The Prophets Blog, Prophet Ken Cox “ Family builds you for Ministry”
Greetings to all of you in the Name of Jesus, It has been some time since I've been able to write due to ministry commitments, and passing of my step father and one of my spiritual fathers. I thank God again for so many of you who called and sent messages of comfort. I will forever be grateful for your outpouring of love.
All my love and thanks to my wife Prophetess Cox who has been with me every step of the way, and for everything she brings to my life. We are well into 2009 and we should have a good idea of 2010 by now but I will save that for another time.
For some time I wanted to share with you all on the subject on how family affects and builds you for ministry. When God spoke "the concept" I thought it was strange also, but let me share with you for a few moments. Let’s explore some things and see the revelation of ”looking again". Looking again will allow us to see why and even understand some things that we are dealing with now. I really hope you will thank your family and see how they helped build you for Ministry. In one way or another, they helped build you to where you are today. Some of you may see no relevance, I understand, that’s why I’m not sharing this with just anyone, but to the one to whom God directed his servant to. So let's both say amen and look again, there is much to see.
Can you name the one person in your family that you always had a problem with? Is it a sibling, cousin or even a parent; a friend, that was like family at one time? Maybe it is an aunt or uncle. Let's explore the reason why and see what God was doing and continues to mature and perfect in your life. I must say now this is a revelation for leaders, and not the faint of heart. Sometimes pain is the best medicine in the worst of situations. Some times we are forced to see what we don’t want to see.
When you were growing up, did you come from an All American or tailor made family? Was your family broken and mended back together as ones healed from old family wounds as they became a new family?. Could this explain why the occasional flare ups among our new relatives and why this has carried on to our ministries? We are trapped in the memory of our foundational environments, we all are to a extent. We try to mask it and some of us do a better job than others. What we take from our family situations we adapt to our lives today. Can you say the good, bad and ugly? Let’s go deeper. Adam and Eve were the first family. Everything was fine with God until they sinned. I did say until they sinned. Adam was the head of the first family; he was out of place when Eve spoke with the serpent. He was the protector; he had a responsibility to his help mate. When we are out of place things happen in ministry also. People start to act strange or funny and we search for reasons why as leaders. Our mandates are full time as Adam's was but we forget to act on it until we see drama in full effect. Why didn’t we learn how to be in place in our families? Some didn’t have an example to learn from, not in the family or even in the church they grew up in. We then move in crisis management instead of being proactive on an issue and many times the damage has already been done. You can’t input what was or is not there.
We want people to come to us as finished products because we present ourselves as leaders as finished products. As a result we now have unfinished dealing with unfinished and each party is mending and trying to grow all at the same time. Sometimes we have a mess, we call church gossip, whole families leaving a particular ministry and we just can't see why? Like spirits will attract each other. Birds of a feather will flock together.
How can you be finished when you never knew you were still in the process? God’s is still in the deliverance business, even from your days as a child maturing within your family setting. Leaders love to present themselves as finished products. Sometimes at the expense of others and thus ones get hurt in ministry, even more than they were in family. Here again what we are initially exposed to forms a life long foundation in us. I find many people still ignore the reality of Generational Curses, but if Jesus did not, why do we of this day find it necessary to.
Prophet are you saying that my family is cursed, I came from a good family. I'm sure you did and Praise God for your family, but as you read Matthew chapter 1 and see the genealogy of Jesus, it is my hope that you will understand that generational norms, customs and traditional have been passed to guess who? Yes you! This is why we never get delivered from some things because we don't feel it affects us, but it does, please go look again, then look into your ministry.
Some of you may remember how your sibling always disrespected you when you were growing up. You did not like it, but you dealt with it. Yes I know you felt you deserved more but some people will only go so far in your life with respect to you or whom you become. The degree of greatness, skill or professionalism is total ignored in this arena. Jesus said who does the will of my Father is my sister and brother. He was speaking of the most glorious fellowship you will ever enjoy with anyone, and that's in Him. Point here is that you should be able to recognize when someone does not respect you or your ministry, because you have already dealt with it. Did you recognize that unappreciated spirit when you encounter it? We always seem to know when we are appreciated and not simply tolerated. Some of us seem to never figure this out and many times God has told us to shake the dust, but the wall of rejection blocks out our hearing from God. The same can be said for our ministries. We see people reject us and we start to feel like we just aren’t good enough. People will always reject you. Come on, you have dealt with this before, why now is it different? You learned this as a child. One child did not want to play with you so you formed a bond with the child who did want to play with you. You became friends and empowered each other from teenagers to adults. What’s different now?
