Normal Christianity

I just got through reading the gospel of Mark. In Mark 16:17,18 Jesus makes this amazing statement, “And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
There are five promises in this passage for those who believe: authority over demons; tongues; protection from wildlife; protection from poison; healing. This is normal Christianity, and for two thousand years a lot of the church has been theologizing normal Christianity away. We have endured ridiculous, non biblical theologies like, ‘there are no more demons, Jesus got rid of them all on the cross.’ Healing and tongues were only meant for the first century church.’ ‘There is no super-natural protection; Christians simply have to be careful.’ None of these theological statements have any biblical support. What does have biblical support is deliverance, tongues, divine protection and healing.
What has resulted from this is sub-normal Christianity being called and accepted as normal? We are scandalized by prominent Christians being caught in adultery or greed. We are scandalized by the polls that show Christians don’t really live much different from the rest of the culture in terms of their morality. But we are not scandalized by our impotence. But our impotence is a scandal, and in some ways worse than the above mentioned moral failings.
We are the only people on earth filled with God. Jesus said don’t put your light under a bushel but let it shine. How is it we have only interpreted this morally and not in terms of power? Throughout the New Testament we are promised power to be His witnesses. Yet when we don’t pursue miracles it is the same as not pursuing moral righteousness, we are hiding the light of the Holy Spirit and depriving the world of an encounter with a miracle-working God.
The lack of the miraculous makes unbelief too easy for the world. The world can produce people who look as morally good or better than church-goers, and the demonic cults can counterfeit miracles. But only the people of God can produce people of purity and power. Our love, goodness and the miracles of God are our witness to Christ. To settle for anything less is a sin and it is boring.
If you have never cast out a demon, spoken in tongues, been divinely protected by God spreading His gospel or healed the sick repent right now and ask God to fill you with power and opportunity. If you have dabbled in these things but it is not normal, repent and tell God you want a new normal. This generation has the opportunity to make sub-normal Christianity obsolete and make normal Christianity visible to an unbelieving world.

Jon and Kate: Rebuilding from Fatherlessness

Jon and Kate are breaking up and getting a divorce. I never watched more than five minutes of the show but it has raised a very common issue. It is the issue of passive men and domineering women in marriage. I have seen this often in thirty years of ministry, the fatherlessness of our culture has contributed greatly to confusion in men and a real emasculation. We have also taught women to be very aggressive and fill the void left by passive men.
I have a couple of observations. First, the answer is not macho men. Machismo is a mask for insecurity and is not the antidote to passivity. Second, women are not to be doormats; biblical submission means respect and honor but not the loss of identity or blind obedience. Instead I think fatherless men need each other to regain their confidence to be initiators in their relationships and real leaders in their families. Women need to realize no matter how much their husband acts like a boy they cannot treat him like a boy. He cannot be nagged into growing up or being the man you hoped you got. If you treat him like a child most likely he will remain a child.
One thing I have a real problem with is the man leaving the bossy wife and saying he did this because he finally grew up. Running away is not growing up, it is as cowardly as passively letting her boss you around. Real growing up takes responsibility for the problems passivity has created and initiates change in the relationship. Instead of running into the arms of another woman, change your behavior toward the woman you married. Come out of your hiding place, learn to both love and confront your wife. Don’t act like a child, gently confront her when she tries to treat you like a child or corrects you like you are a child, and become a real grown up man worthy of her respect.

Messy Revivals or Clean Cemeteries?

