Lessons in the Ladder Days

Candace Long: I'm Candace Long with Lessons in the Latter Days, offering biblical commentary to make sense of the times that we're living in. Today's topic is God's Kingdom Bootcamp for Leaders. In the last episode, "What will you be doing in the Kingdom?", I taught the traditional Jewish perspective that each of us will be given a personal assignment by Messiah to assist Him in governing the Kingdom.

I wrote it especially for those who don't particularly regard themselves as gifted, to have any notable aptitude they think the Lord would want to use, such as my dear 89-year-old friend Connie, who wrote this to me after listening to the program. She said, "So to answer your question, I'll be cleaning up the grounds before the coronation of the King." Now we may smile at her answer, but to be truthful, it's sad, for in my mind I see this woman as extremely gifted, but I cannot convince her. It's up to her and the many like her to press in and ask God to show them the gifts that He gave them and how He wants to use them.

All that to say that this episode is different from the last one. It's for leaders, for those of you who do know what your gifts are, your aptitudes, what you do well, and all the skills that you've been trained to do. But the overall question remains the same: Do you know what you will be doing in the Kingdom? I'm going to show you how to find out.

From what I have experienced walking with the Lord over 50 years, He has a different kind of boot camp for the experienced leader with an advanced curriculum. God introduced it to me in 2017, and it became a huge paradigm shift that centered around a business strategy revelation that required months to understand. I needed confirmation that this revelation was grounded in the Word of God. And when I was sure, I spent the next several years field-testing it and packaging it through various media to provide online resources and share it with others anywhere in the world.

Today I want to share four things with you: First, what this business strategy revelation is and how I received it. Second, how it shifted my career direction. Third, how I applied it. And fourth, how you can learn more about it if you'd like. Before I share the revelation, I want to read you a statement and ask whether you think the statement is true or false. Here it is: It's wrong to ask God for what you want. You just need to be willing to do whatever He asks you to do.

So what do you say, is that true or false? I'll read it one more time: It's wrong to ask God for what you want. You just need to be willing to do whatever He asks you to do. In pondering your answer, here are some verses you might want to consider. 1 Kings 3: "At Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon by night in a dream, and God said, 'Ask what I shall give you.'" In Psalm 2, the Lord said to His son, "Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage." Isaiah 7: "Ask a sign of the Lord your God." And Matthew 7: "Ask, and it shall be given to you."

This revelation came in bits and pieces over a 40-day period. Now, I have found this to be God's way after walking with Him over five decades. He gives a little bit; if you tune that out and go on your own way, He won't reveal any more. But if you do respond, He gives a little more. And once I saw the whole revelation, I was so blown away that I have been teaching it wherever I can.

Event number one began with a dream on January 30, 2017. This was a long dream with many plot points. I could spend hours breaking it out fully, but let me just share the first short scene. I was in a huge office building complex that houses various governmental agencies, and I was looking for the specific office that deals with aviation permits and licenses for part of my assignment. It was a flying assignment that I needed to fill out a lot of papers to get some sort of clearance to carry out.

I found the office, I walked inside, and said a very strange thing. It was loud enough for everyone to hear, and I said, "I'm doing this for the sixth generation." All of a sudden, everyone in the office stopped what they were doing and got quiet. The person behind the counter smiled and said, "Well, in that case, come on in." Now, this dream required a lot of research, including going back six generations in my family. But the metaphorical language of the dream planted a seed inside of me that I was there to get official clearance in a higher calling as someone who represents the sixth generation. I believe this refers biblically to Day 6, which precedes Day 7, or the Day of the Lord.

Event number two happened just a few days later. I was still pondering the sixth-generation dream, and I stopped to focus on how a contractor goes about getting a license when he's starting a building project. I was reviewing the whole process in my mind and flashed back to a memory five years earlier in 2012, when I was heading up a commercial development venture in northeast Georgia. This had been a two-year project up to this point, and I had to make a presentation to the City Council concerning plans to develop a personal care home on the historic main street that runs through town.

While reviewing this memory in my mind, the Lord prompted me to take a look at the proposal that I created for the council meeting. Now you should know that making proposals is what I have done a lot of in my career. I work hard on them. So as I flipped through the pages, I was impressed all over again by how sharp this proposal looked. The first part contained the permits and licenses that I had to get: the building permit, demolition permit, zoning variance, fire code permit, the proof of insurance, property easements, Historic Preservation Commission approval, City Council approval, followed by my favorite part, which is the business plan: the vision, the executive team, the vendors and partners, the market we would serve, the construction budget, the house plans, the financial projections, the investment documents, and funding agreements.

