We are entering a rebuilding David’s Tent season of worship/intercession. This intercession and worship occurs in a way that we cannot tell the difference between the two. This is the revelation of intercession – by experiencing the revelation more than seeing or hearing it – that moves us beyond our limitations so Holy Spirit can birth kingdom in ways that human language cannot carry the weight of it. Connecting this David’s Tent with kingdom action and activity is part of the key of David that locks and unlocks. [Isaiah 22:22]
David learned the art of war and the ways God advances His kingdom agenda on earth. David “inquired of The Lord,” and God gave strategies David was capable of understanding and prepared to fully implement. All these aspects of Glory go together but flow from the overshadowing Glory so the knowledge of the Glory covers the earth. (Note that the Glory doesn’t cover the earth but the knowledge of the Glory.) Glory manifests from strategic places through strategic people. Glory affects atmospheres but isn’t the breathable air of a region: that atmosphere is affected by this source and resource of kingdom authority and power.
Once experienced, Glory becomes more than an experience. It becomes a motivator of Divine Passion for Divine purposes: once you experience His passion, you surrender yourself and all you are and have to see His purposes happen. This level of Glory will separate people who use Glory for their purposes and people only interested in Glory as a “high” or a “wow, cool!” from those appointed and chosen to implement what Glory motivates.
I have always been shocked – mouth open and drooling a bit shocked – that Glory doesn’t produce people of purpose because I cannot grasp how an experience of Glory doesn’t switch people from self and the world to God and the kingdom in some automatic way. Yet, history and my own experience reveals without hesitation that people experience Glory and some of them walk away from it because the passion of God demands a surrendered death of the priority of their own passion. They are happy with Glory if it produces what they want, but walk away from Glory when they realize that God’s passion is for God’s purposes in them and through them. They fail to see that God’s passion for them is set to produce the “what I was created to be so I can do what I was called to do” of their lives.
Glory will transform you. [2 Corinthians 3:18] Glory will transform you by revealing that a completely new set of priorities must govern your life, that you must live from a totally different point of view about what is worthy of your best, your all! In other words, coming to the Glory with your own priorities and attempting to use that experience and Reality to fulfill your own purposes will cause you to ricochet off the Glory, and the greater the Glory, the greater the ricochet effect of that confrontation.
Glory is not a stand-alone manifestation. Glory is present and manifested for a purpose. As with David, Glory was available because of a kingdom. When Jesus arrived, His Glory was available as part of a kingdom. Beware the tendency to see Glory as a Disney attraction produced by heaven or some effort on God’s part to make Himself more interesting and entertaining. Although there were seasons of festivities in the kingdom, the purpose of Glory was never the equivalent of a bar where God filled shot glasses or kept the glasses full for beer-pong. Glory is life and death: fire warmed and lit the camp and fire came out from the Presence of The Lord and consumed.
Leadership and Glory
Glory without kingdom will produce a sideshow. Glory arrives through leadership and that leadership accompanies Glory to reset the natural order to a kingdom order. When David brought Glory into Zion, he fed the nation: beware the tendency to celebrate the provisions of festivities without the accompanying allegiance to the conquest of the kingdom. God is both manifesting Himself to alter the atmosphere and altering the culture. Glory transforms because we our world is reset by His Face, turning our faces toward Him, so that from Him everything in us and around us becomes re-prioritized.
The leadership that arrives with Glory has a scope of leadership equal to the influence and impact of that Glory. David was a leader fully qualified to implement that influence and create that impact in such a way that David established a kingdom that Jesus arrived to make eternal. It as more than type or shadow. It was a manifestation of Glory that function to the full scope of David’s leadership.
Glory is intensely personal and intensely eternal, at the same time. While the individual experience is real and valid, it is not an end within itself. The individual is part of the kingdom, and the kingdom governs through leaders.
Manifestations of Glory can be valid and true but limited to the scope of the leaders who arrive with the Glory, and the failure to implement the purposes of the Glory result in that Glory manifestation diminishing in answer to that failure. In other words, Glory may arrive or be released when a leader who functions at an international level “comes to town.” When that leader leaves town, the Glory, if still manifested, will manifest at the level of leadership available in that town. Glory arrives to produce kingdom, and the level of kingdom that functions will determine the level of Glory.
