1. THE HEART’S DESIRE

• There is one consistent and eternal sign of people who walk with God: they are open to inner change.
• There heart condition is a willingness to be transformed into something greater and more glorious!
• Single-mindedness of heart, seeking God’s heart purposes is their greatest and all-consuming desire.
• Friendship with the Lord!
• God’s heart is seeking our hearts. He is wooing us.
• Only an encounter with the Living God will change us. That’s why He seeks us, for He knows that in our own natural flesh we do not truly desire Him. “He first loved us.”
• The prophets are telling us that great change is about to come, upon the earth and in the hearts of all people. But a greater more eternal change is also on the horizon, the
• Restoration of God’s people into Sons of the Most High God (= El Elyon).

2. YIELDING TO GOD

• The time is ripe for us to yield more and more to God. To lay aside any preconceived ideas and traditions that are likely to make us stray.
• Lay aside the false and embrace the real! God wants to show us how He sees us. This will require humbleness of heart and strength of character.
• Sincerity of heart. The word sincere means “without wax”. It refers to a potter who having made a vessel found it has cracks. To deceive his customers he would put wax in the crack and cover the defect. To be sincere means nothing is flawed, nothing covered up, nothing is deceptive. God is looking for such vessels amongst His people.
• This is why God is putting His people through a time of testing. Vessels that are not sincere, vessels that have hidden defects will not be able to carry the anointing that?’s going to be poured out on the earth.
• The Lord is building His House, but it will not have any flaws in it. All the things we’re going through and yet to go through are for one purpose only: to equip us a holy vessels.
• He has provided for us a full measure of grace to be prepared. Some will run from the fire that’s coming, others will run to it. Which one are you?

3. RESTORATION OF OUR HEARTS

• We need to know our destiny, for without that vision before us we will be left directionless. Prov. 29:18
• God has determined a goal for us, and He wants us to keep this within our hearts and remember it. Deut. 6: 20-23.
• There is a truth and promise for us here. Jesus didn’t save us just so we could wander directionless in the wilderness. God is determined to take you somewhere. In order for this to be fully accomplished our hearts need to be restored.
• He has brought us out of the darkness and translated us into His light! Alleluia!
• It is God’s desire for us to enter into His rest; to experience His presence. He is determined that this should happen. But where are the people who desire this with all their heart?
• He has brought us out and He will take us in. Luke 12:32
• This is a tangible experience, and not something just to be enjoyed once we die and go the heaven.
• God is determined for us to rejoice and enter into His pleasure and purpose. Jesus even said that the stones and rocks cannot contain this truth from being proclaimed. Luke 19:40
• There is a choice to be made in this hour. Do we want to be part of His entering in? Do we have the faith? Heb. 3:19

4. A REGENERATE HEART

• Unregenerate hearts are like the stones God used for the Ten Commandments. But the Father’s desire was for these to be written upon hearts of flesh (Jer. 31:33). Unregenerate hearts obey out of duty and compulsion; hearts of flesh serve Him out of love and desire.
• The Spirit of the Lord needs to enter into our hearts and melt them. We need change in the Inner Realm.
• God has been writing on the stony condition of the Church for a long time but now He wants to etch it on soft hearts, willing to receive it and respond to His wooing.
• Much restoration is happening in the Church, but the greatest restoration needs to be in the inner realm of our heart (=spirit-man). Psa. 40:6
• This is a great revelation and truth. God doesn’t want our services, our missionary outreach, our finance, our numbers, our sweat – He wants our hearts!
• Psa 84:5 “How blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee, in whose heart are the highways to Zion!”
• Are our hearts fixed on God’s purposes? Are we changed so much within the Inner Realms of the heart that God can build His highways there? God’s desire has never changed. He desires to have many sons, who live from the inside out!