In Matthew 13 Jesus tells the parable of the weeds and the wheat. In this parable Jesus describes the wheat and weeds growing side by side. The workers want to pull the weeds but the master forbids them to do so. He tells his workers to let the weeds and the wheat grow side by side, for if the workers pull the weeds they will also inadvertently pull some of the wheat as well. Jesus says the wheat which represents his work and the weeds which represent the devil's work will be separated by his angels at the end of time.
I believe this parable has real application to revival and Holy Spirit manifestations which have happened throughout church history and are happening today. In western Christianity there is a strong preoccupation with neatness and order and a real disdain for the messiness of revival. We have a rationalistic tendency to categorize anything we can’t understand as being of the flesh or the devil and try to tame it or put a stop to it. Even in churches that are ‘open to the Holy Spirit’, (I have learned to dislike that phrase) we only allow so much. In doing this we quench the Spirit and damage the wheat in our zeal for a weed-less church.
About six years ago the Holy Spirit broke out in a new, exciting and messy way in the church I was pastoring. Some people loved it, some people disliked it and left and many endured it without much enthusiasm. But I learned some things. First, Holy Spirit likes to have reign in the church and He is not obligated to us to explain what He is doing. It is not our church and He is not our pet to do our bidding. The church belongs to Jesus and His Spirit brings Him to us and us to Him as He sees fit. Our job is to go with Him, not to tame Him our control Him. Second, we often use the word discernment as a mask word for control and control always has its root in fear. We are afraid of looking strange, we are afraid of God being totally in control of our lives and bodies, we are often bound by the opinions of others and what they might think. Third, when God touches people powerfully He intends it to bring fruit but that fruit is often conditioned by people’s responses.
I think I learned two important things during that time to maximize fruitfulness. First, ignore the weeds. This is hard for western Christians to do, we want our revivals pure, but Jesus cautions us that in our zeal for weed pulling we destroy what He is trying to do; we quench the Spirit and actually pour water on revival fire. Second to get the full fruitfulness from people’s encounters with God we need to marry powerful encounters with discipleship.
Two examples taught me this. One of the examples is from church history and the other one from my own history.
During the early 1800’s the Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists came together on the American frontier and held a series of communion meetings in Kentucky. The most famous of these was at Cane Ridge in 1802. The Holy Spirit fell powerfully at these meetings, conversions, healings, deliverances and strange manifestations abounded. The description of these meetings makes the wildest of today’s revival gatherings look mild. After these meetings the Presbyterians were the most critical of the manifestations and tried to calm things down, the Baptist were a little more accepting and the Methodist embraced just about everything that was going on. During the following decade it was the Methodists who spread most rapidly and powerfully along the borders of the American frontier; the Baptists grew, but not as much; and the Presbyterians brought up the rear. All three groups were powerfully touched but the ones who did the least weed pulling got the most wheat.
The other thing the Methodists did was they rigorously followed up on their converts, put them in small groups and discipled them. The early Methodists got their name because they had a method of bringing people beyond conversion into discipleship and they applied it. Better than anyone else the early Methodist married powerful God encounters with discipleship and it bore maximum fruit.
In my own history, when God moved powerfully on our church He especially moved upon some of our youth. We had young people falling out in the Spirit, crying, laughing, shaking, spinning, prophesying and experiencing dramatic touches and calls from God. Looking back at the fruit of all this I noticed that the boys did better than the girls over the years of living out these experiences in positive and fruit bearing ways. The girls were equally, and in some cases more powerfully touched and don’t get me wrong many of them are still going strong, but some fell away and to this day are not living out the calling that was placed upon them when they were encountered. But to a greater degree the boys have done better to this time. There was one big difference. Many of the boys who were encountered were a part of a discipleship group we called Baalam’s Donkeys. This group met weekly to eat, study, hold each other accountable and pray. In other words they were discipled. It wasn’t until much later that we tried to start such a group for the girls. To this day I can’t think of one of those boys who aren’t excelling in their Christian walk. They are helping plant churches, preparing to go on the mission field, leaders in their schools and churches, going to seminary, working as youth pastors, they are doing great. Again the marriage of powerful Holy Spirit encounter and discipleship grew good wheat.
We spend way too much energy weeding in church. I want the wheat. I want revival, I don’t care if it is messy and there are fleshly indulgences, I would rather have messy revival then a clean cemetery for my church experience. But I have learned that God encounters don’t replace discipleship, they are the point of discipleship. We study, pray and hold each other up not as religious duties but to get the maximum harvest from the encounters we have with God. There is no dichotomy between revival encounters and discipleship, but when married together there is great fruitfulness.