Your childhood was a training ground for all the bumps, bruises, lies, gossip, and envy that you face today from your members and well as your peers. Remember that friend who both of you knew was not as good in an area as you were and for some reason they tried to prove to you and everyone both of you were equal in a certain skill or gift. The reality was that they had untapped skills and gifts that they were unwilling to develop because they wanted to be you. For some of you this may of been a sibling, or even a cousin and to this day as you read they still haven't come to grips with it. My question is why are you still trying to change someone, who only God can change? You are trying to do God's job and you can't. God does what He does, put it in God's hand and leave it there. Consider His Kingdom and allow His ways to be the dominant way. I know by now the amen’s are slack but until you stop trying to change people you will never change yourself. You will always go from one level of drama to another, it becomes commonplace as we see in ministry. Bubble Bath Church won’t change their Annual Easter egg hunt to Saturday because it has always been done on Sunday afternoon after church. It really does not matter that Saturday may be more appropriate as the needs of the Ministry are changing. Bubble Bath Church won’t change and will become upset with other local ministries as they come together for a community wide Easter egg hunt. The real problem is that there is a dominant family in Bubble Bath Church that controls and sets the tone for the Ministry. They want everyone else to change, but refuse to themselves.
I came from a broken home, and remember when my mom remarried, we had to adjust even as really small kids to a man who seemed nice but we really did not know. How could we, we had to trust our mothers decision. Still, there was a period when we rebelled, said the wrong things and even made fools of ourselves. This man had the wisdom to see in us what we did not see or imagine at the time. He poured into us daily as God led him. Even then there was still a period when we could have rejected the discipline and went out on our own and made costly mistakes. What are you saying Prophet? Thanks for asking! I'm saying that many of our ministries are in this mode, people come to us as leaders, we seem nice but we may not be when our family hurt is exposed by something they say or do. As leaders we go to leaders and they may seem nice but may not in reality be so nice when they are hurt by family or ministry patterns of dysfunction. The undisputable fact is that we must go back to our family days and learn to trust again. This is tough because many of us have been hurt badly in our families and even worse in our ministries. Where is the trust? God please send someone I can trust as I trusted my parents. They may not have been perfect but I trusted them or him or her.(mom or dad). Can we do the same for ministry, sure we can! We've got to learn how to look and see God in the mist of our storm. We learned that as small kids remember? We trusted who God put over us and we did not question it. We never knew to question it. Today we do, as we are putting aside things of our child hood and looking again, because we want to be sure it’s God. So many leaders say they knew it was God, but yet it didn’t go the way He gave it to them? We need to go back and Look again and see what God is still developing in us in us even from childhood to make that vision, that dream a reality.
Do you remember when you felt you had accomplished something and yet there was always one who seemed to shine more in your family even in eyes sometimes of parents it seemed or influential family members in whom, you wanted their approval? Yet in this day of your ministry you still seek other people in ministry who always seem to look at your ministry as not good enough, not anointed enough, not enough members and so on, no matter what God does through you. Somehow you have got to seek God's approval and that has to be enough. Maybe you did not realize that there were some who simply always rejected Jesus, no matter what he did.
There is so much here to reflect on when we look at how we learned from our families, but I want you to understand that the lessons are really being repeated until we pass the test. Look and become a student of your ministry. You will see where it needs work and then work like it's no one's business. Romans 8:28 still says all things work together and so you must know that your painful family memories and your proudest moments were part of and still are a part of the all things!
Friend you have been prepared to deal with your situation, sometimes you simply need to realize it! This is why you really do need to look again and see where you came from, it's the foundation for where you will go.
A foundation never has the appearance of the finished product, it is merely the foundation.
Prophetess Cox and I are looking to see you soon, in your city or a city near you!
In The Anointing
Prophet Ken Cox
All my love and thanks to my wife Prophetess Cox who has been with me every step of the way, and for everything she brings to my life. We are well into 2009 and we should have a good idea of 2010 by now but I will save that for another time.
For some time I wanted to share with you all on the subject on how family affects and builds you for ministry. When God spoke "the concept" I thought it was strange also, but let me share with you for a few moments. Let’s explore some things and see the revelation of ”looking again". Looking again will allow us to see why and even understand some things that we are dealing with now. I really hope you will thank your family and see how they helped build you for Ministry. In one way or another, they helped build you to where you are today. Some of you may see no relevance, I understand, that’s why I’m not sharing this with just anyone, but to the one to whom God directed his servant to. So let's both say amen and look again, there is much to see.
