S03E09 - With Jonathan Dunning - Confidence in God vs Arrogance in Man

4:25PM Apr 17, 2023

Speakers:

Ian Banner

Voiceover

Jonathan Dunning

Keywords:

ministry

people

god

verse

pride

humble

prophetic gifting

jesus

honor

jonathan

church

identity

grace

leaders

person

pray

life

talk

humility

christ

Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. It's another podcast from the school of safe and humble profit.

Hi, and welcome to this podcast brought to you by the School of safe and humble profits. Our crew consists of really experienced leaders from different nations who work and operate with churches locally and internationally. Our aim is to bring you the most up to date thinking and teaching on how to use prophetic gifting safely and with humility. Let's join our host Ian for another episode of the current series.

It's great to be with you again, I've been banned from the school of safe and nonprofits thanks for getting hold of this free podcast. I believe prophetic gifting in the Christian church, if done well is immensely useful tool to encourage and help everyone grow and become mature in Christ. If he's done well, it's brilliant. But if it's done badly, it can cause huge problems. I'm obviously a fan of doing it. Well, that's what this podcast and the School of safe and humble profit is all about how to use prophetic gifting well, and safely for the benefit of the local church body. Today again, I'm joined by my really good friend Jonathan, we've, we've been chewing the fat all morning, actually. We're gonna be honest, we're supposed to produce about five and get a couple dancer who's he for? It's for anyone who's saved, who thinks they have prophetic gifting want to learn how to serve the local church. Secondly, it's for pastors and leaders who want to understand how to empower prophetically gifted people well, to get the best out of them, not the worst. And I'm joined with Jonathan, because Jonathan has such huge insight on these issues. And it is a great joy. Thank you, Jonathan, for being with us. Again,

thank you for inviting me again.

It's always fun. So what we want to do on this one actually is deal with an issue that happens a lot. And I tell the story. And then I've got some verses to talk to you about and get your insights on. And it's this. I think I struggled with this earlier in my Christian life, which is the difference between being confident about what you're doing and hearing God and being sure of what God said to you. You know, I I've always said, you know, the Christian life consists of two things, one, learning to hear God and two, having the courage to do what he tells you. Yeah, but that either coming across, or having some root in arrogance. And that's what I wanted to talk to you about the difference between the slippery slope of being arrogant, really, and I think it's possibly true that young, younger people have this as a as an issue. And it might be maybe this is even one I could start asking about it might be what you just need is some knocks, some experience some age to get that out of you. Because I feel I'm really confident in what God wants. And we have a friend Chris, who has a lovely phrase on this, which is he says, we take God very seriously. But we take ourselves less. So before we get into some verses on this to help, I'm thinking of an audience of young. You know, they really want to go for God, they're on fire for God. Or remember an American Prophet talking about someone who came to see him with this problem. And this person said, before they became a Christian, they were, you know, again, in American phrase will be cocky. They were, you know, very sure of themselves. They became a Christian, they learned humility. And this guy went to see it was Chris Ballard, and went to see Chris and said, I don't want to be that person again. But I do want to be confident in what God has said to me. Anyway, let's, before we get into verses, what's your overall thoughts on this?

I think the whole issue of pride is something that most church leaders, if they're honest, struggle with at times, if you have a modicum of success, say you've given a prophetic word, and people have responded to it, or you've, you've given a message, and there's lots of people coming forward or fill out what that was a wonderful message, pastor and all the rest of it. There's an element where all of us have to come to terms with the fact that actually, what we're doing is really serving God first. And it's not a self serving ministry is not about building ourselves up. It's about building up the body of Christ. But sometimes we need a sharp reminder about that. And I often say, you know, some of my some of the hardest lessons you learn in ministry, when things don't go right, when you have a sense of feeling something was really right and it went really wrong. Which happens to us all at times. It is a sharp reminder that actually all that we have and all that we are is from God. And that actually although human nature, the flesh, our lives, you know, craves, craves the affirmation, the love the, the sort of the, the kind of the platform of all this, this is the lie. This is the deceit and this is the thing that can get in the way of being a safe and humble prophet.

Yeah. I think if I think of myself, you The number of positive strokes I get for what I do in ministry compared to ideal business. Yeah, nobody praises me business, you know, the best I get is a renewal. But in church, you get strength, you get positive strokes all the time about, you know, enlarge in certainly lots of other cultures less so in England, but in other countries, you are like, Let's just hear him now the man of God is with us. And, you know, it's possible to go yes, I am. Yeah.

