WHAT’S IN YOUR
CUP?
By Dan Luehrs
I awoke early one day and sat
before the Lord asking Him what He wanted me to speak about for the coming
service and He gave me a vision. I saw a kings cup like a chalice with gold
around the top and quite ornate. So I asked the Lord what it was. He said, “My
cup.” As I heard this, the cup came clearer into my view to behold its beauty.
I was a little shocked by this because I always saw His cup as something plane
and uninviting. Jesus said, “… O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup
pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will” (Matt 26:39 NKJV).
I then asked what the cup represented and He said, “The cup of My prosperity,
it is yours, take it.” So I did and asked where this cup was in the Bible and
He quickly said, “The cup that Joesph gave to Benjamin.” I then understood that
Joseph first drank from the cup of suffering and then He was given a cup of
prosperity that he shared with his full brother Benjamin.
“Then he commanded his house steward, saying, "Fill
the men's sacks with food, as much as they can carry, and put each man's money
in the mouth of his sack. And put my cup, the silver cup, in the mouth of the
sack of the youngest, and his money for the grain." And he did as Joseph
had told him” (Gen 44:1-2 NAS).
For years I have wondered about these verses as to why
Joseph would put a cup into Benjamin’s bag. I understood that he wanted to test
his older brothers and see if they would protect their younger brother or would
they become jealous of him. You see Joseph treated Benjamin better than his
half brothers like his father did to him, Joseph gave him a more honorable seat
at the dinner table with five times the food. But now I understand that there
is even a deeper spiritual meaning for us with his cup.
Joseph’s cup was a royal cup that he prophetically used to
seek God’s wisdom and direction for his life and the future of Egypt. (See
Genesis 44:5). How this all worked for him I do not know, but what I do know is
that Joseph was very prophetic from his childhood. I have a favorite coffee cup
that I like to drink out of everyday as I fellowship with God and hear from Him
for my day and my life. My guess is that Joseph used his cup in like manner,
his cup was in the line of Egyptian royalty like Pharaoh himself would have
drank from because Joseph was second in command of the nation.
The cup that God gives us is royalty whether it is one of
suffering or of prosperity, anyway you look at it, we become prophetic as we
drink in fellowship with Him on a daily basis. “Behold, I stand at the door and
knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and
will dine with him, and he with Me” (Rev 3:20 NAS). We cannot but help to
become prophetic people because that is what the Spirit of Jesus is, the spirit of prophecy. (See Rev 19:10).
When we hang around Him we become more prophetic like Him because our spiritual
eyes are seeing clearer everyday.
Joseph is a type of Christ in the
Old Testament. His name means [to add another son] because his mother wanted
more than one son to keep up to her sister who had several sons. Joseph’s
brother was named Benjamin, meaning [the son of my right hand]. Jesus is the
Son of God that sits at the right hand of the Father, but we are the added sons of God that sit at Jesus’
right hand. The Bible does not come outright and say this, but I think by the
way Joseph was treating his younger brother he gave him a high place in the
kingdom at his right hand. (See Gen 47:6). For that is what the Lord has
promised all His overcoming sons of Benjamin. “And have made us kings and
priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth” (Rev 5:10 NKJV). Just as
God wants to share His power and authority with His chosen, called, and
faithful believers, so did Joseph.
This is why we have been given a
cup of royalty, because it is His cup. “He said to them, "My cup you shall
drink; but to sit on My right and on My left, this is not Mine to give …” (Matt
20:23 NAS). God is giving His royal cup to whosoever will come and drink with
Him. The question we must ask ourselves is, are we a son of His right hand?
This is how we can know, are we daily drinking deeply of His love, are we
coming to Him and drinking from His cup? Knowing Him intimately is the
qualification of us entering the kingdom.
God wants to have fellowship with
us, that is what the cup represents!
Intimacy produces relationship, relationship produces trust, and trust produces
authority. This is what a royal cup represents, authority! “…That you also may
have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with
His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3 NAS).
Our church services should be built
around the art of true fellowship, that is what the disciples did from house to
house as they eat together. This is how we get to know each other, when we open
up our hearts in true intimacy, IN-TO-ME-SEE. We the body make up the bride of
Christ that knows Him intimately, that is what a bride gets to do. We must not
only get to know Him, but every true believer in fellowship that the Lord
connects us with. True godly fellowship is like walking in heaven on earth and
is worth contending for even if we have to open ourselves up to hurt that comes
from intimacy. The enemy of our soul will target our close Christian
relationships and will try to break them up at any cost. He knows that the
church being in unity is the greatest threat of his evil kingdom, because when
we are in one accord we can put the enemy to flight.
We may not use the words, “Lets go
have fellowhip,” but we do say, “Lets go for coffee, coke, or tea.” What we are
really saying is, “Let talk, lets have some fellowship over some drinks of some
kind.” We are saying the same thing that Joseph was saying to his brother
Benjamin when he put his cup in his bag. I crave fellowship with you, lets have
a cup together! This is why Joseph wept several times when meeting with his
brothers and had to leave their presence so that he could keep his composure.
Our need of deep fellowship with God and man is greater then we presently
understand, but as heaven comes to earth we will understand it more.
“Now his heart yearned for his
brother; so Joseph made haste and sought somewhere to weep. And he went into
his chamber and wept there” (Gen 43:30 NKJV).
When Joseph saw Benjamin his heart
yearned to have heart to heart communion with his brother, to tell him all that
the Lord had done for him while they were apart. He longed to re-establish the
relationship and see how he was doing and if his brothers were treating him
poorly. This was a dream come true and now his vision was coming to pass right
before his eyes that the Lord had shown him many years ago. When Joseph placed
his cup in Benjamin’s bag he was opening the way of redemption and fellowship
with his brother once again. His cup was silver and this is the color of
redemption. Each day we drink from the Lord’s cup we are reminded of our
inheritance in Christ, for the Lord has done the same thing for us. Psalms 16:5
says, “Lord, you alone are my inheritance, my cup of blessing. You guard all
that is mine.”
