Mend the nets before fishing

It is shallow to throw away all criticism because surely at this time as the body of Christ we could do with a little constructive criticism. When the Lord was calling Jeremiah into ministry he gave him power and authority to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant. Looking at Jeremiah as he was pulling down, destroying, rooting out and throwing down one would have never thought his ultimate goal was to build and to plant.
Before they were apostles the 12 were first disciples. Before they went out they first stayed in with the Lord. As custodians of the Lords testimony here on earth before we get evangelical and bring people into the church let us put our house in order. Before we go and throw our nets into the deep for a catch, let us by his grace fix the net.
The vital goal of all ministry is sonship For He Himself gave some to be apostles, for the equipping of the saints, that we should no longer be children – Eph4 vs11-14.
In the words of T. Austin Sparks: Sonship is the full ripe fruit of divine thought. There is no higher thought in the divine mind, and no possibility greater and higher for any being, than that of sonship in the divine sense. There is nothing wrong with being a child but there is surely something wrong with wanting to be one forever.
Confronted with the woman of Canaan who had a demon-possessed daughter and was asking Him to set her free, Jesus makes an interesting statement when He says It is not good to take the childrens bread and throw it to the little dogs – Mat15vs26. Besides the fact of the gospel not yet being open to the gentiles and the grace of the woman finally getting the miracle, there is something more to this incident.
As revealed in the words of our Lord Jesus to this woman, signs and wonders are childrens bread. Miracles are childrens bread, but as we move to sonship we are not sustained by them.
When he spoke to the disciples about signs and wonders, the Lord said these signs shall follow them that believe. But it seems we have turned this statement around to read these believers shall follow these signs.
Scripture makes it clear that signs are not for the people of God. They are for non-believers who can not believe without seeing. The Philistines (representative of the world) without seeing have no other connection with God and when they used the signs model of approaching God in the return of the Arc of the Covenant to Israel, God was not angry. However, when Gods people tried to do the same thing, it proved deadly. The lesson here is that when we try to use that which is of the world in the house of God, death is what results. It is vital that we know how to use the faith weapons we have been given.