The Issachar Ministry

Teaching by
Peter McArthur

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1. THE FORMATION OF OUR CHARACTER

• Jesus is the exact “representation” (= character) of the Father’s nature according to Hebrews 1:3.
• The meaning of the word is “a tool used to engrave”. So if we’re going to be conformed unto Jesus we need to let God engraven our soul and life so that it will become just like His Son’s.
• God uses the circumstances of life to form us into His shape: He is the potter we are the clay. This begins when we are Born Again and made “holy”. The word “holy” simply means “to be set apart”.
• God takes us and sets us apart to make us into the form or shape He desires.
• This is why the formation of our character is important. We need to cooperate with the Lord in becoming more like Jesus.
• Read what Paul says in 2 Cor. 7:1

2. THE HEART

• In Scripture the heart is linked to our inner-man, our spirit-life. This is why we are told to guard our heart. Prov. 4:23
• Our human character is formed by our upbringing, education, experiences of life, etc. But our Christian character is moulded by the Holy Spirit. Our spiritual union with God brings forth holy (=“separated”) fruit in our lives.
• So it can be said that our Christian character is grown and nurtured within our spirit-man, the heart. Therefore, whatever is in our heart will determine our character. What comes out of our heart will reveal to others what our character is really like!
• We need to control what goes into the heart. Self-discipline, spiritual regulation and guarding our inner life are ways of protecting the development of the inner man.
• There is a need to re-order our life so that:

The spirit is king
The soul is servant
The body is slave

• The formation of the Christian life is a lost art in modern Christianity. The Hebrews, the early Christians and even those at the time of the Reformation, all had a sense of “developing the Inner Life”. John Wesley had such a method of it that his followers were even called “Methodists”. His early assembly of Christian friends called themselves “The Holy Club” (= the separated ones).
• The attitudes needed to bring about this Christian Formation of the inner man can be found in the Beatitudes (Matt 5: 3-8) and in the list of the Fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5: 22).

3. REVELATION IS NEEDED

• Revelation is needed in order for us to see we need change. Without God showing us our needs we are lost. So many of us try to keep on pleasing Him by reverting to religion and works.
• Once revelation comes and we see the need to be changed and revived our next step is to obey. It is here that so many Christians fail.
• They don’t fail because of insincerity or lack of zeal; they fail because they look to “works” rather than to the person of Jesus.
• When revelation does its convicting work, our part is to look away to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith, not to some method, work or religious thing that will bring us into further bondage.
• We will grow in character by learning to look upon Jesus and to behold Him. The better we know Jesus the more our spirit-man will yearn to be like Him. This is an automatic process based on God’s spiritual laws.
• Remember that the work of change going on within us is not our work, it’s God’s work! Our work is to bend and to be pliable to Him.
• The Adamic nature that fights for control over our life has already been put to death on the Cross. The life that is now within us is the Seed that the Father placed there through the New Birth.
• It is our duty, privilege and even joy, to cooperate with our Father as He brings this seed to full maturity in us!

4. BE RENEWED IN THE SPIRIT OF YOUR MIND Eph. 4:22-24

• Throughout the centuries, but particularly in the 20th, Christians have tried to renew their minds using all sorts of spiritual disciplines and methods. Most have failed – because they were based on man’s works to try to improve himself.
• God doesn’t want to improve us, He wants to transform us!
• Therefore the only place we can find such change is before His throne. Certainly, there are things we have to do and habits we have to confront and put away. But the most vital aspect of circumcising the heart and becoming more like Jesus is to spend time with God, sitting in His presence and allowing His quiet but steady work to act upon our hearts.
• This will require a measure of humility Rom. 12:1-3
• Currently the Holy Spirit is calling the Lord’s people to “come in” and sit with the Father. Many ministries are finding they’re being called to put aside unnecessary issues and to be single-minded.
• We will not stand in what is coming unless we have aligned ourselves with the Father and allowed Him to do His work in the inner man of our heart. Our ministry anointing might be wonderful and good, but it alone will not see us through the days that lie ahead.
• The more we guard and nurture the heart the more we will conform to the image of Christ Jesus our pattern.

Teaching by
Peter McArthur

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The Issachar Ministry is a Christian Prophetic Teaching ministry based in Australia.

Founded in 1986 our calling is to assist the Body of Christ to come to maturity of spirit and soul as we await the return of the Lord Jesus (Eph. 4:11-16).

We are concerned with presenting apostolic truth and End Time insight within a prophetic context.

As part of this endeavour we offer a variety of in-depth teaching publications that are available from our online E-Store.

Peter McArthur, the founder of Issachar Ministry, has a heart for the nation of Israel and teaches on the Hebrew roots of our Christian faith.

Currently he is linking in with those concerned to establish the Biblical Five Fold Ministry as a viable and effective foundation for the next move of God .

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