And the culture of honor is a good culture that we respect and honor one another, we submit to one another, it's a healthy thing. But when the honor becomes come up here to the best seats, brother, or, you know, use you, you're this, this great icon, if you like, of the Christian movement. I see James speaks about this, I think in one of his letters. You know, there's a sense where that that kind of honor, which is human, public, sort of honor, if you like, like we can have celebrity culture in the church is really a very dangerous thing, both for the people, but it's an unhealthy thing. If we encourage it as a culture in our churches,

yeah, I would have to watch the culture side. So I remember, I was pretty much in Africa, and someone walked up to me in the middle of the sermon and gave me some money. Now, my friend, David managed to signal to me that I just need to put the money in my pocket and move on. And afterwards, I was talking to him and someone else, and this other person was like, if you shouldn't have accepted that money, that's boring. And David said to him, Who are you to tell us our coaches wrong? entry in our culture? Well, that person was doing was planting a seed in Ian's ministry. Yeah. And you know, it was a sign of high honor. And if he had gone no down to that, he would have been really quite insulting people. So there's a tension here. Yeah.

And I think that's a very good, quite a good story that you've given that because obviously, we we need to respect culture in that sense, and understand that. And I get that. I just think there's also the danger of a them and us culture, in terms of the gifting you know, if you look at the New Testament gifting, yes, there were people who are in leadership, and you were told to submit to your leaders. So there's a sense where there is respect and honor and in that sense, the body of Christ is, is works because there is this sense of, you know, leadership and insight and all the rest of it that comes from different gifts. But you know, we also need to respect one another, and actually recognize that we haven't got a separation anymore between the priesthood and the people. We are, we are the body of Christ, we are a royal priesthood, we are a chosen generation. We are the body of Christ together. And that's really important. So the way we we handle what can be done as a given. I mean, Jesus was criticized for allowing a woman to pour expensive Eichmann on his feet. Why are you were allowing this to happen, this money should have been spent in another way. And there'll always be people challenging what people do in good faith, and, and in respect, and of what God is asking us to do. But, but it's our response to that. So what it's what you do in with with that sense of that money, do you do you know what I mean? Obviously, that's great, you know, bring it out. No, thank you, Lord.

Well, that is exactly it. I mean, the verse is obviously Romans Do not think of itself more highly than your Yeah, isn't brilliant, but think of yourself with servitude. One Corinthians, early Corinthians, consider what you once were, yeah. What what you were like when you start it? Yeah, you know, and that's really useful for me as a human being to remember those things. And I think it is this point about the whole body thing about, you know, you're no better, you know, this is the trap that devil gives us which is we go yes, I am, I am important. I am powerful I am. And it's just the journey of the devil does not come up with new tactics because he's old tactics work.

And this is about identity, isn't it, our identity, this is where the security comes. That our identity is not just in our in our ministry. It's not just in what people say about us, or how they respect us. Our identity is first and foremost in Christ. And my identity is not my title, as a pastor, or apostle or a prophet, or whatever my identity is that I am a child of the living God, I am saved by the blood of Jesus Christ and and that is my first and foremost I Identity, yes, I have been gifted by God in His grace and mercy not because I deserved it with certain gifts such as the same as we all are. But our identity is not in our gift, our identity is in Christ.

I remember when I first met one of one of my good friends in, in Africa, I'm not going to name him because people will know who he is. But we've been brought in to do a Leaders Conference, and we're doing it at this person's church. And as any of our friends in Africa will now the leader sit at the front, and, you know, that's, that's culturally correct for them. And I was doing this entire sort of thing there it was. My friend David sorted out, you know, local ministers and, and there was guy at the very back. And this guy was sort of sneaked him halfway through, he sat at the very back, he listened. And when we had the prayer time, he queued like everyone else did to get prayed for by me, and he was the last person because he just didn't get up very quickly. So we got the very end. And I felt a prophetic word for him. I said what the word was, it made no sense to me whatsoever. But it unlocked a whole thing for me. The thing I remember most was the humility that this person had who is just so well known, so well known across Africa, that he was humble enough to cue that if you need to come and sit at the front. And it was it was like, it was a bit of a, you know, a bit of a switchboard from God. Because what God gave me as a prophetic word for him would make no sense unless, unless he was who he was. But all I could do is, you know, I shook his hand, God said something to me. I said, I'm sorry, I've got to tell you this. And you know, I didn't know who the point there was keeping humble.