We are prone to romanticize Glory in our minds to fairy-tale proportion and distortion. We imagine a cloud hovering and the populace suddenly breathing in character and beauty, all sin choking to death, and every hardened heart broken with weeping eyes. Yet, Glory produces riot as much as it produces revelation. [Read the Bible and weep.] Moses faced down Korah, and we should expect Korah rebellions when Glory arrives. David had Glory, yet faced down a numbers of treacheries including ones from his own family. Peter said, “Rise and walk!” to the cripple and “Lied and died” to Ananias and Sapphira.
God has not been stingy with Glory but Glory has been challenged by the character and scope of leadership available to establish kingdom when Glory arrives. How often have we observed Glory arrive to reveal disorder that becomes even more disorderly? How often have we seen the level of leadership available to extend that manifestation with integrity, yet have that leadership be the focus of the testing, rebellion, criticism, and accusation? Isn’t it true that immediately Glory arrives, the test isn’t about Glory but leadership? So, why aren’t we more focused upon the development and maturation of leadership that will produce a proper kingdom infrastructure for Glory than efforts to merely experience Glory or plan a Disney ride or amusement part for Glory? Glory isn’t for show and tell! Glory is kingdom of God on earth!
Leadership and David’s Tent
David’s Tent was not “Israel’s Tent.” Here we fail to distinguish leadership. The existence of a tent with David-like music, prophecy, and dance isn’t David’s Tent. It may very well be your tent. In other words, the only way to rebuild David’s Tent is to have some David’s! Reproducing the sound or lights or actions and activities of David’s Tent does not David’s Tent make. David’ Tent cannot be “formula-ized” through mimicry or the spirit of wanna-be. Some of the efforts to do so produce a valid David’s Tent situation, but the validity depends upon the leadership not the Glory.
God’s Glory was lost in Eli’s day when God reached an end point with Israel’s leadership, not because of imperfect leadership. The utter dysfunction and degradation of the program or process had been in existence for a long period of time before the birth of Ichabod, in other words. Glory doesn’t fly away because of sin or failure like many people assume, therefore assuming anytime there is Glory the moral character and order of kingdom leadership is nearly heavenly! The measure of that leadership isn’t the manifestation of Glory but the scope of that leadership and its function. The fatal flaws do not destroy the Glory but the ability of that leadership to function with the Glory.
We assume God showed up and showed off because He loves us so much that we are irresistible to Him! Well, He loves everybody like that but He doesn’t manifest Glory with everybody. His Glory won’t cover the earth; the knowledge of His Glory will cover the earth and He will rule in the midst of His enemies. [Psalm 110] That means that Glory can shine in the darkest places but that Glory’s manifestation will produce transformation only to the scope of the kingdom leadership that is available where Glory manifests. That is why Glory arrives with leadership, functions at the scope of the leadership available, and remains an atmospheric condition only as kingdom leadership implements God’s purposes in individuals and Ecclesia in that region.
There is no limitation to Glory, but there is measurable limitation to the scope of Glory. God intends that Glory be seen and known through kingdom! Bursts of Glory or shafts of Glory can be experienced as revelations of God’s intentions for a place and people, but Glory cannot function merely as an atmosphere without kingdom leaders to provide kingdom protocols for its function to keep people from dropping dead, and kingdom implementation strategies consistent with God’s order for the kingdom.
This is where we get things mixed up. Inevitably, the political spirit presses in. People begin to wish to own Glory instead of Glory owning them. People show up for the loaves and fishes show and tell but wander away if there’s no “laying on the floor longer than last time” experience. People wish to turn the Glory into a bar scene or a club scene with the newest and coolest sound and light show available.
Read carefully some of the accounts surrounding Azusa Street as you read the true-story accounts of Glory. Read carefully the protocols of Glory. Consider who missed the Glory that was just down the street and those who experience the Glory after traveling weeks to arrive where there was a scope of leadership available to maintain its manifestation. Consider that Glory doesn’t leave because of disobedience without considering that Glory arrives because of obedience: Glory doesn’t manifest in a vacuum or randomly.
Glory in Strategic Regions
It follows our discussion’s premises that God’s Glory will manifest in strategic places through strategic people. He wants everybody but He never starts with everybody. He functions through strategic people chosen to receive what He wants everybody to have. He calls these strategic people “remnants.” Unlike our remnants, God’s remnant people are chosen. They are not the leftovers of something used up, they are the first-fruits of something anticipated and prophetically established.
