Fair warning – this is an extremely long post! It’s only for the anointed … Everyone else may skip it!

Seriously so! It will be one of the most powerful pieces you will read about some of the practical challenges you will experience in being a carrier of the Anointing.

It is timeous and in season – But it really is as long as a whole chapter from a book! … here goes for those up for the challenge –

The anointing brings with it two definite identifiable crosses to bear.

Be ready to carry it with grace within, as you bear the cross of its consequences without!

The Anointing will mark you

Simply said – It will set you apart. Something that will cause a great deal of unhappiness among some around your life. It will cause people to accuse you of “thinking you are better than others,” because of the fruit that will be produced in the supernatural working of God’s Spirit through you, in revelation received, Wisdom downloaded and in gifts operated through your life.

Not having being schooled to understand that, you have been prepared to function in the Anointing and gifts operating, some will immediately presume you to be someone with whom they cannot compete and as a result assume that you think yourself better than them and esteem yourself to be above the level where they function, without realising that the opposite is in fact true and that you have been trained to wash feet while working your gifts from your knees.

They will not be able to grasp, that you are a servant with a servants heart and that God had to bring you there before He could entrust you with the Anointing of His Spirit.

So as a automatic result, you will immediately be seen and treated as a threat to them. Especially and more so if something would happen that would cause you to stand in directly opposed to them.

In other words if you disagreed and did not stand in agreement in a certain matter. This will immediately cause more animosity and a greater suspicion than you are “exalting” yourself over them.

Sadly these cases are seldom resolved in an amicable way and usually ends in a split between the parties involved, with a list of accusations and suspicions held against you which are totally unfounded and absolutely untrue and in fact, completely contrary to who you are and to what lives in your own heart!

Remember Joseph and his brothers? He told his dreams from a pure heart. Gladly sharing the wonders of the dreams he was receiving from the LORD. He never meant any harm in doing so. Nor was he haughty over them. He could not see or understand why they did not rejoice with him!

Yet in his brother’s hearts they saw something completely different than what Joseph did! They saw him being proud and haughty and as seeing himself far superior to them!

The fact that the Anointing brought God’s Favour upon his life, causing his father to clothe him in a special coat and keeping him from working with his brothers, certainly also did not help his cause. He was in trouble from the start, without having done anything deserving it, except being Anointed by the LORD and favoured for it.

The Anointing upon his life, however, made his brothers see what wasn’t there or even true and caused them to take offence and to begin resenting Joseph.

The end of the story you know. His own flesh and blood ended up selling him off to get rid of him. Not that they would be better off for it. But because they could not bear the Aroma of the Anointing that perfumed his life.

The Anointing will separate you

The second thing that the Anointing will produce in your life is that it will separate you and set you aside for your purpose.

You were not Anointed to “look good.” You are Anointed for a task and a purpose.

Samson had a task to accomplish. So did Gideon and David and every other servant of God that ever carried His Anointing.

This separation comes by the Holy Spirit and will be an evident part in many areas of your life. It will separate you from being in agreement with a lot of things which others will see no problem agreeing with.

It will separate you from any form of compromise and cause you to be very sensitive and to withdraw from anything that is offensive to the Holy Spirit. It will also separate you from the company of people and draw you aside to spend time with God.

This separation adds more fuel to the fires of suspicion, which will already be burning against your life. To those who do not understand you, your calling, journey and unique walk with the LORD, it will smack of pride and of self exaltation!

These things tell those examining you with the natural eye, that you truly do believe that you are more “special” than others and that you judge and condemn what others do and believe, when you are not in agreement with them.

Joseph did not work with his brothers, because God had assigned him for a special assignment. He had to dream and tell his dreams. He had to be sharpened in the Spirit to hear and see and perceive what others could not.

Had he been in the company of his brothers and befriended them, spending his days and nights with them, he would have been carried away out of “God’s world” into theirs, talking their language, rather than being able to speak the Wisdom of God!

His separation from his brothers caused them to begin to hate him and despise him for thinking himself “above” them.

Yet God knew that in order for Joseph to hear His Voice, he needed to be in His Presence!

Samson was another of God’s Anointed who was separated from certain things in his life which others seemed to have had no need of separating themselves from.

He was never to cut his hair, nor to drink or touch any wine among other things. God needed to keep him pure and required of him to keep himself in his unique covenant promise with Him.

John Baptist also had his uniqueness as an Anointed servant of God. He remained in seclusion with God in the wilderness for most his life and ate a special diet of locusts and honey.

Surely those who came from all over must have brought the prophet something from the city to indulge in. Yet the Word teaches us that John followed the strict diet which God had provided for him.

These things are not easily or readily understood or accepted by those that surround the Anointed of the LORD.

Never the less, they are required of God and although they may cause others to snub at you, God requires you to carry what He has placed upon you with grace, while bearing the outward consequences from those who do not have eyes to see and are not mindful to understand.

The Greatest and supreme Example of these things is of course Jesus our LORD. He remained a Mystery to many in His time and still is to a great many today!

These things are some of the dangers that can and most likely will face the Anointed man or woman of the LORD. It will draw undeserved hatred, resentment and opposition to you from those who you would expect to welcome and embrace you and who rightfully should have done so, but who cannot get themselves to accept you and your behaviour and sometimes also cannot accept the fragrance they detect upon you, that is amiss from their own lives.

Here you will remember David and Saul and how David was persecuted by Saul for no other reason than Saul having detected the Anointing upon David and recognising that God had passed the kingship unto David which had been torn from his life. This drove Saul insane with anger and caused him to hate David and to resent the day he ever brought him in and welcomed him into his house and kingdom. Not realising and forgetting that God had already Anointed David by His servant Samuel, long before he ever set foot in the palace!

Sadly this caused and fuelled rage and jealous resentment to rise in Saul, as it today still does in many who should have loved you, but are both offended and repelled from you, because they recognise upon your life what they desired to have in their own.

Take heart Anointed of the LORD and carry what you have been given gracefully!

 

~ Johann van der Hoven

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Johann van der Hoven is in South Africa. He has been serving the Lord in ministry since 1991 and has hosted numerous apostolic revival meetings in South Africa and in South America. He also currently pioneers a organic church planting movement across South Africa. For more information about him and his ministry visit www.sonsofsovereignty.com or Revival.

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