Greetings and blessings to you in Jesus name! It is clear that in this season our Lord is initiating a great move to restructure the Body of Christ for victory and freedom, and to fulfil His plans and His purposes. In this message, I want to share with you a few things that the Lord has shown me about the ‘category spirit’ and to give you vital keys for breaking its power so that the Lord’s restructuring can take place in His Church.
Breaking the category spirit with the keys of David
Saul was anointed and appointed as the first king of Israel through Samuel the prophet. Saul’s kingship had come to him supernaturally through the Spirit of God, but over time he began to disobey God and to show clearly that he was unable to walk with Samuel and align with God’s word. This disobedience eventually cost him his kingdom and his anointing left him, but for a time he still held his position as king.
David was then anointed by Samuel to be the next king of Israel. A key moment in David’s journey towards kingship came to pass when he was sent down to the Valley of Elah to carry mealtime provisions to his brothers who were there with the army of Israel facing off against the army of the Philistines.
For forty days, the Philistine giant Goliath had stood and openly defied the army of Israel. Israel was literally being resisted by a strongman, and instead of fighting the enemy army they were only managing to infight among themselves. When David came and saw what was taking place, his own brothers told him that he didn’t belong there, and categorised him as a shepherd, and as a conceited and wicked person. However, by the time that all was said and done, David had taken the head of Goliath as a trophy and given Israel the victory in battle. From this victory, David was given a place in the house of Saul. He had come to serve his brothers, but ended up serving the whole nation. He had stepped forward to challenge Goliath initially for the sake of his own ambitions and to claim the rewards that Saul was offering but ended up in the place where he would learn vital lessons about kingship.
At the Valley, David broke out of the category that he had been placed in and came into victory and destiny. This is an aspect of what the Bible calls the Keys of David, and it is important for us to study and understand the characteristics of David that enable this breakthrough.
The godly principles of David
David had to continue to break the category spirit. David went into Saul’s house as a worship warrior, and God used his skill in music to bring peace to Saul’s spirit. Through the victory over Goliath, David had also received wealth and Saul’s daughter’s hand in marriage and had become part of the king’s household. David served in Saul’s household and army faithfully. However, David’s victories and successes caused Saul’s issues and insecurities to stir up badly, and Saul looked for a way to kill David.
Saul categorised David as a troublemaker, and as a king and man of great influence, many people believed what Saul had to say about David. This reinforced the category that was being imposed on David by Saul, and David was pushed out of his place in Saul’s house. He had to escape for his life, and eventually came to the cave of Adullam (1 Samuel 22). Although this was a difficult time for David, God was using what was in Saul to push David into his kingdom and Saul succeeded in this.
The Scripture tells us that while David was at Adullam, a lot of distressed, indebted and dissatisfied people gathered around David. Among them there would have been thieves, people with anger issues, and all sorts. Yet out of this situation, and what David carried within him, an entirely new kingdom was being birthed.
This was taking place because in God’s sight, David was walking according to a different set of principles to Saul. David feared God and was walking according to godly principles.
This brings us to a point which is important for the Body of Christ right now and which we need to address. Today, there are many people who are calling others ‘Saul’, but they themselves are not walking according to David’s principles.
David was not purposely trying to undermine Saul’s kingship or even to use his own giftings and favour to take advantage of Saul’s situation. Today, however, there are some whose ambition, whose unwillingness to accept correction or direction, and whose pride in their own giftedness, leads them to label others as Saul with the purpose of undermining them and taking advantage. They go around in this immature state, and through what they say and write, point people more towards confusion than they do towards Christ. Their labelling and categorising of others in this manner breeds suspicion in the Body of Christ, and causes others to begin to see things according to these false categories rather than by the Spirit of God.
On the other hand, there are clearly also leaders that need to deal with their fears and insecurities so that they can find a way to work with the younger ones and see them released into the purposes of God. All this now has to be addressed, because with so much categorisation, labelling and infighting going on, the real enemy is getting away with it.
The key to it all is to return to the mindset of a servant. David became who he was because of the victories he won as a servant. He came to the Valley of Elah as a servant and walked away with the head and sword of Goliath as his trophies. Nowadays, we see many who want platforms to preach and to do different things, but they have no trophies of servanthood. A person’s gifts are to serve the Church. Somehow, some have become so distorted in their thinking that they think the Church is there to serve their gifts. When are you in this mindset and you come across leaders who resist your errors and provide correction, you interpret this as the spirit of Saul. God is looking for people who will come into the Body of Christ to build in whatever capacity, not to promote themselves in any way that they can. It’s time to move away from thinking about being a superstar, and back to thinking about serving.
Transformation in Adullam
The people that had gathered around David were clearly categorised in certain ways. Even the way that the Bible describes them shows that. However, they came around David, and clearly being a man of God, he used the principles of the kingdom of God to lead them and broke the categories that had defined their lives, so that they became people of great renown and honour. He knew he needed to bring in a new kind of kingdom and he led in a way that brought this to pass.
I believe that this type of transformational leadership is what God is calling the Body of Christ into now. To break the category spirit from around us and the Church, we need to truly stand in the ways of God. The people around David, being distressed and discontented, would have being demanding instant justice, and making other demands based on their situations. That is where the Body of Christ is today. The only leaders that will bring about true transformation in people’s lives, as David did, will be those that maintain the principles of God rather than being easily influenced by the demands of the people. People will be coming into the Church with categories from their pasts that God wants to break, such as singleness and poverty. The anointing of God will fall on the one who can build the kingdom of God and stand for the promise over the Church which is kingship and rulership.
The journey starts by simply recognising what is being sent to compromise you and taking the stand in Christ to cancel out what the enemy is using to categorise you. If you are a person that finds yourself moving from church to church, you need to be aware of what has happened in the past and of your past mistakes, and do what it takes to make sure that those cycles do not repeat. When you go to a new place, don’t do those things that are going to reinforce an old category that you need to move on from. Many people, when they can’t take correction or work in a team, leave a place and then label it as ‘not loving’ or with some other label, when the reality is that they don’t know how to get on with others or are too stubborn to change, being puffed up because of their own giftedness. It is not giftedness, but rather the character of Jesus that builds the Kingdom. If you do not change, you may find next time around that the locks have been changed, and while you may have a position and a few people that walk with you, you won’t have access to what you once had, as the Lord needs to preserve the Upper Room for those who will change so that they can become hosts for a move of God.
Leaders also need to be very much aware that in this season, where many people are transitioning from one place to another, that it is not all about about the giftedness of whoever comes to the Church. There are those that through whatever they are given to do, be it even an opportunity to play a drum or guitar, will bring about division. Don’t be so desperate to grow your church that you allow such things to happen. Don’t pursue growth out of desperation, but by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that He will build His Church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. And His ways always win.
By the end of the story, the people that were around David were no longer categorised as they once were, because he did not compromise. In the New Testament, after three years with our Lord, the Sons of Thunder became lovers of Jesus, Matthew the tax collector became an apostle, Mark the spoiled son of a Greek widow had become an author of Scripture, and Saul of Tarsus had become the Apostle Paul. The presence of God and the access to God given to us through the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit will bring about transformation, and we must fight for that. To see change, we must change.
And change must come. Some due to pride, have refused to change the many twisted things that they know need to be corrected, only to find themselves dancing in sorrow in front of the Leviathan spirit (Isaiah 41:22), and so my prayer is from Isaiah 27:3, that the Lord will water and preserve that which is His. He’s not angry, He’s just getting His Church to awaken to the fact that change is in the air.
I am His delight.
Rev Betty King
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