Can you name the one person in your family that you always had a problem with? Is it a sibling, cousin or even a parent; a friend, that was like family at one time? Maybe it is an aunt or uncle. Let's explore the reason why and see what God was doing and continues to mature and perfect in your life. I must say now this is a revelation for leaders, and not the faint of heart. Sometimes pain is the best medicine in the worst of situations. Some times we are forced to see what we don’t want to see.
When you were growing up, did you come from an All American or tailor made family? Was your family broken and mended back together as ones healed from old family wounds as they became a new family?. Could this explain why the occasional flare ups among our new relatives and why this has carried on to our ministries? We are trapped in the memory of our foundational environments, we all are to a extent. We try to mask it and some of us do a better job than others. What we take from our family situations we adapt to our lives today. Can you say the good, bad and ugly? Let’s go deeper. Adam and Eve were the first family. Everything was fine with God until they sinned. I did say until they sinned. Adam was the head of the first family; he was out of place when Eve spoke with the serpent. He was the protector; he had a responsibility to his help mate. When we are out of place things happen in ministry also. People start to act strange or funny and we search for reasons why as leaders. Our mandates are full time as Adam's was but we forget to act on it until we see drama in full effect. Why didn’t we learn how to be in place in our families? Some didn’t have an example to learn from, not in the family or even in the church they grew up in. We then move in crisis management instead of being proactive on an issue and many times the damage has already been done. You can’t input what was or is not there.
We want people to come to us as finished products because we present ourselves as leaders as finished products. As a result we now have unfinished dealing with unfinished and each party is mending and trying to grow all at the same time. Sometimes we have a mess, we call church gossip, whole families leaving a particular ministry and we just can't see why? Like spirits will attract each other. Birds of a feather will flock together.
How can you be finished when you never knew you were still in the process? God’s is still in the deliverance business, even from your days as a child maturing within your family setting. Leaders love to present themselves as finished products. Sometimes at the expense of others and thus ones get hurt in ministry, even more than they were in family. Here again what we are initially exposed to forms a life long foundation in us. I find many people still ignore the reality of Generational Curses, but if Jesus did not, why do we of this day find it necessary to.
Prophet are you saying that my family is cursed, I came from a good family. I'm sure you did and Praise God for your family, but as you read Matthew chapter 1 and see the genealogy of Jesus, it is my hope that you will understand that generational norms, customs and traditional have been passed to guess who? Yes you! This is why we never get delivered from some things because we don't feel it affects us, but it does, please go look again, then look into your ministry.
Some of you may remember how your sibling always disrespected you when you were growing up. You did not like it, but you dealt with it. Yes I know you felt you deserved more but some people will only go so far in your life with respect to you or whom you become. The degree of greatness, skill or professionalism is total ignored in this arena. Jesus said who does the will of my Father is my sister and brother. He was speaking of the most glorious fellowship you will ever enjoy with anyone, and that's in Him. Point here is that you should be able to recognize when someone does not respect you or your ministry, because you have already dealt with it. Did you recognize that unappreciated spirit when you encounter it? We always seem to know when we are appreciated and not simply tolerated. Some of us seem to never figure this out and many times God has told us to shake the dust, but the wall of rejection blocks out our hearing from God. The same can be said for our ministries. We see people reject us and we start to feel like we just aren’t good enough. People will always reject you. Come on, you have dealt with this before, why now is it different? You learned this as a child. One child did not want to play with you so you formed a bond with the child who did want to play with you. You became friends and empowered each other from teenagers to adults. What’s different now?
Your childhood was a training ground for all the bumps, bruises, lies, gossip, and envy that you face today from your members and well as your peers. Remember that friend who both of you knew was not as good in an area as you were and for some reason they tried to prove to you and everyone both of you were equal in a certain skill or gift. The reality was that they had untapped skills and gifts that they were unwilling to develop because they wanted to be you. For some of you this may of been a sibling, or even a cousin and to this day as you read they still haven't come to grips with it. My question is why are you still trying to change someone, who only God can change? You are trying to do God's job and you can't. God does what He does, put it in God's hand and leave it there. Consider His Kingdom and allow His ways to be the dominant way. I know by now the amen’s are slack but until you stop trying to change people you will never change yourself. You will always go from one level of drama to another, it becomes commonplace as we see in ministry. Bubble Bath Church won’t change their Annual Easter egg hunt to Saturday because it has always been done on Sunday afternoon after church. It really does not matter that Saturday may be more appropriate as the needs of the Ministry are changing. Bubble Bath Church won’t change and will become upset with other local ministries as they come together for a community wide Easter egg hunt. The real problem is that there is a dominant family in Bubble Bath Church that controls and sets the tone for the Ministry. They want everyone else to change, but refuse to themselves.