God is a God of Power

Recently I was reading a profile to a “Bible School”; they were very interested in letting their inquirers know they were serious and dedicated to following the word of God, the Bible. They also were very intentional in stating that they were non-charismatic and believed that the sign gifts of the New Testament were not normative for today’s church. I was struck by the obvious contradiction. You see the Bible they so enthusiastically uphold is a book chalk full of signs and wonders. And nowhere in that Bible does it say, or even insinuate, that signs and wonders where meant for a specific age and not the ongoing operation of a wonder working God. It is sad that people so deeply committed to the truth of the Bible are so blind to the clear teaching of the Bible. God is a God of power. Christianity is based upon the miraculous. Jesus’ conception was a miracle. His ministry was one miracle after another. His resurrection was the great miracle upon which we build our hope. The early church grew upon the testimony of miracles done by Christians. Good Bible believing Christians affirm all this, but they stop short of believing God is still God by denying He is still regularly doing miracles today. Much of western evangelicalism believes in the Great I Was and the Great I Will Be, but they deny the Great I Am. God did it back then; He will do it again in heaven, but don’t expect much from Him now. The sad thing is we get what we expect. Not believing in the miraculous becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Jesus taught if we don’t have faith for miracles we won’t get miracles. In fact because the church is a unit, because we are all connected, the unbelief of some Christians becomes a ball and chain upon all Christians. The stated unbelief of the above Bible school makes miracles harder to do in Africa and harder to do for you and me. Jesus could do very few miracles in Nazareth because of their unbelief.Paul said, “The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.” We have turned it into a matter of talk instead of power. If you say you believe in the Bible then believe in the whole Bible and believe in the God of the Bible. Start pressing into the miraculous, start believing God for miracles, start praying for miracles and don’t stop. It is time for our culture to see that the kingdom of God is still a matter of power and then they may listen some to our talk.

Double Predestination

One of the worst doctrines to ever hit the church is the doctrine which came in under the Reformed label and it is the doctrine of double predestination. Basically this doctrine says God chooses who goes to heaven and who goes to hell and people have no choice in the matter. There is no such thing as human freedom to choose whether or not to follow God, repent, believe in Jesus and receive eternal life. This doctrine is held up to uphold the notion of God’s sovereignty and is usually bandied about by semi-academics. This doctrine is thought by some to be the high watermark of the Protestant Reformation and the strength of the church in the 17th and 18th centuries. The doctrine and the historical analysis are both untrue. First for history, the strength of the Protestant Reformation came from three other doctrines, not double predestination. The great energy which changed Europe and the world came from three rediscovered truths by the early reformers. The first truth was justification by faith, the second was faith in Christ alone as necessary for salvation and the third was the authority of scripture over church tradition. The rediscovery of these three doctrines rocked the world and they are still rocking the world. The truth is the doctrine of double predestination killed the momentum of the reformation and is the main doctrinal reason the church is nearly dead in Europe today. This is because double predestination is nothing more than fatalism with Christian language attached to it. Double predestination cuts the heart out of evangelism and purpose for the church and renders the church listless and uncaring. The worst part about double predestination is that it makes God responsible for evil. If humans have no free will then God is the one who set Adam and Eve up to fall, God is the one who created and destined Hitler to kill 6 million Jews and set the world to war. It would mean that it is God who created the rapist to rape and the murderer to murder all for some sovereign plan we are told we can’t understand. We are told to be quiet in our ignorance because His ways are higher than our ways. Well His ways are higher than our ways, but this doctrine makes His ways lower than our ways. It makes God out to be the author and orchestrator of evil. Abraham said “will not the judge of all the earth do right” because he knew he couldn’t worship an unjust God, and neither can we. If double predestination is true we may fear God and serve God but we will not love and worship Him because we will see Him as less fair than we are, and if we don’t see God as all good we will not be able to give Him our total worship. Double predestinarians say their doctrine is scriptural, relying a lot on Romans 9, but nearly the whole rest of the Bible refutes this position. Not only does the Bible tell people to choose one way over another, time and time again, (see Genesis 4, Deut. 28 and Joshua 24 as examples) but the Bible is full of commands or imperatives. Every command, every imperative implies a choice. God is saying do this, or don’t do that. Commands make no sense without choice. It’s not that there is little evidence for human volition in the Bible, but the whole Bible is about God acting with humans with volition. The Bible is a book about how God works out His salvation with people who are free. He implores, invites, judges, corrects, woos His people but never overrides their choice to love and follow Him or leave and reject Him.

