The accuser uses yet another weapon, and it uses this weapon astutely. There are times in our walk with God when, to increase fruitfulness, the Father prunes us back (see John 15). This is a season of preparation, where the Lord's purpose is to lead His servants into new power in ministry.
During this time, God requires new levels of surrender as well as a fresh crucifixion of the flesh. It is often a time of humiliation and testing, of emptiness and seeming ineffectiveness as God expands our dependency upon Him. It can be a fearful time when our need is exposed in stark visibility.
Unfortunately, this time of weakness is apparent not only to the man or woman of God; it frequently occurs before the church, and before principalities and powers as well. The faultfinder spirit, and those who have come to think as it thinks, find in their target's vulnerability an opportunity to crush him.
Time and again, what would otherwise have become an incubator of life becomes a coffin of death. Those who might otherwise emerge with the clarity and power of prophetic vision are beaten down and abandoned, cut off from the very people who should have prayed them through to resurrection. In this attack the faultfinder is most destructive. For here this demon aborts the birth of mature ministries, those who would arm their churches for war.
The faultfinders and gossips are already planted in the church--perhaps you are such a one! When the living God is making your pastor more deeply dependent, and thus more easily shaped for His purposes, do you criticize his apparent lack of anointing? Although he did not abandon you during your time of need, do you abandon him now when your faith might be the very encouragement he needs to fully yield to the cross?
Those who are sympathetic to the accuser of the brethren fulfill, by application, Matthew 24:28, "Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather." The backbiting of these vulture-like individuals actually feeds their lower nature, for they seek what is dead in a church; they are attracted to what is dying.
Eventually these faultfinders depart, instinctively looking to take issue with some other church. "These are grumblers, finding fault . . . the ones who cause divisions" (Jude 16-19). They leave behind their former brethren, severely wounded and in strife, and a pastor greatly disheartened. Soon, they join a new church and, in time, God begins to deal with this new pastor. Once again the faultfinder spirit manifests itself through them, strategically positioned to destroy another church.
Today, God is seeking to raise up His servants with increased power and authority. In the pruning stage of their growth, will we water their dryness with prayer or will we be vultures drawn to devour their dying flesh?
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