“And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.” Ephesians 4:11-16, (KJV)
Many sects of Christianity teach different man made doctrines concerning this scripture. But if we really stop to take a closer look, if we break it down to the King James and actually study the text for ourselves, we find something so freeing and amazing. Many people make this passage more than it needs to be. God is calling us all here at Fusion Churches to walk in freedom on this today. We live in a title driven recognition based society. We use examples other people set for us to compare ourselves to instead of looking to follow the example of Christ directly. Who Christ is is contained in the red letter words that He directly spoke. We must seek FIRST His identity, HIS WORDS, and THEN allow His Holy Spirit to speak to us about our own identities. If we look at who Jesus was while He walked upon this earth, Jesus was apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher to many. After His death, burial, and resurrection, He became the King humanity has sought after since the beginning. Through Christ’s risen Holy Spirit freely made available to us in our own baptism, He rules and reigns in and through all of us. He is Lord above Lords, Emmanuel, God ALIVE and WITH us. He is every single prophecy ever spoken through any form of doctrine about a coming messiah rolled up into one. He is the light of the world and, when we make our hearts HIS home, His Kingdom ruling and reigning power also resides within us. Therefore, when we are joined to Jesus, all that Jesus is becomes our identity. We speak, we walk, we touch lives, we act on His commands. We live for Christ. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.~Phillipians 1:21. Our identity here at Fusion is to BE the life giving words spoken directly by Christ.
Once life with Christ has become our identity we can better understand who He has created each of us to be individually in Him apart from anyone else. When God told me to use my maiden name in forming Audra Waters Ministries, Inc. It was one of those moments in life where I had to ask God “WHAT?”. Surely God would want a God fearing wife to give glory to her husband by using her married name? But in time God gave me revelation about the truth behind our names. The Bible tells us that we, like Jesus, we were each formed in our mothers wombs and predestined to walk on this earth with our individual missions. How God Himself chose our names before our parents even knew of us or named us. Jesus’s name means victory among so many other things. Each of our names contain clues to who God has created us to be, too. We have to understand this BEFORE God joins us to another in Holy Matrimony to take on their name. Because when we marry another Child of God, we take on their God given missions, too. The two missions become one mission, one joint assignment for both marriage partners, waiting to be discovered and carried out while we are alive on this earth. This God given assignment is our God given legacy (His legacy) that God wants to accomplish in and through us while we walk this earth as Jesus Himself also did. In time, God revealed to me that by using my maiden name, He could give honor to my husband, and the rest of my family, in many other ways. One of those ways has recently been made manifest in an effort here at this ministry known as 4HONOR where my husband has now received the calling from God to Pastor. In short, 4HONOR was created by the Holy Spirit, through Audra Waters Ministries, Inc., to be a platform for my husband’s own singular identity in Christ (apart from me) to speak into the lives of many. So that we both may operate as one Pastor individually and collectively. God, through His Holy Spirit, has joined us and sealed us for His ministry together and we are so thankful to be free to operate this way. Through this, God has directly provided an example of what the Holy Spirit can do in and through all of our marriages or relationships if we are willing to allow Him the freedom to do such a miraculous “fusing” work in each of us.
Once we better understand our own identities in Christ, we can be joined together with another believer either in friendship, ministry, our in our own marriages because we no longer have personal agendas and our agenda is free to become His agenda of peaceful oneness with each other. When God joins us, no man can interfere with this union because it is built upon HIS identity (Salvation) and who He has created each of us to be. We no longer have the need to compare ourselves to others and we become free to be ourselves, let God use us, just the way we are, and continue to guide, strengthen, and shape us. And we are free to be linked together as a chain in the body of Christ that can not be broken as well. Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Matthew 19:6. We think of this passage as a 
marriage scripture but the book of Ephesians tells us that Christ was speaking here concerning the mystery of the church. (For those who are following FUSION CHURCHES, this week’s Bible Discovery assignment is Ephesians 4). The truth is that we have so many denominations that we get scattered, tossed too and fro, with the sound of each of them. God has called us as the church to be HIS Bride and to be joined to each other in Holy Matrimony to HIM. We hear a lot about end times in the church and this can be confusing. We must focus on the fact that, regardless of our religious or political differences) God is in the process of “Sounding the Trumpet” He has prophesied about for years. When we know that Jesus is coming to collect His bride, we know it is our job to get busy about becoming His Bride worthy of collecting because we work together with one another in our individual callings. There are so many mysteries yet for us to discover. This is just one of them. The mere beginning of many. But we must rejoice that we are seeing evidence that He is gathering us and that it lets us know that He has so many more abundant blessings in store for us. As a church, we are called above all else to worship Christ. And though this mystery is so deep that our scientific minds can not even begin to scratch the surface of all of the truth that this knowledge contains, we know that worship is His one true heart for all of us. It is the very thing that links all of us. Regardless of our own singular identities and missions, who we are married to, who our friends are, or what we are called to do, this is the common identity of the Church He is busy about assembling, creating, and building in and through each of us.