How bad do we want the next level?

We want to go to the next level of intimacy with God and fruitfulness in God. We want revival in the church and transformation in our land. What Christian would argue with those statements? But the truth is we don’t want those things if they come with a price tag. And they do come with a price tag and it is a price we are seldom willing to pay. It is not the price we normally hear about, pray more, give more. In fact the price will be different every time. But almost always the price will be offensive, costly and unexpected. The Jews wanted their Messiah, he came, but he was from Nazareth, came from an unwed mother and didn’t look at all like King David. God had answered their prayer but in a package they didn’t recognize, He was offensive. I have been in situations where we have been praying for healing and one person gets healed and another doesn’t. It’s confusing and awkward, it leaves unanswered questions. Many would rather not have healing if it comes in that package, better to back away from it then have confusion. I have heard pastors say I want more power but I don’t want people to fall in church. God send it, but send it my way. And whatever happens don’t let attendance and giving go down. What if God sent revival and it meant you had to travel a long way and have a preacher you found offensive lay hands on you? What if it meant leaving a secure job and moving somewhere where you had to trust God to provide? What if it meant being misunderstood by family and losing some friends? The owner of the field sold everything to get the pearl of great price. Proud Naaman had to submit to Elisha’s direction and dip seven times in the dirty Jordan to be healed of leprosy. God wants to know do you want the answer to your prayers enough to pay the price. Are you willing to embrace the offense, whatever it is, and go and do things he says without having all the answers and surely being misunderstood. The price tag will be different every time but three things are sure, it will be costly, it will be unexpected, and it will in some way be offensive. How bad do we want the next level?

Will not the judge of all the earth do right?

The second way to answer the question of God’s fairness is to look at our sense of justice. Unless we had a sense of justice, of right and wrong we would never question the fairness of God. Our questions come from our sense of what ought to be done. But where does our sense of justice come from? The Christian answer is that it comes from God. If this is true then we can be sure that our sense of justice is not higher than His. Water does not rise higher than its source. God cannot give us a sense of fairness that is superior to His; therefore we can always trust God to do the right thing. In the end there will be no one in heaven or hell who will be able to say, ‘God wasn’t fair’. There is a great illustration of this in Genesis 18. God is letting Abraham know about His plans to judge Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham questions God’s fairness by asking God if He would kill the righteous with the wicked. Abraham barters God down to find out if He is fair. At one point Abraham asks, “Will not the judge of all the earth do right?” This is a profound question. Abraham becomes satisfied that God will not judge the righteous with the wicked, in fact he will spare the wicked for the sake of the righteous. Until we become convinced like Abraham that the judge of all the earth will do right we cannot trust, worship and love Him. But if we know that God is not less fair then me, He is more fair. And God is not less merciful then me, He is more merciful. Then we can freely worship Him and know in the end He will be fair and more then fair, He will be merciful. The judge of all the earth will do right.

Is God fair?

