There is no such thing as equal honor. That is a misnomer.
“Honor your parents the same as you honor all other adults, yourself, your brother, your milkman’s uncle, and any peabody you encounter in the mall” is not a commandment.
In fact, we do not honor all people. We do not honor everyone. We do not honor equally. We do not honor by any other criteria than God’s design and definition for relational dynamics.
Honor and Role
The first commandment with a promise is “honor father and mother.” It assumes you have parents because it assumes that we live in kingdom culture. It assumes a norm that is no longer a norm in most modern cultures. It assumes the norms of the kingdom culture as a basis for understanding who and how to honor, in other words.
We honor parents as God designs and defines family, and we represent God in our honor of God’s design and definition. Otherwise, we dishonor and misrepresent God.
If you honor parents, the two-fold promise is: 1) long life, and, 2) your inheritance will flourish.
If you do not honor parents, you void the promise and your length of life and inheritance production are not tied to blessing. What happens is not connected to kingdom at all and must be measured by other natural factors.
Honor the king.” We do not honor the king as a god. We do not honor the king as a father. We do not honor the king as a source. We do not honor the king in any other way but as a king. We discover the role God designs and defines a king to have in a kingdom, and we represent God in our honor of God’s design and definition.
“Honor to whom honor is due.” God decides what honor is due. We honor as God decides in order to honor God. When we refuse to honor as God decides, we rebel. We dishonor God and misrepresent Him.
“Honor a prophet as a prophet…” Jesus says that honor for a prophet has to do with honoring him or her in the role God sends them to fulfill. If I honor a prophet as a brother, I receive a brother’s reward, not a prophet’s reward. I only get from God what I honor as God designs and defines the role of the person representing God.
Honor always flows toward God because God’s designs and definitions flow toward me in the roles of kingdom culture.
We have lost kingdom culture, we don’t know we’ve lost it.
There is no such thing as equal honor.
We always honor according God’s design and definition of leadership roles. The idea that we honor everyone is false. The idea that we find something to honor in everyone is heathen. The idea that we honor one another is Biblical, but we honor one another by the role God designs and defines, not by our own designs and definitions.
Leadership Honor
The point at which honor is most obvious is the point at which leadership submission is tested.
For example, the extreme of leadership role design and definition can be seen in the redefinition of leadership roles.
“Leave father and mother and cleave to your wife.” A man and women still have parents, and they still honor them as parents, but kingdom covenant marriage redefines the role of parents.
When separation comes to any leadership role, the manner of redefinition measures the honor due. In this way, we most often see horrifying dishonor play out when the people to be honored are not the people in charge of the process of redefinition.
Consider that the process of leave and cleave is a process governed by the parents the couple is leaving, not the couple getting married. It is dishonorable to avoid this role of father and mother. It is always dishonorable for the children to redefine the role of parents in their lives, as if they can design and define “honor” on any other basis than God’s design and definition.
So. in any circumstance where a valid and authentic redefinition of leadership role occurs, the person due honor is the person in charge of the process of redefinition, and the person being separated to is not.
Kingdom Assignment and Alignment
If a person has no alignment for their assignment, they stand run a position of dishonor. They live in dishonor. They function without honor. They dishonor God and misrepresent God in kingdom culture.
Strong words? Yes, but let’s examine the reason for the strong words.
God alone designs and defines the roles, relationships, and responsibilities of kingdom culture. We never adapt kingdom to existing culture, and we never sacrifice God’s designs and definitions to the prince of this world and his spiritual conspiracy against King Jesus.
To get kingdom right, we establish kingdom culture. We do not establish a community because community is a byproduct of culture. If we start a community without establishing kingdom culture, we never get to kingdom culture at all. We simply devise our own scheme of what is common to us all, and those distinctives serves to design and define roles and relationships. Then, we have to produce our own values, beliefs, and behaviors. We build a subculture that ignores God’s culture. We do not build or expand kingdom at all.
