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.

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.