I was having a wonderful time reliving this proposal, and I was thinking to myself, "You did such a good job of this." And all of a sudden, God's voice whispered something that shook my world. He said, "Why aren't you this diligent in the plans that you bring before me?" I was speechless. I had never heard of such a thing. Our prayer is typically, "Lord, I'm here to do whatever You want, just tell me."

But let's be real here. What if He did tell me? What if He said, "I want you to develop a personal care home in the heart of the city." Would you even know how to begin? Would I even entrust something of this magnitude with you if you have not expressed any heart and specific strategy to meet the need you are seeing? Now looking back on all this, I believe it is this shallow thinking that He's dealing with now in His people, those who are called to help Him lead and govern when He builds God's Kingdom. This effort is going to be huge.

He needs leaders who are proven that they can be trusted to hear His heart on things going on in the world, to see a need, to formulate a strategy to meet that need, to present it properly to the authorities who have the power to greenlight such a venture, and then to put it in action. I believe these are the kinds of leaders He's calling now. For days I was stunned by this revelation. It wouldn't leave my mind because it was such a different paradigm from the way we approach God with our ideas and pray about things. It took a little over a month before I was ready to receive the final piece.

Event number three happened during the Jewish festival of Purim. As you know by now, I am Torah observant, meaning that I honor the appointed feasts and festivals as God instructed His people to do. One of those is Purim, that falls on the 14th and 15th of the Hebrew month of Adar, which is mid-March on our calendar. Here's a brief backstory: Purim celebrates the defeat of Haman's plot to massacre the Jews as recorded in the book of Esther. Queen Esther called for the Jews to fast and pray for three days and then risked her life to go before the King and petition to save her people.

This was her strategy, and the result was that God miraculously destroyed the plot and saved them. So while I was celebrating Purim, I was reading the fifth chapter of Esther and was struck by her conversation with the King. It says, "And the King said to her, 'What is it, Queen Esther? What is your request? It shall be given you.'" And then in chapter seven, the King again said, "What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you." Now the King told this to Esther three different times. It didn't matter what she was going to ask; he said he would grant it.

And this was the final piece of the revelation I needed. This is a huge revelation if you can hear it, because most believers have been programmed to say, "I'll do whatever God tells me to do," and we sit and wait and wait, and nothing happens. What I learned that day is that He was waiting for me to prepare my petition and bring it to Him according to what was on my heart to do.

On March 11, 2017, I made the first part of the petition, which was to specify those people I was petitioning for. In Esther's case, she was petitioning for her people, the Jews, whose lives were in danger. So the first question I had to answer before God was, who are you petitioning for? That answer did not take very long because for years, God has put three separate people groups on my heart and in my life to encourage.

Number one are creatives, those right-brain people who are misunderstood, yet are wired to hear inspired revelation. Number two are those I refer to as Levites, those who are called to live closest to the Lord and attend Him. And number three are women of color, who have played a significant role in my life since the mid-1980s. Now that initial petition was all well and good, but I knew that the Lord wanted more. He wanted a thoroughly researched and prepared petition just like I had done for the City Council meeting. Writing that first petition took two months. I ended up creating a template that I call the 24 Steps, which helped me think through the issues and present how I propose to help these three groups according to the gifts God gave me.

My petition ended up being 12 pages long and included topics such as market analysis, business strategies, proposed partners and vendors, budget, what I was prepared to invest, and how I would subsidize myself while all of this infrastructure was put into place. The Lord began to bless my work as never before. I believe because I went past the idea phase and put my thoughts to paper. And that's what the Lord is looking for: leaders who hear what's on His heart and then do something about it. The question for you: What has He put on your heart?

In the time remaining, I want to share three of the strategies that I put into practice following my petition. Keep in mind, this was my petition based on my journey with the Lord. Your journey and what He shows you will be uniquely yours. What I found in general is that once I took the time to make my petition, the Lord became more tangibly involved in every detail of my work and gave me additional ideas and strategies that I had no way of knowing. And when I implemented these God-ideas, it took my career path to a much higher level with greater impact.

It was as if doing the petition opened the door to His hands-on presence in my corporate life. I would be studying the Word, for example, and an insight would surface like buried treasure. I get questions all the time from listeners asking how I study and where I'm learning what I'm teaching. It stems from making petitions before God. The first strategy I was shown had to do with David's Mighty Men. King David was known as a great soldier and leader, and he modeled for us how he built a kingdom for God's people. But he didn't do it alone. He received help from a group of men referred to in scripture as David's Mighty Men. We read about 17 of them in 2 Samuel 23, and in 1 Chronicles 11 we learn about 30 more.