Each person is created for a purpose, to fulfill a purpose. God knows that each person, fully redeemed and matured in function will fit perfectly in that assignment. The process of preparing and positioning lies with the kingdom leadership dynamics (the fivefold), and each brick of the building, part of the body, and piece of bridal adornment comes into alignment with the blueprints God gives those kingdom leaders.
Honor means submission to those leaders.
Separated To
When a person’s leadership is changed in the kingdom, it never assumes a “we are finished” condition. When it does, we are waiting for reconciliation before we can properly align. We cannot drop alignment and arbitrarily align anywhere, anyone, and anytime.
God Who creates, redeems, and restores, also assigns, aligns, and authorizes.
We have a tremendous amount of rebellion in the kingdom at present that ignores God’s designs and definitions, loves chaos and selfish ambition, fights for devilish false equality, and lives for heathen entitlement.
All this chaos comes from the fact that we have lost kingdom culture, and we don’t know we’ve lost it.
We are never separated from. We are always separated to.
The “separated to” phrase means, “enlarge and expand the boundaries of authorized assignment from this same point of alignment.”
When we separate from, we leave everything behind and start over. When we separate to, we take everything with us to the next season of growth.
There is no such thing as equal honor.
Only a rebel seeks equal honor. Only a person who refuses to submit seeks equal honor. Only a person who dishonor God seeks equal honor.
God has favorites. By the very definition of “favor,” we become aware that God has favorites.
In turn, by the very definition of “honor,” we become aware that honor responds to leadership roles that are not equal. Someone on earth beside God is the boss. Family, Kingdom. Government.
The present mess and confusion is no being addressed but dressed up. We now have clothing stores at which to purchase the getup of rebellion, and the franchise grow in number every month.
You Are Not in Charge
If you wish to remain in charge of your life, you should get saved.
Immediately you are born in Spirit, you belong to Someone else. “You do not belong to yourself. You were purchase for a price,” Paul says. You already belonged to someone, but now you belong to God.
You are not in charge of your life. You must decide who to serve, but you are completely deceived if you think you are in charge of your life. The” influences you choose” are not exclusively from inside you. Ever.
At no time does your maturity earn you independence from kingdom culture. Just the opposite – your maturity positions you for greater submission to more fully fulfill purpose.
So, when you are assigned to leaders, living in alignment with them by God’s design and definition, and you decide that you are supposed to cease operating in that alignment because you are about to change assignment, you misunderstand completely how kingdom and kingdom culture operate. You become another victim of church-anity and modern charismatic Woodstock approaches to representing Jesus.
We are in danger, at the very time we are called to restore kingdom and kingdom culture, of becoming even more rebellious of God’s designs and definitions!
When Paul and Barnabas were marked for a “separate to” moment, Holy Spirit didn’t tell them what to do. Holy Spirit told the leaders what to do. Why? Because the process is always a kingdom process, not a personal process.
Kill this thought: “I am in charge of my destiny.” Once that stops kicking and bleeds out, you are ready to hear God’s way of doing things better.
The term “separate to” speaks to how to set boundaries. In this case, it means that Paul and Barnabas has had certain designed and defined boundaries of kingdom assignment that are now going to be expanded and redefined. This will result in a redefinition of leadership roles and personal roles resulting in a new definition of honor for them both.
They will experience redefinition of relationship toward one another and toward the leaders in Antioch and toward the entire kingdom of God. They are told by God what this redefinition will be by the leaders with which they have alignment, and the alignment will not cease or change. The assignment will expand! This means that everyone run Antioch steps into increase, and no one in this process lives with decrease.
You are never in charge of leaving a ministry or entering a ministry. You are in charge of obeying God’s designs and definitions for the roles of kingdom leaders.
We have lost kingdom culture, and we don’t know we’ve lost it.
There is no such thing as equal honor.
Equal honor means insurrection, anarchy, rebellion, and witchcraft will govern the kingdom instead of obedience, submission, passion, and trust.
I have seen a man do miracles, signs and wonders in the Name of Jesus who lived in complete rebellion to God’s order, and his personal life exhibited the worst breaches of kingdom culture in marriage, finances, relational dynamics, and leadership. People around him did not even consider the kingdom culture breaches as important as long as the miracles, signs and wonders kept the ministry in momentum.
