The Anointing: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

by R.T. Kendall

He was completely filled with the Spirit. He was also God as though He were not man! And yet, “In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering” (Heb. 2:10). All I can say is, if our Lord Jesus Christ needed to suffer before He could be all that God the Father envisaged for Him, how much more do we—frail children of dust, and sinful (Jer. 17:9)—need to suffer before God can trust us with the full extent of the anointing?

Suffering was David’s passport to a greater anointing. Though the Spirit came upon him in power (1 Sam. 16:13), he needed Saul as insurance for yet more power.

King Saul’s hatred of David was the best thing that ever happened to

David. Little did David know that, rather than being crowned king in the next week or two, he would have years and years of fleeing Saul—for one reason: to guarantee that the secret anointing in him was refined.

But there was hope in it all. David got new energy from a ne...

God knows how much we all need friends. A friend is someone who knows all about you and still likes you!

A true friend will tell you the truth.

In 1982 I was to undergo my greatest trial. As a result of having Arthur Blessitt in Westminster Chapel, some of my very best supporters and friends deserted me. I was feeling it keenly by the end of the year. But that was only the beginning. Throughout 1983 my opposition grew. By the end of 1983 the criticisms were beyond my wildest dreams. What I had preached, carefully and openly, since coming to the Chapel in 1977 was suddenly being attacked. Billy Graham preached for us in 1984, an event that could have helped most preachers, but by the end of that year six of our twelve deacons officially came out against me. A few days before Christmas I was served with a letter that would be sent to all the members of the church that described me as a heretic—I was accused of antinomianism (the view that says it doesn’t matter how we live if we are saved). Our Christmas of 1984 was the bleakest we’d ever known.

As I stared at the floor I heard a voice—from within: “Don’t lean on your understanding, trust in the Lord with all your heart.” It gave me peace. An unusual presence was at my right hand, almost at my fingertips. I will never forget that. The meeting reconvened, and moments later the church overwhelmingly voted to dismiss the deacons who had falsely accused me. God brought us through, and we have now served twenty-one years at Westminster Chapel.

Those were good men, all of them Christians, and included some of the best and most godly I have ever known. That is what made it all so difficult. Those who affirmed me as a man of God affirmed them as well. The tension was high and was without question the greatest crisis in Westminster Chapel’s history.

But it was brilliant for me. It might be an exaggeration to say it was the best thing that ever happened to me, but it was certainly one of the best.

But God not only did not desert me, but was more gracious and real than ever. I wouldn’t want to go through it again, but its value to me was, literally, more pre- cious than gold.

But thank God for the secret anointing in you. Thank God for friends. And thank God for your enemies. They will probably mean more to you, at the end of the day, than your friends!

For David there was an unconscious preparation in his own household. “A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household” (Matt. 10:36). I

“But the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). God saw in David what Jesse underestimated—a young man with a heart after God.

The feeling that we never come up to standard is frustrating.

As God has earmarked you for a work in the future I would urge you to get your sense of self-esteem from knowing you please God alone. Just

Him. He isn’t hard to please. First, the blood of Jesus washed all sin and imperfection away. Second, Jesus is at the Father’s right hand and is moved with compassion over our weaknesses. Third, the father in any case “knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14).

Do you have a heart after God? Do you yearn to honor Him? Do you aspire to seek not honor and glory from your peers but the honor that God alone can bestow?

Sibling rivalry can be a refining process.

“For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men” (1 Peter 2:15).

The first test: sensitivity to grieving the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a person. A very, very sensitive person at that. He gets His feelings hurt easily. You may say, “That’s not a very secure person.” Well, all I can say is that the Holy Spirit is very secure indeed but at the same time He can be grieved—hurt. “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30).

He would often warn about “grieving the Holy Ghost.” That made an indelible impression on me, and I never got over it.

We almost never know at the time we grieve the Spirit.

These words tell us a lot about the grieved Holy Spirit: “But he did not know that the LORD had left him” (Judg. 16:20).

I have learned the same thing. When I grieve the Spirit—whether by losing my temper or speaking about someone in an unflattering manner—I feel nothing.

We feel justified. Right. It may take hours or days—sometimes years—before we admit we grieved the Spirit.

The chief way we grieve the Spirit is by bitterness. A bitter spirit— that always seems right at the time.

seems right when we are bitter. Totally

justified in our own hearts.

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Eph. 4:31-32).

Instead of killing Saul, David decided to be content with leaving his footprints. He crept up unnoticed and cut off a corner of Saul’s robe. That seemed an innocuous thing to do. But “afterwards David was conscience-stricken for having cut off a corner of his robe” (1 Sam. 24:5). This act may seem harmless to some but not to David. His

walk with the Lord during those days of heart preparation had led him to a highly developed sensitivity to what grieves the Spirit. I say, many would have thought

Tomorrow’s servant of Christ learns to recognize the Holy Spirit and sense the things that grieve Him. We must learn to close the time gap from years to seconds, as David seems to have done.

It is so easy to say an ungracious thing about someone, especially if we feel they are up to no good.

The explanation: the ungrieved Spirit began to flow in me. The Spirit was allowed to be himself in me.

The second test: refusing to vindicate oneself.

Every servant of Christ must pass this test. “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Rom. 12:19).

The one thing He doesn’t want is our help. Indeed, if we pull strings to advance ourselves—as if to help God out— God will back off,

leave it to us so that we may see what a mess we wil...

Every servant of Christ, if honest, can testify to God’s gracious intervention that keeps him or her from grievous sin. It is by the sheer grace of God that any of us is kept from scandalous sin. David knew that so well. Do we?

satanic trap can be God’s setup—whether it be holding a grudge, vindicating ourselves, or sexual temptation—to see whether we really will become tomorrow’s men and women.

It will be recalled from my Introduction that tomorrow’s anointing will result in the combination of the Word and the Spirit. The preparation that God provides for tomorrow’s servant of Christ has as part of its aim making him or her open and obedient to the Spirit.

The Spirit of the Lord was on him to write many psalms. Jesus confirmed that David’s psalms were “by the Spirit” (Matt. 22:43). In these psalms David reveals his love for God’s Word and says that the Lord’s commands and ordinances are More precious than gold, than much pure gold;

they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb. By them is your servant warned; in keeping them

was the anointing on David by which he saw that God Himself magnified His word above His own name (Ps. 138:2).1 The NIV says, “You have exalted above all things your name and your word”—which of course is true. For the two ways God has revealed Himself in Scripture are through His Word and through His name. But why would David actually say that God magnified His Word above all His name? I believe the explanation is this: God puts priority on His integrity over His reputation. The Bible is God putting His integrity on the line. He certainly cares about the honor of His name—of course He does—but it is the integrity of what He says about Himself and what He promises to do that He puts first in order of priority.