So I want to just honour you and appreciate you've come back continuing on the training. It'll be like what we've done before. There'll be teaching, then there'll be an opportunity to just practice ministering to one another. Now I don't want to scare you all out to cast out demons. I want to just [laughter] - the biggest thing in this area is to just be able to learn how to flow with the Holy Spirit, so we'll outline for you some foundational teaching related to deliverance and healing, and then particularly focus on activations, on learning to flow with the Holy Spirit, because this is the key. So no matter what you learn, listening to the Holy Spirit, working with Him, is foundationally the most important part of this area of ministry.
So in the first session what I want to do is look at apostolic anointing and ministry. The other two seminars we didn't do the session on that. I just left you with the notes on it, but I do want to touch on the area of apostolic anointing and ministry. We're going to go through some brief, just some foundational concepts on this and I want you to just open your heart to let God shift you in your own thinking about ministry and your role in ministry.
So Father in heaven, we just honour You. We thank You You're with us tonight. We thank You it's in Your heart that we be equipped and prepared. We thank You for all that Jesus did for us on the cross, and we are convinced that we can honour You most if we take what was done on the cross for us individually, and we apply it to our lives, then learn how to minister to others and bring them into the freedom that Jesus earned for us. We just thank you for each one that's here tonight, the sacrifice, the commitment, the time that they've set aside for this training, and we ask Lord that You would come, Your anointing would be here, all the teaching would be very clear, and there would be a flow of Your presence to help us in this time that we're here. Lord, we give You all the honour and glory - and everyone said... [Amen.] Amen.
Okay, this first session we're going to look at the area of Apostolic Anointing and Ministry. The first thing I want to look at, is that God is raising up apostolic people. Now let me just describe what we mean by that. Let's have a look at a verse here in Mark, Chapter 3, Verses 14 and 15. It says - read it at Verse 13 - Jesus went up the mountain, and called to Him those He Himself wanted to come, and they came to Him. Then He appointed twelve. Notice what it says - He appointed, He positioned them, or set them in place, for a purpose, so from the beginning of Jesus' ministry, He had a purpose in mind that involved multiplying His ministry, raising up other people. Sometimes we can get the idea that some of this work in ministry is just for a few selected people. This is not true, and I'll show you progressively how Jesus started with the 12, and then expanded His ministry to include you and me.
So it says in Mark 3, He appointed the twelve, one, that they would be with Him. The first and foundation for all ministry is learning how to be in the presence of Jesus, learning how to build intimacy with Him. All ministry flows out of your relationship with Him; secondly, that He might send them out to preach, so the word send is the word Apostallar. It's the word which is hard to translate into English, so they translate it: apostolic. It's almost like they've taken the word, oh it's too hard to do anything with, let's just Anglicise it, and make it apostolic, so when you here the word apostolic you may think of the church down the road as the Apostolic Church, or you may think of apostolic movement, or you look and you think, that must mean the 12 apostles. Often there's a lot of confusion around apostolic. Now the Bible is clear that God has set in the church a number of ministries, and it says: He has set - in 1 Corinthians 12, He's set first apostles, then prophets, then teachers, then working of miracles, and then a range of other gifts.