How does this sort of thing happen?
We have lost kingdom culture, and we don’t know we’ve lost it.
Protocols
I recently asked a worship leader who is being trained in FreedomMinistry to join us for a seminar team weekend.
Before I communicated one word with her, I contacted her leader and asked them what they thought and would that be appropriate. The response startled me: “In all the decades of our ministry, this is the first time a leader has asked us before asking the person. Every assumes it is the person’s responsibility to get permission.”
Shocking. We have lost kingdom culture, and we don’t know we’ve lost it.
Prayer networks continue to create enormous and unnecessary confusion in the kingdom by recruiting people in alignment to an intercessory prayer alignment without any thought, discussion, or consideration of the assignment the intercessors are already in, by God’s direction. Soon, the assumption that the network alignment is superior become evident, at the expense of nearly all kingdom culture protocols.
Prayer networks are damaging the kingdom in this way, and they assume that any intercessor is fair game for recruitment because the need for intercession is so great. (As if needs right now are somehow superior to needs of any other period of history, or that needs determine kingdom protocols)
God already built response to emergency into the kingdom culture. Our substitutes fail. His designs and definitions work.
Mass Confusion
At a time when we are screaming for unity – though Jesus didn’t pray for unity but oneness – we are hacking the kingdom into pieces. Opportunists run around the country disparaging existing leaders in order to fill their networks with “new DNA” and “we are the ones with real fire” and “if you don’t align with us, you will never reach your destiny.”
People change alignments now like they change hats. The hats have “new season” on the front, and that justifies every kind of rebellion, vagabonding, dysfunction, wolf behavior, and seeking titles wherever I can get one.
Conferences advertise the release of Glory, but no Glory is released. The conference says, “if you miss this, you won’t be ready for your destiny,” and they are not ready for destiny after the conference either. Conferences promise the impartation that will launch you into the jubilation celebration of higher realms and the unseen – like, that means nothing because it means nothing, but people still say it over and over. The glories and realms of the beauties of the amazings….and people run as fast as they can to circus shows.
Each and all of these obvious breaches of kingdom culture norms reveals the chaos of a generation who has lost kingdom culture and doesn’t know it has lost it.
Conferencitis is curable. Delusions abound, but the reality people need is readily available when they obey God’s order. We continue to scream about deficiencies of leadership when we have an epidemic or pandemic of deficiencies in following, submitting, and obeying leaders.
Legitimacy Measurements
At the same time, we have this ridiculous inconsistency of thought that arises from the false equality thinking: we refuse to judge.
We either have no leaders with guts, or we lack leaders at the proper level of function.
When is the last time you heard of a legitimacy decision by any apostolic council? Since I’m part of a council that makes these kinds of decisions, I know that this does happen. I also know that immediately it happens, the chaos that floats under the surface comes to the top!
Oddly enough, in a season when legitimacy is top priority so we can trust leadership, nothing gets the rebels going quite so quickly as someone dealing with illegitimacy!
Just deal with a leader’s disregard for kingdom norms, and a hundred surface slush sympathizers will arise to declare that no one has the authority to deal with illegitimacy. As if…
Jesus praises Ephesus Ecclesia for making judgment calls on illegitimate apostles.
Wonder what He thinks of the immediate overreaction to simply asking a person who is not an apostle, never will be an apostle, whose personal life and ministry is illegitimate in function, to take a sabbatical so personal and ministry life can be corrected and healthy. Wonder what Jesus thinks of the refusal of people with ethical, moral, personal, domestic, and spiritual limitations to function being asked to stop tearing the kingdom in pieces to submit to kingdom culture. And, I wonder what Jesus thinks of the chaotic crowd that celebrates the chaos as if it is “freedom”!
We have a spiritual “wear some flowers in your hair when you come to be part of the Korah rebellion” movement that must be confronted. We are moving from flight from religious spirits to embracing sorcery and witchcraft spirits.