Once we are joined to Christ, we can THEN be joined to others. When HE joins us to another believer (forms a solid relationship between two people based only upon their common relationship with Him by directly speaking through His Holy Spirit to each other through both of them), whether it be in a personal relationship or ministry effort, we are free to be Christ to the world through helping one another. But, in order to be joined together, we each must revert back to the understanding that Jesus is apostle (sent to preach the gospel that He is alive and walks the earth through us), prophet (one who uses their mouths to speaks for the Holy Spirit) evangelist (one who spreads this good news), pastor (one who shepherds God’s sheep, a spiritual parent to many, he adopts us), and teacher (one who teaches the lessons the Lord has taught them personally as they teach the word of God to others), Jesus was all 5. Jesus IS the 5 fold ministry alive in us. Therefore, if Christ is IN us, we are joined to HIM first above all else. Each of these attributes, or gifts God gave Christ, all make up one ministry that is vital to the body of Christ 
(us). In other words, these are gifts God has called us to give to each other. There are times in our lives where He will ask each of us to operate in one or more of those areas. He has laid an example for us to follow in that He was all things to all people. But at the end of it all, those gifts from God he operated in ultimately lead to our knowledge of His true identity as Savior to us all. Since none of us are Savior but mere human vessels called to spread His truths through His gifts, the Holy Spirit gives each of us the grace and freedom of having ONE main gift that He wants us to focus on and give all of our attention to allowing His Holy Spirit to develop most in us. The Holy Spirit Himself will whisper to us directly about the gifts He has given each of us and He will send people to us to teach us how to operate in these gifts. This is HIS gift to the world through us individually. As Jesus spoke in the book of Matthew, He already GAVE us these gifts (before the foundation of the earth was formed He KNEW us and called us out by name). We ALL have gifts and we all have ONE area He wants us to focus on and operate in for the purpose of edifying the entire body of Christ so that we all may be joined as one body of believers and ultimately joined to Him when He sends for us. Satan has used many of God’s people to twist this and deceive us into thinking these roles (titles given by man) are ways of gaining personal recognition (we live in a success driven society, we are trained by our surroundings to do this) in the body of Christ. If Satan can keep us distracted and focused on ourselves, he can keep us from bringing God glory (giving God credit for the gifts HE placed in us) and operating together in the common heart he has for every church that gathers in His name on this earth. of His church as one body. the common heart of worship.
The church teaches us the religious ways of man in regards to the 5 fold ministry. But Jesus comes to each of us today to teach us even more glorious and powerful understanding of this. He comes today to heal us from our teachings and equip us each to operate in our callings so that, in time, His Holy Spirit can speak to those He has called to shepherd us (they will recognize the gift God is bringing in you, confirm it, and equip you to know how to use it for His greater glory, and so that you can also be used by God to be a blessing to many. Jesus comes this Sabbath to release us to either operate in our gifts or begin discovering who we are in Him. In other words, Jesus didn’t come today to destroy the religious teachings of man regarding His words He spoke
about the 5 fold ministry. Even better. He came down from heaven personally,through this ministry and many others, to actively full fill them. Each of you under the sound of this teaching have a calling and a purpose strategically given to you by God before your parents ever even thought about naming you. You each have an identity in Christ that is vital to everyone around you. God doesn’t need to “fix you first” before He determines you are ready. You aren’t broken like that. You are perfectly crafted vessels who have gone through a lot of pain. God allowed the pain to make you willing, Just as Jesus was, to be filled by His Holy Spirit so that he can use you. And, the fact that he led you here to read this message today serves as evidence that he has gone before you and already made the way for the discovery of who He has created you to be to happen and happen rather quickly. We all seek peace. Knowing who you are in Christ and who Christ really is is the very thing that gives us the freedom to come together, worship Jesus, and just be friends regardless of any other difference. If this word was written just for you, if you have been set free by this, The Holy Spirit says to tell you “Go. Be free. Be strong in me. You were allowed to bruised and broken for me so you could carry my light to many. You are now safe in the Father’s hands because you are linked directly to me.” Don’t worry about what others are going to think. “Just do you.” It is what HE has ALREADY created you to freely do.
If this word has pierced you and brought you much needed freedom this sabbath day, we would love it if you reach out to us. We want to hear personally from you. The Lord may be sending us to help you and you to us to help us, too. This may be the “pool of bethesda” swirling for you. “And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me. Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath. If God is speaking to you about baptism, please reach out to us as well. We want to better get to know you and provide you with resources that will prepare you for that.
Stay abundantly blessed to be a blessing to many. Get out there. Walk with God and just BE you. Exactly the way His Holy Spirit is already leading you.
Pastor Audra Waters-Leary
Sermon notes 6/24/2018, “What is all this 5 fold ministry stuff about?”
Dedicated to the late Pastor Arthur Borgeouis who taught so lovingly about “A Father’s heart” and wanted that more than anything for every person he knew.
Have you accepted Christ as your Savior?
If you would like to accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, please pray the following prayer:
"God, I believe in you and your son Jesus Christ. I believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave to save me. Today, I invite Jesus into my heart to stay. I make you Lord over my life. Make me new. Wash me, Lord, and cleanse me. In Jesus Name, Amen"
If you have just prayed that prayer, we want to celebrate your new victory with you. Please contact us at prayers@awministries.org so we can welcome you into the kingdom. We don't want you to have to walk alone and we have some resources we would like the opportunity to share with you.
