logical realization that others do hold different perspectives, but over-simplification distorts reality and there is a tendency to lump all other perspectives into a few clearly defined camps that are then easier to dismiss. What happens then is that group “A” presents arguments as to why perspective “B” doesn’t really work. Group “A” will have some good points about their objections, but will neglect the fact that “B” is not really summed up that easily and that there are groups that they’ve lumped into “B” that hold to certain facets of that perspective but are really based on perspective “C”, etc. The fact of the matter is, that one needs to sink deep into the perspective of the other to see what they see and understand what they understand. I think when walking a mile in another man’s moccasins, we often stop after about 100 yards and are pretty sure our conclusions won’t change…forgetting how many miles we had to walk to gain our perspective.
So with that little soapbox dealt with, I want to present two different series of teachings. One is Martin’s Scott’s fabulous, line-upon-line presentation of a “framework” for developing an eschatological perspective broken down into 40 (that’s right 40! ) 15-minute podcasts. Both the podcasts and their transcripts can be found on his great and lively blog site (worth connecting with): https://3generations.eu/blog/?page_id=2640
The other is one of Mike Bickle’s many teaching series. Mike and the worshiping intercessors at IHOP in Kansas City have focused a LOT on eschatology in the last 10 years. They have come to many different conclusions than has Martin (who is more interested in creating a healthy framework for interpretation than to be rigid in interpretation). There are many other series specifically on the End Times on Mike’s site, but I chose one called “The Beauty Realm of God“, which is 8, 1-hour messages specifically on Revelation 4-5. The reason is that this series lays the foundation for the IHOP “framework” of how they view eschatology. So you kind of have two different “eschatological interpretation frameworks” if not really two different rigid eschatology theologies. I think they are both valuable to explore… deeply …as they both include rich, rich truth not presented in the other. You’ll have to deal with some unresolved tension however as there are definitely conflicting aspects to what they’ve concluded based on their perspectives.
Have you caught the force of God’s wind for you for this year? This decade? While I think that vision and plan like an airline itinerary is probably the exception, I do believe that because God wants us to regularly come to Him for loving communion and Kingdom direction that He gave us times and seasons. They are a gift to us propel us in regular movement towards His heart; into His embrace; forward in Kingdom advancement, etc.
So, for me the turn of the year is a special time of anticipation to catch the wind of the Spirit for the coming year and to more fully understand the year that just passed. What did 2009 make possible? What does 2010…indeed the whole decade…hold for us?!
In addition to hearing directly from the Lord Himself, our Father desires that His children listen to each other…(that’s what friends and brothers and sisters do…it’s called relationship). So, I’m a big fan of regular listening to voices that I know are pressing into the Lord’s heart. They have keys that will help me unlock doors.
If you don’t already have your collection of sources that speak to you, you’re welcome to mine!
Here’s a message from Bill Johnson called “The Power of a Promise” speaking about Isaiah 45:1-3 and the life that God puts on a word that He give you. This is a passage that Bill feels is important for this year. Then there are several blog posts with various prophetic voices and discussions about 2010 and a link to the archives of the OneThing conference that happens at the turn of every year in Kansas City. Why don’t you post links to sources that have spoken to you in the comments? The wind of the Spirit is blowing for 2010. Get your sails up!
I’m not quite sure where all this topic will go, and I’ll probably write a few posts about it as I think it requires a multi-faceted exploration. These musings were provoked by some blog posts by Martin Scott a couple of months ago. He posited stewardship as the appropriate governing perspective (my terminology) for the Body of Christ over against nationalism and patriotism. I really liked that idea straight away as it put words to the uneasiness I’ve often felt with patriotism; particularly in the way I’ve found it expressed within the Body of Christ.
Simply questioning patriotism in many circles is unheard of and indeed negatively provocative. I’m less interesting in stirring up a hornets nest however, by attacking patriotism, per se, than I am in exploring what stewardship could really mean in its fullest expression. My thought is that for the follower of Jesus, living a full expression of stewardship would make patriotism a lot less energizing.
Obviously the working definition of all these words can be hard to pin down and can lead to a fair amount of heated discussion. I’ll try to explain my terms as I’m using them as I go. That doesn’t mean everybody has to agree with me, of course.
I titled this Stewardship – God’s original plan? because I believe this really begins back in Genesis 1:26,28 with God’s creation of the cosmos and man. I believe that God gave Adam (and then with Eve) a small (?) parcel of land to steward (Genesis 2:8,15). I tend to think that the Garden of Eden was a “partially tamed” land to teach mankind some essential truths about how this whole thing – life, creation, relationship with God, etc. – was supposed to work…with the idea that these experiential understandings were to be applied to the rest of God’s creation. What was it that they were to understand? Certainly a lot more than I can imagine, but here’s a short list oriented to what I’d like to discuss:
God’s creation is a living gift
The gift is given, with love, by our Heavenly Papa to us
Like all life in the current created order, it needs investment to flourish – a lack of investment will either kill it or cause it to grow malignantly/incorrectly
God provides for us
One of the chief ways that He intends to provide for us is via the creation He gives us as a gift
To summarize, He set up Creation and Man in Creation to have a symbiotic relationship. Man helps Creation flourish and Creation’s life becomes life-giving for Man. All of this is intended to be in a context of a growing relationship with God as Father. The joyful, probably limitless, treasure hunt that God has instilled in the created order is there to provide us and Him joy as we seek His heart and and He reveals clues to us as to how His Creation works. He desires that we mature and become more and more creative and loving just like Him. I also happen to think that this maturation process is part of preparing a Bride for Jesus…i.e. a creative Body of Christ to be equally yoked to the Creator for eternity…but that’s another story! 😉
This last weekend, I went to a conference in Germany with some others from our church here in France. In order to get my German ear stimulated again (one of the teachings was actually in Spanish, translated into German…fun to see how much I understood!), I revisited the fabulous site online-predigt.de where one can find a huge deposit of downloadable teachings in MP3 format. Most are all in German but a fairly large percentage are from English-language speakers translated into German. Some of my favorite teachers can be found there so I get a good teaching and it’s translated into German as well. Highly recommended!
Anyway, I listened to this teaching by Martin Scott from the Gideon’s Army/Target Europe conference in Hanover in 2001. Very timely for what we experienced this weekend in our conference in Germany. His primary topic was intergenerational anointings and before he spoke about that he also had a preamble about partnership and how we, who are rooted in a given locality can partner with those who have been called and sent from somewhere else and how this partnership accelerates God’s purposes in a given geographic location. The two topics are related as well…an excellent and strategic teaching that is not stale seven years later.
In my ongoing quest to juxtapose two teachings that come from different perspectives, yet both say very important things, I offer to you a teaching by Martin Scott called “Prophet as sign” and a two-part teaching by Dave Sliker of IHOP called “Signs of the Times.”
Both speakers make excellent, if divergent points about “signs” and I believe there is value in holding these somewhat divergent perspectives in tension. It’s the “triangulation” of two valid, well-thought-out, biblically-justified, coming-from-godly-people, and yet divergent perspectives with what we feel is God’s perspective that brings “3D” depth to our otherwise “2D” theological understanding. So, while I’m not encouraging that we simply listen to something and then find someone who disagrees so that we can wallow in discord, I am saying that we can increase our depth and breadth of understanding of who God is, His heart, and His plans when we tenaciously (in prayer and meditation) hold in tension two such perspectives.
Those provocations have been one of several key ingredients to my personal growth and the growth of my theology. As a prophet, Martin frequently has had specific perspective about the times in which we live and often for each new year. I don’t think he’s posted a specific word about 2011, but in mid-January he and Gayle, his wife, were at 