I came from a broken home, and remember when my mom remarried, we had to adjust even as really small kids to a man who seemed nice but we really did not know. How could we, we had to trust our mothers decision. Still, there was a period when we rebelled, said the wrong things and even made fools of ourselves. This man had the wisdom to see in us what we did not see or imagine at the time. He poured into us daily as God led him. Even then there was still a period when we could have rejected the discipline and went out on our own and made costly mistakes. What are you saying Prophet? Thanks for asking! I'm saying that many of our ministries are in this mode, people come to us as leaders, we seem nice but we may not be when our family hurt is exposed by something they say or do. As leaders we go to leaders and they may seem nice but may not in reality be so nice when they are hurt by family or ministry patterns of dysfunction. The undisputable fact is that we must go back to our family days and learn to trust again. This is tough because many of us have been hurt badly in our families and even worse in our ministries. Where is the trust? God please send someone I can trust as I trusted my parents. They may not have been perfect but I trusted them or him or her.(mom or dad). Can we do the same for ministry, sure we can! We've got to learn how to look and see God in the mist of our storm. We learned that as small kids remember? We trusted who God put over us and we did not question it. We never knew to question it. Today we do, as we are putting aside things of our child hood and looking again, because we want to be sure it’s God. So many leaders say they knew it was God, but yet it didn’t go the way He gave it to them? We need to go back and Look again and see what God is still developing in us in us even from childhood to make that vision, that dream a reality.
Do you remember when you felt you had accomplished something and yet there was always one who seemed to shine more in your family even in eyes sometimes of parents it seemed or influential family members in whom, you wanted their approval? Yet in this day of your ministry you still seek other people in ministry who always seem to look at your ministry as not good enough, not anointed enough, not enough members and so on, no matter what God does through you. Somehow you have got to seek God's approval and that has to be enough. Maybe you did not realize that there were some who simply always rejected Jesus, no matter what he did.
There is so much here to reflect on when we look at how we learned from our families, but I want you to understand that the lessons are really being repeated until we pass the test. Look and become a student of your ministry. You will see where it needs work and then work like it's no one's business. Romans 8:28 still says all things work together and so you must know that your painful family memories and your proudest moments were part of and still are a part of the all things!
Friend you have been prepared to deal with your situation, sometimes you simply need to realize it! This is why you really do need to look again and see where you came from, it's the foundation for where you will go.
A foundation never has the appearance of the finished product, it is merely the foundation.
Prophetess Cox and I are looking to see you soon, in your city or a city near you!
In The Anointing
Prophet Ken Cox
Comment
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Comment by Micah RaSun-Vann on March 4, 2009 at 11:13am
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I think one of the greatest revelations that I've had as a lay person is that the anointing on a person's life is very different from the person. When I was able to see the difference it freed me to see and accept weakness in people in leadership and to have more compassion for them. Thankfully I got that revelation before I experienced was is commonly referred to as "church hurt". There are many i know who were not as fortunate. They expected pastors to be perfect. Because the pastors were anointed the individuals interpreted that to mean that they were perfect that they always had the right answer to every situation. One wrong word of counsel set in motion a string of bad events.
I struggle myself to stay focused as I witness the glaring weakness that many struggle to hide. I empathize with the struggle to maintain the respect of the congregation while at the same time trying manage areas that are vunerable.
I've asked myself over the years "when do they get time to heal" they've given and continue to give their lives for their congregations". Heal from rejection, the pain of losing members over misunderstandings, betrayals, lies etc. There was a time when i was struggling to recover from a satanic blow and I was a mess for years fighting for my life. Thankfully God sent me a friend like Jonathan was David and she walked me through. But when do men of God when they hit such a place have time to heal and recover as I did and at the same time carry on a ministry. It's a big call.
Thank you for your message its an interesting place to look from.
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