The issue of hell raises questions of God’s justice. Is God fair? The question arises how eternal punishment is fair for someone who stole a nickel from their mom’s purse. This question is answered in two ways: First, it is not the nickel that is the problem it is the bent in a person to steal, to take something for themselves that belongs to another. Stealing is selfish as are all sins. It is the bent in us all that tries to make the self the center of the universe that is damnable. Unless this bent is repented of it will keep us away from God simply because He is the center of the universe. We need to deal not so much with sinning as with sin. If sin is at the center of our lives we will not want to go to heaven, we can’t be in control there, we cannot be the center, God is the center. The only way to enjoy heaven and to enjoy God is to let Him kill that bent in us so that we can be at peace with the truth, He is the Creator we are the creature. He is the center, it is all about Him, and we orbit around Him and find ourselves in Him. Heaven is the place for people who accept the truth, want the truth and willingly submit to the truth. Hell is the place for everyone who still wants to be the center. That is why stealing the nickel and mass murder can both send a person to hell, they are both imposing the self over others and God and are both a symptom of self-centeredness instead of God centeredness. The way to kill that self-centeredness is to repent, surrender our wills to His, invite His Lordship over our lives and receive His gifts of forgiveness of sin and new life in the Spirit that come by faith. The next ramble will deal with the second way to approach the question of God’s fairness.

Locked from the Inside

Eschatology is the study of the last things, and the ultimate last thing is heaven or hell. Clearly the doctrine of hell is the most troubling of all doctrines for Christian people, if it is not something is wrong with us. How can the God we have met as Father and Savior send people to hell, if He is good and powerful why not save them all? If it wasn’t for Jesus teaching on the subject I would probably be an universalist, for make no mistake about it, it is not Paul or the Old Testament writers who make the case for hell, it is our Lord Himself. As always the answer lies in the heart of God. God gave us choices, freedom, and our freedom is real. God’s ultimate value seems to be love and love is one of those choices. We choose to love people and we choose to love God. Romantic love, infatuation, simply seems to happen, it is not hard to fall in love. But real love is a choice we make. So to love God we must choose to love God, we must seek Him and find Him and follow Him. God has made this possible through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So far so good, but there is a problem and the problem is us. We don’t want to follow God, we don’t want the universe on His terms we want it on our terms. This is sin and it is no small problem. It is so deeply ingrained in us it stops us from seeking, loving and following God. It is only when God’s grace reaches us and woes us that we awake to the reality that our lives are in Him. At this point we have a choice, we can repent of our self centeredness and believe upon Jesus or we can insist upon our own will being done. That choice is the choice between heaven and hell. Hell is not the place people go for not having correct doctrine or for any particular sin, hell is the place people choose to go to keep God out of there lives. I think it was Calvin Miller who said, “The gates of hell are not locked on the outside to keep the damned in, they are locked from the inside to keep God out.”

Love Drives Out Fear

So if fear is such a negative thing and so detrimental to our faithfulness and fruitfulness in Christ how do we get past it? Faith is the antithesis to fear but love is the antidote. The Bible teaches that “perfect love drives out fear”. This makes perfect sense. Faith requires living by taking risks based upon God’s voice and God’s promises. Fear is simply the state we live in when we really don’t believe the voice or the promises. Love is the answer. If we know that we know that we know God loves us, then we know He won’t let us down when we step out in faith. If we know He loves us we’ll pursue and have a level of intimacy with Him to know His voice so we won’t doubt when we hear Him or even be afraid of hearing wrongly. After all if we make a mistake trying to listen to Him and do His will, if He loves us He’ll put us back on the right track. We will believe His promises, act upon them, see His faithfulness and rejoice in His goodness. The answer for the overwhelming and paralyzing fear that grips a control bound Western Christianity is nothing other than the love of God. We are like little children on the edge of the pool wanting to jump in for the first time. Daddy is in the water with His arms extended and promising to catch us. How do we know He’ll catch us? He has a track record of love and faithfulness, but the only way to be sure is to jump. How do we get past the fear into the arms of a good and loving God, trust His love and take the plunge. Give the money you are prompted to give, start the class you have been nudged to start, reach out to the neighbor or co-worker God has placed on your heart. Base your next decision not upon the fear based prognosis of the current economy but on the voice of God revealed in your heart and in the scriptures. We can live lives of adventure and freedom outside of fear and in the arms of love. Jump.

Perilous Times?