Periodically, any region so marked for this purpose will experience Glory, see shafts of Glory breakthrough, or have Glory arrivals released through leaders who function at the level of Glory God wishes that region to enjoy in order to lift the standard of measurement and reveal the deeper intentions and purposes of God for that region. Yet, until the scope of leadership is established at a functional level, the Glory manifestation in that region will also settle at the level of leadership presently available, and that region will experience periodic confrontations with the prevailing atmospheric catalysts much as Elijah on Mount Carmel was a climax of God’s revelation of Jezebel and Baal. These confrontations occur because Glory is still set for that region, but the level and scope of leadership in that region cannot sustain a manifestation that produces kingdom.
Leaders in a strategic region may be hampered, as David was, by the wrong spirit of leadership dominating that region, even though that is a region marked for Glory. This wrong spirit is a product both of the kingdom populace demanding a political spirit leadership and the absence of a leader who functions with a scope of kingdom leadership equal to the purpose of God. In other words, the problem can be as much a population problem as a leadership problem; that condition will be observable and measurable in the region’s kingdom people.
In seasons of great leadership failure, God may skip one or several generations before that Glory becomes available again. In David’s case, God immediately provided a leader even though it was several decades before he was positioned to lead. During that time, David experienced a unique leadership preparation process through which David came to his position with his own wealth and army; in this way, the leadership of David was not a product of the faulty spirit of leadership functioning in the people and King Saul. (We often fail to consider that the leadership issue is both the leaders and the people called to establish their leadership. No matter how assume the leader, that leadership cannot be established without a transformation of the people. Consider that Jesus was the Ultimate and Perfect Leader rejected by the people.)
Bottom line: the production of leaders is the priority of the kingdom! This mirrors the ministry of Jesus discipling fishermen, zealots, and thieves in a cultural reset for the kingdom on earth. This mirrors the leadership of David producing his mighty men from those disenfranchised by the political spirit that dominated Israel. Regions must have a process of producing leaders who can function at the level of kingdom leadership equal to the scope of leadership at which Glory will manifest in that region. They cannot produce Sunday School teachers if they intend to take nations! They cannot merely build strong localized and individualized ecclesia if their city or region is to influence and impact nations! They cannot preach and lead with spiritual authority and power equal to “the way things are” if the purpose of God for the manifestation of Glory is to shake a region or nation through that city!
Glory Today
Do we not have a strong tendency to image Glory today in the context of the way things are in our churches? Do we not have an overwhelming vision of Glory causing our present vision to flourish, and sometimes secretly or publicly communicate that Glory will arrive to confirm we are right, chosen, best, and models? And, do we not continue to function in leadership, year after year, with little sacrifice for the greater kingdom establishing that Glory will certainly produce?
Do we not tend to seek out manifestations of Glory when they appear, study the situations and leaders of those manifestations with hunger for a time without understanding how or why Glory manifests there? And, do we not have an overwhelming desire to find fault with the mode and style of leadership where there is Glory?
Perhaps, a portion of this analysis is healthy – in fact, it is healthy. We have had Glory in situations where the leadership failure caused people to attribute Glory to the wrong source; Glory cannot come from the wrong source if it is Glory but we misunderstand leadership dynamics so severely that we think we can elect the leaders for Glory or demand God give us a king like the other nations who will lead us in Glory. We do not want the leaders that make the present population of the kingdom happy! Kingdom people do not elect kingdom leaders, nor are those people the ones who hold leader to account. Kingdom leaders hold kingdom leaders to account, but that authority is consistent with their calling and choosing, earned through the passion of obedience. [See Hebrews 5:8.]
There is Glory today! I’ve seen it, experienced it, arrived with it at times, and observed some kingdom leaders who can function at the level of kingdom and scope of leadership that will implement transformation beyond the individual or local church. (Glory will never diminish or destroy transformation at that level but will enhance it; however, Glory has a much broader scope and kingdom leadership must function at an international level to make that level of leadership available at the local and individual level.)
There will be new manifestations of Glory today! Inevitable because it ain’t up to us, but manifestations measurable by the scope and level of leadership available to implement the purposes of God in the regions where that Glory is revealed. Our highest priority is to produce leaders who can produce a people who will embrace that level and scope of leadership. Preparing people for the Glory – well, that’s not so hard if they can follow the protocols of leadership – is as important to the Glory as the manifestation of It.
