The Power of Partnership
by Kenneth Copeland
If you’re a believer, you are called by God to do the works of Jesus. You’re not called to just sit on the sidelines watching while someone else does them. You’re not supposed to just live an ordinary, natural life while God pours out His supernatural power through others He’s especially anointed.
No, God intends for you to be anointed! He intends for you to be one of those through whom He pours out His burden-removing, yoke-destroying power.
“But Brother Copeland,” you might say, “why would God anoint me? I’m not a preacher or in ministry. Doesn’t the Bible teach somewhere that it’s the preachers who are called and anointed to do the work of the ministry?”
No, it doesn’t.
Contrary to popular belief, that is not what the Bible teaches. In Ephesians 4:11-12, it says that God “gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.”
Notice, according to those verses it’s the saints (or believers) who are to do the work of the ministry. The job of the fivefold ministers is to help equip them for that work and to develop the Body of Christ. The Greek word Christ refers to the Anointed One and His Anointing. When used by itself in the Scriptures it indicates the emphasis is on the anointing.
That’s what Ephesians 4:11-12 is talking about.
It’s telling us that God’s plan is for believers to function on the earth as Jesus’ anointed Body. His Anointing is actually more for the general population of the Body of Christ than it is for the fivefold ministry.
The fivefold ministry is God’s Anointing distribution system. God set it up for the purpose of bringing believers to the place where we all come together, as Ephesians 4:13-15 says, “in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we henceforth be no more children…but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.”
Once again, the word Christ there puts the focus on the anointing. It indicates the Apostle Paul is talking in those verses about the Church maturing spiritually to the point where we’re all operating together in the anointing, just like our Anointed example, Jesus.
4 : BVOV
