The Blueprint Room
I once visited a construction company’s offices to review blueprints, and the company had an entire room dedicated to blueprint storage. Large-drawered cabinets dominated the room, clearly marked, collecting a vast museum of proposed and previously constructed building projects.
The person I was with went to a drawer and lifted a set of blueprints from a stack stored in one drawer, throwing them out like a sheet on a bed upon a large table so we could review one section of the prints that were pertinent to my responsibilities.
Considering this situation today, I was struck with the analogy: perhaps we have such a room filled with revelations of God’s construction assignments as well, properly catalogue and often mentioned in terms of “we received a prophetic word.” Yet, the room is filled with God’s projects as if the blueprints He has revealed await God’s implementation. They do not. God has representatives on earth to build what He designs in heaven; waiting on God to do what God is waiting on us to do might be considered the greatest rebellion of kingdom history because it is a massive collection of disobedience!
Voicing Vision without Implementation
Beware the tendency to shout loud about a prophetic revelation and to do nothing about it, anticipating the God will enforce His judgments when the reason for the revelation has more to do with how His representative people will enforce them. Beware the immaturity of apostolic and prophetic leadership that hears and sees but fails to prepare and position.
The operative word for kingdom leadership says, “Prepare and position the saints.” To apply the physical body meaning of the word for “perfect” implies both preparation and positioning. A prepared body part must be put into place for the operation it was prepared to do, in concert with other body parts. This is the metaphor of Ephesians 4.
The operative word for kingdom leadership says, “Apostles and prophets lay foundations that align with the Chief Cornerstone, Jesus Christ. The master builders have blueprints for the entire building from site preparation to finish work.” The metaphor of building implies that the revelation is the approval for the plans and the authorization for the construction. Blueprints leaders have a much greater assignment than merely voicing a revelation or calling people to a vision. They must do something to implement the revelation!
Right now, kingdom blueprints remain in storage racks as accumulations of Divine assignments await apostolic and prophetic maturity. The point is that until we have an apostolic and prophetic people prepared and positioned to implement, the beauty of artist conceptions for kingdom construction become a gallery show of conceptualizations for us to ooh and aah over instead of a working blueprint calling every believer in a region or nation to their destinies.
Accurately Anticipating Applied to Alignment and Assignment
We are still making prophetic announcements of revival and Awakening now as if these are new and novel insights to be celebrated or general invitations to anyone and everyone to parade and party. They are a call to identify the authentic apostolic and prophetic leaders who can found things, kingdom representatives who can tell people what to be and do so that what they are and do builds a body and building.
After spending (almost wasting) time identifying bricks and piling them in neat stacks, we have yet to complete foundations for revival and Awakening, hoping that God will do it for us. He will not. After spending inordinate amounts of emotional energy identifying vision that paints the artist conceptions of the edifices, we have yet to identify the subcontractors or even properly assign the site preparation work that matches the finished product.
We revel in our vision and neglect our assignments. We are like Noah preaching a flood while staring at the timbers that he must assemble to save his family! We assume declaring something obligates God to build something when God reveals so we can do the work!
We may also assume that praying and worshipping will make things magically appear that only the grander kingdom leadership functions can bring to pass. That is, prayer and worship do not form physical things or transform people without the complete functional leadership of the kingdom in full implementation. Praying without preaching or worshipping without discipling won’t produce a mature body. Praying won’t lay bricks or install windows. Without prayer it won’t be right, and we know that. But, the idea that we wait on God to do what God waits upon us to do fills the blueprint with uncompleted assignments.
King Saul discovered quickly that God wasn’t interested in a leader who could offer a sacrifice but fail to obey. King Saul lost what prayer and worship provides because he thought 99% obedience would be enough. King Saul was replaced with David because God found in David someone with His heart, and God defines “has My heart” as “he will finish what I assign him to do.”