These incredibly strong men served as the King's special ops force. So one day as I was studying them, the Lord taught me that to achieve greater things for the Lord, I needed to do what David did and surround myself with "mighty men." Now, how do we do that? The scriptures teach us that the mighty men sat at David's table. That meant that he fed them. He took from what he had and he subsidized them.

The light bulb went on, and I realized a mistake that we often make when trying to do something great for God. We call friends and say, "Please pray for me, here's what I'm doing, I need prayer." The words "pray for me" are cheap. But what David did was different. He financed them out of his own pocket. So the Lord led me to contract with gifted and dedicated intercessors who believed in what I was doing. These became my prayer warriors, men and women, my mighty men, so to speak. I contracted them, I gave them monthly reports outlining strategic prayer needs, and paid them a set amount each month to subsidize them in the area of their spiritual gifts.

The difference I saw in my work was measurable. Now to you leaders who are listening, I encourage you to consider this strategy of putting paid intercessors into your line item budget for whatever you do for God. It is that important, and your efforts will have a Kingdom reward. The next lesson I learned came from Ezra's story, as recounted in the book of Second Esdras in the Apocrypha. God called Ezra the priest to pull aside for 40 days and write, as we read that "God lit the lamp of understanding in his heart." He and the five men assigned to help him wrote 94 books in all.

And the Lord told him, "Publish the 24 books that you wrote first, for the worthy and the unworthy to read. But keep the 70 books that were written last and hand those down to the wise men among your people." Now God did with Ezra the same as He did with the patriarch Enoch. He had them both memorialize His ways and pass that down to the next generations. And what struck me was that only some of what they wrote were released to the masses. The bulk of what they wrote was passed down only to the wise. Jesus modeled the same thing. For the bulk of His three years of ministry, He spoke to the masses freely, but the closer He came to the end, the Lord pulled away and poured out His wisdom to His disciples only.

As I approach the final season of my life, most likely, I have been mindful of this lesson. My priorities are to memorialize how walking in God's ways have played out in my work. Only some of my writing is available for the masses. The bulk of my work is reserved for those who pay the price to learn more, whether it's $6.95 for a monograph, $100 for a course, or a consulting session. I've also made it a priority to concentrate my coaching and mentoring on younger women whose lives I've chosen to invest time in.

The lesson for you is to memorialize what God has given you to do for Him and begin passing those things down to others. We are the sixth generation, the last one before the Day of the Lord. As such, it carries a huge responsibility. The world is getting darker, and we must strategically package God's light that we were given to carry. This is a big part of getting your affairs in order.

The final lesson I want to share came from the book of Jeremiah, because like us, he knew God's judgment was happening all around him and things were not looking good for his country. All the other prophets said what the people wanted to hear, namely that everything was going to be fine and God would save the day. That was not the reality that Jeremiah saw, so his message was diametrically opposed to the religious community of the day. He was thrown into a pit. But in chapter 32, God told Jeremiah to do something radical. He told him to buy a piece of property in his hometown and invest in a land that was soon going to be taken over. That verse hit me between the eyes.

There is a lot of wisdom here. God does not want us to sit back passively while our country implodes. Investing in a piece of land was a prophetic act on the part of Jeremiah to say that God still had plans for Israel in the future. The Lord began speaking to me specifically about this and asked me to invest in the place of my birth, even though things look bleak as to our country's future. So in 2021, I invested in a weekly radio show called Lessons in the Latter Days, which airs in my hometown in North Georgia. This investment began as a spiritual seed that I planted in the land of my forefathers. That seed has since grown, and I am continuing to direct my finances toward Kingdom endeavors through the media.

The Lord wants you to expand your thinking about the gifts that He's given you to steward. For me, my corporate expansion began when I learned how to make petitions before the Lord. If you want to learn how to make your petition, you will want the 24-step template that I talked about earlier. I will put a link in this program's notes, and I encourage you to invest the $20 for a 60-minute webinar, which goes through each of the steps in depth. It gives you the 24 Steps handout and teaches you how to make your Kingdom petition. You'll find this at CandaceLong.com/Podcast. Just click on this episode, "God's Kingdom Bootcamp for Leaders," and you'll find the link in the program notes. I hope you share this episode with other leaders because God is calling His leaders to get prepared for your Kingdom assignment. I want to thank you for taking the time to be with me today. And I invite you to join me again next time for Lessons in the Latter Days. God bless.