Re: The Living Word Fellowship, The Walk, John Robert Stevens
Date: November 22, 2013 02:37AM
A huge benefit each of us can receive from our time in TLWF, or any similar group, is to finally be forced to examine the fruit. There is a reason God’s first command was that we have no other gods before Him. When we accept human substitutes, we end up with some weird distorted view of God - thinking He is constantly destructive in His attempt to “discipline” us. That’s the way humans treat each other – not the way God treats us. He causes the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. When you consider the abuse you forced yourself to endure in TLWF, thinking it was God, it is quite refreshing to find out He’s not like that at all. Of course He disciplines us for our good – but He has a goal in mind and it actually produces godly fruit, not just self- condemnation and slavery.
There is true freedom in Chris alone. Having a “revelation” that another human can take the place of God and give you a nature change or give you resurrection life in exchange for your obedience to them is simply a lie. I spent over 30 years in TLWF on both sides of giving and receiving “words from God” and in hindsight, having a good feeling about something, subject to my overseer's final approval, is not a word from God. Fortunately, we are not under the Old Testament law where prophets were only allowed one miss and then they rocked them to sleep. The present day “Prophetic Movement” would be obsolete in a few days if it had to abide by the same rules. If TLWF were to go back to John’s original teaching, “prophetic words” were to be confirmation of something God had spoken to you, not the initiation of it so that another human becomes the source of God to you. The hirelings insist that everything you do must be confirmed by them while they are subject to no one. Maybe their punishment will be that they have to submit to each other and fight over who gets to be god.