Yep. But you see, our attitude should be the same as Jesus shouldn't. That's what Philippians says. And it's interesting, because Jesus told people to follow him. He basically taught people, you know, to do the things that he was doing. He was confident in who he was. Who do people say that I am, you know, it wasn't that his identity or anything. And there were times when obviously, like that lady who, you know, sort of like, sort of brought the ointment and when washed his fee, you get the returns when he received real honor and respect from people. But but he was also, by his own admission, humble, learn from me, because I am humble. I'm not proud. There were times when the temptation to be taken away after the feeding of the 5000 be medicating with there were times when he could have been carried away when he's going into Jerusalem at Easter. And saying, Yeah, Hosanna blessed as he comes to us in the name of the Lord. What does he do, he goes straight to the heart of challenging the religious style of worship that was happening in the temple. From that he didn't he wasn't of he wasn't overwhelmed by public acclaim, to the point where he lost his focus on what his father was asking him to do. And I think this is the key thing. You know that there are times when people will respect us and honor us. And that's right and proper. But let's not lose our focus on what God is asking us to do. Jesus managed to do all this with humility. And he says, Learn from me,

you brought out a really interesting point I hadn't got in my head about focus, actually, because as you talk, I realized I learned to dinky sale. Yeah. And when you do the sale, you can do one of two things. One is you can set your course for where you're going at the other end of the lake. Or you can be pushed wherever the wind takes you. And you end up getting nowhere. And the difference between people who know what they're doing, and people who don't, it's really clear when you go in anything like a high wind, which is all the sailors who don't really know what they're doing, they all end up at the wrong end of the lake can't come back. And then the boats have to, you know, say powerboats, have to bring them back up again. So here's my point. My point is if you're a person who's got ministry, and you don't keep your focus on Jesus, what you can get even get pushed into a different direction by the by the crowds by the crowd eggs, really well said, pushed by the crowd into thinking you're something you're not Yeah. And going into a ministry area that is not and of course, God doesn't remove gifts willy nilly, but ministries could fail. And that does happen.

I mean, you know, that feeding of the 5000 where they've Krauser wanted to come and make Him their, their king. Jesus. He wants us to get out of that. He walks away from that adulation. That's not to say that we know what the Bible talks about. I this was about the slippery slope of pride. But really, pride is saying, I can do this. This is all about me. It's not about Jesus

rent, you know, I've made the mistake mentally of deciding I'm the guy. Yeah.

And the problem is that the more success one has amazing success in its broadest term. So forgive me if that sounds, not talking about finance, or numbers or others, but but the sense of people, you know, affirming that ministry, the more you can think actually, I can do this United says saying it, but you've actually subconsciously acting as if I can do this in my own strength. Yes. And that is the danger,

isn't it? And let's look at some verses one that's on my mind is James four. thing. Sorry, James, four, six, forgive me. But he gives us more grace. This is why scripture says God opposes the proud, but chose favor to the humble. I just

preached on this just the other week at another church. Yeah,

I've the this. There are many verses that say God opposes you. Yeah, exactly. But he will oppose you if you're proud. Yeah.

I mean, actually, our arrogance. It may not always be obvious, but get it resists the grace of God being manifest through our ministry.

Yeah. So that's the first was thinking about to the audience that

would favor there to the humble is grace. Yeah. You know, shows grace, it's God's undeserved favor.

With grace to us, we're thinking about if you're listening, or you're doing anything, where you've mentally just slipped into feeling proud. Look what I built, look who people follow me. Or look at that money that's coming for the project, I am leading Well, aren't I? And some of that is okay to think but then you have to go. Remember what I once was, remember, this is Grace. God grows this thing, not me. I'm not responsible for the growth he is. I'm just, I'm just the servant here.

I would say that the temptation or the difficulty that happens if you get if you get proud is that you then get quite competitive. You then looking at others and thinking, you can almost feel threatened by others ministries that are doing better than yours. And the whole, the whole of how you act and how you respond in ministry seems to go out of out of sight, out of kilter out of balance, if you like, it's more about law. This is about me, and suddenly it's about him or it's about her, it's about that. And all those kind of bad, bad feelings are coming up in his pride actually, is the starting point of, of a kind of selfish, sort of spiral of destructive, destructive stuff that comes into our ministry, pride. Another verse you've got down here proverbs 16, visiting Pride goes before destruction. a haughty spirit before a fall.