“Thou dost prepare a table before
me in the presence of my enemies; Thou hast anointed my head with oil; My cup
overflows” (Ps 23:5 NAS).
“Or do you think that the Scripture
says in vain, "The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously” (James 4:5
NKJV)?
Did you get that? The Spirit of God
yearns to be with us just as Joseph yearned to have fellowship with Benjamin.
The God of the universe desires you my friend! Why not open the avenue of
fellowship with God today, you will bring great joy to the God of heaven and He
will pour His presence out upon you. It is hard to imagine that God would need
or want fellowhip with us, but He does and we were made in His image to desire
the same. So why not meet a need in the heart of God and fellowship with Him
today.
If we suffer, we shall also reign
with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us (2 Tim 2:12 KJV).
When I formally thought of the
Lord’s cup it was one of suffering rather than that of prosperity, which Joseph
was given after his cup of trials. As far as we know from his story in the
Bible he suffered major rejection and persecution from his brothers and from
others for thirty years just like Jesus. Our cup of suffering is needed so that
we can handle the cup of prosperity that will be with us for the rest of our
life as it was with Joseph. So hang in there and don’t quit because better days
are just ahead for you through your trials. Your trials are working for your
prosperity just as someone going through college has to take tests and pass
them to graduate.
How blessed is the man who
perseveres through temptation! For after he has passed the test, he will
receive as his crown the Life which God has promised to those who love him
(James 1:12 CJB).
God has set up all parts our lives
so that we would become overcomers in this life-time and receive the crown of
life, which is to become like Jesus through the process. I am convinced that we
do not even come close to getting just how blessed we are in our lives because
many times we only see what we do not have. As Children we had no idea how good
we had it when we had loving parents, a roof over our head, food on the table,
and if we were really blessed a few gifts every year. But when we mature and
have families of our own we see just how hard it was for our parents to provide
for us and stay emotionally strong.
Joseph realized in the time of his
suffering and prosperity that he had been greatly blessed to have a loving
father and to have brothers that percecuted him to prepare him for his calling.
(See Gen. 50:20). And so must we see and rejoice in our trials that our enemies
are only working out the will of God in our life.
Once when I was getting very
comfortable pastoring a church and thinking that I had finally arrived at my
calling in life after seven years of great trials to get there. The Lord had an
awaking for me one day when He said, “Do not get comfortable at this, for this
is not what I have called you too! At that time I had a vision of suffering
before me and just cried out in my spirit man, “Oh no!” Now I can tell you
after eighteen years of this happening with the Lord the former seven years of
suffering was nothing in comparison to what I just had gone through. But for
some time now His cup of prosperity has been in my life and the only thing that
has really changed is me!
HER CUP OF HARLOTRIES
The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and
adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden
cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication (Rev 17:4 NKJV).
There are two types of cups; one is from the Lord
and the other from our enemy that wants to deceive us with the foolishness of
religion. Man’s traditional religious ways are stumbling blocks to God’s truth.
They block people from God, having a form of godliness without any true
substance of God’s presence and power. Until our religious ways are repented
from we cannot go into all that the Lord has for us in present truth, which is
the full revelation of Jesus. Traditional religion is like a spiritual
roadblock that bars us from moving forward into the deeper things of God,
because we have been blinded by religion like the Pharisees that could not see
their Messiah standing right before them. Even though He did many signs and
wonders that were prophesied in the Old Testament they couldn’t receive Him.
John the Baptist had to come to the Jewish people first by
preaching a message of repentance before Jesus could come with the message of
the kingdom. They not only needed to repent of their sin, but their way of
thinking about the kingdom of God and their traditions. Jesus taught a whole
new way of thinking about what the kingdom was, most of them could not receive
and in the end they killed Him for His teachings. Only one hundred and twenty
people listened to His final instructions to be in the upper room on the day of
Pentecost.
Over the annuals of time the harlot church has made
herself a king in the earth, arrayed with purple, gold, and having in her hand
a golden cup. Her cup is not filled
with the water of life like the bride of Christ has to give it away to all
those who desire to drink. “And the Spirit and the bride say, "Come."
And let the one who hears say, "Come." And let the one who is thirsty
come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost” (Rev 22:17
NAS).
People on the planet are thirsty for natural water
and they are thirsty for spiritual life, yet they do not understand why. We all
have needs that are within, but because most people are not spiritually
discerning they fill their life with the filth of the world rather than the
things of God. The devil knows that man is spiritual, so he created the harlot
church to be of the world rather than true spirituality, which comes from God
alone. The Bible calls religion, “The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
It looks good to the eye and tastes good to the soulish man, but in the end it
only brings death to the partakers because it is of the world and is an enemy
of God.
You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship
with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend
of the world makes himself an enemy of God (James 4:4 NAS).
A golden cup of death is in the hand of the harlot,
it is full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication and it feeds
the nations antichrist filth. One day soon they will wake up to their present
condition and see their spiritual starvation and cry out to Jesus to feed them
with the true spiritual realities from His word. Then they too will drink from
the royal golden cup of the bride and will be given one to hydrate the nations
with life.
Way too many Christians are fellowshipping with
religious demons that are stealing the life and freedom of God from His people.
“You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the
cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of
demons” (1 Cor 10:21 NAS). God wants us to daily come and dine with Him and
part take of His royal delicacies and to taste and see that God is good.
Dan
Luehrs
PO Box
341
Intercession
City, FL 33848
www.churchinhispresence.org