I got an email one time with a ‘prophetic warning’ that started out by saying, ‘in these perilous times’. That should have been a tip-off. The warning was useless, and uninformed. But the phrase ‘in these perilous times’ caught my attention, I didn’t respond at the time, but I have since reflected on that phrase. My question is what about these times is more perilous than other times? I think all times are perilous for those rebelling against God and His Christ, but what makes the times perilous for those in Christ. My answer is nothing. If we are in Christ the times are not perilous they are glorious. Paul says, “To live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21) In other words we cannot lose. If we live, we live in Christ and have marvelous friends and great ministry opportunities. If we die we enter our reward. So why the fear about perilous times? I think it comes from bad eschatology, and a distorted image of God. The bad eschatology is based upon a system that thinks things are going to get worse and worse until at the very last second we are raptured away. After that things will get real bad for seven years until Christ returns. I think this eschatology is built around a misinterpretation of scripture which interprets scriptures meant to describe the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. for today. But the bigger problem than the eschatological question is the image of God question. The phrase perilous times given to Christians imply salvation hanging by a thread. It pictures a God who is looking for an excuse to condemn; one slip and you’ll lose it all. I am not arguing here one way or another about eternal security, but I am saying God has revealed His will in Jesus Christ as a God who is willing, able and eager to save. Christians, seeking to do God’s will, living by faith and taking risks are not in peril. It is too bad many live their lives in fear of a God who loves them and miss the largeness of His saving heart.

More on Fear

One of the worst ways we hide fear is by hiding behind our Bibles and theology. This happens when knowing all the right answers and being able to correct others becomes more important then knowing and loving God and knowing and loving people. This is often the way of the religious who are afraid of real relationships. We all have been hurt by life and instead of risking more hurt we decide being right is more important than being real and vulnerable. The Bible, and theology can then become tools to actually keep God and people at arms length. This is the way of the Pharisees. Don't get me wrong, the Bible is true and good theology (what we think about God) is important. In fact if we truly understood the word of the Bible and had good theology we would be set free from fear and hiding. Sadly that seems to be too hard for all of us sometimes and for some all the time. So we use our knowledge of the Bible and theological correctness to bully people and keep threats away, we use phrases like 'where is that in the Bible' to protect us from God encounters, and 'that's not biblical' to protect us from changing our minds. As I said, I believe this kind of Pharisaical thinking is rooted in fear. It keeps people isolated, unchangeable and mean. The very antithesis to the heart of God, who wants us in real community, repent, teachable, kind and lovable.

Fear, Wisdom, and Stewardship

Fear is so prevalent in Western Christianity we have theological names for it to hide behind. Two words we use to mask fear are wisdom and stewardship. We use the word wisdom to mean let's maintain the status quo, it would be unwise to change what we are doing, and problem free comfort is the primary goal. We use the word stewardship to justify selfishness with our money and property, we hoard these things for the saints instead of risking them missionally. New Testament wisdom is living by faith, and as John Wimber used to say faith is spelled R-I-S-K. Faith leaves comfort, prays for the sick and expects them to get well, casts out demons and is often leaving familiar places and people for God adventures. And in the New Testament money and property are not evil at all, but seen as tools to expand God's Kingdom on earth, they are given away generously for the cause of evangelism and mercy. Whenever I hear the words let's be wise or practice good stewardship I listen carefully to hear if it is the voice of fear or faith behind these words. All too often out of my mouth and the mouths others it has been the voice of fear.

Sometimes I Ramble

In our evangelical culture we have raised our kids trying to protect them from the world and the devil. This is a posture of fear. We are so concerned they will be swept away we teach them to be bigger cowards then we are. And they never see a vibrant aggressive faith so they end up being swept away. We bring upon us the thing we fear. It is time we raise kids the world and the devil need to be afraid of. We are on the offense, we have the ball. If we live a vibrant victorious life, taking risks by faith and living like we really believe what we want them to believe, then we have nothing to fear from R rated movies or college philosophy courses. They will know the truth of our doctrine by our lives, they will embrace it, take it to another level, and the world and the devil will need protecting from them.