Yes, yes. That's proverbs 1618. Yet perfectly correct. Yeah. So I think what, what I want to advise people is do a check on yourself. Have you got some seeds of pride, because what happens in your garden, your spiritual garden is a little seed is no problem. But when it grows into huge Bush, it just stops everything working, doesn't it? And so I feel I want to say to people's even spiritually, check your check your pride seeds and not starting to grow, you know, put yourself people that can help you. Another thing we talked about in the past is relationships, people can help you. Wise, it can help husbands, Husbands can have wives, that kind of thing is very important. So that's worth saying. But I do want to build up on this as we get near the end with proverbs three, five and six, because this is one of my pivotal verses in my life. Yeah, you know, I was sitting in, I was sitting in the cathedral once meditating on this verse. And I came out of that walked up to someone who I was in a relationship with, but we weren't married. And I proposed based on that verse, trusting God, trusting the Lord with all your heart. And I didn't know what the world was going to be like afterwards for me, and well, my wife now nearly 40 years, but it was this verse and if I'm honest, the verse is, I look back now and say, the first time God really spoke to me, was this verse or in that situation, I was sitting in the cathedral at lunchtime in Sheffield. He spoke to me from this verse, and I did what he said. Anyway, the verse from Proverbs three, five and six, and I want I want to apply this to the idea of this. How do you avoid being arrogant? Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding now? I think there's a load of stuff in there to deal with being humble. Because if we lean on our understanding, we're not leaning on God.

Oh, absolutely. We were saying we can sort this out ourselves. We've got the power. We've got the ability. We've got the success story.

The second part of it is in all your ways, submit to Him and He will make your paths straight.

So yeah, the antidote to, to a lot of pride is submission. submission is saying, submitting to him submitting to God is saying not My will. but yours be done is, is the ultimate act of submission that Jesus, Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane. But actually, not sitting over your ministry. Actually, almost being in the backseat rather than the driver of the ministry and saying, God lead, let us drive a car, you drive the car, Lord, I'll just, I'll just be obedient in the back. Yeah, it's kind of important. Really. It is.

And the other thing I think about this verse, when I think about it is this which is, if I'm honest, at that moment, when I'm thinking of this verse, When God really spoke to me, lots of people were saying to me, Ian, you're gonna have a teaching ministry, you're going to do things, you've got the right build, you've got the right voice, you've got the right intellect. You need a suitable wife, you know. And I was sort of praying to God. If I take this step, can you guarantee that future? And he sort of said, no. What I'm going to do is ask you to take a step and leave the rest of me praise God. And that's what submit really means. Absolute is take one step I took took office a lot about whole ministries, whole unlocking of huge doors come from sometimes from the smallest of steps, that makes no sense. Yeah, but he's just an obedient step.

I think. Yeah, I mean, pride is fundamentally is about control. Yeah, it is. Actually, what we're saying in this verse is, you're in control, Lord, not me.

And he will make your paths straight. He will

then make it may pass that he opens the doors of opportunity ministry, stuff like that, you know, I've never had to bang on a door yet. And I don't intend to stop

down kick it down tricky. Now. And, you know, I, I've had the privilege of traveling around a lot of Africa. And I've had the privilege of traveling on the motorways in England. And I can tell you, I prefer the path straight here rather than waiting. And this is what I sometimes see this person think if I take these steps, God will give me the motorway. Yeah, it gets me there very fast. Yeah. If I don't, I'll be meandering around in my own strength and not getting anywhere. Yeah. How is that good?

Yeah. Good.

Okay, well, we'll probably have time on this one. Is there any final thought? Would you would you can I invite you to do a prayer to finish this

one? Yeah. Let's just pray. Yeah, Heavenly Father, thank You for Your word. Thank you for your grace in our lives. Thank you for your Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth. But I pray you would examine our motivation for ministry. examine our hearts and our minds. When we want to honor you. Above all, we want you to be in control. While we thank you that we can trust you with our future. And just at this moment, each one of us praying this prayer layer lives before you, Almighty God. We submit our ways to you. And we trust you to direct our paths. Lord, where there's been a desire to control to hold on to make things happen. Father, we release these things to you. We declare that we don't want to go down a slippery slope. But we want to go on a straight path in the direction that you've called us to in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Thank you, Jonathan.

That's it for another episode. The School of safe and humble profits is a UK and International Christian ministry, bringing you the best and most up to date teaching on all things relating to prophetic gifting. Subscribe to our podcast by following at safe profits on Twitter or subscribe at our website safe profits.org For more information, visuals and show notes. Join us next time for more from the school of safe and double profits.